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M2 PRESSWIRE-31 May 2004-US DOD: DoD news briefing(C)1994-2004 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

RDATE:05282004

Maj Gen. John Sattler, Central Command Director of OperationsFriday, May 28, 2004 - 10:00 a.m. EDT

Moderator: Bryan Whitman, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Public Affairs, Media Operations

MR. WHITMAN: Hi, thank you for joining us again, sir, and welcome back to the Pentagon briefing room here. We appreciate you taking the time on an occasional basis here, every few weeks, to talk to us and to give us an overview of operations that are taking place in the CENTCOM area of operations. And with that I think we'll just go ahead and get started. And I know that you have a few comments that you'd like to make, and then we'll have some questions from here.

GEN. SATTLER: Thank you very much. And, again, it's an honor to have the opportunity to go and talk and speak with the Pentagon press corps.

I'd like to start out just by kind of giving a macro view of our area of operations, both inside of Iraq and Afghanistan, and a quick trip around the Horn of Africa.

Inside of Iraq, we're averaging somewhere around 2,000 patrols in a 24-hour period. I just want to make sure everyone understands that we are still out and about constantly working the streets, working the towns, and working the rural areas. Of those 2,000, we've climbed up to where over 300 of those on a daily basis are joint patrols, which means they're being conducted side by side with our Iraqi coalition partners. There's an additional approximately 140 to 150 -- and that number continues to grow -- independent patrols that are conducted by Iraqi security forces, most of those by the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps. The importance of that is these particular units that have really honed in on their tactics, techniques and procedures are able to go out and conduct independent patrols without coalition forces with them.

Looking up towards the north, first of all each -- we continue to focus on Iraqi security forces as we continue -- (audio break due to technical difficulties.)

Okay - do we have connectivity?

MR. WHITMAN: I can tell you where we got cut off. You had just finished talking about the joint patrols and the independent patrols of Iraq, and you were just about to talk about heading up north. And that's when we lost you, sir.

GEN. SATTLER: Okay, I was well into my speech at that point. We lost you till about three minutes later. But I'll go and re-cock here, talking about the north. We've got the Task Force Olympia, the Stryker Brigade up to the north, mainly focused in the Mosul area, continuing to patrol the main supply routes to ensure they stay open. And they're conducting quite a bit of work with the Iraqi security forces in the north.

In the north-central, where the 1st Infantry Division is, once again heavy patrolling on the MSRs to ensure they maintain and they stay open, as well as conducting offensive operations to go ahead and capture or bring to justice those individual targets and groups or cells that we in fact identified through our intelligence.

Well, pretty much the same inside of Baghdad, where the 1st Cav Division continues to do journeyman's work all throughout Baghdad, ensuring the rule of law is evenly distributed across Baghdad.

Out to the west, the Marines, as you well know, have pulled out of -- pretty much out of Fallujah, turning it over to the Fallujah Brigade. The Fallujah Brigade occupies the internal sector of the town, and there's an ICDC (Iraqi Civil Defense Corps) unit, an Iraqi ICDC to the north of Fallujah, one to the south, and we still share a common checkpoint to the east. We are working very closely with the Fallujah Brigade. This has now freed the Marines up to push additional forces out towards the Syrian border, and to continue to work the other areas of Al Anbar Province. They are also doing quite a bit of civil military operations work now out to the west, both in Ar Ramadi and Fallujah. Civil military operations also being conducted in Baghdad and up in Samarra, and up in the rest of the north-central region.

Moving on to the center-south, the Polish...

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