Now, Afghanistan is a very different endeavor, and they actually do shoot quite a bit of artillery there. But the fact is that I suspect we shoot vastly more artillery in training than any of our 'peer' competitors, more tank rounds in training than our 'peer' competitors. Again, perhaps less than we used to in preparation for a NATO/ Warsaw Pact confrontation or a type of Desert Storm operation, but we employ tanks and Strykers and Predators with Hellfires and Apaches with Hellfires and other shadow UAVs with full-motion video and other agencies' assets and Close Air Support, all the way down to infantry on the ground, Bradley Fighting Vehicles as well, light infantry, and even Special Operations Forces snipers, SEAL team snipers -- all of that was pulled together, for example, for the operation in Sadr City.

So that's a brigade that knows how to fight, let me tell you. Colonel John Hort (commander of 3d Brigade Combat Team) and his command, his headquarters, the other brigade that was to the southwest of them, that's modern fighting for that situation. We've never had a force that's capable of that. Tell them that they can't do combat and I think you'll get quite a bit of a look.

Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't some brigades -- there's one in the former 'Triangle of Death' south of Baghdad -- that haven't been shot at for awhile. That's true. So they've focused on stability and support operations. The key there is that in their subsequent train up -- and this is what the Chief of Staff of the Army (former commander of Multinational Forces in Iraq, GEN George W. Casey, whom Petraeus replaced) has laid out, I think, very effectively.

And that is, as you're training up, early in your train-up, you do some of the 'high-end skills,' if you will -- the Combined Arms training exercises as we used to do them before we focused a bit more on the counterinsurgency.

CARL PRINE: Like National Training Center?

DAVID PETRAEUS: Yeah, you might even do a National Training Center rotation, where you do the 'Clash of the Titans' again of major combat operations.

Again, I firmly believe that our forces are capable of those and, again, if you don't think so, tell that to Colonel (John) Charlton and the brigade that cleared Ramadi -- 1st Brigade (combat team), 3d Infantry Division. Tell it to the Stryker Brigade that cleared Baquba. I mean, these were tough slugfests, very hard fights, and they employed all combined arms -- now, much more precision weaponry than, perhaps, if you will 'dumb' non-precision artillery or non-precision mortars or something like that, like we might've done in the past.

So there's less of a role for that in a situation like Iraq. That does not mean that there's less of role for that in Afghanistan. And, indeed, they use it routinely, constantly, and do it very, very effectively. In fact, the brigade that is shifted from going to Iraq to Afghanistan will take six weeks or so and, if you will, they'll 'refresh' themselves on all the different artillery weapons systems they use over there -- 105s, 155s and probably heavy mortars as well, and in six weeks they'll be the best in the world.

(Goes off the record)

Yeah, we don't shoot as much artillery in training as we used to do, but, again, why should we if we don't need to?

CARL PRINE: But doesn't that go into the larger question we've been talking about? What do you want the military to be?

DAVID PETRAEUS: Now that's a great question, and that's what you should be asking.

CARL PRINE: That's why I asked it.

DAVID PETRAEUS: The issue is, 'Ready for what?' By the way, first let's back up. You have to recognize that the Army's 'readiness model,' if you will, has changed dramatically over the last five years or so.

With the Brigade Combat Team, with Army transformation, becoming the focus, the centerpiece, the basic building block -- if you will -- for the deployment of Army forces; again, not the Division. Now we deploy brigades. Now you put a division's headquarters on top of them.

You have to approach these Brigade Combat Teams a little bit the way the Navy approaches Carrier Battle Groups.

CARL PRINE: Or the Marines' MAGTF (Marine Air Ground Task Force)?

DAVID PETRAEUS: Exactly right. Yeah, exactly. A MAGTF being the building block for Marines, or a MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit), even, something that's smaller, a battalion task force. In the Army it's a Brigade Combat Team and in the Navy it would be probably a Carrier Battle Group, noting that you can mix and match.

The point is that you go through cycles now. So, it's not appropriate, in a sense, to compare, if you will, Army readiness now with Army readiness during the Warsaw Pact days. In those days, the mission was for all units to be within what was called the 'Band of Excellence.'

You know, you had this little diagram. So your training cycles tended to be four to six, at most eight weeks long. And so a unit was never more than about six or eight weeks out of having been at peak readiness. It would go up and down, but it stayed within this 'Band of Excellence' that allowed it to deploy on fairly short notice, i.e. everyone ready to go within about 30 days, which was the rough standard at that time -- the whole Army capable of doing that.

Explicitly now the Army has adopted a different model. And it's one in which a brigade goes through the preparation for deployment. And when it comes home from a deployment, it goes into the 'readiness bathtub,' if you will. In other words, it comes apart.

Leaders are reassigned elsewhere. They go to their required schools. And then, after a couple of months of this, they literally start to fill it back up with personnel. And they do it in a way so that those personnel will be able to take a unit all the way through the preparation for a deployment and a conduct of the actual deployment. So they're going to be with that unit for a good two, two-and-an-half years -- something like that.

Then it starts the preparation. By the way, now it typically starts with a counterinsurgency seminar. As these periods lengthen -- based on the Chief of Staff's guidance, which I fully subscribe to, fully support -- there will be a period where they'll do the work-up for the major combat operations. And then you'll start to focus on the actual preparation for deployment -- if they're going to Iraq, Afghanistan, wherever it may be.

Well, that's the road to deployment.

CARL PRINE: Because you always deployed full divisions; that was the plan in the past.

DAVID PETRAEUS: And now you deploy Brigade Combat Teams. Then you marry them up with a division's headquarters and other enablers -- an aviation brigade and all that.

CARL PRINE: That makes it easier for you as a commander now, doesn't it?

DAVID PETRAEUS: Well, it gives you an ability. During the 'Surge,' what we did was historically unprecedented. Really, when you think about how these forces were mixed and matched. In fact, at one point they were so mixed and matched that we ended up with brigades that had maybe only one of their original maneuver battalions under them.

This is how Colonel John Hort, for example, in the Battle of Sadr City, not only had his organic tank and Bradley elements -- these combined armed battalions that have these tanks and Bradley in them -- but he also ends up with a Stryker battalion, or elements of a Stryker unit. He ends up with attack helicopters supporting him. He ends up with some light infantry, if you will, in up-armored HMMWVs and MRAPs.

He has the ability to pull all this together, and then all the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles that were supporting him, Close Air Support, the Naval Special Warfare Units attached to him, coordination with other Special Operations elements, intelligence agencies, and on and on and on.

These Brigade Combat Team headquarters now are very, very capable, vastly more capable than before Transformation.

In fact, if you can actually explain in your article the readiness model, that's actually an important contribution to the overall understanding of what it is we're doing. To say, 'But all units aren't ready the way they used to be,' that's exactly correct -- but that's by design, not through lack of resources, if you will.

Now, there are times, perhaps -- well, actually, they're doing fine on recruiting and, I think, retention as well right now, frankly. At least, that's what I'm told.

CARL PRINE: You've dealt with Iran now for many years in Iraq. You've had low-level diplomatic meetings there. You've talked to the enemy, in a sense, while you've been going along.

DAVID PETRAEUS: Sure.

CARL PRINE: Now you have Afghanistan, and Iranians play a certain role in Afghanistan as well. How do you look at Iran as you go forward as CENTCOM commander? How do you address Iran?

DAVID PETRAEUS: With very clear eyes. With a realistic assessment of Iran's objectives. With a recognition that some of those objectives run contrary to some of our objectives, but a recognition as well that there are areas of convergence.

For example, Iran does not want to see Sunni extremists running Afghanistan again. Iran doesn't want Iraq to fail. Now, it may not want it to succeed too wildly, and it might want to give us a bloody nose in the process, but it doesn't want to see the first Shia-led Iraq fail.

It wants to have considerable influence in it. It wants to have broad commercial trade. It wants to have access to religious sites for its religious tourists -- this is of enormous importance to them. But, again, it doesn't want it to fail.

Now, you can question how much it wants it to succeed, as much as Iraq represents a different form of government -- and a Shia-led government -- than the Iranian form of government. We'll have to see how that plays out in the years ahead.

But, again, there are some areas of convergence. And there are certain areas of difference, in terms of the respective foreign policy and security of our country and Iran -- and our partners in the region and Iran.

CARL PRINE: What about Pakistan? There have been some questions about US strikes across the border, and now you inherit Pakistan.

DAVID PETRAEUS: First of all, let's talk about the growing recognition in the statements of Pakistani leaders, that the threat to Pakistan's existence is in the western part of their country, even more than it is to the east of their country.

The traditional threat, of course, has always been India. It's always been the dispute over Kashmir, and so forth. But there's an increasing recognition -- and increasing action in response to that recognition -- that the threat to Pakistan's very existence is the extremist threat in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, parts of the North-West Frontier Province and down around the corner in Baluchistan.

And you see much more activity focused on that threat -- the operations in Baijur, other more limited operations in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

There's been a change in personnel, of course -- not just in President (Asif Ali) Zadari, whose statements have also indicated a willingness to seek commercial trade with India. Again, it takes small steps, and that represents possible small steps with respect to reducing the tensions with India. Also, in his words, a keen recognition of this threat that's posed by the extremists, and not only that, of course, but the actions taken by the extremists -- the Marriott bombing -- and others, that demonstrate how serious the threat to Pakistan this actually is.

But there's also been, of course, a change in the military: The army commander, General (Ashfaq Parvez) Kayani; there's been a change in the Frontier Corps commander, Major General Tariq Khan; the ISI (Inter-Service Intelligence), now Lieutenant General (Ahmad Shuja) Pasha; and the 11th commander (11th Division commander of the Frontier Force at Lahore, MajGen Raheel Sharif) -- these are all the key figures, if you will, in the military with respect to the challenges to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and from also being part of the North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan.

So, this is a very significant assessment, if you will, that they have made. And now, of course, you have to see how that's translated -- how that's operationalized, how is this threat recognition translated -- into actual action on the ground.

SALENA ZITO: Two questions. What are your areas of concern outside Afghanistan, if you're looking at the whole world?

DAVID PETRAEUS: How about just the Central Command area of responsibility?

SALENA ZITO: OK.

CARL PRINE: That's quite an area. Task Force Horn of Africa, is that...

DAVID PETRAEUS: Actually, we just gave up the Horn of Africa.

CARL PRINE: Is that part of AFRICOM officially now?

DAVID PETRAEUS: Yeah, that's part of AFRICOM now, but the water is still Central Command.