General James T. Conway (Usmc) Holds a Defense Department News Briefing

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General James T. Conway (Usmc) Holds a Defense Department News Briefing

GENERAL JAMES T. CONWAY (USMC), COMMANDANT OF THE MARINE CORPS, HOLDS A DEFENSE DEPARTMENT NEWS BRIEFING

DECEMBER 15, 2009

SPEAKER: GENERAL JAMES T. CONWAY (USMC), COMMANDANT OF THE MARINE CORPS

[*] STAFF: Good afternoon, all. I will be brief, since the gentleman next to me needs very little introduction.

We welcome back to the briefing room General James Conway, the commandant of the Marine Corps.

Sir...

(CROSSTALK)

CONWAY: Thanks, David.

Well, must be a slow news day, folks. Greetings. Good to see your friendly faces again.

I think we've got the better part of an hour. What I'd like to do is just start maybe with a quick few comments on a trip I recently made to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. Came out through France. And then maybe talk for just a moment about the deployment sequence that's taking place and perhaps where we are there.

That's not to say that I wouldn't be happy to field any questions on those things if you -- if you have them.

We went this year for Thanksgiving. We do Christmas or Thanksgiving every other year. Did Christmas this year, so we were in-theater for Thanksgiving, and reversed the process this time by going to see the troops first, before we went up to see the commanders in Kabul. And that seemed to work fairly well.

On Thanksgiving Day, we traveled to eight different forward operating bases around Afghanistan to visit our Marines pretty much in place where they live.

We flew, by the way, on Ospreys and Yankee helicopters. That was one of life's little victories, two of our new aircraft, airframes are in the fight and doing very well, zipping us around the battle space.

Someone had asked me before I went over if I would take a look at morale, because there had been some reports about sagging morale and that type of thing where troops are out, again, on the leading edge.

I got to tell you, my observation is that morale is just fine. We were talking to both troops coming out, as well as troops coming in. I think you all know, we do seven-month deployments, and we're at that seven-month deployment window at this point for the first troops that went in with the 2nd Brigade.

I couldn't tell the difference. The people that are going out, of course, are happy to be going home, satisfied they have made a difference, and very, I think, proud of themselves, as rightly they should be. The people coming in were simply happy to be in Afghanistan and to do their part and go into this seven-month sprint that we think that we have with regard to our units on deck there.

If I've got a problem, it's with the other 190,000 Marines who want to go to Afghanistan. They're still a little long in the lip these days, awaiting their opportunity. A lot of them, of course, combat veterans out of Iraq.

Where we visited things were going very well. I mean, we had a chance to visit with subgovernors, Iraqi generals, Iraqi police chiefs, and their smile on their face...

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