August 25, 2010
How We Won in Iraq
Now that Iraq is back in the news, I would like to share what I wrote on my personal blog back in June 2008. I just cut and pasted it, minus the pictures and the text directly related to them except the one with me smiling in the MRAP. I think the predictions turned out okay. Many have and will write more scholarly works explaining how we prevailed in Iraq. Mine has the advantage of being by an eye-witness participant contemporary with events. The title was “We’re gonna do what they said can’t be done.” We did.
We're Gonna do What They Said Can't Be Done
You don't learn from experience unless you pay close attention. Failure focuses the mind. We ask what went wrong and identify improvements. As often, however, we don't fix the problem but try to fix the blame. This absolves everybody else and lets us all continue business as usual. We can find individuals who made poor decision, but the only way to systematically improve is to look at the whole system and analyze the interactions. If you have a dysfunctional system, changing the players doesn't help.
There is a currently popular saying that "doing the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity." This is simplistic. It is possible to flip a coin ten times in a row and get all heads, but still expect the probability of the next toss to be even, at least after checking the coin. A good system with good people may produce poor results. That is why you study the processes. If you can identify the factors the led to the result and they are not likely to recur wholesale changes are unjustified.
Success brings less soul searching than failure. We point to good results and are unenthusiastic about checking to see if they were deserved. But just as it is possible to fail for reasons beyond our control or factors unlikely to recur, we can succeed for the same bad reasons, so success should be as closely scrutinized as failure. There is no shortage of talk about failures in Iraq, although much of it is designed to fix the blame not the problem. As it becomes clearer that we are succeeding, we should learn from what went right and how it might be transferred elsewhere. I have a couple ideas from my own point of view. Keep in mind that I have personal knowledge only of events in Western Anbar and so I emphasize factors and people acting here. My list is not comprehensive.
Leadership
Had Abraham Lincoln had stuck with General George McClellan, or the American people elected "Little Mac president in 1864, we might well need a passport to cross the Potomac. Leadership changes the course of human events and a change in leadership was essential to the turn around in Iraq.
It does not follow, BTW, that previous leadership was incompetent (remember fix the problem, not the blame), just not appropriate. McClellan was a superb general. In a defensive posture, he was great. He just didn’t grasp what he had to do to win and didn’t have the temperament to do implement it. That task eventually fell to Ulysses S. Grant. Lincoln found his general in a man who had been unsuccessful in his earlier endeavors but had the appropriate skills, talents and temperament to handle this job.
General David Petraeus was the right man for the new strategy in Iraq in 2007. He wrote the book on counter insurgency and recruited a first class-team to help him with the changes. He also had the support the new Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, to make the needed adjustments. BTW - the COIN (Counter insurgency) Manual is itself a great example of the flexible strategy it advocates. It is a living document, almost a wiki. As new experience is analyzed and digested, it changes and evolves. The right leadership with the right strategy was essential to success, but causality is never so uncomplicated.
Marines
The USMC was employing the "new paradigm" in Al Anbar before it became part of a new strategy. Marine commanders were well familiar with the theory and practice of counter insurgency, but as importantly the Marines in Al Anbar constituted a learning organization. As experience about what worked and what didn't passed through the organization, Marines adapted and improved their responses. The Marines have a long history with counter insurgency and working with indigenous forces going back at least to Presley O'Bannon on the shores of Tripoli, where they earned the Mameluke sword Marine officers still carry. And they have been a learning organization all that time.
Another advantage is the Marine's rotation system. Marines tend to come back to places near their last deployment bringing with them their experience enhanced by the perspective of their time away. Beyond that, when Marines go back they share their experience with their colleagues coming out, both formally and informally. It is hard to envision a better system for learning and adapting.
Many of the Marines in Anbar today were in Fallujah or Hadithah during the bad times a couple years ago. More than others, they see the progress and understand what still needs to be done. Those who are here for the first time have heard and internalized the stories.
Beyond that, Marines in Anbar did what they do well: eliminating bad guys & breaking their stuff; making friends in that unique Marine Corps way; adapting & overcoming. When the surge came, the Marines were ready with a receptive environment they helped create.
A Time for Peace
"To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven ... a time for war and a time for peace." (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8). Early in the conflict, proud and martial Anbaris allied with Al Qaeda and other insurgent forces to fight against the American invaders. It was an understandable, if mistaken response, but by the close of 2006, they were tired of war; they had come to understand the folly of working with retrogrades such as Al Qaeda and their sense of honor was satisfied and slaked by the casualties they had suffered and those they had inflicted. Al Qaeda told them that the Americans would cut and run. Marines don't. Anbaris learned to respect CF forces. As importantly, they came to understand that CF forces had come to respect them and it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Persistence
You cannot achieve success if you do not stick around long enough to achieve it. Difficult and unexpected circumstances in Iraq provided many excuses to give up. Leading experts, pundits and even members of the U.S. Congress told it straight-out that the U.S. was defeated. They were wrong, but they could have been right if we had acted on their advice. In other words, a lack of resolve on our part would have made their prophecies self-fulfilling. In the event, the U.S. stayed for the turn around.
Luck
Risk can be controlled but never eliminated and pure uncertainty lurks beyond all the risks we can calculate. Even the most exquisite plans must run the gauntlet of random chance that can devastate a perfect plan or vindicate a dreadful one, which is why we have to analyze the process and not judge strictly by results, as I said above.
Early in the conflict, many things turned out worse than we reasonably anticipated. Now things have changed. Our enemies turned out to be poorly organized. Often incompetently led and ideologically myopic, they made stupid mistakes that turned local populations against them. Fighting an insurgent enemy can be like playing whack-a-mole. It is a frustrating game, but it is easier if the moles are not very clever. I don't want to take this too far. Many of our opponents are committed, deadly and dangerous and even in small numbers a ruthless adversary can inflict severe suffering, especially if their goal is to attack civilian populations. But these very tactics erode their support.
The big piece of good luck is the flip side of some very bad luck for the rest of the world - soaring oil prices. Iraq recovered its previous ability to produce oil almost at exactly the time world oil prices spiked. During Saddam's time, Iraq earned oil revenues of around $20 billion a year. Experts anticipated revenues at this time of around $35 billion. Last time I heard, they were looking at $80 billion and the number keeps on growing. Oil money lubricates and more and more often Iraqi funds can pay for the needed infrastructure upgrades and improvements in Iraq.
PRTs, ePRTs and the Holistic Approach
You cannot win a modern war by military means alone. COIN Manual says that some of the best weapons do not shoot. Military units have long had Civil Affairs (CA) teams and Commanders' Emergency Response Funds CERP. These improved conditions for Iraqis and certainly saved many lives. Building on this success and experience in Afghanistan, in November 2005, Secretary of State Rice established Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Iraq. In January 2007, President Bush announced the establishment of embedded PRTs, who work directly with military units such as Regimental Combat Teams.
These were civil-military teams of experts who engaged provincial and local Iraqi officials as well as ordinary Iraqi citizens. Some of their work was old fashioned diplomacy, meeting people, talking to them and listening to concerns. But unlike diplomats in many other contexts, PRT members have access to concrete resources. This development aspect, helping rebuild or in many cases just build for the first time is not entirely new, but putting it together with the interagency team of experts that made up a PRT is breaking some new ground.
PRTs are led by a senior State Foreign Service Officer with a deputy from USAID or a military colonel often as an executive officer. Included on the team are experts on budgeting, industry, law and agriculture, among others.
In rebuilding Iraq, damage from the 2003 invasion is often the least of our problems. Iraq has been in a state of war and/or sanctions for nearly thirty years. Many things decayed during that time and other things that could have been done never were. The Saddam Hussein regime did minimal or no maintenance on the plant & equipment. The whole country suffered the kind of socialist mismanagement seen in former communist regimes, but with an additional layer of sanctions and war. It might have been better if some of the facilities had been destroyed by CF bombs and could be rebuilt from scratch.
The physical damage can be repaired more easily than the damage to human capital. The late despotism actively destroyed most aspects of civil society, anything that might insulate the people from the dictates of the state. In former communist Europe, it was possible to find functioning civil organizations, as the fiercest aspects of Stalinism were generations in the past. In Iraq, the destruction was more recent and in some ways more though going. Ironically, sanctions and isolation helped finish the demolition Saddam started. The only viable non-governmental structure left were family/tribes and religion.
Iraq has a significant, if now distant, tradition of reasonably competent officials. PRT experts work to revive this and build on it. Iraqis are responding very quickly, considering the conditions.
The most popular expert in Western Al Anbar is our agricultural advisor. Iraq was once a bread basket and still has wonderful soils, available water and a skilled population. Unfortunately, some of the best agricultural lands has been abused for thousands of years. Saddam's mismanagement exacerbated it, but I digress.
COIN talks about the need to clear, hold & build. CA, CERT & PRTs have helped build physical infrastructure as well as relations. The Iraqi people increasingly have a commitment to their own future and freedom. They will not easily give it up when terrorists come calling.
What They Said Can’t be Done
The U.S., CF and Iraqi accomplishment is astonishing, especially when you consider the near-death experiences of 2006. The Middle East is more secure w/o the murderous Saddam Hussein in power and it is immensely better off than it would have been had we failed in 2006. I believe this will be seen by future historians as a paradigm shifting event. For awhile many people feared that the initiative had passed to the bad guys or at least to the forces of chaos. The apparent disintegration of our position in 2005/6 seemed to confirm that impression. It was never as bad as it seemed or as bad as it was portrayed in the media, but the trend was unmistakable.
Today we have come out of the darkness into a new morning. It is still a little too dark to see clearly all the features and it is still full of challenge and fraught with dangers but also full of opportunities. For the last generation and arguably since the end of World War I or the Sykes-Picot accord, this region has been unstable and dangerous. Maybe we can help make the future better than the past.
Our Iraqi friends deserve it.
Posted on June 21, 2008 08:49 AM
Posted by Christine & John at August 25, 2010 09:26 PMWhy does Iraq have more people living in slums and less hours of electricity than before the war?
Posted by: gergle at August 25, 2010 11:56 PMC&J, what have won? I know of enormous tax dollar losses and high casualties for our military. The cost was very high. But, what did we win in exchange? Iraq is not stable, it was before we invaded. Their government is corrupt. It was before we invaded. Before we invaded, people had round the clock electricity and potable water which is not true today.
We won, you say. I am still unclear just what it is that we won that justifies and compensates us for our losses.
Posted by: David R. Remer at August 26, 2010 02:17 AMBTW, HOW we won is akin to the prisoner who finally punches a hole through his cell wall with his skull over years of head banging. He is free, but, his brain is mush, and future as a fugitive bleak at best. Reminds me of Shawshank Redemption, pressure and time. Little display of expertise or intelligence applied, just more money and weaponry for the longest time, until Petraeus arrives on the scene and applies some serious brain power with experience which the Bush Administration accepts finally, out of desperation, instead of firing or transferring comparable Generals as was previously the case.
How we won, if we won anything of value, was very STUPIDLY, with a Commander in Chief who was the Poster Child for the Peter Principle.
Posted by: David R. Remer at August 26, 2010 02:24 AMGergle
It doesn’t. You can see them now.
Re electricity, demand has vastly increased. It is not true that people don’t have electricity. They do not always have the free electricity from the grid.
David
We gave President Obama the options he has today, prevented a take over by radicals and probably prevented a major Middle East conflagration. Those are good things.
Winning is better than the alternative.
Posted by: C&J at August 26, 2010 07:39 AM
The Bush Administration chose to ignore specific warnings that terrorists were going to attack the Pentagon, the world trade center and other targets, using commercial airplanes and lied through their teeth about it. They chose to use the media, in their attempt to convince Americans, that Saddam was involved in 911 even though they knew that the 911 terrorists received training in Pakistan courtesy of the Pakistani Intelligence Agency (ISS) and that monetary payments to the terrorists, after they were in America, were authorized by the ISS.
That’s the kind of government we have, so dance to the pipers tune and crow, crow, crow about our great victory in Iraq.
Who’s side do we take when the radical elements, using terrorist tactics, succeed in fomenting civil war?
Posted by: jlw at August 26, 2010 09:33 AMhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Iraq
Posted by: gergle at August 26, 2010 09:56 AMSome wars have better reputations than they deserve. Take the War of 1812. Indecisive in the extreme. Neither side really won, nor did either side really lose, but it was enough of a pooch-screw that Washington ended up getting burned, which is one of the reasons they decided to make the White House white.
Yes, good things can result from bad wars. If good things come of this war, fine, I can live with that. Screw it, I can more than live with it, I’ll be glad to see the mistakes redeemed in some way.
That said, I’m not going to mistake things not being totally ****ed in the end for the war being a success, for American winning. I can list some positive developments that came out of the lessons of the Vietnam war, and some good things that eventually resulted, but that doesn’t make that a victory.
We don’t need to start from our political agenda, and decide what facts to fit to that framework to create our sense of history. That’s dangerous. That puts us on the path to the kind of revisionist history that leads to the repetition of mistakes. We need to know our history, and know it right, so we aren’t doomed to repeat it.
And one tip here: quit trying to whitewash the Bush Legacy. What goes for military affairs goes for other policies: when we don’t learn from our mistakes, we repeat them. Republicans don’t need to vindicate Bush’s Legacy, they need to leave it behind, as fastly as they can, before it drags them down a second time.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at August 26, 2010 12:19 PMStephen/David:
It is pretty obvious what has been won in Iraq.
Iraqi citizens have the opportunity to determine their own future, instead of a dictator.
You say their government was corrupt and is now corrupt. The same can be said for our government.
Republicans don’t need to vindicate Bush’s Legacy,
But it’s ok for the left to demonize it?
Posted by: Craig Holmes at August 26, 2010 01:22 PMCraig,
History will demonize Bush beyond what many Republicans are simply willing to admit. Returning the Republican party to it’s original tenets is what the party needs to be doing.
This morning I was watching a Log Cabin Republican comment on the outing of another Republican Ken Mehlman. He was asked a pointed question as to why secretly gay Republicans often seem to lead some of the most vile anti gay political campaigns, he stated something I identified with as the serious problem of the Republican party. He stated that the extremist wings of the party are damaging the core values of Republicanism. Who knew the Log Cabin wing would be the voice of sanity in the Republican party?
Posted by: gergle at August 26, 2010 01:46 PMjlw
Are you issuing the propaganda update or just where is the documentation for your charges? Newspapers are not considereded a source of documentaion. Media voices likewise. Straight up intel reports from reliable sources are the only sources and those have not been released yet.
gergle
“Log Cabin wing would be the voice of sanity in the Republican party?” For an extremely short statement you are claiming that? Well queers and steers and beers and dears. The line I just typed has absolutely no value or truth. Its kinda like a recent Log Cabinet Republican statement. Neither have no meaning or value to the Republican Party. There are nut cases in the RNC top down and they are trying to sway the party to some other level other than what conservative Americans want. The DNC has already accomplished their southpaw slide. The RNC is close behind. A classic case is socialist Newt Gingerich. Hannity and Co. at FNS is trying to promote Newt as a sound intelligent candidate for 2012 and the WH. He is every bit as bad as our present choice. The main difference is Newt has a paper trail. Barry didn’t. Two peas in the same pod. There are other examples, of course. I feel that is one of the more glaring examples.
Now for Iraq. The best we can say is that there is a semblance of freedom in Iraq today. For how long? I’ll give is a few (vert few) years and the status quo of the ’80s will be back home and moving on up without the Jeffersons. There are no safe gurards for any government to establish any kind of progress, freedom, family values, and the other things a viable society needs. We gave blood. We gave lives. For what? So those American military men’s children can do it all over again? A huge problem with our leadership in the last century is their attempt to globalize everything they see, smell, touch, and feel. Afghanistan, deja vu. I love our military and what they stand for. The top of each branch is loaded with too many political persons. If we are going to shed our sons blood for another country no matter their political affiliation, then let the devil be damned and fight the war and win the war decisively, no questions asked. Keep the people out of the way that even a vacuum cleaner would not suck up. And lastly keep the UN out of the pix. May they topple into the East River.
Posted by: tom humes at August 26, 2010 03:01 PMCraig Holmes-
There’s corrupt, and then there’s corrupt. Like, there’s corrupt when you can be brought up on charges (like Traficant, Blago, Jefferson), and then there’s corrupt when you have a personal army at your disposal that makes your arrest unlikely.
You use vague terms like “the Iraqi people are now free to determine their destiny,” or something like that. Nice marketing, but let’s break down what that would have to mean. Is their government responsive to needs? Does it make sure basic utilities exist, sanitation, power, telecommunications? Are people free to speak their minds, is the press free to act as a check on the abuses of government? Is their religious tolerance, if not complete religious freedom? Can a member of a minority walk down the street without getting harrassed, or worse? Can they compete fairly with others for jobs?
It’s not so simple as the government not being headed by a dictator. There’s a significant factor of what’s in that dictator’s place, because there’s a lot of alternative forms of government of which a truly Democratic form of Republic is but one kind.
As for Demonizing the Bush legacy?
The thing about the Bush Legacy is that it doesn’t take much more than a simple recitation of fact to make it seem a demonization. Two wars badly mishandled, dragging on beyond the beginning of the next decade. A major US City inundated, it’s population displaced. A surplus of hundreds of billions of dollars, which became a deficit of over a trillion dollars on Bush Spending increases, tax decreases, and the results of his economic policy.
His economic policy. As my column across the way indicates, Clinton and the Democrats are not blameless in that economic policy. But nobody who has paid attention would say that the deregulation, and the permitting of the OTC Derivatives Dark Market have not enjoyed broad, if not near unanimous support among the Republicans. Republicans may point to the Democrats on economic policy, but the Democrat’s economic policy for so long was to agree with Republicans and economic Libertarians like Alan Greenspan. In essence, they point to their own policies by proxy.
Bush brought this to its apotheosis, rejecting even the kinds of common sense regulations that events like Enron’s collapse and the bankruptcy of Worldcom would call for.
It could have happened under Clinton’s Watch, but it happened under Bush’s, and Bush made the mistake that Clinton did not: allowing the mess to unravel. See, the Clinton White House attempted a backdoor solution that prevented a cascade of bank failures, or at least the threat of them. The ailing Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund was allowed to unwind, to die a peaceful death. Lehman Brothers was allowed to blow up, and that started 2008’s devastating crash.
That was a Bush Adminstration decision.
There are many toxic legacies. The Oil Spill in the Gulf is one of them. While Obama is responsible for an expansion in drilling leases, and not being more proactive about verifying the quality of the drilling operations, the Bush Administration is largely responsible for provisions that allowed waivers of environmental studies and which required permits to be processed far too quickly to allow the drilling operation plans to be reviewed. They pushed the law, pushed the legislation.
So, in stating plain truths, we can speak of some of the worst fiascos in American political history, not just the worst in modern political history.
Of course, if you’re a conservative who doesn’t like the GOP or Bush to be criticized, this will all be an outrageous stretching of the truth. Such can be said, as all such claims can be said, much easier than it can be proved.
I would think that it would be good to let the Bush Legacy go. To defend it is to minimize catastrophe, and to lionize mediocrity.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at August 26, 2010 04:39 PMStephen:
The truth is fine. But pardon me if I don’t use the far left as only one source.
On another note it may dismay you to know that Obama and Bush’s approval ratings are approaching each other.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/141485/Bill-Clinton-Popular-Barack-Obama.aspx
Posted by: Craig Holmes at August 26, 2010 06:25 PMSo what country are we going to invade next? Venezuela?
Posted by: phx8 at August 26, 2010 06:57 PMTom Humes,
The line I just typed has absolutely no value or truth.
I’ll agree with that. Do you speak for conservative Americans? All of them? Perhaps you meant the rest of the words you typed, as well. (Hint: You don’t speak for me)
Posted by: gergle at August 26, 2010 09:21 PMStephen
I wrote that more than two years ago based on what I saw with my own eyes. It is a primary source. Make of it what you want. It doesn’t defend Bush; it merely is about HOW we managed to win the war in Iraq after coming within months or weeks of losing it in 2006. I don’t know how future historians will view Bush, but I think they will be interested in how we faced down the bad guys. There are lessons to be learned here.
phx8,
We’ve been fighting a war in Columbia for several years now.
Posted by: gergle at August 26, 2010 09:25 PM
tom humes, in 2004, the Bush Administration spent 5.6 billion of taxpayers money classifying the proof, top secret. I wonder why the Administration did not classify the information about Saddam’s WMD’s running across the Syrian border to escape capture. I wonder why some believe Fox News coverage of the event.
The information on the Pakistan involvement was presented to the Bush Administration by Indian intelligence and confirmed by Russian intelligence. Shortly after that information was revealed in the press, the Administration flooded the press with disinformation, naming a half dozen sources for the funding, all having similar names to the operative in Pakistan, that was charged with the responsibility of wiring the money to Miami.
Actually, the Russians and several other countries intelligence agencies gave our government much credible information on the 911 hijackers and their intentions, before the event. The Pentagon and the world trade center were specifically mentioned as targets.
Do you think Obama has been lying to the people?
Is information only credible when it comes out of the mouths of people like Cheney? No prior knowledge, WMD’s, yellow cake uranium, mobile chemical labs, each fabricated intelligence designed for a specific.
No single news article can confirm the truth, but when you put all the news articles together and connect the dots, a pattern is revealed.
Craig Holmes, that poll indicates that two years in Obama is more popular than Clinton was and that conservatives like Bush better out of office than in or they like him better after his Administration helped trash the economy and after he doubled the national debt than before he did that. The Republican dream ticket in 2012, Bush III/Palin.
Posted by: jlw at August 27, 2010 01:24 AMjlw
The news is gathered together by a narrow group of people. The mouths and pens get their information from that narrow group. So when all the news stories come together they usually sound alike. The intel that is “leaked” usually has one of two purposes. One is to throw off track anybody and anything that might get in the way. The other to let it get more info from the leak. The latter is to get people to say things and do things that fill in a gap in the original source of intel.
“No prior knowledge, WMD’s, yellow cake uranium, mobile chemical labs, each fabricated intelligence designed for a specific.”
It is up to you to choose who you believe. Does anybody have a lock on the truth? Of course not. Even the truth is twisted to sound more or less truthful. At that point I do not consider the twisted bits truth.
“Do you think Obama has been lying to the people?”
Of course he has. Did Bush lie to the people. Of course he did. The topics not mentioned on which they lied about is up for debate.
“Actually, the Russians and several other countries intelligence agencies gave our government much credible information on the 911 hijackers and their intentions, before the event. The Pentagon and the world trade center were specifically mentioned as targets.”
Who or what is the source of the intel you are talking about? NYT? The Media in general? Poor sources.
Intel that the media puts out is from loose lips that are suppposed to be loose lips. They are not from the hard core intel people. So what you end up with is the kids telephone game of whispering to the one next to you a story. That person passes it on the the next one. And so on to the end of the line. This the point where the story is not the same one that started the game.
Too many people today believe things because they sound good or “that person always tells the truth” or they ticklish ears and a multitude of other reasons. People seem to not want to find the truth, they just wanted it handed to them.
Posted by: tom humes at August 27, 2010 02:20 PM
And your post is certainly a testament to that…..
Posted by: jane doe at August 27, 2010 02:51 PMThis is a pretty powerful political ad about the Surge:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw70cFpn3xc
Posted by: Craig Holmes at August 27, 2010 07:56 PMCraig wrote: “Iraqi citizens have the opportunity to determine their own future, instead of a dictator.”
That’s it? 100’s of billions of tax dollars, tens of thousands of casualties, abject failure for years in Afghanistan, deficits piled upon deficits, and all just so the Iraqi people could have the opportunity to determine their own future? Helluva deal. We need to invade China and Somalia, and N. Korea immediately with a bargain like that.
Your reply is a complete failure at justification for the invasion of Iraq and the nation building that followed and really calls into question your value system. The Iraqi people ALWAYS had the same opportunity to determine their future as our New World colonialists under King George of England and our Southern Confederates had.
They chose not to exercise that collective choice. Killing 100,000 of them by enforcing our choice for opportunity upon them, is ludicrous from any kind of acceptable ethical or humanitarian standard. Because it was not the Iraqi people’s choice, taking advantage of the opportunity now before them, has a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding as an independent people and nation. Our troops will have to remain as occupiers for decades to artificially keep their 3 main ideologically and historically divided sub-populations together artificially, as one people. And at what cost to Americans going forward to be added to the costs already incurred?
Your reply is NUTS!
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