was our firm belief from the experience of the last decade that the most effective and sustainable way to deal with this problem was to have people who were willing to fight for their own country, do the work on the ground with our air support, intelligence, weapons, advice. but people taking back their own country. so in the past year, as a result of these efforts and as a result of much greater coherence among the iraqis special the coalition, the territory that isil controls is down 35% from where it was when the coalition was first formed. thousands of isil members have been killed, much of their material has been destroyed. and in many parts of iraq, they are on their heels, not on their toes. but they're still capable,