This is a very complex question. I'll be able to answer part of it, and I'll tell you why I won't answer a certain piece of it specifically.
IEDs are the lowest common denominator the Afghans have available to them. For us to be effective and to establish confidence for the Afghans, we need to be throughout the districts and interfacing with the people everywhere, which is why we and the Afghan national security forces have to move about, both individually and together.
Obviously we have defensive efforts. I talked about the EROC system, our mine clearance system, our tanks and mine rollers, and things that we have. Those are physical measures we take.
Obviously we have an awful lot of intelligence-led operations, which we take. We go after what I call “before the boom”--that is, the fellows who design those things, the fellows who finance those things, and then obviously we go after the people who place those things.
We have a full-court press. Without going into detail, it is something we do each and every day. The reason I don't want to talk about the details of our success in different things is that would give direct feedback to the fellows on the other side about their level of success or not.
We are having a tremendous amount of success, but it is at a cost. As you've pointed out, our greatest number of casualties have been because of the IED. It's a terrible weapon. It's indiscriminate--against not just our soldiers but also the local nationals, the people, the children, the contractors. The IED is indiscriminate, and it is causing the Taliban to lose whatever nascent support they had with the local population. The people are getting tired. They are turning them in. They are telling us, “Don't go down that road. They put an IED in there last night. That guy over in the field is not one of us.”
So we are starting to have that level of confidence with them that allows us to fight that.