I missed that in my transcript.

When you have troops in a hot area trained, equipped and prepped to deal with the hot area, they are more likely to succeed.

The U.S.-led presence in Iraq has been hobbled for some time training Iraqis to replace them in the cities' streets and along the nation's borders. Many of these Iraqis are now in place, which releases a very large contingent of troops to return to the hot area they were trained for and to deal with it.

"Its obvious that U.S. forces had some inkling that this was coming"? No. The report states that the commander was surprised Deponai said he was surprised by the scale of the attack. It is, however, painfully obvious that the troops the Iraqi forces met were not there to play games. They delivered their cargo, and took names and numbers. You can count that mission a success.

For the record, Justin is correct -- again.

And "bode" be damned, an Iraqi "civilian" who opens fire on anyone becomes somebody's worst "enemy" -- in this case, ours.

Dan (pressing on)