The Redhunter

GEN. HERTLING:...Some who aren't familiar with this fighting might ask, "Is all this making a difference?" I'll answer that by giving you a few vignettes. I walked through the town of Himbis (ph), which is in the center of the Breadbasket area, with several coalition force soldiers on the second day of our operations, the day after many were reporting that AQI had fled. Townspeople were hesitant in leaving their homes, and when they did, they were asking us if it was safe to come out. When we assured them it was, they began relating stories of all the murders and intimidation from the terrorists that had been in their area. I walked through that same town last Saturday, and shops were again open, people were walking freely through the town, and many people who I saw on the first day again stopped to talk to me. A few days ago, in another town in this area, a town called Shirin (ph), a young cavalry leader introduced me to a 12-year-old Iraqi girl who was brave enough to provide a list and a sketch map to Iraqi soldiers, and that list and sketch map showed the names and hiding places of terrorists who were still in the area and who had harassed her and killed two of her brothers. ...

Q: General, it's Pauline Jelinek of the Associated Press. How would you assess the strength of al Qaeda in your area now after those 40 operations that you mentioned as opposed to before? In other words, how much damage do you think you've done over all to them?

GEN. HERTLING: Yeah, that's a great question, and what I'll you is I think that the terrorists that have been in that area unimpeded for the last several months and in some cases years have done significant damage not only to the infrastructure of the town, but also to the psyche of the various people that lived in the area. They had developed safe havens and caches. Some of them were very well formed. They weren't hasty positions or hasty cache sites. These were ones that have been in place for a very long time.

So what I'll tell you is just the increase in expanding security has caused significant damage to them -- the capture and kill. We're seeing reflections in human intelligence as well as from other intelligence that we're getting that's saying they are still looking for a place to hide, and that's what we're attempting to do.

You know, what's interesting, Pauline, I think a year ago we were often reacting to al Qaeda and what they were going to do next. Now I think the tables have turned a little bit, and they are attempting to react where we're going to go next and that's a critical difference. So I think in, specifically the bread basket area, I've seen it with my own eyes, and things are safer; the people are coming out. I talked to a group of town's people this afternoon, and they were very hopeful of things getting going again. In some of the other provinces that we've also been conducting operations -- in Salahuddin here, south of Samarra and north of Baiji, in the deserts where al Qaeda has attempted to gain footholds, we've continued to pursue them. In Mosul, we still have a very -- Mosul and the rest of Nineveh's province we still have a very tough fight to go. In Kirkuk, things are improving significantly.

Q: General, it's Mike Mount with CNN. Can you expand a little bit about what you just said about terrorists seeming to anticipate where you are heading next as opposed to where -- you chasing them to where you think they're going next? What does that mean in terms of a change?

GEN. HERTLING: Yeah, I hope I didn't -- I hope I didn't say that. If I did, that's not what I meant. What I said was we are continuing to pursue terrorists. They are going to some places. We know where they're going oftentimes. We're continuing to collect intelligence to find out their trails and where they're leading us. So they're not anticipating at all where we're pursuing them. And in fact, I guess what I would say to you is they are trying to get away or find new safe havens, and every time they think they have them, we attack there.
...

Q: From these various operations over the years, we've seen that the terrorists have kind of squeezed out, moved up north. Now they seem, you know, obviously to be in your area. With these operations, do you see them kind of collecting in another area, or do you think this is maybe the final stand for al Qaeda?

GEN. HERTLING: I would never use the term "final stands." I think we're going to have to continue to pursue these individuals wherever they go. Whenever you think -- or whenever you feel comfortable that you've eliminated them in one area, they tend to reemerge. So this is a continuous pursuit operation, and we'll never say that we've completed pursuing them, because they may always come back.

What I would suggest to you, though, is in the past there has been that squeezing, or I've heard it call the whack-a-mole, where you hit them one place and they show up somewhere else. But that was during the time when I don't think the security forces were large enough to actually contain them and continue to pursue them in areas where they thought we couldn't go.

The difference today is, I think, especially in the northern area, where we are, we have a very capable and continually expanding Iraqi security forces. I have working next to all of our soldiers four different Iraqi divisions, and they're growing in size and capacity every day. So I think that's what's making a difference.

In the past, the northern areas have been somewhat of an economy- of-force zone, to use the military term. We've had just enough forces to do a very little bit of the operation. Well, now we also have four Iraqi army divisions alongside of us, and where we can't be, they can be. And in many cases we're conducting operations with them. So it's continuing to improve the situation on the ground in all the communities.
...

Q: General, this is Jim Mannion from Agence France-Presse. Can you tell me what it is you're doing to hold this territory that you've retaken from al Qaeda?

GEN. HERTLING: Yeah, I sure can. Again, the difference this time as opposed to in the past, where coalition forces would go in, clear an area and then move on to the next area and leave the last area for al Qaeda or any other extremist to come in and retake, the difference this time is we are doing it in conjunction with Iraqi security forces, specifically the Iraqi army initially.

The reasons that Iron Harvest is working, then, is that 1) there are more U.S. forces, and 2) there are more Iraqi forces. As a result of this 3) we are receiving more intelligence from the population, as was evidenced ih MG Hertling's opening remarks.

As a result we are not playing "whack a mole" anymore. AQI can run but they can't hide.

I suppose that hard-core leftists who are determined to think that the surge isn't working can retreat into "Hertling is a liar" and "the media are his lapdogs", but such criticism isn't serious.

More serious is what will happen when we leave. The "surge" is just that; a temporary increase in troops. Hertling points out that not only are there more Iraqis in uniform, but they're doing a better job, too. Good enough, but we recall MG Fil's Dec 17 briefing in which he stressed that "The progress that we've made thus far is fragile and not guaranteed."

This is where the Concerned Local Citizens come in. Anyone who's been following Iraq knows that this is a key part of our strategy. Securing Iraq is going to take more than uniformed army and police forces. Here are a few exchanges on the CLCs, and then I'll explain why they're so important:

Q: Gordon Lubold with the Christian Science Monitor. To go back to concerned local citizens, can you give me an idea of, in your area, how many you have again, and how many you think could be transitioned over to the ISF? GEN. HERTLING: Yeah, I can. That's -- and that's a good question. We have just under 15,000 by my last count. It's about 1,400 or -- excuse me -- 14,900 and something. ...

Q: Hi, General, this is Courtney Kube from NBC News. Just one follow-up on Gordon's question. Last week General Odierno mentioned that there were several somewhat isolated incidents where the CLCs were infiltrated.... Have you seen any instances of that in your area? ...

GEN. HERTLING: Yeah, Courtney, it's good to hear you. There are certainly infiltrators within all of the Iraqi security forces, and there are some within the concerned local citizens. As I've stated before, though, in each case of someone joining a CLC group, they are vetted through the biometric system; you know where they live as they sign up for this. You have their fingerprints and all the things that are associated with biometrics. So if there is, in fact, an infiltrator, we can follow up on that if they do some type of criminal act.

Receiving good intelligence ("tips") from the population is important, but we must secure their participlation in the war as well. In a battle between insurgents and a counterinsurgency (COIN) force, the population wants to sit on the fence. The COIN force must get them off of that fence. "Getting the people to like is" will NOT work, because when COIN force is not around the insurgents will return and intimidate the people into submission.

The way you defeat insurgents is to win the "hearts and minds" of the people. However, this term is usually misunderstood and does not mean what most people think it does:

Counterinsurgency: FM 3024 / MCWP 3.33.5 defines the true meaning of the phrase hearts and minds as the two components in building trusted networks in the conduct of COIN operations:

"Hearts" means persuading people that their best interests are served by COIN success. "Minds" means convincing them that the force can protect them and that resisting it is pointless. Note that neither concerns whether people like Soldiers and Marines. Calculated self-interest, not emotion, is what counts. Over time, successful trusted networks grow like roots into the populace. They displace enemy networks, which forces enemies into the open, letting military forces seize the initiative and destroy the insurgents.

You can see the relevance. The CLCs represent "getting the population off the fence" I mentioned earlier. A larger Iraqi Army means more citizens are committed to the cause. To be sure, infiltrators can be a problem and some will join the army only for a AOR are "coming around". The key is to make it stick.