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...measure that? It takes time. First thing is, if you take a very small area, you have to try and figure out what is going on in that area. First you have to understand what's going on. It's like knowing what is going on in your neighborhood. Not just the traffic on the road, but how money is made, who is running rule of law, who do they go to when they have dispute adjudication - do they go to a Taliban shadow court, a government of Afghanistan official entity? So you try to look at a whole range...
...stop us. They can resist that, but they can't stop us from doing that. So I think everyone knowing that that is our intent reinforces with the Afghan populace that obviously we are on their side. But it also reinforces in our force that that is the important thing. It's not killing Talibans, it is protecting the population and giving them the opportunity to smooth their...
...Defense Secretary Robert] Gates spoke of your "fresh eyes." What have they shown you? The first thing I was struck by when I got here was that the security situation is very serious. I am not saying catastrophic, but it is very serious, and it warrants a very serious effort. So that didn't shock me, but it reinforced things that I had been seeing. The other observation is that there has been a tremendous number of people here doing a lot of good work - and that means the ANSF, parts of the Afghanistan government, UNAMA [United Nations Assistance Mission...
...thing that surprised me about this was the level and energy and passion for this mission that I have seen among so many people involved, right after I was told I was going to be sent here. I started getting e-mails and phone calls from people I knew who wanted to come. And these were people who had been here before. Many away from their families for a long time. One of my aides, who had only six months before come back from a tough assignment in Samarra, Iraq - he volunteered to go. And the energy that I found...
...troops? I am really letting the strategic assessment inform that decision. As much as I can, I am really trying to keep my mind from jumping to conclusions before all the brains we have brought together have done their thing. I think when we look at coin requirements, you can't ignore it, and you can't assume it's wrong, but the coin requirements have never been an absolute cookie cutter. We are using some additional technology here, ISR [Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance], which gives us a little bit more ability to cover more terrain...