The negotiations, the discussions in the minds of the Marine commanders, continue to proceed, even though we did not see a tremendous number of weapons turned in today.
We have said for the last couple of weeks that we have seen the enemy starting to attack soft targets, Iraqi targets, rather than military targets, ... He is attempting to intimidate the people of Iraq. He will not succeed.
Maybe there is a communications problem -- that we have not gotten the message out to the leadership; it may be that there is no leadership; or it may be that they have chosen to fight. If it is the latter, that's probably the wrong decision to be making.
They realize they can't attack us and defeat us in a conventional sense. What they are trying to do is break our will. They are trying to capture the headlines. But these attacks -- with the exception of a seriously injured civilian -- have had frankly no tactical value and they're militarily insignificant.
The current strategy that we are implementing is in fact working.
If we can't hold ourselves up as an example of how to treat people with dignity and respect, we can't ask that other nations do that to our soldiers.
You're going to need generals. You're going to need full colonels. You're going to need senior officers to command and control those organizations. Obviously, that is not a skill level that you can get in a series of weeks.
That soldier said: 'There are some things going on here that I can't live with'.
I think we're talking days.
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