Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; Thomas Ricks: General Petraeus and the American Military in Iraq

And now it's my pleasure to introduce Thomas Rex Thomas Ricks is an award winning journalist who has covered the U.S. military for over 20 years for various publications while at the Wall Street Journal he was on a team of reporters that won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles on changes the U.S. military might make to adapt to the new challenges of the 21st century. In 2000 he moved on to The Washington Post where he covered the U.S. military until 2008. There he was part of another team of reporters which won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for reporting about the beginnings of the U.S. counter offensive against terror against terrorism. He is currently a senior fellow for the Center for a New American Security and is a contributing editor for Foreign Policy magazine. He has also written several books including Fiasco and The Gamble both documenting the Iraq war and the gamble he focuses on General David Petraeus his contributions and the surge strategy that changed the course of the war. According to The L.A. Times The gamble is a book that a book of critical importance not only to our understanding of recent history in Iraq

but also one that makes an in the indispensable contribution to our grasp of contemporary relations between our government's military and civilian authorities and to our understanding of the Pentagon's leadership. And now please join me in welcoming Thomas Ricks. Why don't I here's the water. OK thank you very much. Thank you for all coming out on this cold evening and thank you to my amen corner over there. There you go. These are our relatives and and so on. My foster family. And that's the light part of the evening is now over if you have your lexapro. You should take it now and I'm going about to show you why Jon Stewart calls me Little Mr. Sunshine. I gave him a you know it's another version of the talk about to give in condensed form now to a group of U.S. intelligence analysts recently they said would you would like you to come in and

talk about Iraq and Afghanistan I said OK here's the title of my talk. Iraq and Afghanistan how screwed are we. They said that's great. I went and I gave the talking at the end the Iraq came up to me and said Yeah you know it's like you've been reading our mail that's about it. So here we go. Iraq in Afghanistan and Afghanistan is pretty easy I am more optimistic about Afghanistan I am about Iraq. Our ace in the hole there is that they've experienced Islamic extremism. They are in the majority of Afghans didn't like it. All we have to really do in Afghanistan is provide a minimally competent minimally abusive somewhat corrupt government. The standard here is Newark New Jersey OK. And I think it's not that high hurdle the problem is well you're famous now yeah but I think I'm more a Tony Soprano and the problem is we haven't even been able to provide that. I'm reading an interview in Stars and

Stripes with an Afghan villager who is explaining why he didn't like the Taleban but preferred them to the Kabul police and he said you know the Taliban were kind of rough they had this rough justice but they were better than the police that Kabul sent because when the police from Kabul arrived the first thing they did was take our little boys and rape them. This is the type of government we're talking about an abusive corrupt government. Our biggest enemy in Afghanistan in fact is not the Taliban they're a tactical problem that can be handled militarily. Our biggest strategic problem in Afghanistan is the Keyser Karzai government. That's our true true enemy. The government we installed. It's their corruption their abuses that are driving people into the arms of the Taliban. If you can stop them from doing that the Taleban becomes a smaller and weaker and tittie. Iraq I'm not as optimistic about it. In Iraq the surge succeeded tactically in that it improved security.

It did not succeed strategically because its theory was that it would improve security create an opening in which a political breakthrough would occur that political breakthrough did not occur. Why do I say that. Because all the basic problems that Iraq faced before the surge are still there after the surge. To wit how do you share oil revenue. What's the relationship between Sunni Shia and Kurd. What's the disposition of the Kurdish claim city of Kirkuk. Will Iraq have a strong central government or a weak be a wee Confederation. And what's the role of Iran for my money the biggest winner in the whole war in Iraq. So far all these questions have led to violence in the past none of been solved. All could lead to violence again. The only thing changing in the equation in Iraq is that American influence is waning. Why is that significance. Because when Iraq was in a small civil war in 2006 the thing that finally put the lid on the

Civil War was American intervention. The decision to put in more troops to use them differently and to put the Sunni insurgency on the American payroll to the tune of 30 million dollars a month sounds expensive but as you guys know it's about what George Steinbrenner pays for a mediocre second baseman. I'll take it. Thirty million dollars was not a bad deal for a hundred thousand guys to stop fighting us and actually not surrender to the Americans but enter into a kind of cease fire. The problem is that that cease fire might fall apart this year. There are signs that it's already falling apart with the Malaki his government's recent decision to ban several hundred Sunni candidates from the elections. The Sunni's are beginning to get very worried. In the next six months we'll see whether the Sunni's resume violent opposition to the Baghdad government. I think 2010 could be a turning point in the war in a way that 0 3 and 0 6 were turning points. You know three we found out that actually the

war in Iraq was not over simply by taking Baghdad. And of the six the war became a civil war as well as an insurgency. This year will be they will begin to emerge post-American Iraq. The elections are scheduled for March. The three or four months after that will be crucial because that will be the formation of a new government. We'll find out whether the new government is a school whether it's Shiite sectarian nature whether the Sunni's feel that they have either been. Treated for have been treated unfairly in the electoral process or whether they feel they've won political power but has not been given them in the new arrangement of government. This is a worrisome time table. The elections were originally going to be held in January and then after we would have troops there had pretty much the same level around hundred thousand for the following three months which were the worrisome months. Then American which Rawls would begin in March in a big way about 10000 troops a month

for six months. The elections were delayed till March which means the elections and the troop withdrawals are now going to be held simultaneously with this vulnerable period this tumultuous period of a new government being formed as the Americans are distracted by trying to pull out 10000 troops a month. The month that worries me most is June. Because the early which was American troops would be made from the more secure areas either were things are relative or pretty quiet or where Iraqi forces are deemed more reliable more trustworthy. The deeper you get into which Rawls The more you go into unsecure areas and you're pulling troops out of places you really don't want to pull them out of. That's also the period in which the Sudanese may say we really have no place in this new Baghdad government. But I do think that President Obama is determined to get the troops out. But he says combat troops was a phrase that really bothers me. There is no such thing as

non-combat troops there's no pacifist wing of the U.S. military. And in fact I'd rather I feel safer when I'm with the frontline infantry unit. You know what we think it was as a kid you know as major combat that I fear that I am going with it when I'm with a support unit like a convoy unit or advisors who are embedded with Iraqi forces that's a very dangerous vulnerable position to be in when Obama says get the combat troops out what he means is get the infantry troops out the front line troops out. But those are not the troops in the in the most vulnerable positions those are not the troops are going to be dying. We're going to keep tens of thousands of troops in Iraq beyond August. And I think for many years to come will be called advisors to be called trainers. They'll be in other functions but they will be dying they will be people being shot at and being shot. I would not be surprised if the day President Obama leaves office there are still 30000 American troops in Iraq.

Do I think it's a good idea. No I think it's the best of a bad of the bad ideas. I was interviewed by Terry Gross last week on FRESH AIR and I used a word that I know is not in the vocabulary wronger I said. I think staying in Iraq is wrong I think leaving Iraq is wronger. This comes from the thought that there are no good answers in Iraq. There are only bad answers. Why because everything is the fruit of the poison tree. The original decision to invade a country preemptively on false premises. Because we did that which I believe was the biggest mistake in the history of American foreign policy because we did that. We are in a series of bad situations where there are no good answers there's only what is the least bad answer. I think the least bad answer is to keep some troops there for several years to come. If only to try to try to prevent the situation from descending into a civil war that could easily become a regional war.

Is it a great idea that made me happy no. But I think you don't want to run the risk of the place falling apart. Not only is it a moral problem we will be blamed for it. But it also is a political problem for the United States in the Middle East. Let me see what all the cheerful news story I have for you. Oh the other day I was thinking about being on the Harvard campus today with the 1960 slogan What if they gave a war and nobody came. That's essentially where we are in Iraq now. There's 100000 U.S. troops in Iraq and nobody cares. Nobody's covering the media has as an industry is in collapse it's too expensive to keep reporters there. There are very few fully staffed bureaus there anymore. Only a couple of newspapers the wire services and CNN are really staffing this war. The only I think really very good reporter left in Iraq right now is Anthony should Dede who is now with the New York Times. If you want to really understand

Iraqi politics he's the guy to follow. Should he though is not very good on the U.S. military doesn't know the military well has never tried to do it when he was at the post and I was at the post. The deal he had was he did Iraqi politics I did at U.S. military and tried to kasar and did the Green Zone and he wrote the book on the green zone with the funny name of the period life in the green and the Emerald City. Yeah. And I was allowed to talk about a good book. But receives no longer there I'm no longer there and so should deeds the guy I read to to try to figure out what's going on. But it is a bizarre situation. I never thought we'd be in a situation where really nobody is covering this war. There are no reporters getting out of the Ambar province this is something I write about in my blog a lot. What's going on in Anbar and what I hear from Iraqis out there is that it's a very worrisome situation right now but that nobody really is writing much about it. They worry that the tribes are turning against Baghdad and will be looking for alliance with in the

Arab world again as they were for several years until they cut the cease fire would be to betray us. So the question and to end on is not whether there will be violence in Iraq for years to come. The question is what level of violence there will be. And I keep on thinking of some of the General Odierno said to me when I was talking to him he said it's not going to end. OK. There will always be some sort of low level insurgency in Iraq for the next five 10 15 years. The question is what is the level of that insurgency. And can the Iraqis handle it with their own forces and with their government. That's the issue. That is the issue that we're to face. And I think that the way that the Iraqi government is going to face it is eventually by kicking us out. That's the answer. We're going to find when they can stand on their own for street

credibility within the Iraqi within Iraq and within within the region. They're going to have to I think turn somewhat anti-American and probably kick us out this is probably the right way to end this sort of war. It's not going to feel like victory for Americans when they tell us to leave. And it's not going to look or feel like one is going to be in Iraq that is probably not very stable not very democratic and almost certainly is going to be a closer ally of Iran than of the United States. The George Bush's invasion of Iraq is a gift that's going to keep on giving for many years to come. This is why I think it's the worst decision in the history of American foreign policy. People I think in this country don't recognize just how much more we're going to have to pay on Iraq whether we leave or not. The consequences are only half unfolded. I'll end with a thought that Ryan Crocker ended with me when he was the ambassador there. He said the events for which the Iraq war will be remembered have not yet happened. I

think that is true the framework through which we view this war has not yet been built. The events they're going to shape how we think of it have yet to unfold because we haven't seen the end of this thing. Thank you very much. Al-Jazeera. I actually find it pretty interesting pretty good. More attuned to a lot of things than I do. Then American media are one call I used to really like he does the blog informed comment under the w w w Juan Cole dot com. I don't know why I found him less attuned lately. I don't know why that is. I hope I'm not becoming bored with the war like everybody else. But I want call I still read every day. My essential items on Iraq that I look every day are all on SWAT Iraq their English language paise pages very good. JUAN COLE I look at every day I read Don of Pakistan which I liked not only for the for their angle on the Iraq war

but also their coverage of Pakistan. There is a King's College London blog called Kings of war which is good for the British angle. And then I also read the American earlybird the Pentagon's daily compilation of the stories and the Canadian earlybird for all the stuff that they keep out of the American labor. And finally I read Stars and Stripes the U.S. military newspaper which is the only newspaper that gives a damn about the troops in Iraq anymore and actually does a pretty good solid coverage. Very straightforward just about what troops are saying what commanders are saying what's going on. I like to use the term mercenaries because I think we should call things as they are. And people who carry weapons and use force on a battlefield but are not in uniform and are not subject to military discipline and justice are mercenaries. Yes there are probably around a hundred twenty thousand contractors in Iraq right now.

The vast majority of them though are not trigger pullers they're not carrying weapons. There are for example Bangladeshis working in the mess halls. By the way one of the great things about this war of which there are very few great things is the food in mess halls is really good these days. Wednesday night at Camp Victory is Indian food night. Now you can get it and you can go get you know pizza and hamburgers and stuff like that. But once a night they always have Indian food too. It's really good. But I always make sure I did my interview as a character which is the big base just west of Baghdad. On Wednesdays there's a lot of good Indian food. But of those contractors about 20000 are indeed what they call security contractors which is a good euphemism for mercenary. They worry me a lot for several reasons first I think they pollute the battlefield. It's an odd term to use political figures Nothing is more of a psychotic mass than a battlefield. But what they did and in Iraq was confuse the issue for everybody.

Iraqis didn't like them because they didn't know who these people were walking around with automatic weapons. American soldiers didn't like them because of the same reason these guys were around they didn't seem to be subject to discipline or justice. They could go out drinking and whoring and doing all the things that American soldiers were forbidden to do. When I was staying at the Sheraton the 1st Armored Division troops outside told me that sometimes the contractors would get drunk and shoot their weapons down at the tanks of just for fun just paying him and wake him up and stuff. But it did bother the troops. And you did have a lot of incidents where these guys were shooting up people almost randomly. An American soldier tends to be very conscious that he represents the country he's wearing the American flag right here. And he even if he's not he is subject to discipline and justice security contractors were not subject to American law or Iraqi law or American military justice and discipline they weren't and they were outside the chain of command

in a really bothered American commanders who were these guys walking around with weapons on my battlefield. Another thing that worries me is when these guys come home the U.S. military now has a pretty good safety net for to help out soldiers and families when they come home. There's a lot of sensitivity to psychological problems inside the security contractors had none of that. They go home when they're dumped on the street corner and they're back home with their PTSD or whatever other problems and not a lot of support for that. I'm even more worried about third world security contractors we hire big contingents from Salvador from the U.S. from Uganda was another big group. What happens when you have a cohesive well-trained group of say a thousand fighters go back to one of those countries. That's a coup sized force for those countries. So how do we disturb the political equilibrium of these little countries when these guys go back. Finally I'm worried about the precedents we've set in the international legal regime we have

put 20000 shooters into a country and said they're not subject to your laws are laws any other laws. What happens when say the Chinese government says hey that's not the first Shanghai light infantry regiment. That's the people's double double happiness security company sitting there in Sudan. You know that's not a military issue. That's a cop commercial issue. The Chinese can always underbid us in these security contracts. So I think you're going to see more of these mercenaries in the battlefield who are not on our side and it's not clear whose side they're on. Suddenly you have a situation that looks like the 30 Years War with mercenary barons wandering around central Germany basically ripping up the place for decades. Not the privatization American army but it is part of the privatization of force. The classic definition of a military is is that it has a monopoly on the use of large scale violence on behalf of the state. Suddenly that monopolies been broken and these are not

people inside the cone of government controls who don't even have the nation's interests at heart. When a soldier goes out to execute a mission he's executing a mission but he's also trying to represent the US military. I remember a Marine telling me these these security contractors the bodyguards they don't care about what the American mission is here. Their whole contract is keep the principal alive the guy they're assigned to protect. And if that means driving up the sidewalks of Baghdad at 60 miles an hour shooting at people they will do it. You know it's almost a with a question why did we invade Iraq. It's almost a philosophical or spiritual issue. All I thought about a lot when I was writing fiasco which was written kind of in a fever itself I wrote it I think about 350 days from January 3rd until about to December 12th of that year. I think after 9/11 there was a national fever. We were knocked off balance as a country. I think it actually invading Afghanistan was the right

thing to do the correct response to a terrorist attack. The came out came out of a group based in Afghanistan. But in that very tumultuous period after 9/11 the country went along with invading Iraq invading a country preemptively on false premises and it was a terrible mistake and now we're kind of like waking up from other with this national hangover. You know what did we do. No you did it. You know you did it and we're still trying to figure out exactly what we did. And we're asking the questions we should have asked in 2002 in 2003. What is this country how does it work what's the role of the tribes. It amazes me that this country somehow came to think. In the Wolfowitz Ian structure it we could invade one of the world's oldest cultures and change its politics and its culture at the barrel of a gun

swiftly. That one of the world's youngest cultures ours was going to go on in chains one of the world's oldest ones. Now the theory was we would invade Iraq turn it into a beacon of democracy that would transform the Middle East. And Wolfowitz said drain the swamp of terror. I remember an Iraqi saying to me early on he said you Americans thinking to change the Middle East you're going to fight it changes you. And I think that what that is what has happened this country sort of become more Middle Eastern almost more polarized less tolerant and we are enmeshed in the Middle East and we're really stuck. The great beauty of American foreign policy from 1945 to 2003 was that we had influence the Middle East without being stuck on the ground the Middle East. We looked like the giant ten feet tall who would never have been. Stock we know we winning quickly Nonny want to get out quickly once we're on the ground. Guess what. People figured out how to fight

us. They figured out where the seams were the weaknesses the vulnerabilities were and they hit they hit us pretty hard. They have now shown the Iraqis and Taliban have shown the world how to take on Uncle Sam. And this is some of the really terrifies the Pentagon especially when they study the 2006 Hezbollah Israeli war in which Hezbollah a non-state group was able to fight the Israeli Defense Forces pretty effectively use it is the first time that we had seen nonce as a non-state group using precision weaponry hitting an Israeli ship at sea with it with a rocket and irregular infantry and Hezbollah lacking armored vehicles and lacking attack helicopters stopping a column of Israeli tanks and helicopters.

And showing up pretty badly. This is a new development and we are on the ground and people have seen how to do this to us too and the rest the world has gone to school on this. Nobody's going to fight us and conventional forces I think in the you know the middle of the war spectrum they're going to go high and weapons of mass destruction nuclear biological chemical or low end. And those are the areas we're not so good at. The question is why don't we learn the lesson of Vietnam. I actually don't they might have really depressed moments begin to think it's a generational thing. Every generation has to learn these lessons over again about the limits of power the limits of the use of violence and force and the limits of the ability to force other people to do certain things. There were really was I think a profound lack of imagination of the Bush administration. It's funny because actually it was a phrase that Paul Wolfowitz always used to use. Hard to imagine I would always testify. Hard to imagine that it would be more difficult to occupy Iraq than to evade it. Hard to imagine

he said that Iraq couldn't pay for its own reconstruction with oil revenue. Well I wish he had had that better imagination. You point to a basic problem in counterinsurgency theory which I really have not. I come across a good answer too. I do like the counterinsurgency theory. Don't focus on the enemy focus on protecting the population providing basic services separating them from the insurgents. And you can actually succeed. I saw this work on the ground in Iraq moving troops off of bases out among the people getting them familiar with the people familiar with what looks right and what doesn't feel right. Is this truck here every day or did this truck just pull in from Fallujah. That sort of question. The problem with counterinsurgency theory that I have not seen an answer to Is everything we really know about counterinsurgency comes out of the French and British colonial experience in the 1950s and 60s Algeria Malaya Kenya Cyprus. And the problem with that is the French and the

British were fighting to stay in those countries were trying. I really do believe we are trying to get out. So the question is they knew what they wanted and host government they wanted a government that was going to be friendly and to keep them around in some form where the local leaders would come to work with them. It's not clear to me how you get from establishing a government to getting out. And I do think this can actually come from a friend of mine David Kilcullen Probably you have to have the government turn against you. That's probably how you leave. He points to Yemen where the British pulled out I think in the late 50s early 60s and the British announced a timetable set relieving. And then just a few months later their formerly friendly government established basically said no you leave now because it felt self-confident have to kick them out. And it had to establish its credibility in prose British post British Yemen. The question of the host government how you

establish a government and then get out. It still isn't clear to me which is a basic problem. You should have a theory at least of how you can get out before you go into a country. I am no expert on Middle Eastern politics actually but a little bit about just my blog that the question is what I expect the Middle East look like in 25 years. I don't know what I mention in my blog that I was sort of puzzling at through the New York Times or The story I think in yesterday's paper about how you're seeing more and more Arab states arm themselves against a perceived threat from Iran. Getting ready kind of for a nuclear Iran. And that leads to this thought which is if Iran goes nuclear and the Arab world feels threatened by it will it turn an attention from Israel to Iran will then AQ Khan and George Bush inadvertently have brought Arab-Israeli peace about

by nuclear proliferation and invading Iraq. I don't know. I don't know what it's going to look like. I do have the real strong sense though that we're still going to be involved on the ground ground forces in the Middle East from for decades to come. And it's not going to be happy or pretty I don't know I mean you could ease. I think people in this country have much too much been must have been dismissive about the notion of Iraq falling apart. Iraq could easily fall apart and if it does I think it won't do so peacefully. You've already seen the Turks intervene against the Kurds in the north. Iran is very involved inside Iraq and I think Syria Jordan and other Arab states would also intervene. You could easily see you inside the Shiite community a pro-Iranian in an anti-Iranian faction emerge in a kind of interest Shiite civil war so it could be like a three four

five part six part civil war going on now to get the Kurds so far against each other as well as as well as fighting the Iraqis. So it's a very quick jump from it and a civil war to a regional war and I think that that is a real worry that people here have not focused on. And there's one reason I think that Ryan Crocker said the events for which the war will be remembered have not yet happened. We were only in many ways halfway through this thing. His other observation I liked was he said just because you walk out of a movie the movie doesn't end this you know. Yeah I think it will either get real. I just wish I were that is Israel's strategic position it has a routing right now. I think they've lost Europe the backing of Europe sort of the public sentiment and they're losing the public sentiment in this country. I wish they would figure out something I'm not sure what but nailed down a good settlement now. I do specially take advantage of the emergence of Iran

as a threat to kind of get themselves off the front pages as it were. You know rock I kept on thinking of actually oddly enough of the saying of Warren Buffett. If you've been playing poker for half an hour and you don't know who the patsy of the table is you're the patsy. I kept on thinking you were the patsy and we don't know it. And I think everybody else is kind a hands off here you know. These Americans are blundering around and that's one reason and the other is I think we've underestimated the degree of resentment. I was talking to an Egyptian friend about this today. Just how much how big a hole we've dug with a lot of countries in our handling of this whole situation really things are necessary like Abu Ghraib the images out of a book right.

The sense of disrespect of of of not really knowing what we're doing or not appearing to keep care and I wasn't wasn't clear which was scarier to the rest of the Middle East. We are much more impressive than we were just in power. They've taken our measure a lot of these places now. It is scary but also it's what we want them to do. We keep on sort of telling the Arab states you know recognize Baghdad come and give some help but. You know then they see a Baghdad government that a lot of Iraqis think is a wholly owned subsidiary of the government of Iran. Actually this isn't a we don't know a lot about the role Iran has played. I was really struck in the spring of 2004 I was in a convoy from Bakuba down to an edge off a huge convoy the first interview in frigid Infantry Division there moving a brigade down to fight outside the job of the 300 vehicles and big trucks and stuff like tanks and

along our route the highway bridges were being dropped. Were we going to know where we were a bit ahead of us. And it kind of is weirding me out as I was listening to the sergeant major's radio in the convoy because this was mocked territory. You know the Shiite militia Muqtada al-Sadr you know is the guy who dominates Sadr City. And which is kind of like the South Bronx of Baghdad except it's much bigger population of about I think four million people. And I'm not I'm sorry two million people do it to me and Sadr City. And I was thinking you know as the what U.S. intelligence calls them monkeys guys they're not capable of dropping real you know highway bridges ahead of us. This is a that's a difficult task it's figuring out where this convoy is predicting where it's going. Getting people to those bridges having those people have explosives having those people have the knowledge to use those explosives. That's a command

control problem it's a training problem. It's an ordinance problem of having the explosives. And I think you know makis you know it's like Al Sharpton with heavy weapons. How could he be doing this. And retrospect it was almost certainly Iraqi operatives of some sort either Iraqi special operations or Iraqi could force which is the Expeditionary Wing of the. I'm starting to track Iranian special operators or Iranian could force this is their Expeditionary Wing of the Revolutionary Guard. This is all about way of saying we don't know what Iran has done. I was told once that you heard more Arabic spoken on certain floors of the interior and more Farsi spoken language of Persian or of Iran more Farsi spoken on certain floors of the Iraqi interior ministry than you heard Arabic. And the somebody was saying publicly an American official was saying publicly the other day that the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad is a member of the Revolutionary Guard. So there's a

real presence there that we haven't yet figured out. A lot of Iraqis think that the Baghdad government is run by Tehran. If they think that why would the Arab Why would the Arab world think any different. The question is on the walls that I put up all over Baghdad and we're talking to an American officer about this one day and he looked around and you know there do. But the huge barriers concrete barriers like 20 feet tall. And he said you know one day our archaeologist 20000 years from now are going to be digging here and then a find like a 10 foot thick level of cement and then referred to as the cement there of Baghdad and wonder what I wonder what was going on here. I was actually a big fan of walls at the time when they put them up. The two problems that were going on during the civil war of 0 6 was. Sunni killers going into Shiite public places mosque in markets and shooting up people during the

daytime. And Shiite death squads going into Sunni neighborhoods at night and shooting people where they slept. It's a different tactical problems and a tit for tat public fighting. The walls were used to address both but they just put up walls around the mosque walls around the markets and control entry to them. First of all no vehicles second. At least some minimal search of people going in and out. Every time then somebody blew up at a checkpoint. It really was a victory not a defeat because it meant that they killed two Iraqi soldiers they didn't kill 30 or 60 people in a market like you had a bombing today in which a female suicide bomber killed I think around 45 Shiite pilgrims heading down to Karbala. In the same way putting the walls up around the Sunni neighborhoods really usually only one entrance meant it was much harder for the Shiite militias to get in and if they got in their way dangerous for them to try to get out if they acted.

So I thought that was a good temporary answer. As a friend of mine who was involved in it. So he said Yeah he said it's a turn to get a turnip it stopped the bleeding in the short term that killed the limb if you leave it there too long. That's the worry the walls are still there. Are the limbs being killed. I think the actual rather brutal answer is Baghdad is a multiethnic city have already had been killed by that point by the time the walls were put up. Another friend of mine in Baghdad referred to the Sunni neighborhoods as the Sunni as it is. He said basically they're only there because of those walls. But they're there. They're artificial creations now. Baghdad is an ethnically cleanse city. When I was the last time I was there I looked around it would be Sunni awakening guys at the Sunni neighborhoods and police but really Shiite police around the around the Shiite neighborhoods. The Sunni's are very worried because they worried the Baghdad government will

slowly arrest them which they have been various bleeder of being picked off especially the Awakening leaders to be disarmed and they'll be kicked off the payroll. The Baghdad government was never down with this whole Sunni awakening thing and Petraeus paying them 30 billion million dollars a month. You know the Americans claim they didn't arm the Sunni groups. There was a quote unquote recycling program of weapons which is they let them. They let them know where the weapons were and then when we got them so effectively we did arm them. The Baghdad government is trying to go after those people the Sunnis are very worried and I think you might see this year whether the whole deal sticks. I think it's unraveling albeit more slowly than I thought it was a year ago. This is going to sound bizarre given at a Pentagon budget is around seven or a billion dollars plus the cost of ongoing wars actually for the task it has right now the U.S. military is rather small.

Oh. You know at the end of World War 2 our military was 9 million people. Right now you know the U.S. military is a rather small professional force 10 active duty divisions. I mean I was looking at some of my the book I'm working on right now begins of World War 2. I mean the division you used to fill up three miles of front in World War 2 1 brigade a mile sometimes in a tough area. We got 10 divisions for the world plus the Marine Corps and Navy an Air Force and stuff. It's a rather small military that's being used pretty hard. I know guys who have three five seven deployments since 9/11. I was actually talking by e-mail today to a friend at Fort Benning. He's talking about the difficulties of kids. And he was driving his daughter to school and he turned his head. And now you're in third grade and he says he practically spat him and said I'm in fourth grade dad you were never here in third grade.

And you have guys who are missed you know for kids you know much of their children's lives. I was really struck by this I was in a kindergarten at Fort Campbell Kentucky a couple of years ago and I was interviewing the teacher but I sat on the floor while I was talking to her because she was on the floor and the kids started swarming all over me and she apologized she said. They're so hungry for adult male company. All their fathers are gone. So it really has been a huge burden because this is a professional military a married military that has families. This is not a conscript military of 18 19 year olds who go for a year to you know 18 months and get out or something. So it's also an expensive military per capita because you're not just taking care of some guy living in the barracks for a couple of years. You've got a wife and you've got kids and you got daycare centers and so on. The funny thing is you want to improve the effectiveness the efficiency of the U.S. military. It's not going to be a B-2 bomber. It's going to be a daycare center at Fort Drum or Fort Benning. That will

make the families happier about deployments. So in many ways the defense industry is inimical to the interest of military effectiveness now. Every time you buy yourself a tank or a an airplane or a ship. You're not building the daycare center or the housing you need to keep families happy. And it's a real problem right now. Well suppose they gave a war and nobody came. Nobody's coming out anymore. I mean it really I never thought you'd have a hundred thousand U.S. troops in the country that in which I live war was continuing and it was hard to find coverage of it. I noticed this because I track a lot of blogs newspapers and coverage and so on in many ways the war has migrated from the front pages to the Metro sections of newspapers because they run the obituaries when a local soldier dies. But what the soldier was doing why his unit was there what what they're doing out there at a given point.

None of that is much covered. I know it's in the battlefield is much more dangerous place than it used to be for reporters partly because reporters have come to be seen by many parties as participants either wittingly or unwittingly. You hear talk about the battle for the narrative you know but I've had friends kidnapped. I've had friends executed by al Qaeda one friend. It's a very dangerous place. I never thought I would carry a weapon. You know when I was mightly in Baghdad in 0 6 I didn't go outside without one bodyguard carrying a weapon in the car with me. A chase car with two bodyguards with machine guns or you know automatic weapons to be precise. The armor walking into the back. Our Baghdad bureau 05. Mohan Adar our security chief had an AK 47.

And I said. I am not real comfortable with this and he said just keep it in your room. And he said there's a magazine in it and if you hear them coming up the stairs it means we're all dead downstairs. He said fire the whole fire as much as you can through the door. That'll buy you half an hour if they come through yourself. I was on a security plan. I used to write I used to think. When I was in the our bureau which is nice place our PR house there. Every time I go to Iraq I use up another chance. One day I was hurt one day this house could be hit by a bomb. The more I'm here the greater the chance it's going to happen. And actually last week here at the hotel next to the our bureau was bombed and the first bomb went off they kind of ignored the second bomb was closer and they ran to the safe room in the house and lock themselves in the third bomb went

off next door and nearly took the house down around them. And I thought I could actually get a note from a friend saying you know or we talked about this. And I was really glad not to be there I promised my wife I'm not going back. Thank you all very much.