Page one of my new handbook:
"We are moving from a stage of transition toward the strategy to prepare a permanent Iraqi government for a decisive victory. The strategy that is being carried out has profited from the insights of strategic thinkers, civilian and military, inside and outside of government, who have reflected on our experience and on insurgencies in other periods of history.
We know what we must do. With our Iraqi allies, we are working to:
- Clear the toughest places - no sanctuary to the enemy - and to disrupt foreign support for the insurgents.
- We are working to hold and steadily enlarge the secure areas, integrating political and economic outreach with our military operations.
- We are working to build truly national institutions by working with more capable provincial and local authorities. We are challenging them to embody a national compact - not tools of a particular sect or ethnic group. These Iraqi institutions must sustain security forces, bring rule of law, visibly deliver essential services, and offer the Iraqi people hope for a better economic future.
In short, with the Iraqi government, our political-military strategy has to be to clear, hold, and build: to clear areas from insurgent control, to hold them securely, and to build durable, national Iraqi institutions.
None of these elements can be achieved by military action alone. None are purely civilian either. This requires an integrated civil-military partnership."
Opening Remarks by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
October 19, 2005
