Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to all of you for being here.
I'll share my time with Mr. Kerr.
My friend across the way has a filter, apparently, through which he listens to the bad news and cherry-picks that, but he filters out any of the good news. Clearly, there's a lot of bad news in Afghanistan--there's no doubt about that--but it is not all bad news.
I direct this to Admiral Davidson.
We've talked about the increase in IED incidents and contact with the Taliban and so on. Isn't that a natural byproduct of putting about 100,000 extra boots on the ground? Of course there are going to be more incidents and more activities; it's part of the surge and part of getting a grip on the situation. Is that a fair statement?