The United States is the most powerful nation on Earth and it just can't walk away from the Middle East and central Asia and the Horn of Africa.

So, these political activities will create friction in and of themselves, and in this environment of friction there'll be additional violence.

But my Arabic is pretty good. It's good enough to have conversations with people, to understand what they say, to understand what they're feeling.

Undoubtedly, there are members of the former regime that are cooperating in some fashion and then there are extremists that are within Iraq that are cooperating with them.

But the key shift in focus will be from counter-insurgency operations to more and more cooperation with Iraqi security forces and to building Iraqi security capacity.

And so I think that if the person has the funds, the network, and the equipment to do this, and also the experience, which is the key factor, then they can be quite deadly.

I think you also understand that one of the key things that's got to be done in Iraq is to build a mentality of understanding that the military needs to be subordinate to civilian control and respectful of its own people.