# Iraqis make security progress as war winds down

/ Published April 21, 2010

An Iraqi Army officer stands in formation. Iraqi security forces are making great strides as combat operations in Iraq wind down.WASHINGTON (April 21,  2010) – The past week was a very good one for security progress in Iraq,  with two al-Qaida leaders being killed in an Iraqi-led operation,  Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said Wednesday.

                      And Iraqi forces followed up their successes by arresting another  senior al-Qaida leader in northern Iraq, Morrell noted at a Pentagon  news conference.

“This is not a good time ... to be a leader of  al-Qaida in Iraq,” Morrell said. “There’s not a lot of longevity in  those jobs.”

Although U.S. forces partnered with Iraqi forces for  the operations, Morrell stressed, Iraqi security forces found and  exploited the intelligence that made them possible and were in the lead  of both operations.

“We have capabilities that we can bring to  bear that they have not yet developed fully,” he said. “It was a great  joint mission that brought down three people who were responsible for  the deaths of scores and scores of innocent Iraqis, not to mention U.S.  and coalition forces.”

As America’s involvement in Iraq draws to  an end – U.S. combat units will be out of the country by the end of  August – the United States is determined not to make the same mistakes  made in Afghanistan in the 1980s, Morrell said.

In August,  Operation Iraqi Freedom ends and Operation New Dawn begins, with U.S.  forces in “advise and assist” roles.

All U.S. forces will be out  of Iraq by the end of 2011. Supplemental funding for fiscal 2010 calls  for $1 billion for Iraqi security forces. That money would go to  expedite building capabilities in Iraqi security forces. The current  Iraqi budgeting process probably doesn’t have the means to execute  spending on the things they need to invest in as quickly as the United  States can do it by spending this money, Morrell explained.

Defense  Secretary Robert M. Gates fully supports this spending, Morrell told  reporters.

“I think he is very leery of repeating the final scene  in ‘Charlie Wilson’s War,’” he said, referring to a movie that depicted  the unsuccessful efforts of a Texas congressman to get his colleagues to  invest a few million dollars in Afghanistan after Congress invested  billions in paramilitary forces that drove the Soviet Union out of the  country.

“It was a case of us being penny wise and pound foolish,”  Morrell said. “And the secretary believes we've been paying the price  ever since. We turned our backs on Afghanistan. We turned our backs on  Pakistan. Al-Qaida ... and other terrorists were able to take root there,  and obviously we were struck on 9/11.”

The United States has lost  more than 4,400 servicemembers in Iraq, with more than 32,000 others  wounded. American taxpayers spent hundreds of billions of dollars in the  country.

“[Gates] believes that we need to spend the money  necessary to finish this job – to make sure our drawdown is successful  and the Iraqis have the capabilities they need to assume responsibility  for more and more of the security component,” Morrell said.