The good news story, the very, very good news story, is the people point them out typically frankly to the police. And then the police round them up or take them down. And the police are not hesitant at all to go after these guys.
And even if a gunfight breaks out, they are not hesitant to call in additional police forces, not us. And oftentimes we find out after the fact that they've had an engagement. We stand by ready to help of course, but they don't seem to need it right now. ...
I mean, absolutely, when I left here three years ago, you could not go into the cities here, Fallujah, Ramadi, places like that, without a rifle company of Marines, and it was a gunfight going in, gunfight coming out. You couldn't drive from Ramadi to Fallujah, which I did almost every day back then, and not see four or five IEDs or the end result of four or five IEDs on that 40 miles of road. I mean, it is nothing like that now.
Once, you needed a company of Marines to move through enemy areas. Now the enemy is too weak to challenge the Iraqis effectively.
Making sure the Iraqis can beat the terrorists and insurgents has always been a two-variable equation: making sure the Iraqis are stronger and weakening the enemy. The surge has done both.
