After Mosul and Baghdad, Fort Lewis troops have shed more blood in and around Baqouba than any other area in Iraq. So it is with some interest that they likely read the news that come December, when the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division pulls out of Diyala Province and returns to Fort Hood, U.S. military planners don't intend to send in another brigade to replace it.

Instead, the plan at the moment appears to be that Fort Lewis' 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division will cover down on Diyala – in addition to the area southwest of Baqouba that it is already covering. The new turf will be as large as the state of Maryland, says the Raider brigade commander, Col. Jon Lehr.

Lehr on Wednesday talked to the Pentagon's "blogger's roundtable," a regular gaggle with military bloggers who talk with newsmakers by conference call.

A transcript of Lehr's remarks is here.

All in all Lehr was very upbeat about his brigade's progress in the area along the Tigris River Valley north of Baghdad, in the areas of Khan Bani Sa'd, Husseiniyah, Tarmiyah and elsewhere in the convergence of Baghdad, Diyala and Salahuddin provinces.

IED attacks are way down, Lehr said, and the market rate that insurgents have to pay to get "the average goomba," as he put it, to emplace a bomb has skyrocketed from $100 to $500.

"The average goomba that's laying an IED realizes, 'Hey, this is serious business. They're killing people out here and they're eliminating the leadership. I'm not going to do this for $100 anymore. It's going to cost you this amount of money to do it.' So that is a huge metric for us to determine how successful we're being."

As for his soon-to-be-expanded AO, Lehr said:

"We are moving over there to take the larger portion of the mission set, which is the remainder of Diyala province, which is absolutely huge. ... I believe it is a success story. I feel, based on my battle space and what we've accomplished, that the tactical purpose behind the surge is working and now we're able to expand further out concentric circles away from Baghdad."