Steve:

Let me start off with two questions: what is an effective counterinsurgency strategy that would come from the President? And along this line of questioning, please define using historical examples or current operations the difference between counterinsurgency strategy and tactics.

I agree that the Administration rejected the idea of an insurgency in Iraq which suggests as you say that it therefore could not have had an effective counterinsurgency strategy. But does your argument go on to state that therefore since the Administration did not have a coin strategy that army units on the ground were not using Coin tactics and methods?

I was a Brigade Combat Team XO in Tikrit in 03 and we even then and contrary to myth, were using Coin tactics and methods. So too was 1st Cav in 2004 under Chiarelli and Brigade commanders like Pete Mansoor. And in 2006 in west-Baghdad I along with the rest of the battalion commanders in my Brigade were using Coin tactics and methods: We were not as Fred Kagan et al from their command posts at AEI like to say hunkered down on the FOB eating ice cream.

And if the majority of tactical units in Iraq were using Coin tactics and methods prior to the Surge then what is really the difference between then and now with the Surge? The garden variety answer is that prior to the Surge we were not focused on "protecting the people" by establishing Cops and using "Clear, hold, build." But my task in purpose in 2006 was protection of the people, although as a simple tactical method we did not use Cops to the extent that they are being used now.

So, on the ground level besides a few thousand more troops, a few additional Cops, and a new General, what has really changed?

gian