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CBS launched a series dubbed Honor & Sacrifice to provide background to the renewed deployment. Katie Couric anchored from Fort Stewart in Georgia where the USArmy's Third Infantry Division is leaving for its third rotation in Iraq. Byron Pitts recalled that for the first deployment "the mission was clear;" during the second tour in 2005 "Iraq had become a more dangerous place--IEDs the new acronym;" the third time "is back to that uncertainty stage," an infantry colonel supposed. The base at Fort Stewart features an Iraq war memorial called Warrior's Walk where each dead soldier from the division is represented by a tree. So far 317 eastern redbuds have been planted, Couric counted.
Couric also interviewed (no link) Gen Rick Lynch, the division's commander. "I think it is a good idea," said the general about the troop "surge"--but what did Couric expect him to say? "If we can create a stable situation in Baghdad, the rest of Iraq will follow," he asserted, although he initially claimed that 18 provinces were already at peace, even with Baghdad still at war. Lynch's rule of thumb is that it takes an average of nine years to be successful in defeating an insurgency, so he estimated that the job is not yet halfway done. Couric did not ask him for the average duration when an insurgency prevails.
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