The Redhunter

From General Hertling's opening statement:

GEN. HERTLING: Well, good morning to all of you in Washington. Thanks for having me again. You know, we're right now in our 13th month of this deployment, and it's more and more apparent to me that we measure progress in Iraq not by wins and losses but by gains and regressions, steps forward and then steps backwards.

When we first arrived in the north last September, we saw progress, but it was usually two steps forward for every one step back. Now most days are marked by three steps forward, one step back, and on a good day, we sometimes even experience four steps forward. But there's always that one step back, to be sure. And that's usually pretty frustrating, but it's progress and, most importantly, it's their progress.

Since we talked a few months ago, we had begun Operation Iron Pursuit. We began that at the end of July. We had just started it when I talked to you. And we're doing it to go after al Qaeda fighters further out in their support zones as we had -- as we had chased them from the cities, a few key areas they had-- we had identified in each province.

Basha'er al-Kheir, the operation which means "glad tidings of benevolence" was going on in Diyala. We were seeing significant security gains during the month of August, but during the month of September, quite frankly, because of the Ramadan holidays and the holy period of Eid, the tempo of operations began to wane a little bit towards the end of the month. We'll continue to partner with the ISF as operational tempo increases in the next few weeks now that the holiday's over.

Umm Al-Rabiain, Operation Mother of Two Springs, in Mosul and Nineveh Province, continues. We've executed some extremely successful operations in the north in the last few weeks and some even this weekend. And those have resulted in reduced violence in the key city of Mosul. There's also been an interruption in the foreign fighter flow from Syria, although it's critical to note that al Qaeda is desperately trying to hold on to that city of 2 million Iraqis. Our assessment is that the insurgents have become fractured -- certainly still capable and lethal -- and they are increasingly relying on intimidation to garner support from the local populace.

If you talk to the Iraqi citizens in any of our four provinces, which I do quite a bit, they will tell you that security has improved.

And that's true because across the board in our north, we have seen almost a 60 percent reduction of attacks since we arrived last year.

The Iraqis will also tell you that the economy and the government functions are also improving, but each province is proceeding at a different rate. While we've seen improvements in infrastructure repair and employment figures rising, there are still anywhere between 40 and 50 percent unemployed or underemployed, as we sometimes call it, in every one of the provinces. And much is yet to be done in the area of schools, hospitals, electricity, water and industry in the four northern provinces.

What's different today than when we arrived here over a year ago is the contributions of both the provincial government and the central government.

First, a summary of the operations mentioned above

• Operation Iron Pursuit - I can't find much about this other than a few private Youtube videos.
• Umm Al-Rabiain/Operation Mother of Two Springs - See the excellent analysis over at Understanding War.
• Basha'er al-Kheir/ "glad tidings of benevolence" - The best I could find is a short article in the Los Angeles Times.

Other things to note are:

• The importance of economics in ensuring long term stability
• While much of the focus in the press is on the Iraqi national government, just as important is how well local government functions.
• Our troops are combination warfighters, mayors, city managers, sociologists. They have to get to know their areas like the back of their hand (see Petraeus' Field Manual 3-24).

On to the Q & A

Q This is David Morgan from Reuters. You said that the insurgents have become fractured. Can you talk a little bit about the nature of the threat as it stands now and how it has changed in recent months? What is it that has led to this fracturing, as you describe it? ...

GEN. HERTLING:...There are contributions from both the Iraqi security forces, the people of Iraq, who are tired of the insurgency. This -- both those things have been recurring themes that I've talked about before and that I think all the other commanders have talked about. But also in the north what you're seeing is a combination of the increase in the capability of the Iraqi government, both at the provincial level and at the central governmental level, reaching out for the -- reaching out to the provinces in the north.

So I think there is a feeling, first of all, that the Iraqi citizens are certainly sick of the insurgencies. Over the last year we have killed or captured several hundred -- and, in fact, in the thousands -- of insurgents of different insurgency groups, not only al Qaeda but also Jaish al-Islami, Ansar al-Sunna, Jaish al-Mujahideen, several of the insurgent networks in the northern provinces.

So I think it's a combination of continuing to pursue the enemy, making the cities more secure, allowing the people to get back to work and the governmental outreach to help the people feel like they're being secured by a newly evolving government of Iraq. So I think all of those things continue to fracture the insurgencies more and more.

But having said that, there is still a desire by al Qaeda and other extremist groups to hold on to key areas. We have seen that most of all in Mosul. As they have lost Baghdad, for all practical purposes, there have been other areas which they've tried to hold on to. Mosul is one of those. And because of the proximity to the Syrian border, the proximity to the port of Rabiya, the ability to gain safe havens in the desert around that city of 2 million people, the fact that they can blend in very easily in that very cosmopolitan city, which has quite a few different populations within the city -- Sunnis, Arabs, Kurds, Yazidis, Christians, Assyrians -- they continue to try and control that city.

There was a bit more, but not much. As mentioned above the audio part of the transmission stopped working and the briefing had to be terminated.

Nevertheless, we hear again that AQI (al Qaeda in Iraq) is down but not out. This has been a theme of briefings and is not challenged by the journalists.

The obvious conclusion is that we are winning but have not won. We need to keep the troops there as long as they are succeeding, rotating them in and out as necessary. Contrary to what Maliki spouts off about occasionally (and some in the US parrot), "the Iraqis" do not want us out before they are secure.

Here are a few points that Bing West made in the Sept 15 print edition of National Review

• If we leave before the job is finished and Iraq flys apart, they will hate us because our action precipitated a disaster.
• If we leave before the job is done, and Iraq stays together, the Iraqis will still resent us for not finishing the job that we started and making them do what they will say we should have done ourselves, "since you started it."

So we are where we are whether anyone likes it or not.

We're winning, so let's finish the job.