The Redhunter

COL. MCBRIDE: ...As was pointed out, we're going on our 12th month being gone from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and our brigade combat team of 4,000 soldiers continues to perform, in my opinion, exceptionally well.

I will tell you up front that the situation here continues to improve from a security standpoint. And having said that, we still have work to do.

There's still an active enemy out there that we are pursuing and going after every day. And all indicators across the board -- economic, governance and development of our Iraqi security forces -- is getting better. And it's significantly better than it was in January, February of this year, which -- when, in my opinion, was probably the low point of our tour.

So having said that, I'm happy to take any questions that you've got.

Although I did not include all of it, it was a very short intro. On to the Q & A

Q Colonel, this is Dave Wood from The Baltimore Sun. I know that you've been doing a pretty intensive job in terms of trying to penetrate the IED networks and that's sort of a multifaceted, multidimensional kind of -- part of the fight. How much of that are the Iraqis able to take over now? And do you see them taking over that fight, including the -- all the ISI hook-ups and everything else that goes into it, the battlefield forensics, any time in the near future?

COL. MCBRIDE: ...Okay. I'm going to answer that in two parts. One, the amount and volume of improvised explosive devices continues to decline in the province. The way that we've approached IED and -- combating IEDs is, we look at how they affect the population and their ability to move. If you look at MSR Tampa -- and MSR Tampa is a main highway that runs from Baghdad, runs through the length of this province and then runs all the way up to Mosul -- in November of 2007, probably 10 or 11 IEDs a day on MSR Tampa; today, an average of maybe one or two a day.

The important part of that is that those IEDs are largely ineffective. And for that reason, the population is able to travel those roadways. And my concern with IEDs, quite frankly, is not how they affect our forces -- and we have not had one soldier who's been seriously wounded on that main highway -- but how it affects the population and their ability to move. So that's how we've approached combating the IED network, because frankly, we've always seen it as a tactic the enemy uses to force use to lock down those highways and restrict the way the population moves.

And we've taken kind of counterintuitive approach, and now the population is moving on those highways. Economic commerce is moving. I think it's helped the economy, and the people believe they're safe on those highways.
...

The second point is, if you look at all the major -- the major supply routes or movement routes and then the auxiliary movement routes in our province, those are manned largely and secured largely by the Iraqi security forces. Our soldiers really aren't doing that. They are doing that on a day-to-day basis. So what the people see out there is the Iraqi army and the Iraqi police and the Sons of Iraq securing those roadways.

We've heard in other recent briefings that while the IED threat is still present, there are not only fewer of them but that they are less effective. Col Ted Martin, commander of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, said that "we're seeing homemade explosives, low quality, and many that have improper initiation systems" in his briefing on August 4. Col. Tom James, commander of the 4th Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry Division said in his July 24 briefing of al Qaeda that "we see that the recent attacks are IEDs of a primitive nature." So we seem to have a trend.

Q Hi, Colonel. This is Jeff Schogol with Stars and Stripes. The Army is going to be holding a roundtable later today on suicide prevention. Can you talk about what trends you have noticed with suicides in your unit?

COL. MCBRIDE: Thankfully, we have not had any suicides in our outfit since we deployed. Back in back in May, it was about our halfway point, and I was doing some serious thinking about what we wanted to accomplish as a team our last six months. And one of those things was, as a goal, to go home without a soldier having committed suicide.

And really the key there is our junior leaders communicating and then listening to our junior soldiers, and then leaders talking to other leaders. That's -- one of the things I see is that many times, leaders at the rank of staff sergeant, sergeant first class, captain, who have been here two or three times and are leaders, are reluctant to share the struggles they have with other leaders. I encourage them to do that. I share the struggles I have, because I'm on my third deployment. ...

This is a serious issue that needs to be addressed continually.

Suicides are a favorite topic on the leftist blogs. One wonders, what was the suicide rate in previous wars? I hate to sound smart-alecy, but if you just listen to the left you'd think that suicide and post-traumatic stress syndrome were never problems before the war in Iraq.

Q Colonel, this is Andrew Gray from Reuters.... At what point do you think your area will be ready to have a smaller U.S force there? At what point will the Iraqis be able to take up more of the responsibility?

COL. MCBRIDE: I will tell you that having been here in 2006 and worked -- and having worked specifically in that job with the Iraqi security forces and then being here for a year now, they have improved dramatically. I was not encouraged in 2006 when I left here in September. And we got back here in October last year, and over that period of time, this Iraqi army and these Iraqi -- and these Iraqi police -- Iraqi national police that work with us have made dramatic improvements....

And the other thing I see is the quality of leadership is significantly better at the company and battalion level than what I saw two years ago, and that makes all the difference in the world.

Col. McBride went on but would not commit to a time frame. This is the standard answer all commanders give. It's all "conditions based" and they refuse to be locked to a date.

The other important point is that the Colonel sees dramatic improvement in Iraqi forces from his time in 2006 and today. I've also heard this from most other commanders, most of whom have also served multiple tours.

The next question is about the all important issue of political reconciliation. Remember that Col. McBride can only answer for his area of responsibility.

Q Colonel, it's Luis Martinez of ABC News. How would you rank the challenges that you face right now? Which is the greatest challenge? Is it still the security challenge or is it more the infrastructure or getting funds, let's say, from the central government into the provincial government?

COL. MCBRIDE: Five months ago, hands-down, I would have told you security was our greatest challenge. Security is still a challenge, but if I had to rate them now, it's governance, security, economics all kind of neck-and-neck here. Because of the increased security we've got here we're able to get on with some development and then governance.

So I am working very hard while paying attention to our security operations and tying the provincial government with the equivalent of the county governments and then the county governments with our equivalent of the city governments, because in this province there's an inherent distrust, at all levels, of each other. And it's mainly because they don't talk.

That's improved pretty dramatically in the past three months. I'll give you an example. We have the city of Ad Dawr. If you'll remember, just north of Ad Dawr, that's where Saddam Hussein was captured when he was captured. The people of Ad Dawr in 2005 did not vote in the elections, therefore they had no representation on the city council.

Ad Dawr lies about six or seven miles from the provincial capital of Tikrit. For the last two years, no one from the provincial government had been to Ad Dawr and visited their people or their government.

At my urging, working with my partner, the governor and the deputy governor and the provincial leadership, I encouraged them to go to Ad Dawr and listen to the people, go talk to the people. And we've done that twice and it's made a tremendous impact on that city.

About two -- about three weeks after that, things started to happen in that city, and then the population began to have a little bit of trust in their government. And then business owners came together and over a stretch of about one mile, as you run through the center of the city of Ad Dawr, which is about probably 65,000 people, they had painted every shop pink, which was quite amazing to see.

But I asked them, why did you paint everything pink? They said this is the color of peace and reconciliation.

But I think that effort by the provincial government to tie itself to that district made a huge difference. So that's taken up a large amount of our -- of my personal effort and efforts of junior leaders at their respective levels, to tie and to develop the trust so these different levels of government can work together and achieve something for the population.

Wow. What could Code Pink think of this?

Al Pessin, known by me for asking some of the more tough questions, followed up on Andrew Gray' earlier question about drawing down U.S. forces.

Q Colonel, it's Al Pessin from Voice of America. I want to follow up on two of the earlier questions. You said that Iraqi security forces have made dramatic improvements, and yet your unit will be replaced by a unit of similar size and capability. When do you see that changing? When will the Iraqis, with these dramatic improvements, be able to stand more on their own in that province? ...

COL. MCBRIDE: Okay. Okay. The first question, I guess back in 2006 I saw how -- I saw how ineffective they were, because they, in many cases, were at their infancy. So that's what I mean when I say a dramatic improvement. I would hope that in, you know, the next several months to the next year, we could look at -- if everything stays progressing at the way -- at the rate it is now, some reduction of forces here. And that's going to be -- and on a -- and I would say a repeated phrase, but that's going to be contingent upon conditions on the ground....

The Iraqi police are not progressing as quickly as the Iraqi army is. Their performance is uneven across the board. That's largely dependent on leadership. Most of these forces have their equipment. They have their cars. They have their weapons. It's dependent on leadership....

...I wouldn't advocate any drawdown yet, plus we have a huge geographical area where now I can push or we can push both our forces and Iraqi security forces out into deserts, both east and west, which -- frankly, six months ago, al Qaeda had their way in these deserts. They moved from north to south in the deserts, both east and west.

So a little while longer -- we don't -- we haven't held enough to do -- to -- to talk about a drawdown, in my opinion, in the province. And oh, by the way, if you talk to the provincial leadership here, they'll tell you, "We are not ready for you to leave. You need to stay. We're making progress. It's not time."

Two steps forward, one step back. In other words, a typical war. The friction is all around, yet we move forward, if slowly. The key is to fight smart and never get complacent. What works today might not work tomorrow.

"I wouldn't advocate any drawdown yet." I hope whoever is elected in November listens to the troops who are fighting this war.