Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, General, for coming here today.
It's kind of delicate, but when the last rotation was happening in the fall of 2006, we had witnesses who came before the committee and testified that there were some elements of psychological warfare that the Taliban was employing through our media and so on insofar as the timing of their attacks right around when the rotation was happening, trying to discourage the new troops who were coming in, and trying to send the ones coming back home feeling a little bit down as well.
I notice that this most recent rotation has probably gone a lot more smoothly than the last one insofar as attacks are concerned. I'm wondering, is this indicative of the progress that is being made against the Taliban, or is this a seasonal type of thing? What would you attribute the seemingly fewer number of incidents to, which your slide had indicated? What would that be attributed to? Would it be the timing of the year, or would it be the progress that's being made?