GEN. PETRAEUS: Well, good morning to you all. Thanks very much for that warm welcome.

Thanks, John, for your kind introduction. More importantly, thanks for all that you did in uniform and what you're doing now with CNAS to contribute to the important discussions of ongoing operations that are taking place.

And if I could, I want to offer up front my support for what Ambassador Burns advocated, calling to strengthen State and AID. I have said this on the record on several occasions on Capitol Hill. And as they say up there, I want to associate myself with the gentleman's remarks.

The challenges that we face, as I will make very clear, require whole-of-government approaches, not just military approaches. And whole-of-government means that you have to have all the tools in your kit bag capable and sharp, and that does require strength and diplomatic AID and ranks of other interagency organizations as well.

And I'll make that point when I show the Anaconda slide, that counterterrorism, by the way, if you want to talk about that being what we do, counterterrorism actually requires a counterinsurgency approach, not countering terrorism. And that's slightly counterintuitive. (Laughs.)

As John noted, I've known him since he was Cadet Nagl at the U.S. Military Academy. I've developed considerable respect for him over the years. One of the first calls that I made in fact when we started assembling the team to draft the Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual in early 2006 was to John. All of us were familiar with his academic work and his field work on counterinsurgency. The latter, in Ramadi, I might add, indeed under the great Jim Mattis (ph). And it was terrific to have him on the team that helped develop that manual.

There should be no question that he is, for a former Armor officer, really smart. (Laughter.)

I also want to salute this organization. CNAS has, in a few short years, established itself as a true force in think tank and policymaking circles. According to no less an authoritative media source than The Washington Post in fact, CNAS has become, and I quote, "Washington's go-to think tank of military affairs." And this conference is certainly one more example of CNAS' important role. So well-done to all of those on the team that is CNAS.

In truth, you can almost begin to feel a little bit important standing here at this podium, looking out at such a distinguished and large audience assembled in the ballroom of one of Washington's preeminent hotels. But were that temptation to feel important hit me, I would recall a story that the great General Jack Vessey used to tell as a reminder to keep one's ego in check, regardless of the circumstances.

The time was 1982, and General Vessey had only recently become the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, culminating over four decades in uniform that began with service as a young first sergeant in Italy in World War II and included earning the Distinguished Service Cross for heroism when his battalion's fire base in Vietnam was nearly overrun.

So here he was, serving as the senior officer of the greatest military in the world. And he and his wife had been invited to attend a much-anticipated performance at the Kennedy Center, where they sat in the presidential box and were treated royally by one and all.

So by the end of the evening, General Vessey was, understandably, feeling pretty good about his station in life, perhaps even a tiny bit important as he and his wife left the center and stood waiting for their car. Before the car arrived, however, General Vessey saw retired General J. Lawton Collins, a legendary former Army chief of staff, who had earned the nickname "Lightning Joe," as a highly decorated, hard-charging, no-nonsense corps commander in World War II.

On seeing General Collins walk by, General Vessey touched him on the shoulder, held out his hand and said, good evening, General Collins, I'm General Jack Vessey, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It's good to see you, sir.

General Collins turned, took General Vessey's hand, shook it briskly, looked Vessey up and down, and said to him, Vessey, get me a cab! (Laughter.)

Well, when I heard General Vessey tell that story some years back, someone in the audience immediately asked him, of course, well, what did you do, sir? Well, Vessey responded, I got him a cab! (Laughs.)

And I want to assure you that if anyone needs a cab later today, I'll be out front doing my duty. (Laughter.)

Well, this morning, what I'd like to do is, as John said, is provide an update on what we at Central Command are doing across our area of responsibility, to provide you with a brief discussion of the situations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, talk about a couple of other topics and then take your questions.

Next slide, please.

That's the topics. Go ahead.

I wanted to show the CENTCOM AOR just to remind folks, John mentioned it, but it's good to remember that we start in Egypt in the west, continue on across to Pakistan in the east, extend up to Kazakhstan in the north, and down the Yemen and the ground in the south. But we have all this water as well and, of course, that comes in, and we are indeed the counterpiracy crowd as well as the counterterrorist and counterinsurgency crowd as well.

If you look at this in fact -- and this is sort of the one slide, this is what we do -- I think what you conclude is that probably, if you're the commander of CENTCOM, you feel like the guy in the circus, who's running around, trying to keep all the plates spinning. And we've got a lot of plates to try to keep spinning. We have the obvious ones that I'll talk about -- Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan -- but we also have the counterpiracy mission that I mentioned. There is counterarms smuggling that takes place, freedom of the seas, trade routes.

You all know the 40-or-whatever percent of the world's energy resources that flow through the Straits of Hormuz. Enormous efforts in terms of building partnerships, turning bilateral arrangements slowly into multilateral arrangements. And I would note that Iran is our best recruiting officer right now, because the Gulf States and others understandably are very concerned about the provocative rhetoric and actions. We'll see what happens with the elections tomorrow and what transpires after that. But the degree of partnership, the willingness and eagerness in fact to partner on the west side of the Gulf is at substantial levels.

We're also certainly working in (the Lavant ?). There are extremist elements there. Yemen, we're very concerned about the challenges that have emerged there as there have been successes in fact in Saudi Arabia and in many of the other Gulf states against al Qaeda and also as al Qaeda in Iraq has been diminished considerably. And I'll discuss that further.

And then as you look over to the partnership efforts where we're trying to encourage a broad partnership against extremism, against the illegal narcotics industry to replace what might be called the new great game that has characterized relationships in the Central Asian states.

And then, of course, we go down into Afghanistan and Pakistan and the challenges there and what we're doing there to reverse a situation that has deteriorated in one country and to support a partner who has demonstrated considerable resolve in the past several weeks, in particular in the case of Pakistan.

Next slide.

These are the three areas that I'll talk about.

Here are the bottom lines up front.

There is no question about the substantial progress in Iraq. I'll show you the usual metrics to show you where we are with those. But the fact is that we've gone from a situation which in June of 2007 saw 160 attacks per day, on average, in Iraq, and is now between 10 and 15 attacks per day, and has been that way for about six months now. In fact, on the low end of that in recent weeks.

There is no question that there are still capabilities of al Qaeda. We saw it again, tragically, yesterday west of Nasiriya in southern Afghanistan to carry out sensational attacks.

And in fact, one of the challenges that Iraq faces is that because of the improvements in security, they have reduced many of the measures that were taken during the height of the sectarian violence, and that has made it more difficult, in some cases, to interdict or to prevent attacks because of the reduction of checkpoints, barriers and all the rest that the people understandably want reduced to allow freedom of movement in their cities.

But again, substantial progress. But as Ambassador Crocker and I and General Odierno and Ambassador Hill also repeatedly state, it is still fragile and still reversible, albeit I think less so certainly than when I left in September of last year and less so after the elections that took place in January, which were really quite heartening with the provincial councils now having been seated and much more representative provincial councils in some of those areas where the Sunnis boycotted the voting back in January of 2005.

That is in contrast to the situation in Afghanistan where, over the past two years -- and I'll show you the statistics that establish this quite clearly -- the security situation has deteriorated in specific areas, in particular in the east and the south, the areas of the so-called Pashtun insurgency. And that has to be reversed.

And of course, General McChrystal is going over there, flowing in as additional forces are also being committed in substantial numbers from the United States, also additional forces from our NATO partners and some of the other non-NATO members of the coalition, because this is what we have to do. And I think that was laid out very clearly in the president's description of the Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy. It has to be a whole-of-government approach, as I mentioned earlier. A comprehensive counterinsurgency is what is required to keep Afghanistan from becoming once again a sanctuary for transnational extremists, as it was prior to 9/11.

In Pakistan, there is no question, I think, at this point that the Pakistanis see very clearly the existential threat that is posed to their country by the extremists, in particular by the Pakistani Taliban, who have caused such problems in the northwest frontier province and against whom the Pakistani military has responded very strongly in Swat, Lower Dir, Buner and some other districts of the Northwest Frontier Province.

There have also been operations in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, in Bajaur and Mohmand. And of course, there are significant challenges resident there. That is, after all, the location for a number of the sanctuaries and safe havens that caused problems in Afghanistan for the so-called extremist syndicate, as General McKiernan called it very accurately al Qaeda, but also by Tula Masoud (ph), Commander (Nazir), Hakani network, TNSM and a variety of other elements, all of which have loose relationships at various times, but all of which are extremist elements that, again, pose significant threats to Pakistan and cause enormous problems in Afghanistan.

As these operations go forward -- and I was just in Pakistan two weeks ago -- it is obvious that there is a clear recognition of the need not just to clear the miscreants, as the Pakistanis term them, from Swat Valley and from the other areas in which they have challenged the writ of government, there is also a recognition of the need to hold those areas, and then, of course, to rebuild in them because there has been significant damage in some of those areas as well, although they were able to clear Mingora reportedly without extensive damage.

But that recognition is there. And I'll show you on a slide, just in very broad terms so as not to get into classified material, the concepts that are being followed there. And of course, what we're trying to do is to provide assistance but not direct tactical or operational assistance, but rather logistical assistance, coalition support funding, funding to support the internally displaced persons camps. As Ambassador Holbrooke, my great diplomatic wingman, noted when he was in Pakistan most recently, now over $300 million being contributed to that by the United States alone.

Next slide.

I think, as we turn and shift our focus to Afghanistan and Pakistan, it is very important to reflect on what we learned from Iraq and to remember that you have to apply what was learned there was a very nuanced understanding, a very granular understanding of local circumstances in which those lessons are being applied.

And to do that, you have to go back and recall what the surge actually was, because it was really much more than this center line here, the increase in U.S. forces of 30,000 or even the increase in coalition forces which were (in number ?) 1,000 more, even more than the growth in Iraqi forces during the time of the surge, which was about 125,000 -- they now number well-over 600,000 -- and even more than the single commitment that all of this represented.

What those extra forces did and what the commitment they represented did were to enable the employment in a much more robust manner, counterinsurgency concepts of the kind that John talked about earlier, that were indeed codified in the Marine and Army Field Manual on counterinsurgency, really the best practices that we had learned or relearned during the course of our initial years in Iraq.

And I want to talk about those for a second, because, again, they are the big ideas that were the underpinning, the intellectual underpinning, for what was done in Iraq. And they're captured on this next slide here, and I'll go through them one by one.

As John mentioned, the overriding mission of a military force in counterinsurgency has to be to secure the people, to protect the population. And, by the way, I would add, to be seen as securing and serving them. This is hugely important. This is of enormous importance as we go to Afghanistan and recall that this is the graveyard of empires, it is a place that has never taken kindly to would-be conquerors. And we must be partners there, good neighbors and all of the rest of that as opposed to dominating or wanting to take over.

Next.

To do that, you have to, in Iraq, live among the people. And there you could live among the people because you had plenty of empty real estate after the sectarian violence took place in which you could put your forces. We created over 70 additional locations in Baghdad alone, just in the Multinational Division-Baghdad area in which we located our forces. And there are some people in here that were in those joint security stations, I might add, and experienced what it was.

And we put them where the violence was the greatest. And I'll show you the slide that shows where that violence is in Afghanistan. And of course, that's where our forces inevitably have to go and our partner's forces and our Afghan elements.

Now, as this was done, you have to realize now that, as you apply this in Afghanistan, you don't live among the people in Afghanistan. First of all, there's no empty houses. Second, the villages, particularly in the rural areas, tend to be small. Now, in a city, you might be able to do this. And it is indeed done in some of the larger cities.

But what you are going to do is provide a persistent security presence by being near the village, perhaps in a spot that overlooks the village. But again, being good partners and good neighbors in doing that as well and having an enormous concern, needless to say, about civilian casualties in everything that we do.

Next.

It has to be a comprehensive approach. It cannot be purely military. I'll show you the comprehensive approach that we applied with respect to the target set that was al Qaeda in Iraq and the Sunni extremist elements that we were fighting there. There was another one of these for the Shi'a, and you have to fine tune your strategy for each different element that you're seeking to counter. But that has to be much, much more than just counterterrorist operations or even just conventional military operations. And I'll show that on the so-called Anaconda slide here in a moment. But it comes back to what Ambassador Burns was talking about. You have to have a very robust, whole-of-government capability to carry this out.

Needless to say, you have to achieve unity of effort. And Ambassador Crocker and I sat down from the get go and said, we are going to be united in everything that we do. When we go see Prime Minister Maliki, we will always go together. When we met a congressional delegation, we were always together. We had our offices together. We linked arms on everything.

And we established within our respect structures an environment, a culture that we were going to work together as well. We built fusion cells for energy, for elections, for health, you name it, across the board.

We had organizations created that all worked together to a common. And even though we didn't all report through the same chain of command.

Next.

Now, these are all, you know, the nice things to do. You also have to go out and kill or capture bad guys who are irreconcilable. We'll talk a lot more about this critical determination of who is irreconcilable, and that requires a very detailed understanding of intelligence, needless to say, and the local circumstances and so forth.

But that is part of our job. And we cannot shrink from that at all, and we need to do it tenaciously and persistently and relentlessly, as that says.

Next.

You cannot clear and leave, you have to clear and hold. Yes, disruption does have value. In fact, the operation that was recently carried out south of Lashkarga in Helmand Province was of enormous value. Over 100 tons of drugs and narcotics, precursors and other materials destroyed and significant amount of money, all the rest of this, very, very significant. But we couldn't hold that area yet. And so that will have had, again, an important disruptive effect, but not an enduring one.

Ultimately, you have to be able to hold the areas that are cleared. That, of course, is what the Pakistani military is addressing now with respect to Swat. They have a plan for that, and I'll discuss that very briefly with you, without getting ahead of that.

Next.

It is vital that you know and have a sufficient understanding of the local circumstances so that when you are trying to help the government, the host nation forces reconcile, if you will -- reintegrate is a better term that translates better in the Afghan culture in languages -- but as that is done, you have to really have a phenomenal understanding of who's who, how systems work, who is truly possible to be part of the solution instead of a continuing part of the problem and so on. And then also, who's irreconcilable, because they are, again, going to have to be killed, captured or run off.

Next.

You have to promote it. You have to actually support this. And again, adopting this, adapting this to the circumstances in Afghanistan, with sufficient understanding, will be critical. And one of the efforts that we have ongoing is in fact to not only fill the slots that exist there but to put the best folks we can in and to build a bench and then to keep them engaged in it, even when they're back in the United States through, for example, Intelligence Center of Excellence at CENTCOM, a small cell on a joint staff of 30 or 40 folks, not 400 as I think an article said today, and so on, but a variety of ways to keep them in the fight. Even when they're back in the states, they're staying in this, and then they rotate back out there, as we did ultimately for Iraq.

Next.

As you do transitions, when you hand off, you do what was done in Kabul. When the Afghans were ready, I think it's three of the five districts in Kabul now lead for security has been handed off, but they were based on conditions in this particular case. Next.

When you're dealing with the press, when you're dealing with the tribal leaders, when you're dealing with host nations, when you're dealing with your bosses, whatever it may be, you've got to beat the bad guys to the headlines, you've got to beat them to your bosses, the tribal chiefs, the host nation leaders. You have to be first with the truth, and that requires really revamping what it is we do.

By the way, we got this right. There's a story in the early bird today, a case where in RC-East, by God, they beat it, and they did it with video, and they showed it for all the world and everything else.

But this requires very flat approval structures. And you cannot be hierarchical when you're doing this kind of work. And we went through this in Iraq. In fact, we just also sent over to Afghanistan, with General McChrystal will go the individual who is my strategic communications director, Rear Admiral Greg Smith, who was persuaded to stay on active duty for another year or two. Next slide.

We have fought for our values for decades, centuries, and we need to continue to embrace them, and we need to fight for them, and we shouldn't shrink from that. And that should pervade everything that we do.

Next.

You need to create cultures in which the leaders at lower levels not only understand the overall intent, understand these big ideas, but have thought through how it is that they'll translate them operationally. And then they need to feel free to exercise initiative and to go out and get after it.

I remember I was walking through an area in a very tough neighborhood in southwest Baghdad as we were well-into the surge and came across this company commander. His command post is, you know, simply plywood door. As usual, he was really proud of it, by the way. And it had a sign on it. And it said, in the absence of orders or guidance, figure out what they should have been and execute vigorously. (Laughter.) I took that sign back with me, and that became part of the whole line on this.

Next.

And then, of course, it's all about learning and adapting. This is, I might add, something that John Nagl stressed enormously. And in fact, if you look at the counterinsurgency field manual, we pulled what was going to be an annex or an appendix forward to be an actual chapter up front about the importance of learning in the conduct of counterinsurgency. And of course, his dissertation-turned-book emphasized that repeatedly throughout it.

Next.

So those are the concepts. Those are the big ideas. And if you go to the next one, this is how this turns into a whole-of-government approach when it comes to dealing with al Qaeda in Iraq.

My sole point here, we did this for Congress originally so that we could explain to Congress that it takes more than counterterrorist operations to deal with an organization we call terrorists, al Qaeda in Iraq, which was really an industrial-strength insurgency when you took in all of its allies. Because remember, there are many more than just this Sunni extremist organization. There was Ansar al-Sunna, Jaish al-Islami, you name it, many others, and they all mean this, though. They have these common requirements in the center box.

And the only way to take those away from them, to challenge them for popular support, go after, attack their ideology, disrupt their command and control, cut their links to senior leaders, reduce the flow of money available to them, take away their weapons caches and explosives, cut the flow of foreign fighters, in this case through Syria, and take out their safe havens and sanctuaries. The only way to do this is to apply all of these tools to it, not just counterterrorist forces. This takes much, much more than JSOC forces. It takes much more than conventional forces which are required to clear and hold. Let's remember, we banged away in Ramadi with special Special Ops forces for years, and we disrupted the daylights out of the bad guys. We never could drive from one side of Ramadi to the center of the town without getting hit, though, until we cleared it and held it with large conventional forces, together with Iraqi forces and ultimately enabled by these Sons of Iraq which were a product of tribal awakenings which were a product of support for political reconciliation.

So you have to have a huge political component right here, and this is embassy kinds of stuff, certainly working with local military commanders.

The intelligence piece is huge. I would stress here, by the way, the big breakthrough in intelligence is not any one of these platforms or capabilities. It's the fusion of all of this. It's forcing every agency to sit in the room without barriers, no walls allowed and all having to talk to each other together with special Special Ops, regular Special Ops, conventional forces, coalition forces, DIA, CIA, NGA, NSA, you name if, all of them there and required and then the applications that enable that in this great new digital world of ours.

We completely revamped detainee operations. By the way, Major General Stone also just happens to be in Afghanistan right now. Some of you will remember that he was instrumental in reforming the conduct of detainee operations in Iraq where we determined that we had to do counterinsurgency inside the wire as well as outside the wire. You have to separate the irreconcilables into detainee facilities. We had 25,000 detainees at one time, keep in mind, and we had created terrorist university at Camp Bucca. We had the baddest of the bad guys right in with the not-quite-so-bad guys, and they were recruiting al Qaeda in Iraq operatives for the future.

So we finally identified them inside the wire, conducted counterinsurgency, got the bad guys into special holding facilities. By the way, we're building some facilities like that in Bagram now. And ultimately, were able also to create what would be more corrections kinds of functions where you try to help rehabilitate, together with our Iraqi partners, those detainees that are assessed to be low risk for release.

And over time, that knocked the recidivism rate in Iraq way, way down from double digits to at one point I think it was down around 1 percent or so, quite low.

You obviously have to get at the real reasons for discontent in society. You have to help the host nation deal with the challenges when it comes to providing better basic services, jobs, education and so forth. And then you need the real whole-of-government piece out here. Source countries means that the State counterterrorism ambassador, Dell Dailey, went to the North African countries and said, could you please make it tougher for military-age males to buy a one- way ticket to Damascus? And they did. And over time, all of that worked.

And also, a huge piece here that all comes under the heading of strategic communications information operations and building the structures and then the processes that enable you to be first with the truth, as I mentioned.

Whole-of-government approach, again, it takes countering terrorism, requires more than counterterrorist operations. Next.

Okay, well, where are we in Iraq? This starts over in 2004, ends with this past Friday night. And as you can see, the level of violence has come down very dramatically. And in fact, now for six months, as I said, we've had an average per day of 10 to 15 attacks per day, that contrasts with, as I said, about 160 attacks per day at the height of the surge of offensives in June and also correspondingly significant reductions in civilians casualties and so forth.

I won't dwell on this much other than to recall just again how horrific the violence was, a lot of that touched off by the cycle of violence in the wake of the Samarra mosque bombing, 22 February, 2006, which was a horrific event as one looks back on this history.

So again, very significant reduction in security incidents, which includes attempted attacks, IEDs found as well as all of the other normal types of attacks.

Next.

Now, if you're protecting the population, this somewhat -- (inaudible) -- data of violent civilian deaths is very important to you. You will recall, this is Iraqi data on the top, confirmed coalition data on the bottom. Huge gulf because we weren't out with the people as much. We weren't in hospitals, we weren't in places, and the violence was just so out of control. This is a period when there were 53 dead bodies on average per day. Every 24 hours in Baghdad, 53 bodies on the streets.

And Mayor Najim, who was here earlier from Tal Afar somewhere, could recall that period for you, by the way. Horrific. And again, you can see very, very substantially reduced here now. There was an increase back in April because of the sensational attacks that are shown on this next slide -- next slide right here.

We are concerned about these sensational attacks that shows the residual capabilities of al Qaeda in Iraq, in particular. We do remain concerned about Shi'a extremist elements as well that do continue to receive funding, training, arming and so forth from Iran. And there have been signature attacks by these Iranian-sponsored elements, the EFPs and indirect fire attacks, albeit at a reduced level, certainly, from when we were battling the militia a year and a half or so ago. And there's some reconciliation efforts ongoing, including the release of Laith Khazali, not the kingpin, Qais Khazali, his brother, Laith which is supporting an Iraqi initiative at reconciliation with a group called Asaib al-Haq.

Again, these have correspondingly come down very substantially. My greeting, welcome back to Iraq, in February 2007 was 43 car bombs in Baghdad in a single month. And it went up the next month. Next slide.

The presence of al Qaeda in Iraq, very substantially reduced. The inset map shows Baghdad. The red means where al Qaeda had a degree of freedom of action and presence. This is the overall map. This is back in the winter 2006, 2007, the height of the sectarian violence when they controlled the Euphrates River Valley, controlled the approaches from Baghdad, controlled the Za'ab Triangle, the upper Tigris River Valley and a significant presence in Mosul.

You can see very significantly reduced in Baghdad, still there, still able to carry out periodic sensational attacks. They have been on an almost every-three-week cycle, by the way, which we're obviously trying to break with our Iraqi partners. Still some presence again, certainly up in Mosul is a very significant readout that they have got to hold onto given its significant geopolitical location. But very substantially reduced.

Next.

Okay, now, that was Iraq. And again, as I said, significant progress, still fragile, still reversible, but very significant. And it does continue to move forward. Broke the all-time electricity record on the 4th of June. Got rail traffic going from the Syria port all the way down the Basra. Just a lot of things coming together that folks have been working on literally for years.

Afghanistan, on the other hand, is headed in the other direction. You can see the very clear cycle here because of the weather in the winter. Again, 2004 on the left, 2009 on the right, the current. And you can see that the past week was the highest level of security incidents in Afghanistan's history, at least that post-liberation history.

You can see how it goes up during the summer, comes down during the winter months, then goes up and down again. This down right here, by the way, was when they were harvesting the poppy. I think it was at that downturn right there. But again, there are some tough months ahead.

Some of this will go up because we are going to go after their sanctuaries and safe havens, as we must. And I'll show you where those are, and I'll show you where our forces are flowing in. But there is no question but that the situation has deteriorated over the course of the past two years, in particular, and that there are difficult times ahead.

Next.

What is key to note -- and this is if you take all of 2008, but the pattern has generally continued for 2009 so far -- and that is that over two-thirds of all of the fighting, the attacks, the violence and so forth, take place in less than 10 percent of the districts. And you can see the hot spots right here. (Audio difficulties.)

By the way, we used to watch hot spots for Baghdad as well. And again, the first place we put the first joint security station that was part of the surge concepts, not just the forces, the first place was the major hot spot in Baghdad in Amariya. So again, note these hot spots -- Kandahar, this is Helmand Province right here, the major source of the opium, the poppy crop right there and also in Kandahar. And then you can see the locations in the east, southeast to Kabul and then roughly the ring road as it goes around, again, the east and south.

Now, keep in mind, of course, very important what happens in Pakistan. That's why we have the border areas of Pakistan on here, Belujistan in the south. And certainly, there are some sanctuaries for the Afghan Taliban in the Quetta and Belujistan area. Then the you have the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, the very, very mountainous border areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Special arrangements, of course, in terms of governance on the Pakistani side, and that is indeed where this extremist syndicate that I described earlier tends to be located.

And then Northwest Frontier Province with Swat district right in here in the center. And of course, that is where the Pakistani Taliban have caused such problems, where they immediately broke the agreement that was brokered with the government and following which all of the elements of Pakistan have really united against the Taliban. For the first time, you see the people rising up against them, even in the tribal areas with these so-called tribal -- (inaudible) -- standing up against the Taliban. You see all of the political leaders united, including Nawaz Sharif, the opposition leader. Although he's rejoining the parliament, I believe now that he has been restored. And even the clerical leaders issue fatwas against some of the Taliban as well. But again, back to Afghanistan. Next slide.

So where are our forces going? Well, first of all, as you know, we are going roughly from about 30(,000) or 31,000 at the end of last calendar year to around 68,000 by this fall. The first element that already is in and on the ground and operating is Task Force Spartan right here, just southwest of Kabul. There are additional coalition forces that have gone in during this period as well, and you see some of those shown on here.

What is flowing in now and really just becoming operational, the Combat Aviation Brigade which will be based in airfields in the south with the headquarters at Kandahar Air Field, but will dramatically increase the number of aviation resources available there. In fact, we will double the number of air (frames ?), if you will, together with the wing of the Marine Expeditionary Force that's going in. But we will increase by five or sixfold the available helicopters for operations, because many of those helicopters that were positioned in the south were sitting there with MEDEVAC missions or quick reaction force missions. So they really weren't available for daily operations. This will dramatically increase that.

Now you have the Marine Expeditionary Brigade, very, very large structure is going into Helmand Province principally. That is where we recently conducted that operation that I mentioned earlier, although it was largely seen as (SOTF ?) led. They are just coming into operations now, had their transfer of authority the other day.

Next will be the flow of the Stryker Brigade just beginning, mostly based, again, in the Kandahar area. Again, we will spread some of these out in other places. There will be Marines out in Farah, for example, and other locations. And I don't want to get into detailed locations because of classification. But just so you can get a sense of where they're going and recall, again, where the Pashtun insurgency is. That has to be the focus.

And then in a new effort here, we're taking a brigade from the 82nd Airborne Division, increasing the number of leaders provided to it, and they will then overlay throughout Regional Command South on the Afghan national army and Afghan national police elements that are operating there, and provide advisor and assistance missions and tasks with them. And we think that that will have a significant impact on the Afghan forces.

Next.

Afghan forces -- let's talk very briefly. I don't want to get way down into this, but I want to make a couple of points about this. One is that you can see that the current goal, 230,000, that reflects the 15,000 additional police recently agreed. This is all under analysis right now. The CSTCA, the train-and-equip organization in Iraq, is doing an analysis. They're getting help from the Army Concepts Agency and some others to determine what is the right number of Afghan national security forces. The bottom line is it is many more than this. We'll have to see what it is. But if you look at the good old counterinsurgency manual, recall the ratio that typically needs to exist, you will very quickly conclude with some quick back- of-the-envelope calculations that that number will not be sufficient. And then we'll see where it comes out over time.

But they are building rapidly. The Afghan national army is actually a little bit ahead of the accelerated schedule that was agreed to a few months ago. The challenge here is all about leaders. You can train privates, you can equip people, you can build infrastructure, you can do all of that. You can't find battalion commanders, brigade commanders, division commanders and staffs for them just anywhere. That takes years of experience, education, training and all the rest. And that is ultimately the biggest challenge in this overall effort, as it was frankly in Iraq, despite having a significant pool of those from the former Iraqi army and former Iraqi Ministry of Interior.

Next.

Quickly on Pakistan, as I mentioned, the big fighting right now, the focus is on Swat and Swat Valley, in particular, but also in Buner, Lower Dir, perhaps some in Upper Dir and some of the miscreants again fleeing from Swat. These have been quite impressive operations. And I think Pakistan deserves some significant credit for it. And as I said, having been in there a couple of weeks ago and talked to the leaders there, the concepts are solid, and the execution is on track.

As I mentioned, we are not providing direct assistance to combat. We are providing a variety of security assistance, coalition support funding as I mentioned; in fact, recently $447 million. I mentioned the funding announced by Ambassador Holbrooke of over 300 million (dollars) now to assist with the internally displaced persons camps. Those people have to be enabled to get home. These are proud hill people now down in the lowlands and camps, and they desperately need to get back there. So the conditions must be established and achieved to enable them to do just that. You can't let these camps harden, if you will. Now, without violating classifications or anything like that, you can just see roughly where there are Pakistani elements positioned in and on the edges of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. There have been shifts as they have announced forces from India to the west. And in some cases, those are very important shifts that have taken place. And the reason I mention it is because it reflects their assessment of this threat.

And everyone has always said, gosh, don't they see that this is a threat to their very existence? The answer is yes. And they are showing that by the deployments and employment of their forces, the actions they're taking.

We have been very proud frankly to be able to help with this in indirect ways, with some assistance in some training areas. And we delivered yesterday four MI-17 helicopters, the most rapid security assistance effort in the history of the United States, I think, having often had some degree of frustration with the security assistance program, as I'm sure Ambassador Burns has had during his lifetime as well and anyone else. It's just a tough system to work through. And within two or three weeks of a request from them for helicopter support, we wheeled four MI-17s just refurbished just out the back of a Colt yesterday. Next slide.

Okay, a couple of final slides. There are people who occasionally say, gosh, you know, we don't know how to fight anymore, we're not doing enough offense or defense, we're just doing stability and support. What I remind people is that what we are doing is what we call full-spectrum operations. And any operation, by definition, includes a mix of offense, defense and stability and support, no matter where you are.

Now, we probably have forgotten that a little bit over the years at times, and there were certainly times during the fight to Baghdad when we turned around and said, hey, the good news is we own Najaf, the bad news is we own Najaf, and where are the guys that are coming behind us. And where we want to reopen the air field, who are the guys that are going to bring all this stuff in? Where is this organization or that organization?

We have learned an enormous amount about that, and we don't forget stability and support operations at this point in time. Counterinsurgency falls somewhere in here in the spectrum of irregular warfare, keeping in mind this is peace, this is big-time war out here, and the level of violence increases from left to right. And so what you're doing is some mix, some balance of offense, defense and stability and support operations.

Our troopers can still very much fight. By the way, they also can even shoot. The normal (rap ?) is they can't shoot artillery anymore. First of all, we don't shoot much dumb artillery in precision situations, like Iraq, we have precious weapons, as I will show you were employed in Sadr City in that battle.

We do certainly in some places, like Afghanistan, shoot a great deal of indirect fire. And so again, it's about the mix of what it is you're doing, and it's about preparing your forces for that mix. But let me assure you, our units, our leaders and so forth can definitely fight. We may not be able to do a brigade box formation in the desert, as John Nagl did in the Gulf War or something like this, but I think we could probably pick that back up again with a week or two at the National Training Center, where we still do go, by the way. We just don't do the "Clash of the Titans." We're not doing the big tank armies colliding in the central corridor anymore. We are doing continuous, complex counterinsurgency which sometimes requires very significant kinetic ops, often requires very significant stability and support, all integrated.

Next.

And so briefly, this is what we did in Sadr City, by the way. And we created this slide to capture an incredible moment -- how we did Sadr City in contrast to how we fought Fallujah. Fallujah in 2004 was a bit more of the old, because we didn't have all these enablers. We had to clear street by street. We used tanks. We used every enabler we had, but we had nowhere near the number of platforms that we were able to put up over Fallujah. We had 11 unmanned aerial vehicles over Fallujah 24 hours a day during the battle of Fallujah when the militia were challenging us when our forces, together with Iraqi forces, we were supporting Iraqi forces in the battle of Basra. So the militia answer was counterattack in Baghdad, we're to bombard the Green Zone, the international zone with rockets and mortars, and they did. There were 12, 15 volleys a day, on some occasions nine to 10 rounds. This is very significant indirect fire and caused enormous challenges for the folks in the embassy and all of us there, including the seat of Iraqi government.

Next slide.

Okay, at the end of the day, though, I just want to remind everyone, and I know this audience probably doesn't need it, but at the end of the day it's all about these folks right here. It is about people. It's about investing in those people. It's about educating them, training them, retaining them, taking care of them and their families and all the rest.

This is a case in which I was privileged to reenlist 1,250 soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines in a combat zone in Baghdad last July 4th. It was a remarkable experience. I think it was the largest reenlistment in our history. They were raising their right hands, swearing the oath of enlistment, knowing that that meant they would likely end up back in combat zone after this particular tour was done.

It has been the greatest of privileges to serve with these individuals, and we can never thank them enough. Thank you very much. (Applause.) Thank you. Thank you.

MODERATOR: Sir, thank you for that extraordinary overview of how America's fighting men and women, diplomats, intelligence agents, largely under your leadership and under the leadership of an extraordinary team, manage to accomplish extraordinary things and are working now in some of the most important, dangerous places on earth. We can't thank you enough for sharing that with us.

General Petraeus is running over time, but he has time to take just two or three questions. And I've got microphones available I think. And what I'd like you to do please is identify yourself and your affiliation please.

Q Adam Alik (ph), I'm a fellow at U.S. Joint Special Operations University. Thank you, General, for a great presentation. I want to start with your last slide, very moving. And I see some of that happening in Pakistani military, almost kind of a moral-centric model coming out in the counterinsurgency which is an indigenous mix between population and, to some degree, enemy-centric. And I was wondering, you did talk about indirect support, training, equipment, coalition funds, and then you have proposed a special counterinsurgency fund for the Pakistanis. If you would support some kind of a joint lessons-learned mechanism, maybe if there was a way of working with the Pakistani National Defense University on better counterinsurgency tactics that both sides can learn, because there are things that Pakistan is doing right that certainly would help the Americans in Afghanistan.

GEN. PETRAEUS: Yeah. Well, first of all, it's a great idea. And in fact, I think I will actually pursue it, which is even better.

(Laughter.) Sincerely -- I should note that we have actually done a fair amount of sharing back and forth by the way. Because as you point out, we have a lot to learn from our Pakistani partners, a great deal, and there's much that they can teach us. General Kayani and I, when we sat down the other day, he gently reminded me that, you know, Pakistan has been doing this now for a few decades. And they have a reasonable understanding of their Federally Administered Tribal Areas and some of the others. And it was very nicely done and very politely and professionally done.

But he also welcomed, I should note, in our very first meeting on that aircraft carrier when we were off the southern coast of Pakistan, when I was still the commander in Iraq but having been announced as the CENTCOM commander, he welcomed the counterinsurgency field manual and in fact had read it, had gone through it. Your country, in fact your joint staff, is developing a counterinsurgency concept, actually an interagency counterinsurgency concept. They're providing the military component to that. And again, what I was trying to highlight here is the very clear recognition of counterinsurgency concepts by not just the Pakistani military but by a much more whole-of-government approach, if you will.

And a designation, I should have noted, as you know, your 1st Corps commander was designated to oversee the support for the internally displaced persons effort. Perfect choice. He was the deputy head of the earthquake relief effort. He is a highly competent and extremely professional corps commander. He brings the corps headquarters with him (that he brought in his wake ?), so he has real assets. He's brought all of his different support elements. Logistical units are all engaged, and that has been a really wise move.

Some of his units have already been designated to hold Swat Valley, which will allow 11th Corps to continue its focus, as previously has been the case on the Federally Administered Tribal Areas together with the Frontier Corps. And you see the government moving back in.

Now, the challenge is going to be, of course, what do you do long term about the police, in particular, I think is going to be a real difficult one, because under the pressure of the Taliban, under the pressure of any counterinsurgency, the police are always the most vulnerable. And so they're going to have to be substantially shored up and assisted as they are ultimately reintroduced and so ultimately they can draw down.

But I think there's an expectation of a need to keep military forces there for some substantial time, and that's a very good recognition, certainly in my view.

MODERATOR: (Inaudible) -- question. Right in the middle please.

Q Hi there, General. (Name inaudible) -- with Fox News Channel. I had a question for you. There were reports out yesterday from some congressional officials who are concerned that Miranda rights, the right to remain silent or to an attorney, et cetera, are being read to detainees in Bagram and other places in Afghanistan by DOJ officials. And I was wanting to get your take. Do you have personal concerns or have you heard concerns from military officials in the field that this will in any way make intelligence gathering and interrogation more difficult? So a question on that front, and --

GEN. PETRAEUS: Let me just answer that question, if I could. No concerns at all. Look, this is FBI doing what the FBI does. And there are a very limited number of cases in which this has been done. These are cases in which they are looking at potential criminal charges. And when that is done, as that is initiated, and I've been involved in that in other countries as well over the years, they understandably read Miranda rights.

Our forces -- what was part of the real rumor yesterday was, are your forces reading Miranda rights to detainees? And the answer to that is no. So we're comfortable with this.

MODERATOR: We're going to hold you to one question per, please.

Q I just want to get your take on the detainee photos and your concerns about them.

MODERATOR: We really are going to hold you to one question per, please.

GEN. PETRAEUS: A good try. We wouldn't respect you if you didn't do that. (Laughter.) You've got to have a culture of initiative here, you know.

Q Sir, Bill Castle (ph) with Senator Hatch's staff. In Iraq, you had joint security stations, that was living among the people. In Vietnam and combined action platoons, that was living among the people. In Afghanistan, you hedged just a little bit. You said you were living near the people. How do you make up for that difference? And do you think you'll have the same result by having that subtle difference?

GEN. PETRAEUS: Yeah. Again, what you have to do is ask, what's the objective? That's always a good thing to do, by the way. And the objective is to provide security for the people. And the question is, how do to that in a way that is culturally and operationally correct? It is not culturally correct -- and I'm talking about the rural areas, but that's much of this area in which the fighting is the toughest.

In rural areas, these are small villages. They don't have empty houses in the center of them, waiting for us to come in and occupy. I can guarantee you, if there's a roof in any village out there, it's got 10 or 12 people underneath it. And so what you need to do is say, well, I'm trying to achieve a persistent security presence. How do I do that?

Well, actually, the best way to do it is to get on a piece of high ground that overlooks the village and also overlooks the line of communication that you're probably trying to interdict, because that's connected to the overall challenges that you have, particularly in the east and the south, folks that come in from the sanctuaries and safe haves in those rugged border areas. So that's how you get at that.

We do indeed have places in cities where we certainly have compounds obviously in the center and in a variety of different locations in Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad and others.

MODERATOR: And we've got time for one last question. And I'd like to go over on this side, if I can, right there in the middle. Q Good morning, sir. I'm Jason Campbell with Brookings. My question is that with the influx of new troops into Afghanistan, there's been a lot of focus on improving the security there. But as we all know, we're really going to need more, better governance to create sustainable stability. And I'd like to get your take on how optimistic are you that the Afghan political element will make adequate use of the breathing room we're hopefully able to give them.

GEN. PETRAEUS: Yeah. I mean, you have put your finger on it. I mean, everyone that goes to -- and I was also just in Afghanistan a couple of weeks ago. And again, the message is very clear. You know, we think we can make progress in the security arena. The challenge will be to exploit that progress to make the most of that space, as you put it, to enable the establishment of governance that is seen to serve the people, that is not predatory, that is not guilty of corruption and that provides better basic services, more, if you will, local commercial opportunities and better access to health care, education and all the rest. By the way, a lot of that progress has continued in Afghanistan. We should not forget the continued progress in terms of more access to schools, medical facilities, the construction of roads, air fields and the like. And even now, much more aggressive in the area of agriculture, an area that Ambassador Holbrooke rightly has emphasized enormously. And we see the interagency partners getting very serious about that now as well.

A lot of this comes to the civilian surge, if you will, as it's being called, although I think it's going to be a sustained civilian increase would be a better description. And in fact, we talked about that at a deputy's committee, and it is on track as of two days ago. And enabling us first getting our footprint out there, bringing in the additional civilian elements from all of the different agencies, not just State and AID by the way, but other partners as well, and then helping the establishment of the governance, particularly, frankly, in the wake of the elections that will take place on August 20th.

MODERATOR: Sir, we're out of time. Thank you, more than I can say, for setting up our next two panels extraordinarily well. We're now going to dig a little more deeply into the future of U.S. policy in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan over the next couple of hours. You have, as you have for so many years, taught me so very much. And on behalf of all of us here today whom you've taught so much, sir, thank you on behalf of the -- (inaudible).

(Applause.)

GEN. PETRAEUS: Thank you. Thank you.

END.