online at our communicators web site, c-span.org/communicators. shevan of "the wall street journal", thank you very much. >> host: thank you. .. curr

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and on the weekend on c-span. later today, a look at the future of nuclear energy by senate republican conference chairman lamar alexander. he will outline his proposal for the development of 100 new nuclear power plants over the next 20 years to address the nation's energy needs and climate change. live coverage of his remarks from the national press club began at 11:00 a.m. on our companion network, c-span 3. >> use -- how is c-span funded? >> private donations? >> public support. >> consumer funded. >> i don't know. >> private contributions. >> how is c-span funded? 30 years ago america's cable companies created c-span as a public service, a private business initiative, no public

mandate, no government money. >> the head of the u.s. central command, david petraeus, talks about the summer's military campaign in afghanistan and how the counterinsurgency strategy is in iraq can be applied to u.s. troops fighting the taliban. he spoke recently to a gathering of the world affairs council in seattle for an hour and 20 minutes. >> thanks very much for that warm welcome. thanks for your kind introduction, thanks for your service with the international development effort over the years of your career and your great work as president and ceo of the world affairs council and all that you are doing to contribute to this conversation and dialogue you just talked about. this is the second world affairs council i have had the pleasure of addressing this year. i have developed quite an admiration for the organization and its goals. i will address another one tomorrow, co-host in san francisco and as i mentioned

earlier i am hoping if i can get all of the wreck wasn't stamp from our loyal customer cards i can qualify for a t-shirt. the council in seattle seems particularly distinguished, being one of the nation's largest hosts of the state department funded international visitor program. former secretary of state colin powell has talked about that program as one of the best foreign policy investments we make and i agree. i was pleased to learned that tonight we have with us and international security delegation of members from nine different african countries, well done to you on that. a few moments ago i had the pleasure of meeting a remarkable group of folks based in seattle, and joining us tonight, it is great to have all of them here in the audience. i want to recognize general john shali -- someone people know and

recognize. [applause] >> he is truly the personification of the american dream, started as an emigrant, began his career in the army as a private and rose over the course of 38 years to 4 stars, including the supreme allied commander in europe, and in this end, the highest military position in the united states, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff during some very important years in the mid 1990s, who is in uniform at that time, respected enormously, what he did for us and what he continues to do, it is a pleasure to have him here with us this evening. is a treat to have in the audience members of west point's class of 1974, the pride of the corps as our old model goes.

it was 39 years ago last week, in the summer of -- away to get ourselves into. after a drink or two after the speech, they will be happy to still use some funny stories about cadet david petraeus and how unlikely it seemed that i might be standing here to address you this evening. it is great to see you again. thanks for being here. and everybody else, thanks for such a warm welcome to seattle, i am thrilled to be here. flying in today, coming through the clouds, as always, we avoided the harrowing experience that i had last time we visited. seattle is very famous for its infantry sunshine known to most of the rest world as rain. the last time we flew in it was particularly bad, there was fog so thick that visibility was

only 40 feet. to make matters worse, our pilots's instruments went out on approach. so we circled the airport for an hour or so trying to see through the fog to a landmark. as we start to get low on fuel we got nervous, this from a group that was used to flying around in combat zones. fortunately we had a very clever pilot at the controls and through a small opening in the fog he spotted a tall building with one guy working alone on the fifteenth floor. he had his window open. circling, our pilot banked sharply and shouted through the cockpit window, hey, where am i? this solitary office worker shouted back, you are in an airplane. on hearing this very useful information our pilot immediately made a 275 degree turn and executed a perfect blind landing on the sea-tac

runway. just as the plane stopped the engines coughed and died from lack of fuel. we sat stunned, no one said a word. finally my a timidly asked the pilot, how did you do that? elementary, replied the pilot, i asked the guy in that building is a question, the answer he gave me was 100% correct the absolutely useless. therefore, i knew that must be microsoft support office. and from there, the airport is only three minutes away on a course of 87 degrees. i want you to know that i am keenly aware that microsoft is one of the sponsors of this evening's event. i cleared this tumor earlier, you see the hand right here, we have a fellow commanding general

staff marshall award winner who works for microsoft who gave the thumbs up to this, that is particularly important because i am going to use microsoft power point in one moment. are don't want to see any suggs as we go through this. we will do this for half an hour or so and i will be happy to take any questions you may have. this slide shows the area of responsibility of the u.s. central command. 20 countries stretch from egypt in the west to pakistan in the east, cause exxon in the north, down to the waters off of

somalia. this does capture sort of the many slide, if you will, what it is that we try to in central command. needless to say we are hard at work in iraq. i will talk some of that, increasingly enabling, helping the iraqi security forces, but still working against al qaeda in iraq and the shiite extremist elements that are still active. we do a great deal of work in terms of partnering and building regional security initiatives in the arabian peninsula. we are helping in yemen because of concerns about al qaeda in the arabian peninsula setting up its headquarters after al qaeda

has been quite soundly defeated in saudi arabia and many of the gulf states. we have a very active partnership with egypt. we are concerned about weapons smuggling going to hamas and lebanese hezbollah. we have to worry about counterpiracy. if anybody wants to know what we advise to the maritime companies we would be happy to provide that later during the q&a. the other choke points in our area are of enormous importance to global commerce. it is estimated somewhere in the neighborhood of 50% of the world's energy resources flow through that on a daily basis. we obviously have an enormous challenge in the form of iran, whose provocative actions, the continued arming of extremist elements in iraq, in lebanon, in gaza and western afghanistan, cause problems, and his apparent quest for nuclear technology and

delivery means causes enormous pause, as you would imagine, throughout our region but particularly among the arab states. preventing fourth -- proliferation is another of our tasks. we are working to build a partnerships in the stands. we have a no. distribution network that is now established. given all the we have done in the years since the end of the soviet union, he pioneered a lot of the door opening in some of these areas. that is to enable the buildup of our forces in afghanistan and i will talk about how the situation has deteriorated over the course of the past two years or so and how we also work to assist our pakistan the partners who in the last two months have carried out significant operations against extremists who notably are seen by them to

pose an existential threat to their country which is an important development, needless to say. next slide. here are those challenges that we have for this year. it is a reasonable number. as i mentioned, there has been a downward spiral in afghanistan, and we have to arrest that downward spiral and helped turn it upward. some heartening activities on the part of the pakistanis lucas significance of them seeing this as their fight against extremists who threaten their existence cannot be overstated. meanwhile, there have been substantial gains in iraq but there are also significant concerns and i will talk about those.

we are reducing our forces and making other changes in accordance with our security agreement between iraq and the united states and that is on track. as i will highlight in a moment, there are continuing challenges. i talked about the challenges from malign iranian influence, this is the power that they exert in the region, in a generally malign fashion, although we should note that there are common interests and it is not impossible that those common interests could be turned into something in the months ahead. and the concerns that all have as well as our european partners, the united states and others about their apparent nuclear ambitions. 11 on has just had lebanon has n

in which the coalition--i was just in afghanistan, pakistan, egypt and turkey as well as lebanon, so i can give some firsthand accounts during the question and answer period. i talked about the concerns in yemen about the need to assist them and ensure they do not become a failed state right across the border, somalia, a failed state, it causes enormous problems and it is, after all, that is the reason you have the piracy challenges that we have in the water between somalia and yemen and off the east coast again and efforts with the central asian states, some of whom have extraordinary natural energy resources and some of

whom do not. i talked about piracy, narcotics trafficking, all of the states in the region, including iran, seeking to come to grips, obviously enslave their populations, and foster's criminal networks that challenge the rule of law, as do some of the elements of arms smuggling that take place in the region. and we are fully supporting various policy initiatives that the obama administration is pursuing for which they have named special envoys, enormous concern in the area for which central command is responsible, the situation of the palestinians, the middle east peace process for which senator mitchell has taken the reins in washington, it is very encouraging to have a man of his stature and experience having done in northern ireland peace deal prior to this. i am privileged to partner with one of the world's great

diplomats, ambassador richard holbrooke, truly a force of nature as those who know him will attest, an extraordinary individual, he was the key figure in the dayton accords, when general challis was the joint chiefs, he gave up his chief of plans, general wesley clark, we are working on afghanistan and pakistan together, very important to have a regional approach and ambassador dennis ross, another skilled and experienced diplomat, who is focusing the efforts on iran and the our reach to syria. next side. let's talk about iraq and go on to talk about afghanistan and some others and turn to the questions. 2009 is a very significant year in iraq, it is a transition year, a year during which all of the non u.s. coalition members

have departed or will be part, although there's still a nato mission in iraq that has other nations in it. we are obviously drawing down our forces. we have just completed the withdrawal of our combat elements from the cities in accordance with the u.s./iraq security agreement and we are changing our focus so we are going from being the primary conductors of combat operations to supporting iraqi forces. this is not something that we just started the engines and rolled out of the city's on 30 june, this is an ongoing for 12 to 18 months, that was the consummation, the final withdrawal, it certainly did accelerate in those cities in which we had a large presence in the spring, and that would be the case of baghdad, central, north, and south. we have in those locations what are called quote ordination centers but those are not centers for combat forces, those are centers for coordination elements from our forces who can

still provide the iraqis access to the enablers that they might meet in a tough position, share intelligence, provide logistical work medevac assistance as required and so forth. they are assuming those tasks for a good 18 months or more. and they did have the provincial elections this past january, interestingly the parties that succeeded were those that released associated with iran and most associated with more nationalist and secular tendencies rather than the more religious and iranian oriented parties. they are now preparing for the january 2010 elections. you can see the maneuvering that is going on. it is quite interesting. the constitution in your act requires a substantial degree of

coordination. it is fascinating to watch this in action, it is not democracy as we know it, it is setting different but certainly something in which the people are represented and in which the people have a say. they will go to the polls in significant numbers in january. prior to that there will be a census, not a significant event in most countries, it is a very significant event in iraq because it will have a great deal to do with how many sunni, shiite, occurred, christian and a variety variety of others end registered. there are al qaeda elements and see any extremist elements that are at work. we have seen their horrific

attacks, they wanted to imply we had been run out of the cities and unleashed as many suicide bombers as they could. i will say the statistics on that. there are still shiite extremists, there's reconciliation with some of them, there have been some detainee releases that used to pursue some of that with the iraqi government, but there's no question that iran still does train, equip and directed varying degrees some of the groups that still active inside iraq, that is a concern. there are external influences, i mentioned iran, there is movement of foreign fighters through syria, though we have to note that syria has taken action against some of the foreign facilitators and the overall number is down from probably 1244 in fighters, many of them

suicide bombers, moving through syria, between 10, and 15 and most tournament in recent months for a variety of reasons, not the least of which are host countries making it difficult for military age males to fly to iraq on a 1-way ticket. this is a series deal in the state department at counters of the terrorist bureau. there are certainly considerable mistrusts between arabs and kurds. this is the kurdish region. general challis, in 1999, was in charge of the effort to support the kurds in what is now called the kurdish regional government area. there are disputes over where the boundaries are between the kurdish regional government and the rest of iraq, disputes between the provinces because saddam hussein redistricted

during his time. there are sunni shiite concerns, intra shiite and interest sunni disputes in competition in the rest of that. iraq got used to that $140 per barrel price of oil, that is pretty sweet for them. is we for boeing too. one of my friends landed a $7 billion deal. there are a challenges now the price of oil is down. lot of work still to be done in the provision of electricity, water, schools, health care and all the press, although there have been significant gains as well. they have broken their electrical production records by significant amounts. once we have achieved security and keep the power lines from being knocked down, keep the pipelines from being blown up, keep the roads and bridges intact and all the rest of that,

it has made an enormous difference. i talked about those disputes. next slide. if you look at it and when you back that up and try it again, microsoft taking its revenge on me here. backup, one more time. limit describe what you would see if microsoft wasn't mad at me. what you would see, this is the height of the violence, 1600 attacks in a single week, 1600 incidents in a single week back in june of 2007, the height of the violence. the scale when like this, shiite shrine north of baghdad was blown up in a sunni area and the cycle of violence started and never stopped until we were well into the surge and conducted the operations to take away the sanctuaries and safe-havens that

al qaeda had been able to establish an overtime to deal with the shiite extremists and it came down like this. the number now, the number for last week was the lowest on record since we started keeping records in july 2003, the number of security incidents, in the month of june and despite the sensational attacks we did see, did go down to the lowest as well. next slide. this is a macabre statistic but if our job was to secure and serve the people, that was the focus of our forces from the beginning of the surge until now, with the iraqi forces, you keep track of violent civilian deaths, this shows iraqi data on top, confirmed collision data, a huge gap because we were not in the neighborhood that this time or in the hospitals, we didn't

have good data sources and we closed that gap during the time. there were 55 dead bodies every 24 hours in baghdad alone, every 24 hours and we wondered why they couldn't get any legislation done. bridges were blown up, pipelines were blown up, high tension wire towers were blown down, it was a horrific period. when i took over in february 2007, and we launched the surge, there were 42 car bombs in baghdad that single month and the number went up the next month. overtime, our troopers and iraqi partners, by locating in neighborhoods with those we receding to secure, 77 additional joint security stationed in baghdad alone as an example were able to drive the level of violence down, take away those sanctuaries and safe havens from the al qaeda and sunni extremists and over time from the see of alisha

extremists as well. there have been ups and downs, we remain concerned about the number of high-profile attacks and that is what this shows, the high-profile attacks, these being the car bomb, suicide car bombs, we have been able to drive them down together with our coalition and iraqi partners to much lower levels, but still at levels that are of concern. i don't want to diminish in the least the challenges that face iraq, nor the fact that as ryan crocker, a washingtonian and best diplomatic swing man anyone could ever have had, used to say, iraq does remain the progress does remain fragile landed does remain reversible, although it is less so in each respect since the conduct of the elections in january and since the end -- the hand off of security to the iraqis as well. next slide.

this just shows you where the al qaeda elements were in 2006/2007, baghdad is right in here. they had a substantial presence in baghdad, the city of baghdad, seven million people, you see how it runs up and down the tigris and euphrates river valleys. the approach to baghdad, overtime, greatly diminished. microsoft is doing me in because this is much less right now than it was before. next slide. how was that done? we made this slide to show to congress when we went back and testified, ambassador crocker and myself, dealing with al qaeda in iraq, a terrorist group requires much more than counter to the terrorist operations, it requires more than i end special

forces elements. they're very important, their operations at the height of the surge might have been an end it -- as many as 10 operations a night, taking six or more bad guys, specific individuals off the battlefield in any given 24-hour period. that is hugely significant but not enough. we banged away and run body for years doing this, you still couldn't drive from one side of the city to the other without getting hit when you did that. until we use all of these forces, not just counters of the terrorists but large, condemned conventional forces, increasingly large iraqi forces and increasingly capable special operations forces and over 100,000 sons of iraq, product of the awakening movements, whereas over time we were able to work with sunni tribes in particular, 20% of the awakening was shiite,

over ittime. they said enough, we want to get rid of iraq -- al qaeda. we will stand with you, although in some cases we generally had to clear it first because of the use of al qaeda presence. it is not enough to do kinetic military, you need political activity, you need legislation, you have to pass laws that distribute income, have a budget that recognizes all the members of society and all the rest and over time, try to reduce the intentions. you need to recognize the fabric of iraqi society was torn. what we were trying to do was create conditions in which the fabric can be lined back up again and a couple stitches put in overtime, and eventually perhaps can be put back together

to what it was. also takes enormous intelligence. the big breakthrough we had is not any particular discipline of intelligence as has been implied by certain books that have been on best-seller lists. there have been break throughs and intelligence imagery, intelligence measurement and the applications that help us put it all together with increasingly large databases and storage capabilities and pipes but that fact is the breakthrough has been in the fusion of all this and that is what we have worked to do to break down all the walls around cia, and g-8, special special locks, special ops conventional coalition, iraqi, and so forth, we have worked hard to do that as well as a proliferation of unmanned aerial vehicles and other platforms that have made such a difference and i will talk about that in a moment. we had overhauled detainee operations, we had 26 or so thousand detainees at the height of this, those were breeding

ground for the terrorists class of 2007. until we started to do counterinsurgency operations inside the wire as well as we were doing it outside to where we identify the irreconcilable, separated and so they could not be training terrorists to be released. you have to get at the roots of discontent, the problems that might lead someone to be willing to sign on with an extremist group to begin with. you have to get an education, even in the religious arena, and we have a lot of lessons in that regard. all of this, you take a host of other areas with other countries, syria, borders, the whole area of strategic coordination in which we had a very substantial and very aggressive effort over time, but always emphasizing the truth because our motto in public affairs was to be first with the truth. :.

>> although they matter because this is a people intensive effort. but the biggest difference was the ideas. it was, the concept, the employment of the forces in accordance with these, starting with a focus on securing the people and recognizing that we also had to serve the people. and frankly be seen to serve the people. next slide. to do that you have to live with them. you cannot commute to the fight. you cannot live in a big base outside the city. at that time he could with a level at time of violence at that time, drive to the neighborhood a couple times and go back to your big base and have people feel secure. you had to move in with them. baghdad 77 additional locations alone. next slide. comprehensive, that's what i explained what the anacondas lied there, but this is true at large. again, this is why we had linked arms so aggressively with our state department rather and a

id, all the other interagency groups, not just in the u.s. but from other countries and in obviously with our iraqi partners. and in so doing achieve unity of effort. brian crocker and i established a cooperation was not optional. and we look for opportunities to make that point and we did. we had our office is right next to each other. we spent a lot of time together each day. we met with every congressional delegation together. we went to the prime minister of always together even if he called just on one of the. next slide. you do now still, this is not all about soft power. this is also about doing what the military gets paid to do. and that is to get your teeth into the enemy and to keep them there and go for his jugular and stay after him, pursue him relentlessly and indeed at times kill or capture. next. now, you shouldn't start during an area unless you can hold and indeed have a plan to build on it as well. so before we launched our up and said, we knew what we are going to do once we had the areas

clear when we began clearing ramani we knew how we're going to hold ramani because we're going to fight like the devil to take it. and it was indeed a very, very tough fight. next. now, you have to have such good intelligence that you can figure out who are the irreconcilable, because you want to promote reconciliation. you can't kill or capture your way out of an industrial-strength insurgency. you have to figure out who could be made part of the solution, instead of a continuing part of the problem. and in those who are truly in reconcilable do indeed have to be killed, captured or run out of the country. next. and that's part of this process here and it requires a very granular and nuanced understanding of local situations because that's where this takes place. it takes place with individual shakes, individual tribal elements, and mid-level leaders. next. now, when you transition, when you hand off in this case to iraqi security forces, you have to be sure the conditions update

to enable you to do that successfully so you're not trying to give them a problem that we can't handle which will only make things worse, and perhaps lead to them being challenged in a way that ultimately means that they are hijacked by some of the enemy elements just for their own survival, which was the case to varying degrees in late 2006 and into 2007. we had to work very hard really to reclaim the national police in particular, and it's up to do that by the way, the relief of their overall commander, both of their division commanders, all of their brigade commanders and something like 70% of their battalion commanders. next. now, we are very, very aggressive with our information operations campaign and public affairs, if you will. i think many of you will know that we try to be very accessible to the press. we embedded them everywhere, but we did not put lipstick on pigs. if it was a problem, we said it was a problem. i had some people come out at

various times from washington, went into the search and they said, you know, you've got a perception problem. you have a messaging problem. i said with all the respect, we have a results problem. when the result turnaround, but people will see it. until then we will or not try to spin it or anything else like that. so this was our motto and this is what we try to do. the first pardo is critically important. because when you conduct an operation there is literally a race with a headline of the cnn or the other 2424 hour news services which is just about all of them now. and you can see who gets it first, but we have to do it truthfully to the very best of our ability throughout that process. but the militia has speed dial into their cell phone or local stringers for those different news organizations, i can tell you. next. got a live our values. i put out instruction, direction to our troops about the fall of 2007. in fact, when there is a bit of concern that over time the

grinding effect of combat for years and years may have actually led some folks to say that they have turned a blind eye to some of this if they saw a buddy do something. and we work very hard to make sure that we knew short-term expediency just brings long term problems. and indeed, that we must embrace and live the values for which we have fought so hard over the decades and centuries. next. we sought to create an environment in which our young leaders, junior leaders in particular, felt they could exercise initiative. the idea was that at my level i would sort of sketch out rhetorically someone lied on the road and tell them to get down the road. and each level between me and those guys define those lines a little bit better as you get to the closer to the local situation. and i realized that we might be doing okay in that regard when we're out on a patrol one time in a tough area of southwest baghdad that had been really

coming back to life, and we saw on the plywood door of his company commanders command post, a sign that said in the absence of orders or guidance, figure out what they should have been and execute aggressively. [laughter] >> needless to say, i took that off the door and took it back and it made its way into my counter insurgency guy. these are all the elements. these are the elements of the guidance, in fact, that was issued during that period of the search. and then you have to continually learn and adapt. you have to continually look for lessons, best practices, worst practices. and then you must institutionalize them. you must share them. this is a thinking, adaptive enemy and we cannot ever get into a rat where we think that what works today will work tomorrow. or that works today in baghdad will work in mosul or vice versa. next. >> okay, let's talk about afghanistan. back in 2005, on my way home

from the second tour in iraq, secretary rumsfeld asked me to go via afghanistan and look at the so-called train and equip effort. one of the things i came back from that was impressed with the enormous challenges of afghanistan, a country that lacks many of the blessings that iraq has, surely also lacked the enormous violence that iraq had, but again, did not have the oil, the water, the natural gas, and much else. it does have some fantastic mineral wealth i might add, if they can be extracted and gotten to market. but in any event, looking at all of that, and you know, a staggering rate of illiteracy, 30 years of war and all the accumulated difficulties that had visited on the country, i said that i thought this would be the longest campaign of what was then called the long war. i think that is proven to be

accurate. afghanistan is going to take sustained and substantial commitment. more forces which indeed are on the way. we're going from about 30000 at the beginning of the year to about 68000 or so by this fall. more so called enablers. attack helicopters, regular helicopters, unmanned military vehicles, route clearance teams, you name it. more trainers to work with the afghan security forces and serving more civilians and of course 400 plus of those already on the way as well, or in the train to get there. clearly, the afghan national army and police have got to grow further. one of the studies that's ongoing is to determine if indeed they should be grown larger than is currently envisioned. and i think that will be a conclusion that is reached. certainly, you have to take a regional approach. you cannot solve the problems of afghanistan if indeed there is not some effort in pakistan.

and as i mentioned, that is actually ongoing now and pretty substantial ways. in fact, of course, the afpak strategy as it's been called, the tragic for afghanistan and pakistan that president obama announced several months ago, the announcement of ambassador holbrook as the afpak, again, special representative and so forth. all of these are manifestations of this. of course, you didn't have to dig all of this and ensure that you once again achieved that unity of effort that i discussed earlier as being so important. that is in this case with a substantial number of international partners, nongovernment organization, international organizations, and certainly host nation ministries and agencies as well. so what has to be done? well, since essential task. again, i will show you in a moment how the violence has escalated in afghanistan over the course of the past two years in particular. again, as in iraq, there has to

be a commitment indeed to secure and serve the population. general crystals, the new tactical directive just recently released focuses on the. by the way, talks about the circumstances in which close air support can be used so as to ensure that we minimize the chances of civilian casualties from the use of those close air support and attack helicopters and so forth while still making sure that we don't end up with our soldiers feeling that they have one hand tied behind their back. certainly, the effort to in this case we call promote reintegration. localizable activity, but that does again require that kind of nuanced deep appreciation and understanding at local levels and in some cases it is still work in progress so that you can identify who the irreconcilable's are, separate them from the rest of the population, and indeed reintegrate the others back into

the population and make them part of the solution instead of part of the problem. the elections are coming up on the 20th of august. obviously have to work hard to improve security by them. to ensure that they are seen as legitimate, particularly in the posh to an area that i will show you how 70% of the violence has been an about 10% of the areas. these are indeed the insurgent areas. needless to say an enormous amount of work required to build the capacity of the afghanistan government. for it to be seen as serving the people and not taking advantage of them to clamp down on the corruption that has marked some of the elements, and also the ticket after the narcotics problem, the illegal narcotics industry that is such a plague on afghanistan. and indeed, makes one of the major export crops, if not the major export crop, and illegal business and obvious challenges to the rule of law efforts in that regard. and then a host of other

initiatives that need to be taken here all very tall orders but all very necessary to ensure the overriding objective with respect to afghanistan is achieved here and that is, that it not again become a country in which transnational extremist can establish sanctuaries for which they plot attacks like those of 9/11. next. now, microsoft is favoring us at this point in time. you can see though how indeed the violence has escalated. you can see in the bottom, these are the years. there's a very distinct cycle. the fighting season that takes place of course really slows down the does to say in the extreme winter, in the mountains of afghanistan. but as you can see, during the summer of the fighting season, the level of violence, level of security incidents, and this includes all attacks of all varieties, including attempted attacks that's improvised explosive devices found and cleared as well as those that

explode. and you can see how the levels have gone up each year in particular 2007, 2007 and indeed now. some of the reason right now to be sure is because our forces are on the offensive and they are seeking to take away again some of the safe havens, particularly in helmand province right now to a degree and kandahar and in regional committees as i will show you on the map in a second. some of it also because the taliban is indeed trying to attack before we can build our forces up and before we can indeed launch further offenses. next. this shows the country of afghanistan, kabul being right here and you can see again that the violence is largely concentrated in a variety of areas that are a posh tune belt as they are called of eastern and southern afghanistan. especially down in helmand province and kandahar province here which also happened to be the major poppy producing

provinces in all of afghanistan so again as it says right there 10% of the district have about 70% of the violence, and that is obviously where we have to focus our effort to help secure the population and separate the insurgents from the population. next. backup, please. this shows, in fact, where our focus is on their forces are going as a macro sense so as not to get into classified information. the first of the additional forces and brigade, third grade, 10th mountain division within your south, southwest of kabul, but in a very important area but also right along the ring road that is so tricky to the commercial activity is in afghanistan. the next was in combat aviation group a that is in south and is just about doubled together with the marine helicopters, the

number of helicopters that we have had in afghanistan which is of enormous importance. there is the ring her grave that has been in the news so much of late because of the offense. it has launched a log of so-called fishhook which is helmand river which is the populated area of helmand province, and they operate now in the central and southern parts of that fishhook areas. and engage in some tough fighting as our our british comrades who are operating, have launched offensives of their own further north in helmand province. flowing in now is the stryker brigade combat team. these organizations, a lot of them of course based in fort lewis, i forget the origin of this particular one, but those stryker organizations made for the vehicle that is their platform have done exceedingly well in iraq and commanders in afghanistan and i are very keen to get him on the ground there. they will focus in these areas here shortly some of them in

connor hart, and then in some of the surrounding provinces. and then buried portably we'll take a brigade from the 82nd airborne division and overlay get along with a a number of advisers that will supplement its number under normal structure for the place in the army elements that are in regional command south having done something similar to that in regional command east. so that's the plan for the future. and again there some tough months ahead there to be sure. and some difficult fighting that will be necessary first to secure as many additional district as possible prior to the elections on 20 august, it into continue the progress for the remainder of this fighting season. and then as we go and prepare for the 2000 fighting season. next slide. let me talk briefly about these other locations. iran, golf and the lamont. again, we are very keenly watching the activity in iran

where a survey does appear that there are fissures that have emerged in the ruling structure. and that there is into competition between rafsanjani and his camp and the supreme leader and president ahmadinejad. will be very interesting to see how that plays out, needless to say. i think rightly leaders are staying out of that, and allowing events to transpire while keeping a very weather eye on that. and also while still seeking to counter these activities that i discussed earlier that take place in iraq, western afghanistan southern lebanon and gaza. now, because of iranian activity we have an interesting situation in the arabian peninsula where many of our longtime partners have expressed a desire to work with us, that is uniquely strong since really the goal for. we have more patriot batteries

back up in the gulf states than we have for many years to get made date all the way back to the goal for. there is a great deal of interest because of the concerned about iranian missile activity and there are increasing development of various delivery means, interest in shared early warning and air and missile defense. there are concerns about infrastructure that is alterable in certain areas and much more partnering going on to protect it. needless to say, concern about maritime security, not just to counter piracy but also ensuring freedom of navigation through the strait in difficult times. tried to disrupt and interdict the arms smuggling that goes on to again hamas and lebanese, hezbollah and the extremist elements that are still active to varying degrees in iraq and western afghanistan. we conduct more joint exercises

than we have in quite some years, and again with much more enthusiasm for them. there are regional training centers springing up such as the air warfare center at algol for airbase, second only in the world probably for the red flag complex at dulles airport base in nevada and an extraordinary center for extraordinary air force of a small country that has tremendous capability now, partly because of that center. but others, special operations are the just opened outside of mohn jordan, near southeast asia. general challis will be happy to hear we are putting in and a variety of other initiatives like that, and then a lot of activity again to ensure the proliferation of various components for nuclear weapons and berries missiles cannot take place. there is an outrage going by various arab countries to syria.

indeed, egypt, the present climate was by the way two weeks ago and king abdullah of saudi arabia both had met with president bush are awesome of syria in recent months. there are a number of efforts to reach out to syria, and indeed with one of our assistant secretaries of state, jeff feldman, and others have made trips to damascus as well. again, will be very interesting to see how that develops. one would think that over time, syria will see that its future lies more with the arab world and the western world than with iran and again given their economic challenges, and given the relative economic opportunities, one would think that would be the way of the future. we will have to see if that happens. and also see what the impact of the other people in iran might have on that.

and then there is a considerable outreach by the arab world to iraq which is concerned about iranian influence in iraq. franca, ambassador crocker and i on several occasions visited arab countries when we were still in iraq. i have been around to all the needless to say as the central command commander when they have expressed that concern. i have said why don't you have a little arab influence in their? how about you sending an ambassador, reopening your embassy, reestablishing trade and other relations. indeed, that is exactly what is happening and in fact president was quite firm about that when i met with him again a couple weeks ago in cairo. and in the effort to strengthen the lebanese armed forces, not to provoke a confrontation there by any means but certainly to build the pace at impatiently, slowly so they can become the legitimate armed force in the country as opposed to other elements that are there. next slide. yemen, gulf of aden, red sea, i

mention are concerned that yemen is a location in which there is an al qaeda threat that is emerging. al qaeda in the arabian peninsula have been pushed out of other countries on the arabian peninsula. it appears to have lodged in southern yemen. that is a concern. it has a link back to back a stand and then across to somalia ended over into the markgraf. and so that is something in which we are focusing on helping the host nation there. also taking a number of steps to combat piracy which is down considerably recently but i think arguably that is more because of the high seas associated with the monsoon this time of year, off of somalia, although other factors certainly are contributing. maritime companies are indeed taking the steps that we advised them to take in the past, the three simplest of which actually were not being followed and the first is speed up when a pirate approaches you. [laughter]

>> i'm not making this up. the second was take evasive action. your ship is 100,000 tons. their ship is a dinghy with an outboard motor. you know, it's not all that easy if you just try. and in the third is take up the ladder. deleted or not. [laughter] >> believe it or not it's actually not quite so easy that there is a pilot light that is bolted on there and all the rest of that. but if they take the ladder of it is pretty tough to get up on some of these big ships. in a more serious note, the u.s. merchant marine, all or coast guard commandant has issued instructions to the u.s. companies, which there are not many admittedly, because it's easier tax wise to do it in the cayman islands or something like that, but they have indeed issued direction to consider a variety of steps beyond that all the way up to, and in fact, arming security forces on them

which may be necessary over time. a challenge, of course, is that somalia is a failed state. and so people say what do you do, you know, toward the pirates over to the authorities and u.s. which authorities? because the authorities in some cases will have him back out in their bows before you can weigh anchor. next slide. i want to talk very briefly at the end here. i think this is the second to last slide. about how we fight nowadays. you know, there are people that say gosh, all you guys do is counterinsurgency, civilian operations. you can do will combat the way we used to do real combat. let me tell you first of all, that our troops can do real combat. number one. but number two, we do it differently. if you contrast the way we in 2008, this is when the militia in response to the offensive prime minister amal, he ordered in the southern part of iraq, launched a counteroffensive out of the sadr city in east baghdad, and this is a very

tightly packed area, neighborhood, 2 million people in this very large, some of it slum conditions, and they were launching volleys of rockets out of there. 10 to 12, 15 rounds per volley. as many as 15 times a day landing in the embassy area, the green zone, where the seed of iraqi government was. needless to say, an enormous challenge to our activities at there. and, taking life and wounding others. to combat that, we provided one single brigade commander, one colonel, the great colonel john with all of these assets right here. never before as a brigade commander has this number of assets. when we did the fight to baghdad, for example, as command of the airborne division in 2003, when it all began with all fought in the entire court for one predator, one unmanned

vehicle and the picture wasn't all that great. now for one brigade commander, we had these two predators here who have full-motion video and were armed, these special operation platforms, one is an intelligence agency and the other was a special mission units. then we had six other lower flying shadow and raven. this is 24 hours a day, circling the city at various levels. all of which have a screen associated with them and a chat room, by the way underneath. at the u. command and control it because the pilot might be at knolls air force base. the other folks may be at maryland, germany, georgia and then obviously out in iraq. and they are all in their chat room with there, you know, equally indecipherable language by the way i might add. for dad here. then we had two teams of apache helicopters each circling. we had dismounted infantry strikers, thanks, bradley

fighting vehicles, guided missile rod, locket radars blebs, aero stats with optics, towers with optics. all of this focus on identifying the rocket teams in where their weapons caches were. once we got this going in high gear, and all the pipes and everything else allied in the communication and command and control, on three different days we destroyed five rocket teams and we killed 7017th overall during the course of about a three or four week battle. also, one of the top 8 liters wounded another one of the top eight, and the three special assistancassistance of another, and about 780 militia members as well. with minimal, minimal damage inside the city, some tough fighting along a particular tough line that we had to secure because it was an area in which rockets were being shot with considerable precision. but this is how our troopers fight with all of the so-called

enablers that we provide them, and include also close air support, all of the other highfliers all the way up to so-called national technical means and you choose in these other various exotic platforms and again it's all pulled together at relatively low levels at a brigade division level. and integrated all the way down to special forces snipers at the very bottom, and infantrymen, but in all the way up. and again, our forces can do this and it is quite an evolution over the course of the last few years. next. they key to all this are our troopers. it is our soldiers, our sailors, airmen, marines, coast guardsmen, civilians that support them. this is a picture from july 4 of a little over a year ago. i was privileged in that occasion, and this is in our headquarters, to reenlist 1215 soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and in one ceremony we believe the largest in our

nations history. they are the ones who have made the progress. it is they and their iraqi counterparts, their coalition partners, who have fought the tough fights, have sought to secure and serve the people, in body armor and kevlar and 120-degree temperatures, sandstorms, mountains of afghanistan and all the rest. and i can tell you that there is no greater privilege than having served with him in the capacities that i have been privileged to go over the past several years. thank you very much. [applause]

>> i think the last comment was particularly important because i know with this audience we have a number of returned veterans. i know we have parents, men and women who are serving overseas. i appreciate your last comment. as the questions come up i have the privilege of asking the first question. one of the things i want to come back to if you spoke about the importance to be able to take an area and then hold and build on it. a number of years ago the council here in seattle was fortunate to have the ambassador come out. she was responsible for overseeing the first investment of $18 billion in iraq. her challenge was as she talked to the council members, was they were never able to spend $18 million. there were challenges around the ability of the government to release money to commanders in the field. so here's a challenge, you can go and write a check. they were responsible for 535 men. were not responsible to write a

check. how is this working right now as you go to secure and serve the populations in which you will be working? >> vastly better. in fact, i remember telling ambassador bremer very early on, we were up in bothell by this time with a hundred woofers airborne division. we actually had things going pretty well. had been able to hold an election. we had iraqi partners caring responsibilities, had a governor, had a provincial council, people were all pulled together but we didn't have any money. now we actually did go out and find some iraqi money. that's another story. we got him to spend that, but what i said to him was, you know, look, we can launch a half-million dollar missile with a single radio call and nobody even requires me to authentica authenticate, but i can't spend $10000 without, you know, literally to picket before being flown down at that time. and to be fair, they fixed that.

and that was the beginning of what has, over time, has been called the commanders emergency reconstruction program, as an example we had over $1 billion in that program this past year for iraq and afghanistan. our commanders have learned how to use that. we believe we do it responsibly. we are on the look out for challenges, there are problems. there are some from time to time. but by and large this has been very successful in enabling small amounts of money to be spent relatively expeditiously for small reconstruction projects. i knew robin by the way and worked well with her. a lot of respect for her and she described accurately the situation at the time. there was also at the time of course a whole ball of the structures that we eventually were able to establish this didn't exist. there was a lot of at hocrisy in these different organizations. and over time, we were able to build structures that facilitated what we truly

complex counterinsurgency operations. and those are not typical military structure we had a whole cell, for example that did nothing but work on this issue of reconciliation and we had an intelligence organization created, tailor-made just to support them to help us figure out again who the reconcilablesan irreconcilable for. i was on a video teleconference with general kristol in afghanistan is more and talking precisely about comparing what we are able to establish overtime in iraq with what we have in afghanistan at this point in time. and as you know one of the initiatives there is to build an intermediate headquarters, and operational headquarters to let his headquarters at the strategic level is not also trying to do tactical operatio operations. overtime we learned the same thing. it took us about 18 months but we had the old thai national corps of iraq. we have often talked about him in the operational of the surge, which indeed that corps headquarters, and he were. but to come back to this, and in

fact, we put out, in fact, his headquarters put out a whole document that was called money as a weapons system and it talked about how he responsibly and properly and with due diligence determine what the projects are. and then spend the money to execute them. >> so part of my role here is to be able to get the questions from the audience in this conversation. we have a series of questions here related to bin laden. essentially, i guess the question boils down to essentially why can't we find him? [laughter] [applause] >> i asked myself this question every morning. [laughter] >> i asked a few other people also. [laughter]

>> the bottom line is that manhunts are tough. i think there was, who was a, eric rudolph or so and who was in the north carolina hills. this is right in our very own united states of america, presumably in a part that we control, and we couldn't find him for quite some time. and we wouldn't have if he would've had a little better support structure and hadn't come down and see that the garbage pales of some state park or something. i was in a manhunt business in a previous life in bosnia and herzegovina when we were chasing models of edge and others. and i might add, by the way we had the best year ever that particular year in getting war criminals. in fact, most of which was actually brought over in the deal. eventually they'll we chased, we did operations. without one time we had really good hard intelligence and it

was for not. ultimately, as you all know he was eventually found selling herbal medicines with a bird i bared in belgrade right underneath the nose of everyone. when you translate that to 16 to 18000-foot mountains in which anybody who is not from the family from the tribe stands out like a sore thumb, bast distances, very good operational security. i mean, the fact is that while bin laden remains a very iconic and a very important symbolic figure, he asserted not issuing even strategic direction, much less a day to day direction of any kind. nonetheless, don't get me wrong, we still certainly would like to find them. he is also in an area which we do not operate on the ground, and obviously that complicates things enormously as well. i have flown the areas. i mean, you have to see these areas to believe them.

and if you go out in the rocky mountains, i guess, and an adult little bit more to them, you have some sense of what it is i'm talking about. and then make an even more remote than they are and take away aspen and vail and all the rest of that. [laughter] >> we have a series of questions here related to an s. and military goals. talking about, you mentioned the natural resources so times in both iraq and afghanistan. are u.s. troops protecting these resources or is it u.s. is two x. point them? how do you respond? >> this is actually a great question because we use to get in iraq all the time. the enemy is pretty skillful at propagating conspiracy theories in particular. frankly, these are parts of the world that aren't very given into believing conspiracy theories. it's part of the topic that we share with our soldiers.

and my response to speak, look, we could have bought all the iraqi oil for the next, i forget how many years it was that i figured out it was, it was at least 20 or 50 years. in fact, i could do the math pretty quickly. they export about 1.8, 1.9 million barrels a day. you can do the mouth. we could have bought all of that for about a year's worth of our operational expenses in iraq. and that actually did convince iraqi's when you do the math for them. so this is certainly not about minerals. is not about pipeline wars. it's not about trying to corner the market. in fact, china is the one that got the contract, the first contract for oil in iraq in part because the iraqi pricing scheme that they did was not all that advantageous to the countries. in fact, china and india are very active inside afghanistan.

again, trying to get somebody iron ore and some of the other minerals out of there. >> we've got a series of questions around the question of the reconcilable and irreconcilable differences and how essentially does leadership think about these issues? how do you make the determent about what is and what isn't reconcilable? >> you know, again, there's a various wags. if the weapon is pointed at you they are irreconcilable. [laughter] >> no, because to be candid, i mean, one of the real tough things we had to get past in iraq when i got back over there the last time for the surge was, you know, this idea that we are going to sit down, maybe even make a deal with people who had our blood on their hands. we had to get past this, and we worked hard at it. i was very fortunate to have as a deputy lieutenant general graham lamb, uk officer, now sir graeme, lamb.

and in fact, we had chase war criminals together key was a 22 sas in the uk. so i knew him and i asked, he was also a division commander in the beginning in the first year of iraq and we had some great exchanges during some interesting episodes there in those early days. and i asked does the government extending, and they did, prime minister blair at the time still. and it was very fortuitous because he sat down with us and he said, you know, when i was in northern ireland, again he was special operator over there, he eventually had to sit down with martin mcguinness. some of you will recall that martin mcguinness is a fairly notable ira brigade or commander, and quite a very, very tough customer. had a lot of blood of uk soldiers on his hands, particularly of the soldiers. i had to sit across the table for martin mcguinness and i did know what i wanted to reach across and throttle him or set there and have dialogue. obviously he decided to have

dialogue. and overtime, of course, it was that kind of activity that was necessary for the reconciliation that ultimately blossomed into the northern ireland peace agreement. and so he had advised us how we needed to thank our way through iraq, and that is what we did. and by the way i might add that i used him initially and tutu as as a guys because they can deploy very quickly and in some intel folks from our special and cobble together the first element that eventually became known somewhat innocuously as the four strategic engagement cell which was comprised of the uk general and a very senior u.s. format, and then they're supporting structures. and they overtime provided the kind of guidance and/or action that worked its way down to our troopers. and then help, because it was really the battalion commander

level that this activity was actually taking place. you can see some other folks out here that probably were part of that, by the way. just based on seeing what they have on their uniform. and they were the key. again, what we needed to do was provide increasingly specific left and right limits on that road, if you will, as you got closer to their specific local circumstances. and the kind of intelligence support that they needed that could tell them whether these guys were telling the truth in general door could be trusted and so forth. we have to go through that same process in afghanistan. because we have not had the same density of troops because we have not had the same level of resources, we don't have the same structures. we have some significant work to do there, but certainly general mcchrystal is keenly aware of that as is the new ambassador, ambassador karl eikenberry who has had several years on the ground there in afghanistan. they make up a very good team and they are reworking on a

joint civil military campaign plan that's very similar to the one that ambassador crocker and i put together for iraq. >> so part of this pushes towards the question around leadership. as these decisions are made lower down, how do you think about leadership and the change in role of leadership in this, clearly changes in leadership in afghanistan? how do you think about that stuff? >> this is a great topic, and into this as a whole powerpoint briefing on it. it talks about big ideas. it talks about how do you change an organization. actually, let me just the guys and see if they are still awake. do you have the engine to change slide that you could pop up your and we will see if microsoft is going to be quadrant or not. still, i'm sorry. the helpdesk is awesome. [laughter] >> when you talk about, the

bursting by the way, people ask, how do you develop leaders who are comfortable in this kind of situation? and the answer that i get is a unique people who have had out of their intellectual comfort zone experiences. and for me for what it's worth it was graduate school. you know, i would different commander general staff college, but i was reasonably swift fellow. like our microsoft rep, was first in the class and all this stuff. and i learned that there's some really smart folks out there who don't see the world exactly the way we do. in fact, some of them see it very, very differently and some have extraordinarily assumptions about literally the state of nature as it's called in international relations theory and political science. and that is a very salutary experience to have. and to learn about political philosophy, about basic economic concepts and all the rest of his actually stand you in very good stead. but again it was the process i think of being in a situation

where it was, again, out of my intellectual comfort zone. the shows cost. they are a little bit washed out. these are carves right here. what is is is a so-called engine of change. and when i was privileged to be a three-star commander of the combined arms center, we controlled a lot of the elements that make up these cogs. we control the organization, the army, in field manager. this was produced during that period under our oversight. that drives of course, that car, that's the concept, the big idea that guides the education of our commission, board and noncommissioned leaders and all the different schools of sinners. so you adjust that based on this. and then of course you have to change the way you train your units at the national training center out in the mojave desert, 29 palms down in california. the joint readiness center in louisiana tech and ask you how you conduct combat operations

towner in this urgency operations are these are conducted by leaders who learn this right here. and then you have to have a feedback mechanism and a lessons learned and we have the center for army lessons learned. and then help you refine the doctrine, adjust the curricula, make tweaks to the scenarios out in the training centers, and of course change how you are conducting operations. by the way, now all of this facilitated of course by microsoft, and by a lot of applications that make up the greater world called knowledge management. but big pipes, again, virtual communities, the ability to literally look over the shoulder of those who are in iraq from all the way back here in the states virtually to do it through the internet to see in a sense the orders they are receiving, the intelligence they are getting, the orders they issued, their significant activities of that day and all the rest of that. so that we are producing a

learning organization. and what you are after, again, its leaders because that's the topic of that question, leaders who did it, as they say. so they are comfortable with this kind of operation, which is different. this is not traditional, conventional military tank on tank operations. it's a hybrid form of warfare, if you will, and a regular war there and then they can lead units in the conduct of it knowing they have to continue to learn and adapt. again, this overall model by the way i would submit is applicable to any organization. because leaders have to get the big ideas right. they have to committee gave them effectively to subordinate leaders. they have to oversee their implementation, and they then have to capture lessons learned and best practices. >> so our final question, leaders getting the ideas right, communicate effectively. our final question, isn't would

you please address how if at all the change from the bush administration to an obama administration has it affected the military priorities and the way you do your job? >> i'm pausing because i've had some of these, you know, these compare and contrast kind of questions. entity get it, they are a tiny bit uncomfortable in some respects. i mean, because first of all, i think that both of them, both commanders in chief have been deadly serious about what it is they are doing, truly committed to the welfare of the country and the men and women who serve in uniform. one was in the final years, obviously, when i had the kind of close contact that we had. the other in the early years. what i will say is that the processes that we we have gone through with president obama and his administration have been very good, frankly. we met the day after they took

office. we met on iraq. in fact, i was in turkestan and got the call to be back within 28 hours or something like that. we made it back in time and we had a meeting in iraq. and i was going to get on the plane and head back to the central command headquarters, not so fast, and not so fast. we will back in afghanistan. each of those being the process of a roughly 60 day review. i very strongly supported the decision that was made on iraq. i think was very pragmatic and the decision on the way forward for iraq, and feel the same way about afghanistan, pakistan at, strategy. we have had very opportunity for input, consultation. we have had subsequent meetings with the president, and many more with the varying levels of principles, committees, deputi deputies, certainly chairman of

the joints chief as secretary of defense. again, i think everybody is trying to get it right. i think the objective, again, that was laid out for exit, afghanistan is vitally important to our nation. as i mentioned earlier, to ensure that it doesn't become a sanctuary for the kind of transnational extremists who were able to do with us at 9/11. and that does require again a comprehensive effort as i describe to you, and it requires substantial and sustained commitment to our partners in pakistan as well. so again, i think the process has been good. i strongly support the outcome and the strategies that have been adopted and the review process is an oversight that has been conducted since. >> the gold of the council is to help every seattle have the opportunity to become a world citizen, to learn more and think about the hard issues of our day. there's nothing harder right now

and thinking about the role of the u.s. abroad. in the times of economic crisis, in the times of military intervention around the world, these hard issues are things that are going to affect our community. we are the third largest military investment in the nation. these are issues that are important to us. please join me in thanking general petraeus for his remarks today. [applause] >> coming up on c-span2, the deputy commander of the guantanamo bay joint task force talks about his responsibilities supervising the thousands of military and civilian personnel at the military detainee facility.

later, live coverage of the senate at 11 eastern as members returned to begin work on the defense authorization bill with a procedural vote later in the day on the nomination of a president obama's choice for census director. >> later today, a look at the future of nuclear energy by senate republican conference chairman lamar alexander. he will outline his proposal for the development of 100 new nuclear power plants over the next 20 years to address the nation's energy needs and climate change. live coverage of his remarks from the national press club begin at 11 a.m. eastern on our companion network, c-span3. >> how is c-span funded? >> taxpayer dollars in private donations. >> outlook support. >> consumer funded, i guess. >> viewer funded, i don't know.

>> private contributions. >> how is c-span funded? 30 years ago america's cable companies created c-span as a public service. a private business initiative. no government mandate that no government money. >> now remarks by the deputy commander of the joint task force at guantánamo bay, cuba. he supervises several thousand military personnel and civilian contractors at the prison facility that houses some of the world suspected terrorist. he talks about its day-to-day operations at this hour long event hosted by the miami lawyers chapter of the federalist society. >> thank you very much. this is one of the things i don't have to lower the mike. [laughter] >> good for me. i'm starting the right way.

first of all, thank you very much for inviting us. not only me, but of the portions of guantánamo to talk a little bit about guantánamo. also, i have a concept, i work for all things. this is very easy form me. i got my public affairs director. he tells me where to speak, where to go, things like that. this audience, i believe that there's going to be a lot of questions that you might have for me. also, i cannot, we are peers because he tells me where to go, when to go house to do it and i just stand up here. thank you very much for inviting us over here. guantanamo is a real true joint force, and we have all the service and we want to talk a little bit about that, and i am at this moment want to join, so

not to miss anybody. there are five service representatives in our command. however, there are many low enforcement that are also incorporated in the guantanamo bay should. for approximately, i say here, 30 minutes, but maybe it will be 20. i guarantee you that, okay? but i will answer everybody's questions. in a few minutes i will explain how this and other elements support daily operations with the task force of wonton will. to bring together all branches of service in order to complete our mission. as they mention we have about 5000 people, 2000 or servicemember, and i want to recognize a kernel from u.s., which is based in miami. thank you for being here with us tonight. [applause]

>> he also a lawyer. . . stands not for me but for emergency support.

that is something i learned a long time ago. we have them in all the different groups we have at one time. the naval station is an important base, but did with location in the gulf, it is separated from our other region and remains--the last remaining naval base in the u.s. southern command operation. this is the only department of defense activity in the caribbean located at the southeast part of cuba, naturally protected harbor with 34 deep passage and a storm safe-haven every year, through this area, the island of hispaniola, normally protection

from tropical storms. the base came into existence during the spanish-american war and was designed as a u.s. base in 1902. a formal treaty was established in 1934, and ratified in 1963, it is legally binding and has no ending date as long as the u.s. government fulfills the requirement, maintain base on a permanent basis, maintain fuelling capability, maintain a defense line, maintain a shipping channel -- there are some lawyers over here. rent payment before $4,085. the treaty also provides not

only u.s. abandonment of the property, guantanamo has 17 miles of fence line which surround it by 45 square miles of the naval station. a third of the total area is water. along with five service represented within and supporting cast guantanamo, there are many agencies as well as indicated on this slide. sorry. that work alongside our troopers. we furnish it with this and other passport agencies in order to assist air force in the world. later, we can go into different details, the fbi, investigation,

and so forth. this is one of the parts of camp 6 that describe our first mission, safe, humane, legal, transparent care of detainee's. that is the main mission we have. other visitors have access to the camp in 2008, 374 representatives continuing to visit guantanamo operations, and 2700 news media representatives have visited since 2002. additionally, in 2008, we have 1870 legal visitors. a national committee of the red cross has access on a regular basis, transparency of the

activity described here describes the guantanamo structure. the sailor in the middle, with the black belt on, in charge of this watch detail. a 12 hour shift working on average, four days on, two days off during their shift. our second mission is intelligence correlation which is run by the chinese group. intelligence collection operations support the protection mission which is to protect guards and detainee's. this will answer a lot of questions that you might already be developing.

the second point is to assist in terrorism -- world terrorism, to a law-enforcement efforts. these are features of interrogation, detainees can choose interrogation requests. to a non intelligence professional, there's a better way to describe interrogation at guantanamo. to allow detainee's to watch, eat fast food from my doughnuts, soft drinks in the basement or play video games while and investigators talking to them. one myths about guantanamo is detainees are mistreated during interrogation. this is not torture, there is no torture at guantanamo. the detainees and mistreated

during interviews. our third mission is to provide support to the office of the commission. the commander, thomas, i am second-in-command, is personally accountable for the safe treatment of detainees at all times. custody of detainees is not transferred from j.t. s even during the commission receding as. there's a lot of -- surrounding the commission, the legal basis, having detainee's at guantanamo. this is important for the public and international scene. what is not debatable is conditions in guantanamo. most americans would be proud of the guards who serve there.

the group conducted once again safe, humane, legal and transparent care of detainees, including those convicted by military commissions, and those released by court. the current detainee population is approximately 230 and represents 30 countries and languages. they range from 22 to 61-year-old with an average of 35. more than 500 detainees have been transferred to their country or other areas. this part of -- represent various levels of detention at guantanamo bay. there are 9 different counts.

detainee's are placed in different detention facilities that and depending on their behavior, not what they were doing when they were captured. we have complained camp no. 4 over here, noncompliance maximum-security facility 5 and 6, illinois and michigan. and camp number 7 which is where we have the detainees, these detainee's in this facility are given the same food and treatment, but the location of camp 7 is not as close for security measures. as the ticket over year, the

facility for detainees, court order release, legal visitation facilities. the approximately 1100 guards within the joint detention group, army and navy personnel. guards receive training to ensure they are professionally linked to all requirements. army personnel, and military police trained in detention operations. and a variety of backgrounds, for lewis washington, the same way we receive the army. forces. this is very important. guards range in age from 19 to 25.

they are very young. probably this is their first deployment in their life. you can imagine later when they go through, the other things i want to point out. i am sorry. guards are at three minutes, 24 hours, seven days a week, this is -- the assignment is gender neutral. which means the average, 70% female that we have. the assault on guards on a daily basis, can be physically --

physically, hitting, spinning. anything that comes from your body, later, a little bit more. that is why we have the joint stress mitigation theme, service to all personnel, guards have access to other outages to combat the stress of daily duties such as the recreation sponsor.

just a few attempts. we have continued to verify that any program through the years, as we speak, we are still constructing an improvement in the facility run, community recreation programs. program that are available, provide electric stimulation, instructional training, including a library with over 14,000 items, it shoes from two to five books on anything. the program includes communal meals and recreational activity,

sports, they offer free meals on a daily basis. these meals meet cultural and dietary requirements. 65 to 6800 galleries on a daily basis. mealtimes are just as during religious holidays, and access to 24 hours of recreation on a a daily basis. they can also play soccer, basketball, and board games as well as mechanical machines. they are allowed to watch movies, designate movie night. we also inc. electronic games in somalia. we don't have a x box.

in 2008, 22,055 pieces of mail was delivered, instructional training, as well as second language classes, offered with four and six, always elektra stimulation. in guantanamo they try to continue to maintain their previous operation. and continuing to deliver their guard population and try to

conduct intelligence correlation at guantanamo. they also practice information operation by using the media, lawyers and international organization to spread the story of abuse and mistreatment, and they become very creative in making weapons out of any items they might coming to contact, war are part of the daily grouping. and the most compliant camp, number four. and in the apartment of a suspected al qaeda members in manchester, england, this document provided instruction on topics such as forgery,

surveillance, so today in guantanamo, active federalist activities continue. we have 2006/2007 which we could go later, and also, you may medical care--as a u.s. servicemember receives, all detainee's received their discipline. some of the constraints we experience, specialty care must

be brought on stage, provide a standard of care. additionally, if anyone would refuse, we make to all of the work to find a specific detail or specialty, when either one of these go to the airport, it is important to note that joint medical groups work independently from intelligence and intelligence operations, separate groups and each of them has their own language. is dedicated to detainee care. and it should be also used if needed. comprehensive physical and mental examination and assessment, a rival of each detainee, all of them have

access 24 hours, days a week. medical staff dispense an average of 155,000 medication on an annual basis, about 3500 cycles are made on an annual basis on an average of appointments and visits scheduled. this is very -- if i will use that word -- health-care provider, in america we have 600, 500, something like that. they have 1 or 2.

any special care when needed, even if a specialist must be flown to guantanamo. this could include dental care, and you keep thinking about it. this is interesting. nine consecutive emil's, the finest eating less, 25% of each mealmeals, the finest eating less, 25% of each meal constitutes a hunger strike. if we see they're losing weight

or getting in trouble, the myth is that intravenous feeding is painful. this is farther from the truth. people who get internal feeding are trained professionals, nurses who use the same procedures in nursing homes or for someone with a broken jaw injury, the procedure is size and flexibility of spaghetti and pulsation midway. they are usually given two kinds and the length that they are asking for flavor. strawberry, then a lot -- you got it. an hour later they are poured without chewing and they use it

to have a conversation. this is not a painful procedure. they can be said in an hour so they try to provide two hours says they can have more conversations with other detainees. the group conducts operations to collect, analyze and disseminate intelligence in support of protection and work on terror, interrogation is are conducted in strict compliance to 22.3, all of them are scheduled because they want an interview.

approximately 1/3 of interrogation is requested by the detainee. the rooms used at guantanamo, interrogation is at guantanamo focus and on 90 detainee's out of the 230 that we have. in is more of an interview, informational saying hthing has great value to u.s. and international law enforcement agencies. remember what i showed you? we have a partnership.

joint intelligence analysts provide support, the habeas corpus proceeding. in conclusion, guantanamo is not what it is portrayed in today's media. the operations in guantanamo could be your son, your daughter, your spouse, your neighbor. we are doing a tough mission and doing it very well. thank you very much in. i will take your questions. >> that is what we came for.

no questions? >> i don't understand the response by some american politicians, an abbreviation for not in my backyard. my question is the following. if you assume theoretically that you move your prison camp to any large american military base of sufficient size, if you move the whole operation, would there be any danger to the surrounding civilian population? >> we have the subject of terrorists, that is why the act and has been slowed down. in going specifically in to that question, that is a policy

question. i have to rely on going back -- we will do anything to protect our nation in guantanamo. that is one of the missions that we have. >> can you hear me? the general had mentioned a lot of times we get a lot of questions that do relate to more policy related questions, that specific question, we have media all the time. >> if i may rephrase, i am not asking a policy question. my question is operational. if the president decided, move this to and air force base in

north florida, the whole operation, would there be any danger to the civilian population? >> as i mentioned, sorry -- we have 2,000 soldiers that are into the mission we are doing. there is a secure place, you saw in one of the transparency, the facilities we have built and enhanced throughout the last three years, years, the enormous cost. i can say they are secure, we know what we are doing and we are safeguarding.

if we place them into the other places, did i answer? >> you didn't answer but i understand. >> i am learning. we have a lot of human-resources done in guantanamo. they are always combining with two guards always. if they are going to move to the appointment, we have 30 language represented in guantanamo. we have a linguists or translator for every time we talk to them, every time we move them, it is a special accommodation call all the

amenities that they have. if it is dangerous we have them come, we take them out of the battlefield, it is safe for us and we are supporting our allies. yes, sir? >> you said there are 2,000 military employees and 5,000 civilian employees. most of your talk focused on the care of the detainees. is anything done in guantanamo bay that you can talk about that doesn't have to do with the detainees? a lot of employees are trying to understand what other ones do besides taken care of them? >> yes. >> i was just interested. >> out of the 2,200 service members which comprise the armed

forces, we have 5,000 civilians which includes contractors. we have to continue every time we have an inspection or an audit, they mentioned they need more, you have to improve the facility which we are doing. those are civilians and for each civilian, each operation, we need a military person. we have civilians that are linguists, 30 languages to be precise. >> the total number of personnel, several thousand that you are hearing, that is the entirety of the u.s. naval station in guantanamo bay,

several thousand people in that 45 square mile area conducted a lot of operations, within that area, just under four square miles of that is joint task force at guantanamo. and within that, just over 2,000 people on the joint task force mission. approximately just over 2,000 the we have in guantanamo, that is the group doing the mission we are discussing here. >> you just mentions the joint task force in guantanamo. is totally separate of guantanamo bay. at the beginning of a mentioned the training in 1963. that will continue. what we are talking about is the detainees operation. we have to separate the subject.

>> working -- refuels, civilian employees with military, has left out along the years. that maintains focus. >> pardon me, sir? >> it is possible for military service people to be stationed in guantanamo and have nothing to do with the detainees. >> yes. we have frank over here. >> do you have any idea the cost of the facilities?

those facilities are adequate to maintain the retention of detainees? >> absolutely. the amount we are managing, a budget of 295 -- >> is that the annual budget? >> that is another -- facility costs $47 million, the other one, 47, $50 million, we continue to improve. >> the operating budget -- >> two ninety-five million. those are expendable. >> over year. two questions. you talk about the ratio of the soldiers/detainee/prisoner, is it the same in guantanamo as in

other facilities on or off the shore. the media always focuses on water boarding, which has had a wonderful results, but in your -- in your comments tonight it looked more like a lounge at the airport than it did a torture chamber if you could comment on that. >> waters about boarding, i read about the history of guantanamo, we have never had it. we have photos released in january of 2000, we spoke about x-rays their use for four months and to we build camp 4. we don't do any water boarding. what was the second? >> the ratio of soldiers per detainee, prisoner, seems like

there is an awful lot of our people--is that comparable? >> yes -- answering that question more precisely, we are looking, if it was downsize, we would downsize the force, we cannot downsize the force because as we have a facility, we say we have 15 men, 15 man force, we have to maintain a 15 and force. we have to maintain standing with the force. if we place the facility some place else, as i mentioned every year, that is totally different from my mission right now.

i will be totally responsible in answering that. is okay. >> how does that compare to other facilities? we are a very specialized facility, specialized organization, i can't speak for other places. the closest we can compare it to are things like federal bureau of prisons, things of that sort and i honestly don't know the ratio of that, i should not be one to speculate but i don't believe you will find the ratio to be quite the same. >> the facility, expeditionary legal facility, is the only one

of its nature in the world. we can translate from one language to another, the audience in the back, we could go secret, there are some cases that are secret because they were the masterminds. these where excellent facilities at one time. >> speaking of camp x-ray, the transition -- camp x-ray as mentioned, was used during a very short period of time at the beginning of the start of the transfer of individuals to guantanamo, use for a period of four month. during that time, the facility built up camps 1, 2, and number 3, and as the facility grew and developed, we were able to

construct camp 4, the large communal facility and later build camps 5 and 6. >> they were posted in 2002. that is a point of view. if they get noncompliance of their behavior in camp we place them, the orange, they don't use it. they use white or cream because it is easier for them to watch and it looks better. over year? >> my question is logistical in

nature. you mentioned earlier they are not placed into the camps based on their conduct in the field. when they first arrive, how do you assess where they will be placed? >> all of them were in camp, and by a gathering, their behavior, protecting our own force and them to make harm to themselves, we start placing them in different facilities, but not because of what they did. you can, and a little more? >> when the detainees are showing that they become compliant, they're able to follow camp rules and get along with others, that is the

determining factor and you are able to follow camp rules and get along with others, you are not going to assault the guard force or other detainees. you would be able to be put into a communal environment. more than half of the detainees at guantanamo bay today, more than half are in a communal environment at this time. >> they have plenty of hours of recreation. >> i'm sure a concern is the correspondence being sent in to the detainees. please describe how you prevent clandestine communications, a secret code being sent in to those letters, the screening process. >> sometimes we find contraband. it would make a weapon, for example, a weapon or artifact they might use is toilet tissue,

they will swallow it to be asphyxiated. we have to be careful how much, what amount of toilet paper we give them. or around the cell, we have to be careful if they have enough to be flexible. we have a capt. that can help me out over a year. >> there are various ways that communication goes in and out. it was screened appropriately. there are a couple avenues, specialized avenues especially for family comment and there are also visits depending on weather conditions -- information can go through the authorized channel. if there are other channels,

they get creative. >> answer the question. i have a question on this side. >> have you spent some time to sit down with president obama and briefed him, showed him the power point? is clear to me there's no torture going on and he keeps talking about torture. have you spent time briefing our commander in chief? [laughter and applause] >> we have informed our superiors. i keep and maintain focus on the mission, taking care, support the military commissions, they are on hold conlan and 3, the support logistic to the commission. out of that, we have conversation with osd and all

the other agencies that are oriented to advice, tell our superiors. if you want to add to it -- >> thank you. we have visits from high-level individuals who have come down at the request from the white house and conducted the walsh report, visits from the department of justice, and the information is certainly being communicated. but the chief thing that i would like folks to remember is we are a military organization, and we are following the orders task to us. lot of policy questions are out there. what about the white house and

the department of justice? we take the orders given to us and we conduct our business following the orders given to us, if a decision is made that the decision is to be closed per executive order, we will follow the orders given to us directing us toward that end. if any other orders come to that effect, we will follow those orders. i want to make sure folks understand, a lot of policy questions, join taskforce at guantanamo, a military facility led by admiral tom coteman and general rafael o'ferrall, we follow the orders of the officers. i want to make sure folks understand the key issues. >> if i answer your question,

thank you. >> earlier, you mentioned outside attorneys frequently meet with detainee's. i was hoping you could elaborate on the frequency, scope, and nature of the contacts that outside attorneys have and the nature of the access they are given. >> yes. very frequent. >> there was a slide, 1,800 attorney visits scheduled. they are scheduled depending on what procedure they are in. the office of military commission, they submit their schedule and they are allowed. there's no amount of time, there's a meeting time during the day and the afternoon, we to accommodate as necessary. if you are talking about the habeas process, they have a point of contact, the office of

general counsel. the meetings happen seven days a week, on holidays, there are normal hours. the amount and frequency of the meetings is entirely dependent on council. does that answer your questions? >> it was father's day, a lawyer's meeting, yesterday as well. >> thank you for coming. as far as operations, a new administration in washington. where do you see the future of the base as far as long-term goals and what it can be used for in the long term future? >> as we just mentioned, we will continue to operate on presidential order. it is completed. defense, if they get a revised review during the next few

months, if we know what the presidential order will tell us but the deputy commander will maintain our posture with the presidential order. >> keep in mind, the u.s. naval station in guantanamo bay has been in operation for 100 years, it is an important logistical asset. we have catalog operations over the years, a lot of military personnel in and out over the last century. we have had visits a couple months ago, the secretary of the navy showed up and made the public comments that the naval station has been an important asset to this nation for the last century and he envisioned it would be so in the future as

well. the joint task force in guantanamo that we represent is just under four square miles of land on that 45 square miles base. there is a long history, it is an important history for the u.s. government. what happens to these specific four square miles of land that we are on if we were to go way? lots of discussion to have about that. there's a lot more land, a lot more activity. several thousand personnel to continue to work, providing a lot of activity for the u.s. government at that facility. i would expect there's a lot of history to be made. >> i would like to ask you a question. have any of the prisoners been

relieved, continued on? >> yes. to day, 94, that has gone back into the activity. this is a family business. when they go back, they become heroes from guantanamo. that is the situation we are confronting. i will go to you, sir. >> i have two questions if you can answer them. can you answer, you told us you have 230 detainees at guantanamo, yet you have three levels in the federal system of medium and maximum security. can you tell us how many high

risk, dangerous people you have in your high risk facility? if you can't, we understand. >> we have less than 20. >> the other question, if you can answer, those situations, has intelligence actually been brought out that prevented attacks on the united states? >> can you formulate the question again? [talking over each other] >> the intelligence you have gathered, has it prevented, actual intelligence, resulted in preventing attacks, additional attacks on the united states? >> we suspect yes, sir. that is why the activity has been low impacting in the u.s.. that is our belief. >> it is not going to be an easy one. >> i am here for that.

>> in the history of canada, have we lost any translators? because their research turned -- returned stateside because they were homosexual? >> not to my knowledge. not to my knowledge. not to my knowledge. they have not qualified because of -- the security level, but not that specifically. >> the majority of the translators in guantanamo are contractors. i am not aware of anyone being sent back but as far as sexual orientation i don't know that that would be a clause in the contract. that would be more appropriate.

[talking over each other] >> easy question for you. >> i have to be careful. >> what are some of the headaches you experience in your job at camp? >> the most at a? >> what are some of your headaches? >> i talk to the troops, the most difficult is maintain their motivation because of the media as they are receiving, the way they treat the treatment of the detainees, their 19 to 25. is tough for them. the easy task is do the job because we are trained for it. but that part of the emotional thing, the human aspect of a

soldier, we have to -- everybody works on it. you are doing this by inviting me over here, it is a great opportunity to mention what we are doing and how we are performing. if you want to allow -- elaborate -- basically the care, the intelligencegathering, it is the easy task. it is more difficult, maintain their posture, they're homesickness. that is the reality that we have. that is why we have to be smart. >> just a quick question. >> did i answer the question? i work the camp everyday, day,

night, evening morning. >> a cold war relic question. i spent 94/95 on the dmz and what was happening, the guards said unification in korean. that told us what they wanted to happen. you were right in the downtown did center of cuba. what is the relation between our troops, is there any interaction at all? >> as i mentioned in the second slide as we depicted in the second slot, they have -- that was the reality. the cubans had the same line on the other side. once a month we make meetings on one side of the fence and the other side of the fence, the only thing we told -- in the

vicinity. the dangerous case -- that could be affecting the other side or an infection on the plantations or something like that, but the relationship military is good. we have no issue on two side of the offenses. >> keep in mind the location, the naval station in guantanamo is in a remote location, it is not -- a lot of folks, a lot of people, what is on the other side of the gate? can you go out on the town? there is no town. keep that in mind as well.

those meetings that do happen on a regular basis are an important part of maintaining relationships for those emergency situations. we have good relations in that regard, in maintaining the ability to help each other as needed for natural disasters and things of that sort. but actual interaction or anything along those lines on a regular basis with the general populace or guard forces, that is not his situation i have time for. >> thank you very much. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much. before we conclude, we have a plaque to present to the general from the federalist society miami lawyers division with our sincere thanks and appreciation

to general rafael o'ferrall, deputy commanding general, joint task force at guantanamo bay, cuba. you honor us by your presence. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> let me do something over here. let me present you with our colleague which has the arcoin which has the army flag, the navy flag, the map of cuba. >> i can see this. i want to thank everyone that came to attend the function. this will be the first of many. the next one, we should be coming up on late september, it will focus on the supreme court

and all the exciting things that are occurring there. i thank you for taking time out from your evenings and those who work for the office, keep building. for everyone else here, have a good night and good evening. thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> live coverage of the confirmation hearing for supreme justice nominee sonia sotomayor continues this week on c-span3, c-span radio and on the web at c-span.org. we will replay the proceedings weeknights on c-span to.

for the home of america's highest court. the supreme court on c-span. we take you live to the u.s. capitol as the senate convenes, taking up defense department programs for fiscal year 2010. dishes include military pay raises, f-22 fighter planes, and rules of evidence for detainee trials. senators turned to the nomination of robert groves to become the new census director with a procedural and possibly final vote on that at 5:30. now, live senate coverage on c-span2. lord, our lawmakers face complex issues that challenge the best of human thoughts and actions. as you gave insights to king

solomon, impart which is come to to your servants in the senate. help them to believe that you are real and relevant and a ready help for all of their challenges. may they recognize their need for divine intervention and develop the necessary humility to seek it. lord, shower them with wisdom and strength far beyond their own to face these critical days. in their worries and cares, give them the joy of knowing you are with them. we pray in the name of him who is all wise, all powerful, and

all loving. amen. the presiding officer: please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to the flag. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. the presiding officer: the clerk will read a communication to the senate. the clerk: washington, d.c, july 13, 2009. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable tom udall, a senator from the state of new mexico, to perform the duties of the chair. signed: robert c. byrd, president pro tempore. mr. reid: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader recognized. mr. reid: following leader remarks, we'll begin

consideration of s. 1390, the department of defense authorization bill. at 4:30 today, the senate will tour to executive session to consider the nomination of robert groves to be the director of the census and debate the nomination for one hour. at 5:30 p.m., the senate will proceed to a cloture vote on the nomination. under agreement reached last week, if cloture is invoked, all postcloture debate time will be yielded back and the senate will immediately proceed it a vote on confirmation of the nomination. if cloture is invoked, the vote on confirmation could be a voice vote. upon disposition of the vote, the senate will resume consideration of the department of defense bill. there will be no roll call votes after 2:00 or so afternoon. mr. president, the coming weeks are at a critical time, not just here in congress but in our country. this month we'llwork to stablize our broken health care system and lower costs for the middle class. this month we'll also discuss,

debate, and i'm confident ultimately confirm president obama's outstanding nominee for the supreme court, judge sonia sotomayor. both these goals require both sides to work together. i repeat, both of these goals require both sides to work together. each requires all of us to work in good faith. because if we're to do what our country needs to do, we must work as partners, not partisans. we've said all along that we strongly prefer to fix health care as one cooperative body, not as two competing parties. i'm encouraged that we will do so. last week i had a positive meeting with four senior republican senators about the road ahead for health care, and it's health care reform we talked about. we finished the meeting and there was a general agreement that we needed health care reform. and that should be done in a bipartisan basis, not resort to what we call "reconciliation,"

which requires only a simple majority. i appreciate very much the commitment of those four republicans to getting this done. i look forward to more republicans joining the same commitment. the finance and "help" committee chairmen are working tirelessly to mark up the health care bills. our goal remains the same: we'd like to see those bills on the floor in july and i hope our republican colleagues will work us to achieve that goasm just as our commitment to a bipartisan plan has not changed, neither have our principles about that plan: lowering skyrocketing costs and bringing stability and security back to health care. we're committed to passing a plan that protects what works and fixes what's broken, a plan that ensures that if you like the coverage you have, you can keep it. we'll make sure people can still choose their own doctors, hospital, and health plans. americans need affordable health care they can count on. too many families live just one illness or one accident or one pink slip away from financial

ruin. the cost of inaction is too great and the status quo needs -- i'm sorry, mr. president -- the status quo need -- the status simply is no longer something we had to look to. on another subject today, this historic day in america, right now they're getting -- giving opening statements in the senate judiciary committee committee, democrats and republicans, regarding sonia sotomayor. and she will later today testify before that committee as presidenpresident obama's nominr the highest court in this country. she is the first hispanic woman to do so. judge sotomayor has a wide range of experience, not just in the legal world but in the real world. her understanding of the law is grounded not only in theory but also in are pravment her record and qualifications are tremendous. she's worked at every level of our judicial system: as a prosecutor, a litigator, trial court judge, appellate judge. that's exactly the type of

experience we need on the supreme court. and when she's confidence, she'll bring to the bench more judicial experience than any sitting justice has when they joined the court. judge sotomayor has been nominated by both democratic and republican presidents. she's been confirmed twice by the senate with strong bipartisan support. her record is well-known and well-respected. we're committed to ensuring that she has a rigorous, reasonable confirmation hearing. we expect both sides to ask her tough questions. we expect both the questions and answered to be fair and honest before she is confidence. mr. mcconnell: mr. president? the presiding officer: the republican leader is recognized. mr. mcconnell: today the senate judiciary committee has begun its hearings on the nomination of judge sonia sotomayor to be an associate justice on the u.s. supreme court. the consideration of a supreme court nominee is always an

historic event. since our nation's founding, only 110 people have served on the high court and 10 of those were nominated by george washington. there are few duties more consequential for a member of the u.s. senate than a vote on a supreme court nominee. this particular nominee comes before the judiciary committee with a compelling life story. like so many other americans before her, judge sotomayor has overcome great adversity, and she has reaffirmed once again that our nation is which one's willingness to work hard and apply one's talents are the principal requirements for success. yet as we begin these hearings, it is important to remind ourselves that our obligations as senators under the constitution's advise and consent, requires us to do more than confirm someone to a lifetime position on our nation's highest court based on their life story. rather, it requires us to determine whether he or she will be able to fulfill the requirements of the oath taken

by all federal judges that they will -- quote -- "administer justice without respect to persons and do equal right to the poor and the rich and that they will faithfully discharge all the duties incumbent upon them under the constitution and laws of the united states." the emphasis here is on "equal treatment of everyone, without respect to a person's status or belief, that everyone in america can expect that when they enter a courtroom they won't be treated any differently than anyone else." that's what justice is, afternoel. and that's what americans expect of our judicial system: equality under the law. now, president obama has made it abundantly clear as a senator, as a candidate for president, and now as president, that he has a somewhat different requirement for his appointees to the federal bench. he has repeatedlyempt i emphasid that his cr criterion is their

ability to empathize are certain groups. it is a great standard if you are one of those groups. it is not so useful if you are not. it might be good to consider the groups on the short end of the empathy standard. there are those that engage in political speesm then there are those americans who want to exercise their right to bear arms under the second amendment. next, those who want protection under the fifth amendment's requirement that private property cannot be taken for public purposes without just compensation. and that it should not be taken for another person's preferred private use at all. also, there are those who want protection from unfair employment practices under the 14th amendment's guarantee of equal protection of the law. i mention these specific groups because judge sotomayor has had to handle cases in each of these areas and looking at her record, it appears that the president

has nominated just the kind of judge he said he would: someone who appears to have empathy for certain groups who appear before her but not for others. as i discussed last week, judge sotomayor kicked out of court the claims of new haven, connecticut, firefighters who had been denied promotions because some minority firefighters had not performed as well as a group of mostly white firefighters on a race-neutral exam. the supreme court reversed her decision in this matter, her third reversal just this term, with all nine justices finding that she misapplied the law. her treatment of this case -- the ricci cairks has been politicized across the political spectrum as perfunctory and peculiar. it called into question whether they are dismissal handing of the firefighters' claims was unduly influenced by her past experiences in quotas.

i also spoke about provocative comments that judge sotomayor made about her claim that merely donating money to a candidate is akin to bribery. it is her prerogative to make such statements, as provocative as it may be, but it is not her prerogative as a judge to fail to follow clear supreme court precedent. yet when she had a chance to vote on whether to correct clear court precedent in this very area of the law, she voted against doing so. ultimately the supreme court in an opinion authored by justice breyer, corrected this error on the grounds that it failed to follow precedent. there are other areas of concern. judge sotomayor has brushed aside a person's claim that their private property had been taken in violation of the fifth amendment's takings clause. as in the ricci cairks the l kicked it out of court giving

them toll a brief, one-paragraph explanation as to y moreover, in the course of doing so, she dramatically expanded the supreme court's controversial 2005 decision in kelo v. new london. in kelo, the supreme court broadened the meaning of "public purpose" that allows the government is to take someone's public property. in th another case, judge sotomr broadened the ruling even further. her ruling makes it easier for a person's private property to be taken for the purpose of queering a private benefit on another private party. the result is at odds with both the plain language of the fifth amendment's takings clause and with the supreme court's statements in kelo. and as in ricci, she did it

without providing a thorough analysis of the law. her panel devoted just one paragraph to analyzing the plaintiff's important fifth amendment claims. it is no wonder tha then that property law expert professor elia h sulman called it one of the worst property rights decisions in recent years. professor richard epstein at the university of chicago college of law called it only "wrong" and ill-thought-out. sut make i -- there's more. judge sotomayor has twice ruled that the second amendment is is not a fundamental right and does not protect americans from actions sphwaits and localities that prevent them from lawfully exercising their ability to bear arms. as with the ricci and dyden

cases, judge sotomayor gave the losing parties short shrift and did not explain her analysis. in one case she disposed of the party's second amendment claim in a mere one-sentence foot footnote. in another case, argued before the supreme court in the district of columbia vs. hemmer she gave this cursecy treatment devoting only one paragraph in an unsigned opinion to this important issue which is unusu unusual, indeed, for a case of this significance. the losing parties in the cases might not have belonged to groups the president had if mine when he articulated empathy standard. they underscore the hazards of such a standard. they had important constitutional claims. they deserved to have their claims treated seriously and adjudicated fairly under the law regardless of what judge sotomayor sonia sotomayor's

percent thapersonal agenda might this did not get the fair treatment for the losing parties as deserved. the cases strongly suggest a pattern of unequal treatment in judge sotomayor's judicial record particularly in high-profile cases. this pattern is disturbing in light of judge sotomayor's numerous comments about her view of the role of the judge such as questioning a judge's ability to be impartial even in most cases asserting that appellate courts are where policy is made and concluding that her experiences and views affecting the facts she chooses to see in deciding cases. republicans take very seriously our obligation to review anyone who is nominated to a lifetime position on our nation's highest court. that's why senators have taken time to review judge sotomayor's record to make sure she has the same basic qualities we look for

in any federal judge. superb legal ability, personal integrity, sound temperament, and most importantly, a commitment to read the law evenhandedly. at the beginning of this process, i noted that some of judge sotomayor's past statements and decisions raised concerns. as we begin the confirmation hearings those concerns have been multiplied. my concern is this: that judge sotomayor's record suggests a history of allowing personal and political beliefs to seep into her judgments on the bench which has repeatedly resulted in unequal treatment for those who stand before her. but that's what the hearings are all about. giving nominees an opportunity to address the concerns that senators might have about a nominee's record -- in this case the list is long. so we welcome judge sotomayor as she comes before the judiciary committee today and we look forward to a full and thorough

hearing of her record and her views. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: under the previous order the leadership time is reserved. under the previous order the senate will proceed to the consideration of s. 1390, the clerk will report. the clerk: spird 1390 authorize appropriations for february fiscal year 2010 for the department of defense and so for and for other purposes. the presiding officer: the senator from michigan. mr. levin: mr. president, on behalf of the armed services committee i'm pleased to bring s. 1390, the national defense authorization act for fiscal year 2010, to the senate floor. this bill will fully fund the fiscal year 2010 budget request of $680 billion for national security activities in the department of defense and the

department of energy. the senate armed services committee has a long tradition of setting aside partisanship and working together in the interest of the national defense. this year follows that tradition. i'm pleased s. 1390 was reported to the senate on a unanimous 26-0 vote of the committee. this vote stands as a testament to the common commitment of all of our members to supporting our men and women in uniform. i particularly want to thank senator mccain, our ranking minority member, for his strong support throughout the committee process and, of course, for the dedication he has shown to the national dense throughout his senate career. earlier this year the armed services committee reported out the weapon systems acquisition reform act of 2009 with similar bipartisan support. if less than two months we were able to get the bill passed by the senate, complete conference with the house, and have the

president sign it into law. it's my hope we will be able to move with similar dispatch on the bill now before us. this bill contains many important provisions that will improve the quality of life of our men and women in uniform, provide needed support and assistance to our troops on the battlefield in iraq and afghanistan, make the investments we need to meet the challenges of the 21st century, and require needed reforms in the management of the department of defense. first and foremost, the bill before us continued the increases in compensation and quality of life that our servicemen and women and their families deserve as they face the hardships imposed by continuing military operations around the world. for example, the bill contains provisions that would, first, authorize a 3.4% across-the-board pay raise for all afternoon formed military personnel. and that represents half a

percent more than the budget request and the annual rate of inflation and authorized a 30,000 increase in the army's active duty end strength in fiscal year 2011 and 2012 in order to increase dwell time and reduce stress created by deployment and authorized payment of over 25 types of bonus and special pay aimed at encouraging enlistment, reenlistment and continued service by active duty and reserve military personnel. we increase the authorization for the homeowners assistance program by $350 million in order to provide relief to homeowners the armed forces who are required to relocate because of base closures or a change of station orders. and we increase the maximum amount of supplemental subsistence allowance from $500

to $1,100 per month to ensure that service members and their families do not have to be dependent on food stamps. the bill also includes important funding and authorities needed to provide our troops the equipment and support they will continue to need as long as they remain on the battlefield in iraq and afghanistan. for example, the bill contains provisions that would provide $6.7 billion for the ambush protection, the mrap vehicle and an increase of $1.2 billion above the president's budget request for m wrvment all-terrain vehicles deployed in afghanistan. and the bill fully funds the president's budget request for u.s. special operations command and adds $131 million for unfunded requirements identified

by the commander of special operations command. the bill provides full funding for the joint improvised explosive device organization to continue the development and deployment of technologies to defeat these attacks. and we provide nearly $7.5 billion to train and equip the afghan national army and the afghan national police so they can carry more of the burden defending their own country against the taliban. the bill would also implement most of the budget recommendations made by the secretary of defense to terminate troubled programs and apply the savings to higher priority activities of the department. for example, the bill will terminate the air force combat search and rescue helicopter program, it will terminate the vh-71 presidential helicopter,

it would cancel and restructure the manned ground vehicle portion of the army's future combat systems program, it would stop the growth of the army brigade combat teams, the b.c.t.'s at 45 instead of 48 while maintaining the planned increase in end strength. it would end production of the c-17 program. it would terminate the multiple kill vehicle program. cancel the energy interceptor and the second airborne prototype aircraft, and authorize additional funding to field more theater missile defense systems that terminal high altitude area of defense, thaad, and the standard missile three interceptors and converting additional aegis for missile defense to defend our forward-deployed forces and allies against the many short and medium-range missiles held

by countries such as north korea and iran. the bill supports the decision of secretary gates to stop deployment of the ground-based interceptors at 30 missiles and to focus on improving the capability of this system to be more reliable and effective than the current system against the limited threat of long-range missiles. the bill also supports the decision to continue production of those ground-based interceptors that are on contract and to use them as test missiles. by fielding the most modern version of the interceptor using modern silos and conducting operationally realistic testing with the additional missiles instead of putting them in silos, the system will provide in secretary gates' words "a robust capability fully adequate to protect us against a north korean threat for a number of

years." according to testimony to the committee the joint chiefs of staff and the combatant commanders agreed that their highest priority for the ground missile defense system was to have 30 interceptors with improved reliability, availability, and effectiveness. the bill before us, again, supports secretary gates' decision to field that improved capability. now, i'm disappointed that the committee voted on a very close vote not to terminate the f-22 aircraft production program as requested by the secretary of defense and as supported by the joint chiefs of staff. i will join with senator mccontaimccain to overturn this decision during floor consideration. the bill contains a public of provisions that will help improve the management of the

department of defense and federal agencies -- other federal agencies. for example, the bill contains provisions that would, first, improve department of defense financial management by requiring the department to engage in business process reengineering before acquiring new information technology systems and to submit regular reports on its progress toward auditable financial statements. second, it requires the department of defense to develop a comprehensive plan to address long-standing problems in its inventory management systems which lead it to acquire and store hundreds of millions worth of unneed the items. third, it place as moratorium on public-private competitions under o.m.b. until the department complies with an

existing statutory requirement to develop information needed to manage its service contractors, plan for its civilian employee workforce, and identify functioning that would be subject to public-private competition. and, fourth, we would authorize the secretary to establish a new defense civilians leadership program to help recruit, train, and retain highly qualified civilian employees to help lead the department of defense over the next 20 years. a very important provision in this bill is section 1031 which would address the problems that exist with military commissions. the military commissions provisions that we have in law today do not provide basic guarantees of fairness identified by our supreme court. the existing provisions place a cloud, therefore, over military

commissions and have led some to conclude that the use of military commissions can never be fair, credible, or consistent with our basic principles of justice. earlier this year, the president stated that military commissions can be reformed. to meet bake standards of fairness needed for them to play a legitimate role in prosecuting violations of the law of war. in miss may 21st, 2009 speech, president obama stated that -- quote -- "military commissions have a history in the united states dating back to george washington and the revolutionary war. they are an appropriate venue for trying detainees for violations of the laws of war. they allow for the presentation of sensitive sources and methods of intelligence gathering.

they allow for the safety and security of participants and for the presentation of evidence gathered from the battlefield that cannot always be effectively presented in federal courts." and the president continued, "instead of using the flawed comitionz of the last sevenees, my administration is bringing our commissions in line with the rule of law. we will make our military commissions a more credible and effective means of administering justice, and i will work with congress and members of both parties, as well as legal authorities across the political spectrum, on legislation to ensure that these commissions are fair, legitimate, and effective." close quote. well, we agree with the president and section 103 reflects our determination to reform the commissions. in its 2006 decision in the ham deny case, the supreme court

held that common article 3 of the geneva conventions requires that the trial of detainees for violations of the law of war be consistent with the procedures applicable in trials by courts share mall and that any deviation from those procedures be justified by -- quote -- "evident, practical need." close quote. the supreme court said that -- quote -- "uniformity -- the uniformity principle is not an inflexible one. it does not reconclude all departures from the procedures dictated for use from courts martial but any departure must be tailored to the exinch generalcy that necessitates it." that is the standard that the armed services committee has tried to apply in adopting the procedures for military

commissions that we have included in our bill. this new language addresses a long series of problems with the procedures currently in law. for example, relative to the admissibility of coerced testimony, the provision in our bill would eliminate the double standard in existing law under which coerced statements are admissible if they were obtained prior to december 30, 2005. they would be inadmissible regardless of when the coercion occurred. relative to the use of heresay evidence, the provision in our bill would eliminate the extraordinary in the existing law which places the burden on detainees to prove that hearsay evidence introduced against them is not reliable and probative. "relative to the use -- relative

to the issue of access to classified evidence and exculpatory evidence, the provision in our bill would eliminate the unique procedures and requirements which lamb perked the ability of defense teams to obtain information and which have led to so much litigation. we would substitute more established procedures based on the uniform code of military justice, the ucmj, with modest changes to ensure that the government cannot be required to disclose classified information to unauthorized persons. now, even if we're able to enact new legislation that successfully addresses the problems in existing law, we will have a ways to go to restore public confidence in military commissions and the justice that they produce. however, we will not be able to restore confidence in military commissions at all unless we

first substitute new procedures in language to address the problems with the existing statute. as of today, mr. president, we have almost 130,000 u.s. soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines on the ground in iraq. over the course of the next fiscal year, we will undertake the difficult task of drawing down these iraqi numbers while maintaining security and stability on the ground, and at the same time we have increased our forces in afghanistan with close to 60,000 troops engaged in increasingly active combat and combat support operations and more are on the way. while there are many issues where there may not be a consensus, we all know -- and there is a consensus on this -- that we must provide our troops the support that they need as

long as they remain in harm's way. senate action on the national defense authorization act for fiscal year 2010 will improve the quality of life for our men and women in uniform. it will give them the tools that they need to remain the most effective fighting force in the world. and, very importantly, it will send an important message that we, as a nation, stand behind them and are deeply grateful for their service. so we look forward to working with colleagues to pass this important legislation, and again i want to thank senator mccain for all he and his staff have done to bring this bill to the floor. and i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from arizona. mr. mccain: i'd like to thank chairman levin, and i share your gatgratitude in thanking our

committee chairmen and ranking members. thank them all for their hard work and they were ably saysed b-- and they were ably cased by their staffs. this would not be possible without the hard work of our staffs that ensures the process goes smoothly. i also want to extend my special thanks to chairman levin, with whom i have worked with for many years now. i commend him on his leadership, grairks and integrity in shepherding this bill. it is not easy manage the competing interests, views, and opinions of 26 senators. chairman levin disw and outstanding job in ensuring that we all feel heard and understood, even if we don't always agree. i continue to admire his steadfast dedication to the committee's long tradition of

bipartisan cooperation. chairman levin, you are a friend and a great colleague, and i appreciate your support in both regards. consistent with the long-standing bipartisan practice of the armed services committee, this bill reflects our committee's continued strong support for the brave men and women of the united states armed forces. it's for the most part an excellent bill. i believe the committee has made informed decisions regarding the authorization of over $680 billion in base and overseas contingency operating funds for fiscal year 2010. to a great extent it reflects the priorities laid out by the secretary of defense and the administration. it also reflects his decisions to end troubled programs and focus our limited resources on today's threats and the lessons we've learned after more than eight years of war. while the provisions in this

bill demonstrate our commitment to provide our soldiers, sailors, marm, an airmen, and me very best training, equipment, and support, in order to provide them with the very best possible tools to undertake their missions, i believe we can and should improve the bill in certain respects and i will offer amendments during our flute debate to do so. the bill takes care of our men and women in uniform and their families by providing military members with a 3.4% pay raise. it expands care for wounded warriors, supports families and improves military health care. it fully funds the growth of the army and marine corps. indeed, it authorizes further growth of the army, should that be necessary, to sustain our combat operations. the bill retains a balanced capability to deter aggression by increasing intelligence, survelings and reconnaissance

capabilities, investing in tactical aircraft in ships and accelerating the purchase of mine-resistant, all-terrain vehicles for our troops in afghanistan. this bill acknowledges that the united states has a vital national security interest in ensuring that afghanistan does not once again become a safe haven for terrorists. it supports a comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy that is adequately resourced and funded by congress based on identified needs to date and calls on the president to provide our u.s. military commanders with the military forces they require in order to succeed. in iraq, the committee ensures that the congress will support the president's plan to redeploy combat forces while providing our commanders the flexibility to hold hard-fought security gains and ensure the safety of

our forces. one of the toughest issues this committee has taken a leading role in, both in past years and in this bill, is detainee policy. since 2005, this committee has developed legislation on detainee matters, sometimes in cooperation with the white house and sometimes over its strong objections. because it's critical to our national security and the presser vaiftiopreservation of l principles. this bill makes changes to the military commission act of 2006. we have all -- senator levin, senator graham and others -- worked closely together to address some of these difficult issues. now, we haven't resolved all of the challenges that military commissions and other aspects of detainee policy present, but i believe that we've made substantial progress to strengthen the military

commission systems during appellate review, provide a careful balance between protection of national security and american values, and allow the trials to move forward with greater efficiency toward a just and fair result. the committee also had a healthy debate on the future of missile defense and our strategic deterrence capabilities. i welcome and share president obama's aspirations, hope for a nuclear-free world. however, i believe we must also be prudent and practical in our reductions and remain vigilant about the global proliferation of advanced missile and nuclear technology. while recently much our national defense posture supports combating terrorists, we cannot grow complacent to the danger that rogue nations like north korea and iran pose us to, whether it is missile launches within range of hawaii or transferring weapons to hezbollah or hamas.

we must strengthen our commitment to enforcing the nonproliferation treaty and the existing inspections regime. we must lead an international effort to interdict and prevent the word's most dangerous weapons from getting into the hands of the world's worst actors. i know there are varying views on the future of missile defense and our long-term strategic defense posture and i look forward to those debates. the bipartisan nature of our committee allows for candid discussion, lively debate, and at times disagreement. in that spirit, there's some items in the bill that i do not support and were were not in the president's budget request, such as continuation of the f-22 aircraft production line, funding for the joint strike fighter alter national engine and earmarks tolling approximately $6.4 billion. i was disappointed that in spite of a veto threat from the white house, our committee chose to

add $1.75 billion for seven f-22 aircraft and $439 million for an alter national engine for the joint strike fighter. neither the president asked for them. nor were they part of the service's unfunded priority list. secretary gates has consistently opposed the need for additional f-22 aircraft and has indicated on a number of occasions that additional f-22 aircraft are not required to meet potential threats posed by near-term add eadversaries. i strongly support secretary gates' decision to end the f-22 production line at 187 aircraft and his commitment and the president's commitment to building a fifth-gentlemen of thgenerationtactical fighter cay

focusing on the timely delivery of the f-35 joint strike fighter to the air force, navy, and marines. and i look forward to a lively debate on these and other important issue oves over the nt few daissments i want to make clear, the reason why senator levin and i supported the stressing and secretary gates' proposal to terminate at 187 the f-22 fighter aircraft is not because we believe we're going to leave the nation undefended. we need the next-general rigs f-35 joint strike fighter. our armed services are counting on them. we want to increase funding for the f-35 joint strike fighter, an aircraft and weapons system that in the view of many experts, including my view, would be far more capable of meeting the emerging threats of the future.

so this is not -- this debate, my colleagues -- i want you to understand -- is not just about cutting a weapon or bringing to an end, frankly, the line of a fighter aircraft; it's bringing to the end the line of one fighter aircraft and moving forward with another generation. for all three services, a very capable weapon system. one that meets the threats of the 21st century. so i think it's important that we look at the argument that will come forward about jobs created or jobs lost, there will be jobs created. but defense weapon systems, the rationale, should never be the creation of jobs. it should only be about the best way to defend this nation in a very dangerous world. so it's my understanding it is the wish of the chairman, and i join him, the first amendment for debate will be the

administration proposal to finish the f-22 aircraft production line saving some $6.4 billion -- $1.75 billion. so i look forward to that debate. i look forward to my colleagues coming to the floor that would oppose that amendment and i hope my colleagues understand we would like to get this done this week if possible. one more comment about the f-22 and the alternate engine for the joint strike fighter. the president of the united states, and i am told and the secretary of defense, have made it very clear: a veto is very likely if the congress does not act to end production of the f-22 line. i would strongly recommend the president of the united states go ahead and veto this bill if the f-22 is included.

at some point, with unemployment at 9.5%, people not being able to stay in their jobs, with health care being less available and less aforrable in america -- affordable in america, we cannot afford to spend $1.7 billion additional funds of taxpayer dollars for a system that can be replaced by a more capable weapon system and one that can against our nation with greater efficiency and less cost. so i believe, frankly, there's more at stake here than just whether we adopt the levin-mccain amendment to terminate production as scheduled. this is a much larger issue. i hope my colleagues understand the importance of it. i hope if the levin-mccain amendment is defeated, which i hope it is not, because i hope,

i believe senator levin and i can make a convincing argument on behalf of the administration and the secretary of defense. but if it is, have no doubt, there be no doubt, the president of the united states would veto this bill. i say that with great reluctance. i say it with almost a sense of deep regret because there's so many things in this bill that are important to the defense of our nation, whether it be care and pay raises and hospitalization and care of our wounded warriors along with many other issues but at some point this congress, this nation, has to exercise the fiscal discipline that an economic crisis we're in today demands. i thank senator levin for the long and close relationship and work we've done better. sometimes we have had very

spirited but very informative discussions. i know those will continue as we address this very important legislation before the senate. mr. president, i yield the floor. i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: