Well, we've been whittling away at this for a very long time. But back in December, January -- I get dates mixed up -- December, January, February time frame, we made some significant inroads in Mosul, where their headquarters basically was, and we got inside of AQI. We picked up several of their leaders that did the financing, that did planning, that did recruiting, that did -- some of their lawyers that worked on bringing detainees who were released and bringing them into al Qaeda -- we were able to get inside of this network, pick a lot of them up. And then over time, through just hard work, we were able to continue to get inside the organization, finally leading to the killing of AAM [Abu Ayyub al-Masri] and AUAB [Abu Umar al-Baghdadi], you know, about a month ago or so.
And so -- and we've not stopped. And since then we've picked up two or three more. And we want to continue -- we will continue with our Iraqi security force partners to go after them. But there are still some very dangerous people out there, and there are some mid- and low-level leaders; we don't want them to develop into senior leadership. And that's what we're working towards now.
This is good. Expecially as we draw down. Al Qaeda will need to spend more time filling slots than attacking us or the Iraqis.
