I would say it's anything but. First, I'd look at it from the friendly forces side. When we were in Operation Medusa, we had no Afghan forces with us whatsoever. They simply weren't available, and those that were available around the north or near Kabul were not capable of coming in and conducting operations of the nature that we faced in Operation Medusa. Their leadership was not capable of planning and then commanding and conducting those operations, and they weren't equipped, trained, or ready. Now we have six Afghan National Army kandaks, or battalions, moved in. So we have two full brigades with a core commander exercising command and control, with the senior commander of the Afghan National Army on the ground in Kandahar. They are doing the planning for operations to restabilize the Arghandab district. They've already started these operations. What we see there is night and day compared with 18 or 20 months ago.
From the enemy perspective, in Medusa they put a lot of fighters in the field and managed to keep them there. They dug into one area and determined that they would own it. They were ready for a conventional, almost World War I kind of fight, and they paid a tremendous price. They will not do that in Arghandab. They don't have the number of warriors that their spokesmen like to claim they have. They don't have the number of villages. When they get into a firefight, they'll try to disappear as quickly as possible. Our aim is to make sure they can't just melt away and come back to fight another day.
We'll support the Afghans. The Taliban cannot conduct the kind of operations they did during Medusa. Conversely, the Afghan army can conduct the kind of operations they had no possibility of conducting just 18 to 20 months ago. So I think the difference is phenomenally greater right now.