Bryan Whitman Operations Quotations

Well, it certainly is the Defense Department's practice to pay our bills. Uzbekistan has been a good partner in the war on terror, particularly ... with respect to our ongoing operations in Afghanistan.

An Iraqi special operations force conducted a raid in one of the neighborhoods in northeast Baghdad to disrupt a terrorist cell that had been responsible for not only conducting attacks on Iraqi security forces and coalition forces but also in kidnapping Iraqi civilians in the local area.

That particular Iraqi special operations force came under fire as they were conducting this operation, and in the process the Iraqi special operations forces killed 16 insurgents. They also, in securing the objective there, detained a number of other individuals, approximately 15, is what I've heard.

There's no doubt that there has been a very porous border in the west (with Syria), and military operations have focussed on that over the past year.

There were policies, there were standard operating procedures. But we found as we looked at our operations that there was this gap that should be filled by a directive.