The power to prevent violence is a power that no police force seems to have anywhere in the United States.

It’s also natural in that part of the world to blame what people view as the… as the most important authority in the region, and that currently is the United States of America.

The people who were low-level Baathists need to know they have a part in the future of their country,

Yet, we believe that that’s probably the vigilance of Iraqi security forces and some of our proactive measures the night before probably saved lives.

Well, the reports are correct that we’re conducting very robust military operations on the Afghan side of the border in areas where we think al-Qaida is operating and Taliban remnants are.

It makes sense that as NATO forces go in, and they’re more in numbers, that we could drop some of the U.S. requirements somewhat,

I believe that there are elements of extra-legal militias that are moving around doing some of this damage. There may be people with misguided loyalties in some of the security services, although less in the...

But the truth of the matter is that there is there is an opportunity for them to participate in the economic and political future of the country and certainly in the security life of the...

I don’t know if I would make any comment about that other than to say that there is a lot of work against the insurgency,

The implications of allowing the region to become dominated by the ideology of al-Qaeda are the same as the implication in the years previous to World War II of allowing fascism to become the ideology...

I think you also understand that one of the key things that’s got to be done in Iraq is to build a mentality of understanding that the military needs to be subordinate to civilian control...

Oh, the transition concerns me because as we move towards an important political event, it’s clear to me that the terrorists and insurgents will move as hard as they can to disrupt this process.

Now, people will say, ‘Well, that’s a very small number,’ but when you understand that they’re organized in cellular structure, that they have a brutal and determined cadre, that they know how to operate covertly,...

What I’ve asked for is essentially to have a strong mobile combat arms capability, … That’s probably about two brigades worth of combat power, if not more.

But my Arabic is pretty good. It’s good enough to have conversations with people, to understand what they say, to understand what they’re feeling.

In terms of overall strength of the insurgency, I would say it is the same as it was,

There are certainly considerations that we must make with regard to the level of the forces,

Capturing any member of any terrorist cell or any insurgent cell that we may happen to come across is always very, very valuable, and the thing that interests me is that in most instances after...

is to build an Iraqi security capacity, all the way from the police level up to the national army level, that is militarily effective and loyal to the established civil government.

So we’re bringing in as much as we can. I know that NATO forces will be coming and certainly we’re bringing more forces from the US, more helicopters.

Certainly our goal is to leave Iraq, but we can’t leave Iraq with our forces until we know that the Iraqi security forces are capable and efficient enough to defend the sovereignty of the nation.

We have a number of killed in the action in Nasiriya with the Marines — I believe that number will remain less than 10 — and a number of wounded,

Some of them did very well and some of them did not. And in the south, a number of units, both in the police force and also in the ICDC did not stand up to...

I think what actually works best is local-level individual targeting of key leadership nodes.

In terms of comparison from six months ago, in terms of foreign fighters, I believe there are more foreign fighters coming into Iraq than there were six months ago, … In terms of overall strength...

There are peaks and valleys that you go through, but overall the trend is good,

But I am satisfied that the information that we have that this is the work of Zarqawi, is accurate.

The NATO forces are coming,

Today we provided two more heavy-lift helicopters that can come over from Afghanistan,

In other words, for every 10 enemy you kill you bring on 20 new recruits to their anti-coalition cause then essentially you are working against yourself.

This is a doctrinal problem of understanding … what do the MPs do, what do the military intelligence guys do, how do they come together in the right way. And this doctrinal issue has got...

I do think there is a general lack of understanding in the United States as to how it’s going,

Well, the hardest thing to do, as we know from our own experience on 9/11 is protect everything all the time.

The way we need to deal with them is to be offensive — to find them and to attack them and also to ensure that we pay attention to what’s moving along the Syrian, Jordanian...

We certainly will take whatever military action we need to defend ourselves and to prevent the enemy from taking advantage there,

But the key shift in focus will be from counter-insurgency operations to more and more cooperation with Iraqi security forces and to building Iraqi security capacity.

It is a belief that they hold firmly, and we need to be just as firm that we can’t be driven out.

I know you have a lot of work ahead of you. I will continue to work with you all the way.

Morale is good; troops are confident; leaders are capable.

The enemy that brought us 9/11 continues to represent one of the greatest dangers to this nation,

I think we will need more troops then we currently have to secure the elections process in Iraq — that will probably take place in January — but it is our belief that those troops...

You don’t build a new power plant in the United States overnight. It takes years to build.

I would say that U.S. officials and Iraqi officials are looking for the right people in the Sunni community to talk to in order to ensure that the Sunni Arab community … becomes part of...

that this is not a rush to failure. It’s a rush to victory.

But clearly the fact that we’ve gone from zero Iraqi security forces on duty in May to up to 200,000 today is an enormous accomplishment, but it’s not enough.

And clearly we know that the vast majority of the insurgents are from the Sunni Arab community.

The scope of devastation is gigantic. The level of work which has to be done is very immense,

And so I think that if the person has the funds, the network, and the equipment to do this, and also the experience, which is the key factor, then they can be quite deadly.

We will defeat these terrorists who kill innocents, we will defeat these murderers who spare no faith,

a classical guerrilla-type campaign.