Captain Aaron Kaufman is the CO of Bravo Company, 177 Armor, 2nd Brigade of the US 1st Infantry. He spent the past year deployed in Baghdad and the past several months in command of a unit in Adamiyah in east Baghdad. It was his second tour in Iraq; the first was in Tikrit. In late October he and his unit returned to base at Schweinfurt, Germany. Today I interviewed him about the war, whether the surge is working and whether we’re winning.

The interview is about 40 minutes long, so I posted it in its entirety below but I’ve also pulled out a few sound bites. The first one deals with the question that’s probably on everyone’s mind: Are we winning?

CPT Kaufman followed the Scott Thomas Beauchamp saga, and says that Beauchamp’s characterization of American soldiers doesn’t match reality:

Films like Redacted and politicians like Rep. Jack Murtha consistently paint US troops as callous and even brutal. But CPT Kaufman says that such behavior is alien to US troops.

Here’s the entire interview.

You can download the mp3 file here.