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Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz held a press conference during which he addressed the current situation in Iraq, including the handover of authority in Mosul and the capabilities of the Stryker vehicle. Excerpt:
I've seen the handover issues first-hand both up in Mosul and here in Kirkuk. It's like wrenching a limb away I think to take these good guys out for the people here, but I feel very very good about the thought that's gone into the handover already and the fact that we're able to go around with the successor commanders right next to the people that are leaving. I think before long they'll say - who was Odierno? And who was Petraeus? But we won't forget you. [Laughter]
This city here is in some respects a model and if it's successful it will be a real model. I think it was interesting, some of it may have been in the translation but I think what the Deputy Governor was saying at the end was yes, there are problems but if we hadn't had some successes this place would have already fallen apart in the last nine months and it's almost a miracle that we're sitting here and we're arguing whether the success was large or small instead of looking at a catastrophic failure...Q: I wanted to ask you about the Stryker attack, both the effect on you personally. You had a close call at the Al Rashid hotel. This is not the same thing, but it's an attack on the kind of vehicle you had just climbed out of a few miles away, not long afterwards.
I also want to ask you whether it gives you any greater confidence in the Stryker. There was some controversy as to whether it could take an --
Wolfowitz: If there's any news in that attack since unfortunately attacks are not news, that goes to the discussion we had. I think it's pretty hard to visit a division around here on a day when they're not attacked somewhere. It's a dangerous business. We know that.
The real news is that the Stryker performed exactly as we believed it would and stopped that round. It's a good vehicle. Obviously for the work they have to do here, very much superior to a tracked vehicle. I think you may have noticed that just in the smooth and quiet ride that we had. So it's a basically good news story to me.
Odierno: I would add, as you know -- or might now know -- they worked for me for about 60 days in a tough operation in Samarra and also performed very well down there, the Stryker --
Q: Is that the one that took an IED hit?
Odierno: It took an IED and 24 hours later was operational. Nobody was injured. The driver had a minor injury.
So it really has performed very well and the ability of the Infantry, that they have an Infantry-based organization to operate both in a city environment as well as outside of the city has really proven very valuable in this fight. So I think they'll do very well up there.