In Afghanistan you are not rebuilding, you are building. There is very limited infrastructure and extreme terrain, with deserts in the south and mountains so high in some areas that helicopters don't even fly well at a certain altitude because the air becomes so thin. The country has a serious problem of illiteracy, especially after so many years of war and Taliban rule.

Iraq has gone from being on the brink to being on the mend, and it clearly has some big advantages.

If you don't want to have to kill or capture every bad guy in the country, you have to reintegrate those who are willing to be reconciled and become part of the solution instead of a continued part of the problem. And then, above all, the resources.

Money can be a very important form of "ammunition," although we should never forget that when you're being shot at the most important ammunition is real ammunition.

There [in Afghanistan] is also a growing insurgency threat from al-Qaida, the Taliban and other extremist elements, some of which comes from the tribal areas of Pakistan, as well as from the Northwest Frontier province and Baluchistan.

The Sunni Arabs began to realize that they had made a huge mistake by not voting in the election of 2005 and by not being part of the new Iraq. They had reasons for this: They were effected by the disestablishment of the military and by de-Baathification (the dismantling of Saddam Hussein's party) in winter 2007-2007. They increasingly recognized that their future lay in being part of the solution rather than a continuing part of the problem.

US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and I have repeatedly sought to emphasize that the progress in Iraq is fragile and also, possibly, reversible.