In terms of comparison from six months ago, in terms of foreign fighters, I believe there are more foreign fighters coming into Iraq than there were six months ago, ... In terms of overall strength of the insurgency, I would say it is the same as it was.
The real target is creating enough chaos in Iraq so that an extremist government can emerge there that would be friendly and conducive to the form of ideology that bin Laden, Zawahiri and Zarqawi believe in.
There are a lot of people in the Middle East who believe our weakness is our inability to stay the course, and they believe that two casualties today, two casualties tomorrow, four the next day, will eventually drive us out,
Yet, we believe that that's probably the vigilance of Iraqi security forces and some of our proactive measures the night before probably saved lives.
I believe that there are elements of extra-legal militias that are moving around doing some of this damage. There may be people with misguided loyalties in some of the security services, although less in the army than in the police.
We have a number of killed in the action in Nasiriya with the Marines -- I believe that number will remain less than 10 -- and a number of wounded,
I don't believe Iran is a suicide state.
I believe we've... we've worked very hard with the Iraqis to build a better place ever since the fall of Saddam's government.