General Austin was the Commanding General of U.S. Forces – Iraq in 2010. Also served as Vice Chief of Staff for the US Army. He is currently the commander of CENTCOM. Actually met the man once at Ft. Bragg – very imposing man, especially when he gets pissed off!
Department of Defense Press Briefing by General Austin in the Pentagon Briefing Room
October 17, 2014
“Three weeks ago, we began conducting offensive, precision strikes inside of Syria. And prior to that, the strikes conducted in Iraq were limited to the protection of U.S. personnel and key facilities and the prevention of human suffering.
The intent of the expanded airstrikes is to degrade ISIL’s capability and their ability to threaten U.S. interests and the interests of our partners.
More specifically, we are enabling the efforts of the Iraqis in their fight against ISIL, acknowledging that, in addition to halting ISIL’s advance, the Iraqis must secure the border. They must regenerate and restructure their forces to ensure that they are able to provide for the sovereignty of their country going forward. And this represents our main focus right now — enabling the efforts of the Iraqis.
With respect to the airstrikes, and together with our coalition partners, we are purposely and necessarily targeting very specific capabilities, again, with the intent to degrade the enemy’s ability to command and control, to degrade his ability to project combat power, and to degrade his ability to sustain himself.
We’ve conducted precision strikes, for example, targeting ISIL’s communications equipment and hardware, their command centers, and their vehicle parks, and tanks and Humvees which were stolen from the Iraqi army, as well as oil refineries which are now under ISIL’s control.
ISIL derives significant revenue from oil production, and so by striking these types of facilities, we reduce their ability to generate the funds and the fuel required to sustain their operations. And we are having the desired effects.
We’re seeing evidence of this not only in our battle damage assessments, but more important, we’re noting changes in the enemy’s behavior and tactics that reflect his diminished capability and restricted — restricted freedom of movement. For example, we’re no longer seeing them move around the country in large convoys. Now they’re mostly traveling in civilian vehicles in smaller numbers. This is hindering their ability to mass and to shift combat power.
We’ve also seen them alter their methods of communication which is inhibiting their ability to coordinate and synchronize their efforts. And so we are having the desired effects, but this will take some time.
I’d also note that we’ve been very careful in how we’ve gone about conducting strikes because we want to avoid unnecessary collateral damage. Had we killed a lot of innocent civilians, and specifically in Sunni areas, I think that it’s fair to say that we would be in a much different place at this point. But because we’ve done this the right way, we’ve secured the support of our Sunni Arab partners in the region. And together, we are making progress.
That said, I do want to emphasize that airstrikes — the airstrikes that we’re conducting are just one element of the campaign to counter and ultimately destroy ISIL.”
Source: Department of Defense http://www.defense.gov/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx…