Lots of comments on my posting and since I can get lost in long-running, detailed threads let me just say a few things in response.

First of all I apologize to Colonel Mansoor for not having my facts straight by stating incorrectly his former area of operations in Iraq when he was a Brigade commander.

I do accept what Colonel Mansoor's concludes his posting with that perhaps we will just have to agree to disagree.

I also appreciate Mark Oneil's statement that:

One thing that this thread highlights is that there are many competing narratives about what is happening in Iraq. Some of them are probably even quiet close to the reality of what is occurring. However, the situation is constantly evolving and each narrative can really only as 'good' as the accuracy of the facts that informs it.
I actually think that there are essentially two; the one i hold and admittedly very few others do and the consensus view as described in detail by the responses to my postings. This is almost certainly why my responses and the words i use to describe how i see things draws such strident remarks from the other side. In order to probe at the truth with power sometimes the matrix responds with equal and even greater force. Cavguy asks why i keep using terms like "buying off our former enemies," well it is an essential truth to the matter that at least a few reporters from Iraq have highlighted and it does set off sparks within the matrix which needs to be done which causes at least some to consider things otherwise.

The narrative, or truth, is important much beyond my personal views and feelings toward Iraq and my experience there. As General Casey has stated our army is out of balance. If we dont see the war as it actually is and understand causal factors as they actually are we may be learning the wrong things that will take us down wrong paths in the future. This may not be the detail that Cavguy is looking for from me but it is the best that i can do in this forum as a serving officer.

It is curious that i am the one being most often accused as being "emotional." Yet i have to tell you that when an officer like Colonel Mansoor uses terms like "periodic patrolling" to characterize my operations in 2006 how am i supposed to take that? The implication of it is hurtful and is factually incorrect. Why are not others questioning his use of strident language?

I push the button by using terms like "buying off our enemies" because so many have convinced themselves that American military power has been the primary agent for the lowering of violence in Iraq in Summer 2007. I am sorry but i just dont view it that way; and a cold hard look at the evidence should cause others to question the narrative too. In the same way that many of you have responded to me this is not an indictment against those brave soldiers who have served as part of our (I accept Colonel Mansoor's critique of my use of a personal pronoun that assigned the Surge to him) Surge but an attempt to get at the truth so that we can devise paths for the future.

Getting at the primary mechansim for the lowering of violence in Summer 2007 is absolutely critical here. Most assume that it was American military power using new doctrine and more troops that did it. From that point to the past the narrative is built that prior to that point we just didnt get things right because we did not have the right doctrine and were not practicing the right methods. Too from that causal point into the future we say that since success in Iraq is primarily because of us we build future plans of action from tactics all the way up to national policy based on this incorrect assessment of causation. Looking at this from the opposite angle, if American military power in its form in Summer 2007 was not at all the primary mechanism for lowering of violence then the way one views the past as essentially a continuation of the same method and tactics since 2004 makes sense. And the future course certainly looks different from the path we are on now. Hence the importance i place on getting at the truth.

This has been an admittedly generalized response lacking in detail but alas like most of you i have lots of things to do on this sunday.

More to follow in other mediums. As the great American historian Carl Becker once said: "it is the duty of the intellectual to think otherwise" in order to get at the truth.

gg