The Redhunter

The initial set of questions was about infiltration from Syria in the wake of the October U.S. raid into that country. Post replied that there has been little cross-border activity, and no fallout from the raid. All good news.

Since Obama won the election, I suppose we're going to get a lot of questions like this next one;

Q Sir, it's Mike Mount with CNN. The new president-elect has a kind of rapid timetable to start moving troops out of Iraq. You've just kind of given us a pretty positive look at the Iraqi security forces there. Do you have any concerns, if the U.S. troops are pulled out early, what effect that might have on advances that the Iraqi security forces have made?

GEN. POST: Well, obviously, I can't or won't comment necessarily on decisions being made in Washington or in Baghdad.

I know those discussions are going -- are being had and will be had here in the future. And obviously Multinational Force-West is providing recommendations to our higher headquarters, as far as how we believe our stance is.

I think, as you all know, since we arrived here last February, we've reduced over 50 percent of our ground forces, our actual maneuver battalions, if you would, with the coming down from the surge and then from the Army BCT that left, the two Marine battalions that left. And then just recently here as a matter of fact, this week, another Marine battalion is headed back home, without a replacement....

One of our big efforts has been to start to close some of the bases down, i.e., closing Camp Fallujah, as we -- General Kelly talked to you about here a couple weeks ago. And we've also -- there's been a big effort to move all the Marine forces out of the cities. And so as you go throughout, from Fallujah all the way up the Euphrates River Valley, up to Al Qaim, where we used to have Marines actually living in the cities, we've pulled them all out.

And so where we have our tactical locations, where the Marines are living, they're all in expeditionary facilities right now, outside the urban centers, if you will. And of course, that's one piece of the discussion here, as we wait to see what will happen with SOFA, if SOFA is in fact signed, and what the final agreement will be.

SOFA refers to the Status of Forces Agreement, an agreement between on country and another for keeping troops from one country in another. In this case, it refers to U.S. forces in Iraq. The idea is to reach a long-term agreement, and it would cover a range of issues, among them who gets to prosecute U.S. troops accused of various crimes against Iraqi civilians, and vice versa. Theoretically, if we cannot reach an agreement we'll have to immediately withdraw.

Lest you become alarmed, I think Steve Schippert has it right when he says that it's all just jockeying for position by the Iraqi government. The Iraqis are 1) trying to get the best deal they can so see no reason to sign before the deadline, and 2) have to look tough to their own people, this being what they call an "honor society."

A theme of recent briefings is the drawdown of U.S. forces. The Iraqis are now able to handle security on their own with the U.S. in a support role, and anyway violence is way down as AQI (al-Qaeda in Iraq) and other insurgent forces near defeat.

Q Hi, General. This is Courtney Kube from NBC News. Just a couple of quick questions. Can you talk a little bit more about the move, the headquarters move to Al Asad next week? How many Marines does that involve?....

GEN. POST: Yeah, I can. I'll first answer the comment here about the Camp Fallujah, I mean the basing. You know, we had -- when Camp Fallujah was full up with all the units, we had probably over 8,000 Marines and sailors and soldiers and contractors here on Camp Fallujah.....

So it's a -- really, numbers-wise, I mean, you can go from where we're going -- from 8,000 in here earlier this summer to zero. So we're just reposturing those forces. In some cases, some of those forces -- (audio break) -- you know, would be transitioned home....

Percentage-wise, obviously, you could probably look at -- you know, we were -- when we arrived here in Anbar Province, MNF-West was about 34,000 strong. That's between Marine forces, Army forces and our support from the -- from the Navy. We're probably going to be at the end of this month here, early December, down about 26,000. So you can see it's almost 8,000, approaching 9,000 service member -- men and women -- reduction.

Gen. Post also discussed upcoming elections that will seat new provincial governments. They'd hoped to hold them in October but they've been delayed. He stressed that unlike in 2005, when the Sunni's mostly sat them out, this time their polls showed they could expect a 70-80% turnout.

Several U.S. Army commanders have said in recent briefings that while there is much progress in their AORs (Area of Responsibility) it is "fragile" and we must be careful how fast we draw down. Not so for the Marines;

Q General, if you don't want to give figures for the coming six to 12 months, can you give us some idea -- we hear this word "fragile," that there's good progress, but it's fragile. How fragile -- or is it fragile in Anbar Province?

GEN. POST: No, I don't believe it's fragile at all. You know -- (audio break) -- for Anbar Province. The -- you know, as we say it, the AQI is marginalized here. The people of Anbar don't want that back. Surely we have -- we have incidents out here where we believe AQ is still trying to inject themselves when they and where they can and where we stay very heavily engaged on that, as you would expect....

Candidly, it depends upon who you talk to. In some cases, if you talk to the local man on the street, they'll look at us and say, "Hey, I think we're ready for you to go."

If you talk to the -- the leadership -- you know, the IP leadership or the Iraqi army leadership or the provincial leadership, they would probably tell you, "Hey, we need you here for some period of time longer." Not really ever saying, "We need you here for one year or two years," but I think we're still, if you would, that security blanket for them, in the -- standing behind them....

But what we're seeing is that -- they're comfortable in their role, and I would probably see -- as decisions would come out at CENTCOM and MNFI here, and later this year or early -- early 2009, there would probably be potential continued reductions out here. I think we would be able to probably handle that quite nicely.

Often I hear the anti-war crowd seize on one or another statement by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki or a survey which purports to show that "the Iraqis don't want us there." As the statements by Gen. Post illustrate, this is simplistic thinking and the reality is a bit more complicated. I don't want to go through the whole issue with Maliki now but let's just say that he often seems motivated by factors other than what's best for Iraq.

No one wants foreign troops on their soil. The Germans got tired of us by the late 1970s, and we saw large protests over the placement of Pershing II and GLCMs in the 80s. Truth be told, I am halfway surprised we were able to keep such large numbers of troops and weaponry in Western Europe for so long.

So of course they want us out. The Iraqis are a proud people (when asked about Iraqi achievements, one response you hear is "we invented the wheel" - made only half in jest). And with violence so far down, everything I see (including from this briefing; watch the whole thing) the Iraqis are more concerned now with social services.

Mid-level Iraqis, however, know that for now they need U.S. support. The good news and bottom line lesson from this briefing is that the surge was a tremendous success (Obama and the left are wrong on the reasons for our success in Anbar), the Iraqis are able to handle the situation with less and less U.S. support, and that we can slowly draw down.