wanted to talk about. francis collins, and d., ph.d. was sworn in as the 16th rector of the national institutes of health in august of 2009 after being unanimously confirmed by the senate. a geneticist noted for his discoveries of disease changes leadership of the human genome project. prior to becoming directory service to rector of these genome research institute at nih. received his b.s. b.s. from the university of virginia ph.d. from yale and an m.d. from the university of north carolina at chapel hill. you are no stranger to the subcommittee in your statement will be made a part of this record in its entirety and you can please proceed as you so desire. >> thank you senator and it is a great pleasure to be here. good morning to all of you. it is an honor to appear to present the national institutes of health budget request for fiscal 2001 and to discuss my vision for the future of biomedical research. ..

to begin with. eight years ago the age of 44 this mother of two was diagnosed with lung cancer specifically it had already metastasized to her brain. normally this would be a death sentence despite surgery, radiation, chemotherapy the cancer continued its deadly march moving into her liver and pancreas. she kept on fighting and in early 2003 she enrolled in a trial of a drug that is a new gm based drug for cancer based on a molecular understanding of what has gone wrong in certain cases of lung cancer. after she started the drug, most

of her metastases vanished. look at the ct scans. this was the original one. in 2002 all of those areas are cancer in her liver. just six months later all but one is gone and today there is no evidence of cancer in her liver at all. why doesn't his work in all cases? in her case america's recovery. she is seven and a half-years-old with no clear signs of liver and her -- cancer in her liver, lung or pancreas. does this drug only work in about one-fifth of one cancer patients. but we now know why. if your tumor has a specific misspelling and a gene called egrr this is not for you and probably will not work so this demonstrates the potential of personalized medicine which is a major frontier for cancer, heart disease and virtually all conditions we could individualized treatment instead of doing the one-size-fits-all approach.

next i would like you to meet 9-year-old cory. he was affected by a disease robbing him of his vision. a disease called leber's congenital amaurosis and by age seven he was legally blind but he underwent an experimental procedure supported by the nih the university of pennsylvania, a gene therapy approach basically the idea was to take a normal copy of the p65 and injected in a viral into the back of his body and let me show you what happened in the video that you can see. 1i was treated and then by catching one and looking to see how he would do the but follow a rose on the floor you can see what the effects were. let's start here. at this point the treated on has been blocked so you are seeing what he is able to see without treatment trying to follow these

little areas on the floor. he's basically being asked to follow them and he's saying i can't see them. he's frustrated. he's standing there. he can't see where anything is. he finally says i can't see anything. now, the same day they patch the untreated issa he can see with the eye that has received the therapy and watch what happens. okay, follow those heroes, corey no mistakes. he even had to climb over an obstacle and go all the way around and he decided he was doing so well he wouldn't even stop he would just walk outside the door. [laughter] if we had the audio you hear wild applause from the researchers at that point.

this is in that dramatic? and this has been more than a year and now the consideration is to treat the other eye to read a third story that features prevention oriented research. this is about was the cook, she smoked for 25 years have of her life. a habit that put her in increased risk for heart attack, cancer and other disease. she's a high-powered realistic lawyers and tried to kick the habit many triumphs. she tried the gum, the patch, nothing worked for her. then she enrolled in a phase to trial of a vaccine against nicotine. the vaccine spurs the immune system to generate antibodies against nicotine. those blind to it prevented from entering the brain and no for pleasure response occurs after smoking. they did the trick for leslie. she has not slowed for three and a half years and there is now a phase three trial under way here

supported by the recovery act to test this in a thousand smokers at 20 centers. it's the first ever faced retrial of a smoking cessation vaccine. thanks to the discoveries you have funded working on a broad basis this is not personalized it doesn't depend on a certain gene? >> in this case the vaccine is actually raised against the nicotine itself. antibodies are against the material and the figure of smoke it gives people a hobby and it blocks the effect so there's no point in smoking and they have an easier time quitting. it's pretty dramatic. it hasn't previously been tried for this purpose and we are mixing immunology and drug addiction and interesting ways. there are efforts underway to do this for other drugs of addiction. let me conclude by quickly pointing out to you these represent just a few of the exciting areas of opportunity when i first came to this job as an incredible responsibility of

leading the national institutes of health i skimmed the landscape by medical research to identify areas that seem right for major advances. in the process of doing so identified five genes i thought were particularly ripe for investment and you have in front of you this publication from science published in january that goes through a description of the five things and i think that has been recently well received about a scientific community. one is to use the technology that have been invented in the last few years, and genomics, nanotechnology, imaging, computational biology to tackle the questions in a comprehensive way. questions like the causes of cancer and autism and what role the microbes plea in disease when we can't culture than in the laboratory and we can detect the presence by dna analysis. it's a good opportunity and when you mentioned already mr. chairman the importance of translating the basic science discoveries into new and better treatments of building the bridge as you see down here for

example san francisco but a bridge between the six research and drugs and in power in academic investigators to play a larger role and the acceleration that work whicis part of the health care reform bill which is an important aspect of this and we are excited about. and stem cells i'm happy to tell you there are now 64 tiemann embrey on a customs oelwein sadr on the registry and approved for federal funding follow up on obama's exhibit order from a year ago. a third area represented by the banner is here is to reach out for the nih research results and actually have an effect on the health care system and that means personalized medicine research, health disparities research, comparative effectiveness research, behavioral research and even health care economics are a major meeting on that nt week. with a third areas to recognize we have responsibilities to apply our medical research efforts to those in the less fortunate parts of the world and

that means the focus on aids, tuberculosis and malaria but going beyond that to neglected tropical disease and noncommissionable disorders which for the rapidly growing tobacco growing cause of mortality in the developing world. finally the reinvigoration and empowerment of research community which is the challenge especially in times of stress budgets to be sure we are encouraging young investigators we are encouraging innovation and training the next generation using the awards and i should for a moment here just say how much we missed the doctor, such a remarkable leader of nih and we are having a special symposium in her honor later this month bringing back many of the people supported by this award of the role she's played and so much of what we've done in training. also is this pamphlet and let me conclude by saying if our nation can be bold enough to act upon these unprecedented opportunities we will be amazed at what tomorrow will bring and

how swiftly we can turn the discovery into health as the title says. the one-size-fits-all approach to medicine will be a thing of the past. we will be using genetic information to personalize our health care. but if you allow me i see a future in which we will use stem cells to repair spinal cord injuries. bioengineered cartilage to replace one will use the anno technology to deliver therapy with exquisite provision. we will preempt heart disease in minimally invasive image guide procedures and use an artificial pancreas or other new technologies to manage ids better. i look forward to universal vaccine for influenza is you don't have to get a shot every year for the strain. i look for to the possibility more possible now than ever of an aids vaccine and the malaria vaccine and i dream of the day when we will be able to prevent alzheimer's disease, parkinson's and others that rothfuss to soon of family and friends. as you have heard the fiscal year 2011 request from this

committee is 32.1 site billion an increase of $1 billion. the funds will enable the biomedical research community to pursue a number of substantial opportunities in these major scientific health opportunity areas. so i am grateful for the chance to be here this morning. i am pleased to respond to any questions that you might have. thank you very much. >> dr. collins, thank you. i asked eric to give me more information on the smoking vaccine. something i hadn't heard about. that could be phenomenal. from prevention and we no smoking leads to all the diseases and everything that leads to it and the cost of society and most people have been on smoking want to get off of these but have a tough time. >> they do indeed. >> so this could be remarkable. that trial is ongoing right now. sprick it is recently started. i could find out for you the expected end date of the trial but they are pushing this

forward with all due speed. >> let me ask you this, we will just start a six minute round, is that what we have here? [inaudible] >> dr. collins, i noticed on the funding for next year how osama institutes go up by 3.2% and some bye 2.5 and some 2.8 and they are all over the place. i assume are some of these differences accounted for by focusing on those dramatic areas that you just mentioned, those five areas, is that what kind of is driving that now? >> that is right. those five teams to be seeming areas of opportunity. when we look at the investments of institutes to stem the areas a couple of years ago which is not a perfect but somewhat good predictor of what might be

possible in fy 11 it was clear that those opportunities are not entirely evenly distributed. so recognizing that $1 billion of the wood is only going to keep up with inflation still to be invested in an innovative way. we attempted to do some arranging of the budget to reflect that and that is what you see in the differences between institutes. they are modest but are important to point out that we are not just doing everything in lockstep. >> i ask we always be careful when you were dealing in percentages. as i've often pointed out zero to one is an infinite increase. [laughter] so sometimes those give a little funding to get them up looks like it is a huge percentage increase was so i always want to be careful when i look at that percentage increase. >> point taken. >> like the library of medicine has 4% but it's so small why

doesn't increase amounts for that? i always like to look at the very carefully. >> you're quite right, senator. >> the other 1i want to get into with herraiz on the funding. we put the money in the recovery act. at that time it was the site we put that in is a two-year stock for at least the following reasons one, because we didn't want researchers being laid off. we wanted to keep people employed. a lot of researchers were in the middle of projects and studies that we didn't want to interrupt but we knew that we were publicly going to face this two years from now coming back off of that. so i guess my question is what kind of challenges or defacing? how do you provide for this soft landing? are we facing any interruptions

at all in terms of science that is being done right now because of this cliff? >> senator, this is the question that keeps me up at night. on the screen there you will see what the total funding for nih has been the last ten years and the red bars are the dollars that came from the recovery act which we are deeply grateful for and which provide a shot in the arm for exciting innovative research that otherwise would have had to wait a long time to get started. things like the cancer genome atlas which was able to move forward at an unprecedented pace because of the availability of those funds. but as you can see the difference between fy ten total when you include that 5.2 billion of the recovery act dollars compared to the president's budget for fy 11 is a drop and that is the cliff that everybody talks about right there about $4 billion. we have done what we can in

anticipation that this might be a really challenging year to be sure that the recovery act dollars were invested as much as possible in the short term needs. so for instance a billion dollars of this has gone to construction and the extramural community. additional dollars have gone to equipment, things that were one time requirements. and some dollars of contra projects we thought we could get done in two years although that is a short cycle time. but we also felt that this was an opportunity to stimulate real innovation and get people to put forward out of the box ideas that they did in huge numbers. the challenge grant for instance we thought we might get 4,000 applications. we got 20,000. there was a great pent-up need for support for new ideas and many of those are in fact funded and we have now the question in their mind what do we do after the two years is expended? one thing we are doing is to

encourage those who believe they can't quite finish their project and the haven't quite spend all the money in two years to ask for in a cost extension and we will consider those quite seriously and if it seems reasonable and they're making reasonable progress we will grant that so as to at least stretchout the cliff a little bit but there is no question that the consequences of the situation are going to be significant. we estimate success rates for the nih guarantees which been in the 25 to 35% level most of the last 35 years and are now 25% are going to drop further in fy 11 at this budget level to about 15%. that is one chance out of seven that a given a grant would get supported and there is no question that is going to be stressful for all of us. >> that is not good. >> well, we've been wrestling with is ourselves. we need to do more at in my age. the question is where we get the

funding and the of the things the appropriations committee has to do and with budget constraints but we will see what we can do. i want to get one question while i am down to zero. alaska the question after senator cochran. >> mr. chairman, thank you. dr. collins, thank you again for being here in helpless review the budget request and pointing out your views of how we should identify the priorities in the most importantly is available to this committee. we know that you are a research scientist and were rewarded with a lot of recognition and metals and offers because of the of standing research that you have done and it reminds me of success of the university center at the feet to the continue to perform research there and

although he is no longer with us he has a fascinating and influential impact on heart disease and its understanding and therapy to help people live longer better lives. is their anything going on in the research field right now that rivals the work to you personally and dupre so highly for? do we have any really blockbuster researchers out there that you've identified in helping us provide funding for? >> yes, happy to tell you that there is an amazing, cadre involved in the research. i agree that dr. geithner was the legendary character. i studied his book when i was a medical school. that's how i learned a lot about physiology and the heart it would you agree that today you could count nobel prizes i

suppose. nih has been the source of support for no less than 131 nobel prize this over the last few decades and in fact this past fall when the nobel prizes were given out both for medicine and chemistry of the 65 of them were guarantees. remarkable people like liz blackburn who were right to be awarded the prize for the enzyme that maintained those ends of the,, some so they don't get right to like your shoelaces. remarkable stories all of those. many of them coming from a direction you couldn't have predicted that one of the wonders of the way that nih has been able to support the research is we base our decision many of them on what comes across to us by investigators with ideas that go through the most rigorous review system in the world and then are given the funds to chase after those

ideas. a new program that we are investing in called a pioneer award is particularly trying to identify those very creative individuals who we could unleash to follow their ideas and not have been quite so constrained by the systems that sometimes are in place that we need to track research but there are times you want to let somebody just go for it and we are determined to use those kinds of mechanisms and things like new innovators to make that happen. in that particular area the nih is supporting, i will mention cancer because i think we are at a remarkable moment in terms of being able to understand that that most detailed dna level what goes on in a cancer cell, not just some of the things that all the things that go wrong. why does the good sell go bad and what could we use with that information to develop therapies targeted like the case i told you about specifically towards the tumor?

that was the dream fight for six years ago. now it is absolutely transforming people's ideas of how to go forward and the researchers working on that, many of them 20 something, many of them with computational background because a lot of the challenges now is to figure out how to analyze them, the mountains of data that can be produced. they are remarkable to hang out with and i am actually quite inspired by our award of researchers. my concern is we need to be sure that we are giving them the confidence that support is going to be there so that they stick it out and are willing to take risk and not just do the obvious next step. >> one of the undertakings in our state is the jackson heart study which has been a comprehensive review of the individual medical history of people who have heart problems and see if we can identify factors that can be changed or corrected to help us do a better job of providing opportunities

for healthy lives rather than a destiny that has more likely to involve our problems. what is the status of that and are you requesting funding to continue or to go forward from that study or is their something else? >> we are very enthusiastic about that study, senator, and delighted by your strong support of this from the beginnings of this is carried out in mississippi and jackson with the university mississippi and the college participating nih has a big role in this supported by the heart lung and blood institute and already a lot of important observations come forward. steadying party of that secular disease and african-americans about which we negative know enough and we are starting to learn. so for instance, we are learning hypertension and obesity and diabetes. the three of those together, the so-called metabolic some durham occurs as phenomenally high rates in this group.

we are also learning that even individuals of normal body weight have a higher incidence of hypertension and diabetes in this group and that puzzle and a question is trying to be answered now has that doggett, is that the environment, is a genetics? we have to figure out what are the causes because these are the pieces that have a great deal of confidence to the eckert consequence in terms of heart disease and stroke. we are learning this kind of gathering together is also a great way to get community involvement and the ways in which the jackson heart study increased the community and has been embraced by the community is a wonderful model for doing research on health disparity. the funding for the 2011 part study is very much part of the budget and the heart institute intends to continue that at least through 2013 and at that point they will be evaluating what progress has been attained. but everything i have heard from the leadership is there and the expect to continue this for a long time. >> thank you very much. thank you, mr. chairman.

>> thank you, senator cochran. i have a few things to follow-up on. president obama doud for curing cancer in our time that i remember when president nixon declared war on cancer and has been financing ever since while i appreciate the president's vow i just wonder if we are going in the right direction. you've come up with some things that give hope of institute released its report on the trial network. according to the iom the network is underfunded and is approaching, quote, a state of crisis. most disturbing of all about 40% of the cancer trials are never completed which might suggest we are wasting valuable time and money. so again i want to give you the opportunity to respond to that.

the report found that the network is too bureaucratic. the research is poorly coordinated due to the cumbersome review procedures the average time the traditional been an idea for a trial and getting it started is about two years. another problem they pointed out was the distressingly low participation rate of adults in clinical trials. so i wanted to kind of go over that with you and how are you responding to this iom study? >> senter i think all of us are quite concerned about the situation. certainly i've studied that iom report carefully and talked to the leadership of the cancer institute about this. the cooperative groups that have been conducting the clinical trials on cancer as long as 50 years have certainly produced wonderful data over the course of time but there is no question that the current system is not functioning as well as it should

and that is what the report pointed out. i should mention that it was the doctor and the leadership that asked for the iom to look at this so they were fully aware of the need of course on the changes and asking iom to help out with this and are now i think in bracing the report and already moving forward to try to make the such changes. clearly the number of serious issues, one is of long time as you mentioned between the time when a protocol was conceived and when the first patient is enrolled and that has stretched of two and a half years. here we have a field that is moving so quickly that by the time you get to the point of enrolling a patient sometimes the protocol didn't seem like one that he would want to support at that point so the timetable has to be shortened. nci has moved forward to make changes that would limit that to one year and no more and obviously part of this is our own system of trying to run the ball to center trials which has

gotten quite convoluted and complicated in the sense that particularly for human subject to approval every center has its own irb and it has to view the consent form and if you are running a trial that involves dozens of centers and every irb wants to tweak things you can see how time passes and you don't end up with things getting under way very quickly. furthermore, -- >> [inaudible] >> exactly. and there is a major move underway to implement that. it has been i think delayed by the fact that many legal minds have been involved saying that institutions shouldn't be seen anyone other than their own as capable -- >> you use anything legislatively? >> i think it can be handled without legislation. i will tell you there is a great brand as well largest cancers but other areas of clinical research to do something to streamline the subject effort that we are not really in every

instance using this in a way to protect participants in research that we've gotten all tangled up in the bureaucracy and sometimes we are mixing up the things that are high risk with fixed or low risk and we need revamping there and this is something that is going to get attention quite soon. other areas -- there's a problem in some instances particles may be run into many centers and teaches only unrolling a small number of patients so it isn't an efficient way to do things. there may not be a sufficient evaluation of whether a protocol is actually the best use of the money for that disease at that point. there needs to be more of a scientific rigor in the process. all of those are accepted now by the nci. there will be research at the institute. that announcement is eminent and ensure the new director will take this on as a very high priority to try to understand how best to reengineer the clinical trial network because this is critical for our future. we are going to have a much

higher molecular input coming forward from a molecular understanding of cancer and we need an engine in place to test them and see what works and what doesn't so this could not be more important and i appreciate your raising the issue. >> thank you. i have a couple more. let me see if i can get this one -- a question i have deals with alzheimer's but may be more broad than that. a panel convened by the nih issue of funding last month that left people confused to think about alzheimer's. according to the panel there is no evidence any of the strategies people have been told to use to prevent alzheimer's makes any difference. that includes getting exercise, taking supplements, keeping your mind active doing crossword puzzles and so forth. according to this panel there's no evidence that any of these prevent you from getting this disease. so again, the one question would be how to interpret a finding

like that and the other question about alzheimer's has to do with a broad level of funding and how we think about funding for different diseases. but let's focus on this one first about the finding. what we tell people? how we interpret this? >> i think there have been a lot of messages out there that people were confused by what works and what doesn't. the whole point of the panel was to actually look at the evidence and try to see what we object of we know about measures that could be used to delay or prevent this disease because this is a disease that affects large numbers of people and we are all concerned about it. i just turned 60 and am thinking about it more than i used to and basically all of the things that were put forward as potentially being beneficial in reducing the risk haven't held up very well to the rigorous scientific evaluation. it looks as if doing crossword puzzles or doing sudoku makes

you better at doing crossword puzzles and sudoku. laughter could have a more global effect than protecting mental capacities as you are getting older. the one exception they thought perhaps there was evidence for is donner yet and particularly only get free fatty acids which is something you find in fish and there is data supporting that as a possible preventive measure it that one deserves more study but there was a bright light and then of course there are well documented influence is that we know about. smoking for instance is clearly a risk factor for alzheimer's as well as a list of other things and certainly obesity seems to have a connection as well. but in terms of the specific mental exercises which i think was one of the disappointments for people who hoped that there would be a way that you could take control of the situation and help yourself there didn't seem to be evidence to support that. >> mr. chairman, thank you.

we were talking in my first round of questions about the university of mississippi and the legacy of dr. arthur. one thing that this committee decided to do a few years ago was earmarks, heaven forbid, some money in this particular bill and target the funding for grants and research to institutions and states that were getting less money and less attention to their work and the politicians and many other states which had long records of success and notoriety in certain areas. the university of mississippi medical center but was benefited greatly from one person's influence, dr. arthur and we talked about that but there are other institutions within small states in particular who come out on the short end of the

stick when they apply for grants and try to get federal support for the work they are doing. some of the ideas may be good but the money is never commit never finds its way to those institutions so we set aside in the fy $2,009,224,000,000 in a program designated for institutional development awards. the purpose of that is to spread the money out in areas that would not probably be seriously considered for grants. finding and looking for the activities and the research that is being done and having national impact and importance. i guess my question is the received a little over $85 billion of the amount appropriated. that is only 2.4% of the total so it's not like we maneuvered

everybody but i guess that is the reason for my question. some states do better than others and i was just wondering is there any way for more careful review to be made to be sure that the intent of the set aside is carried forward and that some states are not treated too much better than everybody else? so the consequences of being left out? mississippi shares 2.4% for example. that doesn't sound like much to me. what are your thoughts about how we could better define what the money is for to make sure it carries out the intent of the congress? >> thank you, senator. the institutional development awards usually called idea grants have been strongly supported by nih and are administered by the national research sources and as the budget for fy 2010 went up to

$229 million. these are competitive. they are available to the states identified as idea states one of which is mississippi but there are a number of others traditionally underfunded by nih oftentimes because they have a lower proportion of institutions' heavy and research efforts but we felt we needed to be sure. we were finding opportunities in those states and the states have opportunities for the nih funding. there's a couple of specific programs, biomedical research excellence or cobra is one. there is an ibm network of biomedical research excellence, and in fact most of the states in the idea network have been applying for those and many of them with considerable success but it is a competitive program where the peer review system kicks in and so because of our interest and making sure that with the funds available we support what seems to the experts who are not biased towards any particular state but trying to identify the best use

of the money we have to see where the outcomes fall. another program that i think is relevant here is actually the ability through the recovery act to support construction efforts that have been asked for in the idea states and mississippi recently received such a construction grant. arkansas did. in fact a number of the idea states for this $1 billion construction money that was part of the recovery act had been quite successful and we are delighted to see that because that may he be a way to build that capacity so that in the coming years to will be a better position to be highly competitive for these funds. >> thank you. >> senator specter? >> thank you, mr. chairman. dr. collins, i join my colleagues in welcoming you here and think you for taking on this

important job. my view is expressed repeatedly the national institutes of health are the crown jewels of the federal government perhaps the only jewels and in an era we are searching for ways to prolong the lives and save lives and save money, it seems to me we ought to be funding nih more aggressively than we are. senator harkin and i led the way with senator cochran and others to raise nih funding from 12 to $40 billion up $10 billion more in the stimulus, and the stimulus i have heard has court created a wave across america of what the record show the witness is nodding in the affirmative. [laughter]

the enthusiasm rekindled a lot of interesting young people who've been very much concerned because the founding team bordoff or if there had been a loss in excess of $5 billion when we had the cost of living adjustments and also some across-the-board cuts. last year's funding was disgraceful with 772 billion this year's funding is also disgraceful in my opinion in a $1 billion with a comment made not to million before but it wasn't meant to lessen the annual funding. so i'm going to repeat a message to you that i have met frequently, and that is that the scientific calamity is going to have to become a lot more politically active blowing the

horn. the statistics were impressive as to what the increased funding did for nih on the rates on strokes and progress on the strains of cancer and heart disease and write down the line and i think when you have to do for the congress and the administration is show how many dollars it saves. senator harkin has been a leader in what he has some of the wellness, the new concept called the heart can believe to -- harkin of all this doctrine. exercise come annual exams and catching ailments before they become chronic and to debilitating and expensive. the money can be saved by research, a tremendous amounts of money can be reduced by research. in your medical communities of gotten a lot of money. university of pittsburgh has gotten $4 billion in the last decade and it is across the

country. a lot of prominent people on the boards publicly and influential people. and appropriations run on the politics, on pressure. you've got a great case but it hasn't been expressed very well. and i don't fault he was a great director and staffed by great people. dalia understand you convened a meeting of your 27 institutes to talk about accelerated network which is new and has been put forward to bridge the gap so-called valley of death as i've heard expressed in the scientific community between the bench and the bedside between research and practical application. it has an authorization of

$500 million, not a whole lot of money for that kind of a project but first of all, could you confirm the meeting at 27 institutes got together on an accelerated network and what was the thrust of the conversation? >> thank you. let me first say how appreciative your leadership has been over the years in a supporting the cause of biomedical research and particularly the critical role you played for nih support including the recovery act funding which as you have eluted to provide a remarkable shot in the arm for research community as being spent i think in a truly exciting ways. with regard to the acceleration network this part of the health care reform legislation as you know puts forward a proposal of having the nih take on a new flexible way the acceleration of

the process of coming from a basic science discovery to clinical evidence drug therapy most likely that this will also apply to other kind of clinical evidence is. we did discuss this last thursday. all of the institute directors together for a full day retreat. >> i heard there was a lot of a enthusiasm. >> there was a lot of enthusiasm. people were delighted about the potential because this audience reached the point of making this a real possibility. not that nih would become a drug to the element company with the partnerships that we could now established between nih and the private sector through this kind of legislation are exciting and unprecedented and are being very well received by if decompose by academics and people and companies. >> what is your professional judgment as to the kind of priority attention that the ought to receive? >> from my perspective, this is one of the five themes i published in science magazine as most worthy of high priority

attention. the cure exploration at work provides additional flexibility, so this is a very high priority for us and obviously we are mindful of the fact that at the moment this is authorized but not appropriate and we are mindful of the fact that it may be a difficult year in fy 11 with the ending of the recovery act dollars but certainly from my perspective and speaking for the authors this is something people are anxious to get started on and have great hopes for recognizing this is high risk research that many drug development programs fail and if we are going to undertake this we have to be prepared for that. i think we could learn a lot by doing this. >> wedding programs fail and many succeed. the success have been monumental in which you have done for prolonging and saving the lives. what could you do with a

$500 million? tell the subcommittee, she could accomplish. >> to undertake a project where you go from a basic science discovery to an fda approval is several years and expensive effort with $500 million we could probably proceed with about 20 projects simultaneously that went from the pipeline and probably another 20 where we identify compounds already increasing that has been abandoned for various reasons because they didn't work out for one applications with a light workout for a different one, so-called free purposing which would allow you to skip over expensive steps. that would be a bold effort indeed to take on roughly 40 projects on 40 different targets. >> one final comment with the red light on. i would like you to go back to your office and refueled what could be accomplished with the

$500 million in as specific terms you could would you project he could do with it. and i know it is very hard to talk about saving lives but you have some experience in what has gone on an officer lives and statistically. and to the extent that you could quantify on the seating lives, prolonging lives were saving money, i think that it would be very helpful when the chairman and the rest of us sit down to allocate the funds. this is a very difficult subcommittee having to education, the competition for the money is absolutely fierce so the more specific you can be, the stronger the case can carry. thank you, dr. collins and mr. chairman. >> i want to first of all say

that this whole acceleration network that we have put into the health care reform bill was a similar effort by senator specter. he really doggett that one and since i was -- i wear the other hat as the chairman of the committee, too, this is one that senator specter championed and got in there and was honest all the time to make sure it was not dropped so it was held in there and i think him for that. i agree that this is something that really needs to be done and we talked about it personally many times in the past. senator specter i think has really been the great leader on this one. just again of course i -- the field of competition for a lot of money and constrained budgets so i'm going to play a little bit of the devil's advocate

here. but what funding the cure acceleration network and this 500 million or however it goes, what with that allow nih to do that it can't do now? >> a diprete -- it's appropriate to ask those questions. and we are in fact pushing this translation agenda in innovative ways. there is a program that this conagra's has funded, therapeutics for the really neglected disease is that aims to try to fill in some of the missing pieces in the valley of death that's necessary to cross if you are going from a promising compound to an fda application for a clinical trial and we are pursuing that quite vigorously. senator, i do understand the pressure on the budget system are severe and i should have said earlier in that consequence -- in that condition affect the president's budget was able to come and put a billion dollars of in on a h -- nih is something

we should credit for their version of science and i am personally delighted to see this is an administration that put science at the high priority than those in discretionary budget. but we could do that the c.a.n. legislation provides is not just about money though. it's also about flexibility. with that legislation allows is that some proportion of the money can be used in a darpa for look-alike model where you go beyond traditional grants, contracts and agreements to manage projects and forward looking ways and that for this kind of science where you need to make decisions clearly and bring in other partners and quick turnaround and you need to fill the void with the science is showing needs to be done can be quite valuable in the present time we do not have the flexibility for that sort of project and we could benefit from that. >> dr. collins you have the flexibility now that its offer price. what you are saying is that you don't have the money.

>> actually the way the bill was written says the flexible bodies of the bill may not be utilized unless the appropriation is put forward. as an appropriation is required before this is activated so on less in the appropriations process you all are thoughtfully leading there is a green light offered to this project by providing some kind of funding. i am not permitted to take advantage of the offer last flexibility. that is the with the legislation was put together. >> even if we just appropriate a dollar? >> i suppose also the would be a little hard to do a darpa program with 1 dollar. >> i'm just talking about the trigger man said. you told me something i didn't know. this is very interesting. >> of course the other question is in trying to figure not all of the priorities are now struggle with how does this fit and obviously you might say why don't you just do this with the budget you've got? that would mean i would have to do less of something else and

all ready with our 15% success rate living you can imagine how much of a stress and strain that is. dr. collins, i feel your pain. [laughter] the same thing has hit us here, not just here but in health and education we will have real problems in education meeting the needs, a lot of things pulling and that we are not going to have the fund since we have to make some tough decisions too and some of our friends are not going to be happy with the decisions that we make that we are all going to sharpen our pencils and try to prioritize things and what i am hearing about the acceleration that work is that it is a high priority to get the translation of research and so are you going to look at what you just told me

about the trigger mechanism in the legislation. i think senator specter that is something we have to take a look at here and i accept your word on that we just need to see how much we need to put in to trigger that and now i know senator specter would like a full 500 million. [laughter] so what point >> we could do more than that. that was an appropriation for fy 2010. now we could do a billion. [laughter] stomach it was 500 for 2010. >> it could be a billion or 2 billion. >> you tell me where to get the money. [laughter] >> we will just put it out there. who we are going to take it away from to get that money. like i said, it's fine we just

have a lot of different demands on our money. >> you and i found as much as $3.7 billion in the past, and it was exactly what you mentioned, it was the sharp pencil and there are other accounts that do not rate with curing cancer or parkinson's or alzheimer's you and i did it before and we can do it again. >> we did before when we had a budget flexibility. i don't see much of that right now unless you've got some way of getting it. anyway i ran up my time. i'm yielding to senator specter another round. >> one of the lines i would like to take up and that is the

funding on a minority health. i know that it is in the budget for $219 million the health reform bill elevated the national center on minority health and health disparities at nih to and institute and the administration requested a budget of $219 million which by comparison seems low. what do you recommend on that, dr. collins and? >> the national institute as it now is is a major coordinator of minority health and health disparities research. but certainly all of the institutes are invested in this area. if you look at the graph on the

screen the total investments estimated for 2011 with this budget would be more like $2.7 billion, so more than ten times what the funding is specifically for that institute because we actually think minority health and health disparities ought to be a priority for all of the institute's whether it is the cancer institute with diabetes institute these are all areas where health disparities are critical. >> then why was the new institute established for the health if it is a common needed in other places? >> i think there was a desire to have it visible, to have a coordinating function -- >> $119 million doesn't give you a lot of visibility. >> it has provided an opportunity to get endowment to some of the traditional minority serving institutions. that is a major part of what the center and now institute has done. when the flexibility didn't exist before and certainly this institute every four years puts

forward a strategic plan that they toward made on health disparities and that didn't really have a home before in terms of doing that kind of strategic plan coordination and now with us. >> thank you. >> mr. specter let me follow on what i started with you. the first part had to do with the finding of the panel but here is how nih decides what to spend on individual diseases. it is something that comes up here after year i hear about. first, congress doesn't earmarks funding levels by disease, and i hope we never do. as long as i am chairman and we never will. i am often asked by patients and that tickets for example how to explain the nih funding level for a disease like alzheimer's. as we know, alzheimer's is a burden on our society not just in human terms but in terms of the overall economy. there is an estimate out there that from 2010 to 2015 the

medicare and medicaid costs of alzheimer's will total, ready for this? about 20 trillion that is just for the care of alzheimer's. i don't know if that is high or low i'm just telling you. even if it was half of that it would be staggering. yet if you look at the nih budget funding for alzheimer's makes up for a much smaller share than one might expect, about 1.5%. another example, pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer related death. less than 2% of the national cancer institute is devoted to this disease. so, my question is this, dr. collins, what role does the burden of the disease, the burden on society play where nih allocates its money? >> center, that is a great question and it's a question that all of the people who have sat in this chair in the prior

year's have also wrestled with from the very beginning of nih and the system of trying to define how to set priorities. there's always been debates about what are the right waiting factors two fy to particular diseases. and i would say it is a complicated calculus. it will take a minute to explain it. first of all, some of what nih does need not to be focused on a specific disease otherwise we will not have the foundational discoveries that result in the nobel prizes and a transformative understanding seven and immunology and cellular biology and all of those things important foundations upon which everything rests. as we would not want to have our entire budget specifically focused on disease research or we would be mortgaging our future. when it comes to those things that are in need of attention how do we decide? certainly the burden of disease has to be a big factor and the cost of the disease has to be a big factor and you have quoted numbers from alzheimer's the

staggering in that regard. diabetes could also be cited in that we had cancer and heart disease. but if we base hour were decision solely on those issues that rear disease is would tend to get ignored or funded in only the very smallest amounts. if a rare disease happens to strike your own family is hard to say it doesn't matter for that person the burden of disease is very high so we clearly have a responsibility there as well. oftentimes studying a rare disease gives us an insight into the common diseases. we study perjury about effects may be 30 kids in the country and we learn something about aging we never knew before that affects all of us. those kind of connections keep popping up over and over again. we wouldn't have that if we hadn't started studying the high cost of cholesterol levels. all of those i think our reasons not to focus solely on the burden of disease. then there's the scientific community to say that we have a disease problem and we are going

to throw money at it if nobody has an idea about what to do it is unlikely to be productive. .. and when you look at the landscape of what to do across diseases, it doesn't match up nicely with what you might have

guessed is based on epidemiology, but i think it is fair to say there is a pretty strong connection. alzheimer's-- we are working hard on that. there are 30 new drugs that are in various stages of being developed for this approach. using things we have learned about the amyloid deposits in the brain and the enzymes involved in breaking that down and how to encourage them to do a better job. vaccinations, we talked about vaccinations against nicotine and maybe a vaccination against amyloid for alzheimer's. unfortunately the early trials ran into unfortunate side effects that people are developing new ideas about how to get around that. i couldn't agree more that there is an area that desperately needs a breakthrough, it is alzheimer's disease. a lot of people have tried. >> that gets me to another question that just about causes and the rapid growth of certain disease. it seems like alzheimer's is

exploding. pancreatic cancer, a huge increase in pancreatic cancer in just the last few years. different medical personnel have talked to about this is there something going on out there. something is causing this huge increase in pancreatic cancer, no and no one can quite figure out what it is. so that is why i say, you look at this, i mean, i would like to have some sort of satisfaction or some feeling, some positive feeling that nih's pivoting a little bit on this and saying what is causing this? and guiding some more research into pancreatic cancer and what is happening there. we always knew that it was one of those secret kind of cancers. in other words you didn't know about it until it was too late because there were no markers for it or anything. it is not only that now but just the huge increase. by for if the figure but it is a

tremendously number of people being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. do you think nci is looking at this and putting more emphasis on that? >> i think pancreatic cancer is a major concern and it is for me when you see the number of individuals being diagnosed with this disease which as you say already comes to light because it is doesn't reveal itself and in an oftentimes has spread. it is all too often a disease that we don't do much for at the present time. chemotherapy which may gain a few months. and of course, some notable figures, patrick swayze diagnosed with this disease of the way in which that created nunu personal face has brought more attention to this, as will it just so pancreatic cancer is one of the cancers being pursued by the cancer genome in this comprehensive effort to identify what exactly goes wrong in a pancreatic cell to cause it to grow out of control this way and

not just look under the lamppost where we have been looking all along for clues but actually using the tools of genomics to get all the answers, all the ways that a a cell in the pancreas can start to go bad. that will.i.am confident give us a comprehensive ability, both to do a better job of early diagnosis but most importantly to identify new magic with that will go to the heart of that cancer like a pancreatic cancer. the problem right now is we don't know what the target is we are shooting at. the cancer genome atlas will reveal the complete list of targets. of course that doesn't happen overnight or code that is a process and again they cures acceleration network we talked about a minute ago will assist once the target is identified in speeding up the process getting something ready for clinical trial. all of the steps have to be integrated together. i think having leadership for the cancer institute is going to be quite timely in this regard. i am impatient just as you are,

frustrated as you are about this terrible disease of pancreatic cancer and how many people we lose to it and how impotent they seem to be so often in being able to stop the course of the disease and i would not want to have a day go by where we are passing up the opportunity of new ideas to do something about this. >> it is like b. cell lymphoma and things like that and nci has done miraculous. it is just a nominal, very good. >> that is a good point because there you have targets and they are the drugs have been developed against those targets and boy they work. >> they sure do. we will follow up on that. you recently joined secretary sebelius and fda commissioner hamburg in announcing a new partnership between nih and fda that again is intended to speed up the process of turning basic scientific discoveries into treatments. what is this effort? how does this correlate with

c.a.n.? what are the goals? is this different than what we have been talking about? >> it is a part of the whole system that needs to be coordinated, integrated, optimized. i think it is clear that relationships between nih and fda have to be really well orchestrated in order for all of those complicated steps in going from an idea to having a successful clinical trial to go forward without missteps that cost time and costs money. the fda has enormous challenges in front of them in terms of the way in which the development of therapeutics is evolving. the idea that you might for instance for cancer need to get to a place where most patients are not being given one compound that maybe two or three that is targeted specifically to their tumor because you are going to do in their term or what exactly what is going wrong. you look at your list of drugs and pick the combination you

know is zeroed in on their problem. how does fda evaluate a clinical trial with thousands of patients were they aren't all taking the same thing? they need scientific research efforts to prepare them for that and regulatory signs that peggy hamburg has been talking about is exactly what is needed. we had nih agree and in fact we have funded with fda for the first time a research program on regulatory science. we got 59 letters of intent. they are really interesting things being put forward that the scientific community thinks they can offer to help fda with the things coming down the pike as far as regulatory challenges. many academic investigators if they are getting more involved in the development of therapeutics in the cures acceleration network will make that happen, they are not familiar with exactly how to do this and there is a risk that they might sort of get very close to an fda application and then find out they have left out something really important and have to backtrack and waste time and money. so we have to tighten up those

relationships. peggy hamburg and i have been waiting since last summer to figure out how to do this new leadership council which she and i will cochair will involve senior leadership of both agencies and will involve many people at the middle level so that we could prepare for the opportunities that are calming and not end up in some sort of bureaucratic mixup which would be really heartbreaking to see. i think the atmosphere is just right for this. >> tell me about the role of what i would call patient advocacy groups and when you are going out to conduct human trials, as you said there are always risks when you conduct human trials. i think it is important to inform patients from the beginning and help them understand what you are going through in terms of the regulatory end of it. been so i'm just wondering if you and dr. hamburg are looking at, when you are setting up this regime of involving these patient advocacy groups, so that

they can be supportive because they want to be. they want to get the human trials out there and i think it might be wise to have them involved as-- i mean you want them involved so they understand what you are doing, that they can be a proponent of it, that they can be out in the public advocating for this, and sort of acting as a shield for you out there perhaps because a lot of people don't understand what you may be doing in these groups can help you. i hope you will look at involving them in this process. >> senator i completely agree with you. i think there are many heroes then she rose up there in the advocacy organizations who have remarkable insight into what we could do to improve the success of our whole enterprise and we listen to them with great

attentiveness and certainly with regard to this relationship, we have already had some of those informal consultations and on june 2, we are holding a public sort of town meeting about this new nih fda leadership council and asking advocates and other members of the public to come forward and tell us what they think are the highest priority matters for this council to address. >> are these on line town meetings? >> i think we are webcasting it and encouraging people to come live and come to the microphone. >> is that going to be out of the camp is? >> it is. >> very good. i appreciate that. i think that would be important. of course, how could i leave you without asking about stem cells? i would not let this go.

i heard you announce that she did in in your opening statement some stem cell has been approved and including the line that has been studied more than any other. again, just what is the significance of this, how many lives are we up to now and give me some crystal ball gazing. where are we headed? >> thanks for the question, because this is a very exciting area of biomedical research. there are now 64 human embryonic stem cell lines that have been approved by this nih process that was stimulated by obama's executive order and better up on the nih registry and may now be used by researchers using federal funds and that is the number that is going to continue to grow. we have more than 100 additional lines that are in the process of being review. the goal of course in the review is to be sure that the consent process that was utilized for the embryo donors was above reproach. we want to be sure that these lines were chained in a way that is entirely open to ethical

scrutiny and that is wide the nih has been conducting the reuse of those documents before certifying such a line. we were very havel to be able to get the materials just about a month ago on a few of the lines have been particularly heavily used since 2001 when as you recall, president bush's decision was that lines could not be used that derived after that but there were 21 lines that were allowed at that point. there were a couple of them that were used particularly heavily. one called each one we were able to approve right away because we have the documentation. the one that was causing a lot of anxiety in the community with a line called age nine and it took a while for the driver of that line because it involves israel and the united states to locate all the documents and to get them to us. once we have been we did a rigorous review and a short turnaround. we are happy to see that everything was totally in order and approve that line and i

think that is settle down some of the concerns people had about whether that line was still going to be available. we allow the researchers to work with that with an existing grant that if somebody came back for a competing renewal we wanted them to start using approved lines. there will be hundreds more coming through. on top of that of course there is great excitement about this additional way of making a priori post stem cell by taking a skin cell with just four genes carefully chosen and this is a remarkable work of-- who i am sure ought to win the nobel prize. you can turn that into a perry postell and basically many cell type if you've stimulated with the right caught tail. it is just phenomenal senator that there is this much plasticity in the system with a cell that has been sitting in your skin all those years and she were originally horn is capable of having that ability

or go but i guess it sort of makes sense from a genome perspective. after all that skin cell has the whole genome. it just needs to be woken up again and encouraged to think that it is young and has all the potential to do everything you could imagine. that is an area that is just bursting. we are actually starting on the nih campus a special center for the so-called ips, induced stem cells and the specific goal there is to push the agenda towards actual clinical applications. the beauty of these, if it turns out to be as successful as we all hope is that with these are your cells so if you were to need them for parkinson's disease, because you develop better or for a liver problem you should be able to receive that kind of auto transplant without the rejection problems that would otherwise apply if the cells came from somebody else. so that is a big positive about this.

this questions or safety particularly because a cells sometimes grows when it isn't supposed to. one of the ways we characterized stem cells like ips cells are embryonic stem cells is by whether they can make tumors. if you put them into a particular model. obviously we have to be very sure before we tried this human application that we are not creating new trouble. there is as you may know a single fda approved trial for clinical use of human embryonic stem cells for spinal cord injury. they have not yet enrolled their first patient but expect to later this year. obviously everyone is watching that although i think realistically one should not assume the first trial of many brand-new therapy is going to tell the holes tale. of all the areas that are going forward right now in biomedical research that i think have been breathtaking in their potential

and this is near the top of the list. i think nih as you can tell from my remarks is excited about pushing this forward with as much energy and as many resources as we are able to. >> i just asked to get the information on the spinal cord. i read about it a little bit but if you can get me some information i would be. >> happy to do that. >> the last issue of scientific american which is called the layman's magazine of the nih report that i can understand. it is my monthly reading every month but the last cover, if you get a copy was all on the ips, on the adult stem cell as they say and there was a fascinating article about turning the clock back and dr. yamanaka is featured in that.

the way it was written, just make you think that this could be sort of the way to go. i don't know. that is why i have been in favor of all stem cell research, whatever pathway that leads us down within a ethical guidelines we have established. >> think about sickle cell disease and the possible applications. this is already beat done in the mouse model which is one of the reasons i'm excited about its potential for humans. if you could take somebody with sickle cell disease is terrible disorder where the red cells clog up in the vessels and cause all matter of organ damage, take a skin cell make it into an ips cells grow, grow a bunch of those and then using well-established experimental protocols convert those ips cells into bone marrow stem cells and infuse them back in after you have fixed the sickle mutation which you can do while you you were still working with an ips cell and a cloture dish so you can do the whole cycle. that has been done at mit and a

mouse model and cured sickle cell disease in the mouth. everybody will say we have cured a lot of diseases with mice and we have that by this protocol and pretty radical and pretty exciting and certainly one of the diseases i hope will be high on the list for first human applications will be sickle cell. it has been 100 years since this does-- disease was first described. >> let me ask you about our columnists-- autologous stem cells. i've been meeting about the change in their approval process that took place in about 2005 if i'm not mistaken. but that is another regulatory and. i am just interested in the scientific and because i have it people in my office who have had autologous stem cell treatment, and interesting group of people.

one was a pilot who had been in an airplane crash, and was basically paralyzed from his waist down and through a process of a tall at the stem cells-- he is not walking like you and i but with keynes, he is actually walking but not fully recovered. another person that had some hard problems brought in his different pet scans and different things like that and autologous stem cells. has never had to have heart surgery. there were a few others that i met, but this is all through autologous stem cells and some of that is being done in our country right now. can you enlighten me as to what this involves and what is nih doing with a tall at the stem cells? >> this is an interesting area and a rather controversial one.

just what capability do these apologists themselves have two home to the site where they are needed and actually turn into the kind of cells that are needed there in order to compensate for what is happened whether it is a spinal cord injury, whether it is a heart attack and you are trying to provide an opportunity for the heart to repair itself. frankly the nih supported studies on this have not been as encouraging as many people at hope. take the approach to heart attack. 10 years ago there was a lot of suggestions and enthusiasm that bone marrow stem cells might, if given directly into the heart muscle after a heart attack, allowed a pair of that area that has suffered damage, and they were experienced done in animals that looked encouraging and human trials that were done in many centers that had somewhat mixed results. i think now, looking back on that, the evidence that that that is actually been beneficial is not nearly as convincing as one would like.

that has not stopped of course the research from going forward, and it shouldn't and i can't tell you but i couldn't for the record exactly what the total is of nih supported autologous stem cell trials. i will say i've heard some heartbreaking stories of people who have gone outside of the u.s. to undergo these kinds of trials in the hands of people who really are not scientifically very rigorous and bad things have happened in terms of the consequences. infections, stem cells that got into the wrong place. people basically spending large sums of money for the kinds of therapy that really had no scientific vases in hopes that it would help them. anybody contemplating that ought to be eyes wide open as far as what the evidence is. and we will continue to push this approach. we spent more money on adult stem cells than we do on embryonic stem cells because of the potential opportunities

therein obviously there are great success is particularly bone marrow transplants that they could point to that it saved many many lies but the broader application for hearing problems that involve solid organs i think are much more challenging. there is a protocol just getting started not with a tall at the cells, but with fetal cells to try to treat lou gehrig's disease, als which is obviously a diseased great frustration and great tragedy when it strikes. these kinds of approaches that deserve every bit of attention as long as they are done rigorously and as long as we find out at the end of the study did a work or did it not so we can guide people who are interested in that outcome. >> i would like to know more about autologous stem cells. i would just like to know what is being done at nih and research on autologous stem cells? >> happy to provide a summary of that for you senator. >> that would be good. i would appreciate that. that is good. i enjoyed the session very much.

as you know dr. collins i have always in the past i do have sessions with each of the directors of the institutes. however, because of some added responsibilities i have busier now, my time is being crunched a lot and i can't do that right now. i am hopeful though, and i say this for the record, that sometime during this year, when i find some space opening up a little bit, that i might ask mr. bertini and ms. taylor to also see if we can pull this together again where i can set up a few days and have three or four at a time and sit down. it is very enlightening. it is better than reading scientific america. [laughter] so i just want you to know that i'm contemplating that. i hope i can do that at some point again during this calendar year. >> all of us at nih would love that opportunity and we do

appreciate the many heavy loads you are carrying this year and your strong support of medical research. >> thank you and congratulations again on taking over the reins and we are looking forward to working with you on this terrible budget crunch that we have. thanks dr. collins. >> thank you senator. >> the meeting will stand adjourned. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> i'm confident we can come up to gain the confidence of the senate. cs the president contenders potential nominees learn about the nation's highest court through the eyes of those who served there. in c-span's latest book, the supreme court, 381 pages of history, photos and interviews with all the justices, active and retired. the supreme court, available now in hardcover and also as an e-book. now the house armed services committee is hearing looks at the military operations in afghanistan. we will hear about counter narcotics efforts and results

from the recent addition of 30,000 troops in that country. ike skelton of missouri chairs the armed services committee. this is a little over two hours. >> good morning. our committees meets today to receive testimony on the development and security and stability in the country of afghanistan. with us are some old friends and thank you for joining us. the honorable michele flournoy, undersecretary of defense and policy and the director for operations on the joint staff. we appreciate your coming back so soon with us. six months ago our president announced the results of a comprehensive review of our policy in afghanistan, which for many years has essentially been

nonexistent. during this announcement he endorsed a new counterinsurgency strategy centered on increasing u.s. forces by 30,000 troops, adding u.s. civilian experts and focusing on protecting the population of afghanistan from the taliban and their terrorist allies. i endorse the strategy then and i do so now. as i have said many times while this new strategy cannot guarantee success in afghanistan, it is most likely to prevent the return of the taliban and their al qaeda terrorist allies. six months into the new policy, it is appropriate for congress to consider how things are going about 21,000 of the 30,000 troops have arrived in that country and many have been involved in recent successful military operations around marjah. this will soon begin restoring security in kandahar an operation that is likely to be

crucial to our overall success in the country. we have seen clear signs of success in our fight against terrorist. the president's new strategy helps lead to the capture of the taliban second-in-command, the former taliban finance minister into so-called shadow governors of the afghan provinces. than most significant capture of the afghan taliban leader since the start of the war in afghanistan. while i am pleased with the recent success in afghanistan, i anticipate many concerns remain. although we successfully cleared march of the taliban still appears to be able to infiltrate the town and threaten and kill those who cooperate with afghan security forces. this may not be unanticipated. it takes time to build the confidence of the local population but i worry some others of this may point to the weakness of the local government who cannot successfully delivered the governance needed to help convince the residents of marjah to join the right side

while we have increased forces in afghanistan our allies have begun to send additional troops. today they have added 50% of troops and they pledged after president obama's december speech. serious concerns remain about our ability to train the afghan security forces who will have to assume the burden of providing security and combating terrorism in afghanistan. lampley secretary gates has decided to send additional u.s. military personnel to fill this gap, potentially a short-term solution and not a long-term fix. this concern relates to another. in a recent meeting, nato endorsed the process to transition to lead for security in some districts from u.s. and allied troops to afghan national security forces. i think all of us would like to know more about this process as well as its implications.

what progress do we have to see in addition before we can transition to afghan lead and what does this mean for the international troops in the district? progress among the afghan security forces, where-- or must the district need a competent and honest government? finally a quick word of congratulations and one of caution. the department of defense recently delivered a very good untimely report on progress toward security and stability in afghanistan. thank you for that. unfortunately a similar somewhat higher level metrics report filed by the national security council was very disappointing. it is my hope that future reports more closely resemble a one, two, three, zero report and provide real information. again, thank you for coming before us today. i suspect this will not be the hearing on afghanistan.

this committee will hold this year. i appreciate you working with us to ensure that congress can conduct its constitution and appropriate oversight activities. we are very pleased with your work and very please with your parents. my good friend, the ranking member from california, mr. mccann. steve i would like to welcome back the secretary of defense michelle michele flournoy in the tenant general john paxton. i look forward to your testimony. we are a nation at war. we attempted terrorist attack in new york city's times square serves as the most recent reminder that we face dangerous enemies who threaten the safety and security of our country. the extraordinary men and women of our military and their families need no reminding of this thread. they know all too well the sacrifices and the dedication it takes to keep this fight off our shores.

a lot has happened since the president stood before the american people and made the case for his afghanistan pakistan strategy. over half of the 30,000 forces authorized by the president have arrived in the country and are conducting operations in southern afghanistan. they are operating with some constraints, both political and operational. this is where i would like to focus the remainder of my comments and questions. in my view, this body, no matter on which side of the aisle you reside, and this committee in particular has the moral responsibility to ensure that this war is not thought with a minimalist mindset or with a mind toward the washington political clock. nearly 18 months ago admiral mike mullen told this committee, and i quote, in afghanistan we do what we can. in iraq, we do what we must. when it comes to resourcing our efforts in afghanistan, i remain concerned that we are not doing

everything that we must in order to ensure that the general mcchrystal and his commanders on the battlefield have the time, space and resources they need to succeed. let me be clear. i have the utmost confidence that general mcchrystal and his troops will get the job done. my concern is that the minimalist approach being abdicated from some in washington raises the risk and increases casualties. the 30,000 troop cap put in place by this administration is sending the wrong signal to our commanders and enforcing military planners to make difficult trade-off decisions between combat troops and key enablers. i am particularly concerned we are under resourcing force protection capabilities. it is my understanding that there continues to be a serious, indirect fire threat to u.s. and coalition forward operating bases in afghanistan.

yet the current force protection systems that protect jobs in iraq are not deployed to protect fobs in afghanistan. this is disconcerting especially given the fact we have evidence that such capabilities have saved hundreds of lives in iraq. today i would like are witnesses to explain what modifications have been made to the original joint operational needs for response capability and operation enduring freedom and why these changes were made. why are we addressing this particular force protection shortfall differently in afghanistan than in iraq? specifically, why are we deploying contractors instead of military personnel? it is my understanding that if we had to use military personnel like we did in iraq, this capability would already be over in afghanistan protecting lives. while i focused on the impact of the troop cap on the fielding of

certain key enablers, this cap becomes more problematic when you consider that some of our nato allies are not meeting their commitments and others will be withdrawing their forces from southern afghanistan. further, as admiral mullen's comment suggests, there was a time when many thought that the two wars in the struggle for resources resulting in the haves and have-nots. iraq was the haves and afghanistan was the have-nots. my suspicion is that the mentality of the have-nots may be impacting how commanders are employing the resources that they do have been afghanistan. for example in iraq, there was the capability called task force bowden, observe, detect identify and neutralize. this task force was responsible for killing or capturing over 3000 assertions they were trying to put an ied's basically turning the ied into a suicide mission. and afghanistan they are

standing up a similar task force capability. average is my understanding that this capability is being used differently than it was in iraq. instead of being used to specifically go after ied in placers it is being incorporated into the big picture, isr requirements. i am unclear if this is a tactical decision or the result of a signal from washington to operate under the ceiling you have been given. lastly i have raised concerns that the emphasis in our strategy appears to be on ending the conflict, rather than winning. i wish the president would use words like victory rather than transition and redeployment. this morning i hope to get a better understanding on what transition actually means. how do you explain the transition to the afghans, to the enemy into our forces on the ground. mr. chairman i have my entire statement be included for the record where i address other concerns and questions.

>> i certainly thank the gentleman. secretary for night, please. >> chairman skelton, congressman mckeon and distinguished members of the committee it is good to see you all again. thank you for inviting us here to testify in our ongoing efforts in afghanistan. as you know the administration's orgel in the region is to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al qaeda and ensure the elimination of al qaeda safe haven. a critical component of our strategy is a stable afghanistan with the the government incapacity to ensure that afghanistan can no longer be a safe haven for al qaeda and insurgents. the u.s. and afghanistan also have shared interest that extends far beyond combating violent extremism and we are working to develop an enduring partnership that will serve both our nations for many years to come.

when i last testify before you on afghanistan we faced a critic -- pretty bleak situation. the taliban was-- incompetence was in decline. president obama ordered an immediate strategy review when he came into office and added 38,000 troops in the spring of 2009. after general mcchrystal's assessment last summer and further review the president decided to deploy an additional 30,000 troops in december last year. today over half of these forces have already deployed and almost all of them will be in place by the end of august. more than 9000 international troops have also been pledged. isaf is now focused on protecting the afghan population and partnering with the afghan national security forces to build their capacity to connect and lead security operations. the civilian search is also moving forward. we now have three kind times as many u.s. civilians in kabul as we had a year ago and over four

times as many civilians outside of kabul. the evidence suggests that are shipped in approach is beginning to produce results. the insurgency is losing momentum and the real challenges and risks remain, we see a number of positive trends. let me highlight a few. as you know we are executing our strategy in close cooperation with the afghan government with our coalition allies and other partners in the region, particularly pakistan. our consultations with partners are but a to a much greater sense of unity of effort and a common strategy. also changes and coalition tactics have substantially reduced the percentage of afghan civilian casualties caused by coalition actions to about 20%. this has in turn produce significant positive shifts in afghan attitudes towards both isaf and afghan forces. building the capacity of the afghan national security forces

remains a significant challenge but there are signs of progress. currently the afghan national army strength is well above our april target and the afghan national police are well on their way to achieving their growth goals for this fiscal year. that said, we continue to face challenges associated with recruiting, training, retention and attrition in the isaf particular the police. isaf has identified its partnering at all levels from the ministry down to the local unit but shortages of trainers and mentors process. the afghan government has undertaken initiatives to address these issues including raising the salaries of nsf, equalizing pay disparities between army and police, improving quality of life and training for police and beginning to address corruption. there is however much more work to be done to develop commensurate rule of law structures. more broadly our emphasis on using development assistance to

support the sustainable governance similarly appears to be paying off. and cleared areas such as the argonaut valley, the conditions for implementing governance at the district level are being created and we are seeing international and afghan actors both military and civilian working to effectively empower and legitimize the afghan government at the local level. despite challenges like corruption, polls suggest a majority of afghans, about 59%, believe their government is headed in the right direction. we have also seen some positive steps taken by the karzai government at the national level. for instance, president karzai recently issued internal guidance for for the executioner for integration programs. he will issue a final guidance after the peace jirga later this month and we expect to support the authority by releasing funds authorized by this committee and the congress in the fy10.

president karzai and members of his cabinet as you know will be visiting washington next week and will highlight the continuing support among afghans for our involvement there. and the afghan appreciation for the sacrifices being made by u.s. troops and civilians. during president karzai's visit we also expect to discuss the nature of long-term strategic partnerships between the u.s. and afghanistan including longer-term economic development, security cooperation and cooperation in areas such as law enforcement, judicial reform and educational programs. as you know, our military operations in helmand continue and we are also engaged in planning and shaping efforts for future efforts in kandahar. i will leave the specifics of that to lieutenant general paxton but i do want to emphasize that for isaf and for afghan partners the helmand operation was the first large-scale effort to

fundamentally change how we are doing business together. in helmand protecting the population has been our top priorities along with ensuring our military operations pave the way for afghan-led governance and development activities. preparation for the helmand operation included extraordinary levels of civil military planning an engagement with the afghan partners at every level and we feel the collaborative operational planning process is critical to giving afghans a sense of ownership and investment in the success of our joint efforts. i don't want to suggest that achieving success in afghanistan will be simple or easy. far from it. kandahar for example will present challenges that are fundamentally different from those we have recently encountered in helmand. inevitably, we will face challenges, possibly setbacks even have we achieved success. way to recognize things may get harder before they get better. we are challenging our

adversaries in new ways and the insurgents are intelligent and adaptable. they will find new ways to respond and to make momentum we will need to continuously refine an adapter on tactics. that at this point i am cautiously optimistic. i believe that we are developing the conditions that are necessary though not yet sufficient for success. we finally, and i would argue for the first time, we finally have the right mission, the right strategy, the right leadership team in place and we have marshaled international and afghan resources, civilian and military, to support this mission. afghanistan is our number one priority. general mcchrystal knows he can ask her what he needs. the president has given the secretary of defense the flexibility to provide for additional forces, particularly force protection is needed. as we move forward we will continue to refine our approach and i believe we will continue to make progress. i want to thank this committee

for the support you have provided to our troops and to this mission thus far. i would urge you to continue that support in considering our current budget requests for-- that are before you and i know general paxton will address operational matters in greater detail and we look forward to your questions and comments. thank you. >> thanks so much. general paxton. >> good morning chairman skelton, ranking member mcgann and distinguished members of the committee. thank you again for your time today. this morning i would like to provide an overview of military in afghanistan. as secretary flournoy pointed out we are starting to see conditions we believe are necessary for success in afghanistan. among the most important of these conditions is having the right leadership and strategy in place. in 2000 nine after assuming command of isaf general mcchrystal conducted an assessment of the situation in afghanistan. he developed a campaign plan

that was designed to provide a secure environment that would enable improved governments and development within afghanistan. at the heart of that campaign plan are for requirements. to protect the afghan people, to enable afghan security forces, to neutralize and malign influences and to support the extension of governance. general mcchrystal is gone to great lengths to ensure our operations in afghanistan are directly tied to achieving these aims. the central tenet of our campaign strategies to protect the populace. we are for failing if i per part part -- my prayer ties in governance and high density population areas in the insurgent groups currently operate and by reducing civilian casualties. the reduction of civilian casualties as a key component of our efforts to protect the people in afghanistan. general mcchrystal has repeatedly emphasized this point at every opportunity. in fact are on force protection is closely related to gaining

the respect and support of the afghan people. ied's remain our number one killer in afghanistan accounted for 60% of our total casualties. in some areas over 80% of our ied discoveries have been a direct result of tips from local nationals. we are convinced that these tips are the result of their relationships where building on a daily basis with the local population and the protection we are providing. clearly the support of the people of afghanistan is essential and relates directly to our own safety. regional command south is currently-- we are expanding security zones, and enhancing freedom of movement and increasing the confidence of our afghan national security forces and partners by the growth of our embedded partner concept. real price in the south is the key city of kandahar and its environment. kandahar city is a huge importance nationally and is the capital is the the capital of the south. it has a rich culture and history and is the key economic and trading and is of great

importance to the taliban movement which originated in kandahar. insurgents have a degree of freedom and this recent suicide armors have demonstrated in the local police lack sufficient forces to prevent insurgent activity while government lacks the capacity, credibility and resources to operate effectively. the people of kandahar are caught in the middle of this confrontation and they demand better security, economic development and the government that is in touch with and responsive to their needs. aarp ration is named him kari which means cooperation. it has been planted will be conducted with our afghan partners in the lead for operation. the focus is on providing kandahar with credible and effective governance that gives the population hope for the future. more effective government will deliver security, basic services, development and employment. if the sensor achieve the people of kandahar will reject the insurgency and support the government.

the plans were approved by the president of afghanistan when he visited this city. in time will deliver the security the people of kandahar kandahar desire and will drive the insurgents from the city in the outlying districts by steadily restricting their freedom to operate. a more capable representative and responsive government will be able to bring economic development and the rule of law bay area so badly needs. it is not about highly kinetic military operations. is about a combined resources of the afghan national army, the afghan national police and isaf in support of the governor to improve security both in the city and in the populated environments. him kari will bring the government and people closer together to make for a better future for kandahar. a recent clearing operations by the afghan national security forces, the marines and the british and marjah, operation more stark were shaping operations for the upcoming events in the operations in and around kandahar. there are several differences

between the operation more stark and marjah. the physical size and the size of the population are much greater in kandahar than they were and marjah. and marjah, isaf forces relied heavily on kinetic operations including the insurgents from the populated areas. in kandahar as general mcchrystal has recently indicated and i quote there won't be a dj that is climactic or cohen said there would be a rising tide of security for the local population. our current assessment is the trends such as asf growth and improve security a result of recent operations and indicator campaign is on track and moving in the right direction. previously declining security trends in some areas of the country have been arrested while trends elsewhere have been starting to advance in a positive direction. current trends remain tenuous until more permanent government is established in the area.

enduring stability is dependent on the government afghanistan's ability to deliver credible local governance and essential services and to expand economic opportunities for its people. real progress will be confirmed only when the afghan people believe lasting security and stability have been established in their areas and this will take time. the people's perception typically change more slowly and lag behind many of the actions improving the conditions on the ground. as i conclude my remarks, as i did to secretary flournoy caution everyone that in spite of the recent successes we should not underestimate the challenges that lie before us with the underplayed the need for resolve in the days ahead because we continue to fight an intelligent and and and doctoral enemy. by thank you free time in more berkeley thank you for your continued support of our troops, their families and our missions. i look forward to your questions. >> thank you thank you very much and we again appreciate your being with us and your excellent

assessment. both of you come from-- early in the morning go to a local coffee shop and there are seven or eight gentlemen friends sitting around drinking coffee and talking about football games than the baseball games that are coming up. i introduce you. most of them are veterans of vietnam or korea. one of them turns to you and says, are we achieving success in afghanistan? another one turns to you and says, when do we declare victory in afghanistan? i stepped back and i let you answer the questions. madam secretary, to questions.

>> chairman skelton i believe we are achieving success. we are on the right road for the first time in a long time in afghanistan. that is the assessment of general mcchrystal that we hear weekly in our conversations with him. it is the assessment of our u.s. government team on the ground. are we done yet? absolutely not. are there more challenges to be dealt with? yes. but we are on the right path and things are starting to move in the right direction. in terms of how we define victory, i think that victory is. >> i did not say defining. >> when is it? bes, and my friend didn't ask you to define. he asked you, are we achieving it? >> i think victory is based on achieving certain convictions

and that to me is making sure the government of afghanistan has the capacity to exert its sovereignty over its territory, to deny al qaeda and its associates safe haven in the country. and, to maintain stability so that it can continue to develop on the way forward. that is the core, that relates to our core goals that we have defined for ourselves in this mission. >> general, to questions. >> sir, in terms of success, i too believe that we are achieving success on the ground. the definition of success, rather than-- the indicators of success, it is true that the levels of violence are up right now in some areas. both attacks have been up and ied's particularly are up but as i noted earlier what we are seeing in some cases is up to 80% of the local population letting us know where the ied's

are and that contributed to a reduction in the number of casualties and increased operational efficiencies and was tariq and oddly and marjah and it is our expectation as we have better partnering, more partnering, more afghans in the lead and the planning and the execution that will see those trends continue as we move into kandahar. in terms of victory, i believe that the indicators for victory are there is a lag between the execution and the indication, and it is indeed very dependent on the demonstration of both capacity and credibility of the afghan people, the security forces and the government to lead and provide security and provide opportunities for the people. but the more that the polls indicated as they currently do that they believe in the afghan national security forces and they believe in isaf, and that they believe our current

operations are generating the potential for a better life for them, then we are on the right road, sir. >> thank you so much. mr. mckeon. >> thank you mr. chairman. in my opening comments, i stated that admiral mullen told this committee in afghanistan, we do what we can in iraq, we do what we must 18 months ago. actually that statement was made december of 2007 so i wanted to correct that for the record. as i stated earlier, i am concerned that the 30,000 troop cap for afghanistan, forcing difficult decisions to be made when it comes to finding certain key enablers including force protection measures for our forward operating bases. do we have a troop cap in afghanistan? steve sir, i would tell you we do not have a troop cap. 30,000 is the number of forces of our-- it is not a cat per se.

>> that is based on the assessment on the ground both by general mcchrystal and back here in washington and the 30 k. that people commonly referred to as just one component sir because we have an additional 92,000-- 10,000 nato forces and then we have what is now 134 afghan national army and up to 170,000 some ---- national police say you have to look at the composite and trying to strike the right balance between u.s., composite for some local national. >> you feel there is no cap and general mcchrystal could call on all the resources he felt he needed? >> ndp has. he has come back to us for more and it is a constant series of assessments which i constantly get it involved with on a weekly basis, what should go in

addition to. >> let me talk a little bit about the enablers in iraq versus afghanistan. can you answer the following? are we addressing force protection on a differently in afghanistan than iraq and if yes why are we deploying contractors instead of military personnel? >> sir, our analysis and assessment of force protection is no different regardless of the theater and if you strike the balance between is the threat direct fire, indirect fire, aviation missile and you take a look at the appropriate indications and warnings he would need to identify where that threat would come from. i would tell you as we look to increase our footprint and their boots on the ground presence in afghanistan, we also look to bring in all that we commonly called the enablers that you need to have to provide that force protection so conditional -- additional combat clearance and part and parcel

tankers to the good efforts of this committee in the funding has been are elevated line of sight which would be our persistent ground surveillance. some of it on camera and elevating telescopic poles from the vehicles, some of the tethered balloons, some of it man that some unmanned so all of our task force capabilities indeed abydos the eyes and ears that they need to sense the environment they are and if you look at the source of the fires in the casualties the indirect fire in afghanistan is not what i was in iraq. it is the ied's that is the largest component and then the small-arms fire and things like rocket-propelled grenade second so it is not the indirect fire. the special process in afghanistan are identical, sir. ..

azzaoui increase arn on the

ground we are surging with them and bringing behind extra on is in the years the will do the same things in afghanistan that was done in iraq. >> do we have more of these currently in iraq than in afghanistan? >> if i could take that for the record and get back with you because we are drawing down obviously in iraq trying to keep a sufficient amount to cover what will become advised brigades that stay behind and there's a difference in the geometry of the bottle filled some folks would believe as usual down boots on the ground to control them the extra enablers and that may not be the case i think as general odierno and petraeus articulated you still need extra eyes and the years because you don't have the physical persons on the grounds we are trying to strike a balance between how quickly we can draw down in iraq and how much we build up in afghanistan

to read some of it is the transitional fleeces from one to the other. other cases we need them both as we are preparing more as i said thanks to the efforts of the committee to go out and buy more whole motion video and electro optical in things like that. >> it seems to me in iraq where we pulled the troops out of the cities and there are more in reserve positions right now we're in afghanistan we are on the offense it seems like to me. now i'm not a military expert such as general petraeus are the general mcchrystal or yourself but i would like to see those numbers because it seems to me more of those enablers in my humble opinion should be where we are on the offensive and where we had more troops actually in the line of fire right now. >> yes, sir and i take that for the record and then deductible discussion of how many where they go with it certainly been closed session of you would like

to do that. >> thank you. >> thank the gentleman. mr. ortiz. >> thank you, mr. chairman and secretary flournoy and general paxton. thank you for being here and providing your thoughts on security and stability in afghanistan. a few days ago it was announced the united states would be sending an additional 850 soldiers and marines to trim the local security forces in afghanistan for approximately 90 to 120 days. trainers are seen as a stopgap that the air is still the choice of a critical mission. if the way ahead in afghanistan is to have people local security forces, what is needed to fill this critical shortage of trainers and this is one of the difficulties we have and how are

our allies conjugating to fill the eckert will shortages and how will the shortage affect the hand over to the local forces? maybe you can enlighten us a little bit on that. >> i think the institutional traders for the afghan national community forces and having mentoring teams what we call omelets held on the field to continue the training and leadership development as they actually operate. that really is a sort of intent of the future success. this is absolutely critical to building capacity. we seek to grow the nsf and the quality and the requirement for the training capacity has gone up. we've been pushing our allies to step up with us to meet those new requirements and many of them are doing so.

it remains the work in progress. we have not -- we've made progress congenital paxton may have some specific numbers but we are not all the way there yet. the deployment of u.s. forces on the bridge is simply to try to meet some of the near term requirements as we continue to recruit nato allies to step up with additional traders so we don't want to lose time. we wanted to go ahead and pull the near term gap and get general caldwell the head to take additional resources to continue the momentum in these important efforts. i don't know if you want to add any comments. >> thank you. obviously the training of the police and afghan national army are critical functions not just critical enablers but functions we have to accomplish. general caldwell was with the nato training mission and we have sent additional u.s. forces

over to assist him. the two brigade combat teams were to do training for the army and police. nato has contributions almost 4,000, three to 4,000 more since the president's announcement in december but we will like to get additional contributions their and the members perhaps look at the combat footprint we are looking to see if they can change goes into the trainer's and enablers so what we have done and what the comment reflects is the fact in the short term we have a pressing need for trainers and are waiting for long-term solutions so we have sent the army battalion and three increments of marines to fill the gap in the short term. >> i know that some time back we had a higher ratio. has that come down some or are we still having those things we had before where they just wouldn't come in? >> it's been a marked change since december in terms of both absenteeism which has gone down and then reenlistment retention

rate which has gone up so it's not only the short term in showing up for duty but the long term in terms of commitment. some of this is due to success on the ground and some to the changing in the structure but we believe these are both good news stories. >> and it's encouraging to see that we are beginning to get tips from the local citizens as to what to locate. what about the training camps? to we have any knowledge? are we getting any training tips because we see that just like the other day a naturalized citizen from the united states coast on there to train and is that hard to detect the training camp for conducting the training of the enemy? >> i don't have some of the tactical specific set by fingertips but obviously these are safe havens and sanctuaries and sometimes difficult to find. the more that you build confidence for the populace and the more that they tell you you

have freedom of movement or you should not go for help to detect ied evin shall you get to the point you can say who lives in this neighborhood and is able to do to other areas so we watch every closet. >> thank you. >> ar thank the gentleman. mr. bartlett. >> i want to return to the germans coffeeshops in others where to other questions are being asked. the first is why this is the ultimate exercise even if we do what no one else has ever done from alexander the great the british empire the soviet empire even if we can accomplish what none of them had ever accomplished it won't make any difference because the bad guys will simply going to pakistan. if we spread that over how many more billions of dollars and kids they will go into somalia and yemen. it's quite clear we cannot do

negative some juries so why is this not the ultimate exercise in its utility? it is noted the frequent citizens and tell them compared to the corrupt rule of the karzai government and our very presence their recruits the enemy. there are ascent tolino al qaeda in iraq and then there were a lot of al qaeda after we were there i asked the state department and they said that most of them were in fact mobile as the presence of their creates the enemy. the second question is why are we following osama bin laden's cycle? this is a hugely asymmetric war. mohammed with a rusty shall and electronics and just one of our responses has cost $40 billion, that is just one platform in response to that. osama bin laden is on the record saying they will continue this guerrilla war until they bleed

dustin right. two questions. why is this not the ultimate exercise in its utility and why are we following osama bin laden's playbook? >> congressman, in response to the first question i would draw a sharp distinction between the historical experience of many in afghanistan who are there to conquer versus our mission in afghanistan which is to enable the development of afghan capacity to exert sovereignty over their own a territory. i think the point about pakistan has informed the fact we've taken a regional strategy. we need to pressure al qaeda and its associates and divide them safe haven on both sides of the border and that is exactly what our strategy is designed to do. support for the television in afghanistan is quite weak. very little popular support and that creates great opportunity for us to help develop an afghan

institution and capacity that are viable alternatives for the population. and in terms of osama bin laden again, i would just say that we don't have the option of allowing al qaeda to have freedom of movement and sanctuary given the threat that they pose to our homeland and our vital interests abroad. and i think that if you look at the totality of the campaign on both sides of the afghan pakistan border and globally we are having tremendous success putting pressure on the network and disrupting their operations and denying their ability to launch spectacular attacks. so i think we have to take a global perspective and i think the strategy is actually bearing

a great deal of fruit at this point. >> the question he notes that in iraq we actually increase the number of the enemy. very presence admitted to by the state department and assuming success in afghanistan and pakistan they will simply go to somalia and yemen. it's clear we cannot deny them sanctuary so the question still remains why is this not the ultimate exercise in its utility assuming success? >> again i think the facts are just that we are debilitating the network and putting pressure on the network on a global basis and denying them sanctuary is critical to presenting their ability to attack our homeland and attack our interests and forces and allies. >> the second question why are

we following osama bin laden's playbook in this hugely asymmetric war? >> i would differ with you. i don't believe we are following his playbook. i think that his playbook isn't working so well in terms of advancing al qaeda's aims right now. >> a thank the gentleman from mississippi, mr. taylor. >> mr. chairman, i'm going to yield my time to mr. murphy and claim his leader. mr. murphy is recognized. >> thank you. i want to -- i'm over here. it's hard to tell where we are going. i wanted to locate a little bit at the direction where this was headed. i was in kandahar two months ago on the ground talking to the people there were there. very impressed with our efforts and we were trying to do to stabilize the area and provide security but one of the things that jumped out at me was where does it go from there? i have no doubt our soldiers can provide securities and drive the taliban away but where is the

next step and one that still to be some of the locals said we don't have any reliable electricity or an economy we can't run our businesses. i can have to meet with 20 local businessmen that can't run their factories because there is no electricity and we dug a little deeper. what they told me is there is to megawatts of power for the city of kandahar. our base needs ten to 15 megawatts of power to run every day so we are sitting there trying to provide security in the night lighting up his boardwalk of broadway lights and the people say we can't get power but you have it over there. we provide the security but then what happens when people start to function in that environment to allow us to get away and go next and i guess specifically to we have a plan for electricity and the local economy? >> i would like to come back for the record more detail on the specifics of the electrical portion reason for kandahar. my understanding foe is that it

is a part of a larger plan for that area. i think the shift that we have seen coming out of the strategy review and putting additional sebelius resources on the ground along side our soldiers is that we have had much more integrated planning in designing our counter insurgency campaign for the area we are actually harnessing the development peace to support the establishment of more credible and capable afghan government at the local and provincial level. my understanding is that there is -- this is a recognized need and part of the longer-term plan for that area but i would like to get back on the specific details if i may. >> i will join the secretary and get back on specifics but there is some of you know the day and in southern afghanistan. three years before the impact. >> and assam, sir, that is part

of the long term plan as you get security and of the government's up and we can develop areas. >> is it three years before we think the government is coming? before there is electricity to have an economy is hard to imagine the people say this government is working for us. does it mean it is our responsibility for that long? >> we will remove some generator capacity into the area. it is a process of development and this is the time line between when we get the generators and and when the infrastructure is in place and the valor starts to deliver. islamic i use this more as a specific illustration of where i wanted to get a bigger point which is what i heard from the afghan ministers as we have a catch-22. they can't get the credibility to build popular support behind the government until they can deliver for people. we are not comfortable delivering of the work until they stop having the corruption problems they have because we say we are not going to give you the money for the development because we do are going to steal and they say that's great but if

you here with your mother terrie providing security and development folks doing the development why would anybody turn to us and what i heard on the ground is that the order of operation for where you turn for help in kandahar was one for nato, to to the local warlords, free to the taliban and four to the afghan government. what i wanted to understand was how are we going to make that transition? how are we going to get to the point where the afghan government one on the list and we are at least number two if not three or four? >> i think to point i would make that are very important issues you are raising. one is to make sure that the prt priorities in the every are tightly integrated into the overall civil military campaign for that area. i think in kandahar that integration process is starting to happen more than it has in the past so i think you're going to see a realignment of to the limit efforts to more closely support the security in the

government's objectives. >> are we starting to give more of the development money to the afghan government? >> welcome the second point is we are working ministry by ministry to develop the internal capacity so that they can receive account, and track and be accountable for flowing money through the ministry. so we have set ourselves a series of principles to flow more and more assistance through the key afghan ministries but that requires certifying them to be able to handle that in an accountable way and we are in the process of doing that. i think we've done two or three and we will do another two or three in the next coming months. >> i'm sorry. my time is expired but if we could get the metrics of the certification and progress works, and interested in that because it gets to the corruption and how we get ourselves out of being the ones doing the nation building and let the afghans build their own nation.

>> made the gentleman -- mr. jones? >> mr. chairman, thank you very much. madam secretary, general paxton, thank you for being here today. i would like to start my plans and also my questions by reading an e-mail i got recently from the retired general i have tremendous respect for. the only real shot we have any sort of success is years strengthening the afghan army and police were killed with pakistan we to tackle both sides of the border in parentheses very tough to do. get rid of corruption and the government again, good luck on that front. do something about an economy based on poppy growing, not ring to happen in the congressman's lifetime and not to drive toward and into the arms of local population. it was a fairly long e-mail i'm not at liberty to say his name, but i e-mail him because i was

concerned about rules of engagement and i have had a conversation with the father of this marine who was killed, john bernard and [inaudible] then i go back to another article in the times left to die they call for help. army leadership refused and abandon them on the battlefield. i realize that you're trying to win the confidence and the support of the afghan people. but i go back to mr. bartlett's point and really to the coffee shop the chairman talked about. i hear this frequently back home in the third district of north carolina, home of countless bases and people are wondering truthfully if you don't put an end point is is beginning to sound like the previous administration and iraq.

you brief the congress and i am not being critical of you i want you to fully understand that. you brief the congress and well, you know, we are cautiously optimistic we are going down this road and about road and, you know, it seems like we are making progress. i'm sure we are making some progress. i don't doubt that. but i will tell you reading this article in newsweek scandal in afghanistan the exclusive story of how we have wasted $6 billion -- $6 billion. a corruption and abuse of police force that may cause the war. i really want to try to figure out who never sitting in these chairs a year or two years, three years, four years and we still are spending billions and trillions in the 14th century

country with corruption that we cannot control where you've got even some of our people in congress could over here so i don't know how we are going to it in a country we can't even hardly speak their language. so the point is at what point will you say to the congress do you believe you can say we are a point that we have one thought and point of what we are trying to achieve because, madam secretary, i feel for this administration. i've made that point. this is something they have inherited and we have to fight terrorism around the world. but sticking 100,000 of our troops over in afghanistan and telling them if they fire at you from the left you shoot back and the fire at you from the right you don't shoot that is not fair to these kids and it's not fair to the parents and their wives and husbands. i guess that is the question. >> i'm going to let general

paxton address the particular is of the rules of engagement because i think that he is more qualified to do that. let me first take on your concern which i think is understandable in the real about the challenges of capacity building and also corruption. afghanistan is a country that has been in and out of war for 30 years in that kind of environment, corruption tends to take root in the society at large. it is a problem for other countries in the region as well. i think we are seeing renewed commitment to dealing with this problem on the afghan side. they have recently established a task force and invite key officials. the mayor of kabul, minister of police general to signal no one is going to be allowed the will fall. we are at the beginning of a process but again we are moving in the right direction.

we are trying to change the incentive structures that have motivated corruption in the past. you're right it used to be the police didn't make a living wage, the police would make their living wage by policing local population. we have changed the pay and benefit working with the afghan government said they don't have to be corrupt to make a living wage. things like that are very important. we are working with afghan ministries on the long-term economic development, things like they're very rich and strategic minerals and resources, very rich in agriculture, helping them to develop sustainable long-term sources of income for the nation. those are the longer-term parts of the project. but on the specific question i would like to defer to chairman paxton. >> please proceed. we have to move along. but go ahead.

>> thank you. congressman jones, there is absolutely nothing in the tactical directive that prohibits or limits any service member marine, soldier from appropriate self-defense. what is in the directive is the conscious application of close air support and indirect fire to make sure that if it is not a fleeting target or something that poses eminem self-defense that you have done due diligence in terms of assessing collateral damage whether it is for infrastructure, for children for non-combatants. but there is nothing in there that prohibits either the commander or the individual soldier from doing what he needs to do on the ground. >> dr. snyder, please. >> thank you all for being here once again. i wanted what about resources, psychiatry flournoy, you talked about that earlier. i remember some time to last year general jack keen

testified, now retired, when he is vice chief of staff of the army at the end of 2002 the resources began being moved out of afghanistan in anticipation of the invasion of iraq. his recollection is that was that early. and then we began hearing almost privately i remember the, donner -- the, not made the comment we have the build only enough trucks to clear, not to hold and build secretary gates during the bush administration made some comments that private meetings that he was concerned about the troop strength was already referred to the december 2007 statement by admiral mike mullen. my concern is that the continued discussion as if we are still in that mind set the ranking member's opening statement refers to a have not mentality. is there have not mentality would be permeating the military

commanders thinking they don't have adequate resources? >> that is certainly not my impression. i think general mcchrystal's assessment was to tell us what he thought he needed to be the priority mission and to get the mission right. and i think when you look at the u.s. forces put in and of the nato forces committed, the afghan forces that are being grown, he believes he has what he needs to do the mission. and i think one of the things that secretary gates has always said is we have to make sure that we balance our approach here that on the one hand you want to make sure you have enough forces in afghanistan to ensure you don't feel mission. on the other hand, you don't want to go overboard and become to be seen as a force of occupation. so we've listened to general mcchrystal very carefully in what he told congress in december and what he continues

to say is he believes he's getting the resources to carry out his mission at this point. i don't know if you have anything to add. >> yes, sir part of the assessment to figure out what you need by both people and resources, when you needed and where you needed and the constant risk assessment. i think most members in uniform if you ask them how much do you need the answer would always be more because the more you have the less risk you have to assume but we try to constantly ss how many people we have and what types of capability we have and bindles that sufficiently mitigate the risk and is the most likely or most dangerous course of action that you are going to mitigate against. and second, as we look to increase the capability and the capacity of the afghan forces to make sure as the shoulder more of the burden and we can requisite stand down and to perhaps less we show them and lead them and then turn over to them. >> and i appreciate your statement today and the nature

of war is such that i hope that were to change six months, a year, two years from now i hope that you expressed the same level of candor. i yield back. thank you, mr. chairman. >> mr. turner, please. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank both of you for being here today. i have two questions, one concerning the troup count and one drug trafficking. the first question, general paxton, is directed at you and building on mr. mckeon's statement and other questions of their members have had during this hearing. people are very concerned about our ability to be successful as we are looking at the constraints you are operating with under. so my question is what enablers are the nato allies and afghan security forces relying on for the united states to provide and how has the troup cap of 30,000 impacted ability to support the

u.s. and allied forces and the afghans cracks as the isaf collection at 3500 out of perhaps 9,000 troops pledged in conjunction with u.s. surge and its afghan security forces grow our we ensuring that our troops, the allies and the afghans all have access to be enablers that they need? >> thank you, sir. we've looked closely at the enablers. no surprise when the u.s. comes not only do we bring the preponderance of the forces but the preponderance of the enablers. so we have more aviation be it for left or medevac. we have more engineers from the route clearance so you look when you go to the nato allies and the coalition forces for them to bring a requisite share of the capabilities if they are able. secretary gates just spoke at a stumble several years ago and offered that we would take a look at our obligations this committee rightfully told us to

look at in iraq several years ago to make sure that by resource and allied coalition partners we don't necessarily jeopardize u.s. forces first. we are at the plant now with production of mraps and a coating on the ground that we can take a look at those capabilities we could either share with partners or offer to sell to them or put in the s m f program so there is an increased capacity and a willingness on the part of the allies to find for themselves and source for themselves and then we have the capability of sharing with them in areas where we are partnered together. >> everyone continues to be concerned about how those resources come out of the total resources are applied and whether one not we have sufficient response to meet our needs. turning to the drug trade. december 21st, 2006 remarked to the atlantic council general jones stated that the achilles' heel of afghanistan is the

narcotics problem. george jones suggested the solution has to be broad if not one thing there is no recipe for this. it's not just eradication or crop substitution. it's a lot of things that can be combined to begin to wean the economy. more specifically he called for one judicial system functioning to police reform, three, involved in of the afghan government, four, extending the reach of the afghan grumet to pakistan. i know that when we look at the issue of the drug trade we have to be concerned about how do we address the issue of the money, the cash that flows through the drug trade. the transportation route for the drugs themselves, the labs that are producing drugs, the fields themselves where we need to look for an economic shift. part of the problem has been the lack of an assessment of the complete to do list and then execution of that to do list.

a report by the national security council, a new u.s. government counternarcotic strategy for afghanistan has been approved. it is my understanding that we haven't been briefed on this new strategy and we don't have that here for our staff. i'm very concerned about this. what can you tell about this new strategy? and i would like to hold up this chart. this is a crs report chart that shows the afghan drug trade. as you can see the last four years if he folded in half you can see what the normal production is of narcotics. the last four years have been their own, the narcotics surge and that is the root of what we have been phasing in afghanistan as we try to address the issues of the afghanistan but don't address the drug trade will continue to fund and you'll ever adversaries. what can you add to that discussion? >> we did refine our counternarcotics strategy as part of the review we conducted

late last year and i am happy to invite the inner agency partners to come up and brief this committee if you haven't been adequately briefed. narcotics is a key funding scheme for the insurgency. we have established a free finance sell that looks at the nexus of narcotics in the insurgency to go after that. we've also help train afghan forces that are specifically focused on drug interdiction. we have crop substitution programs under way to try to transition farmers to crops. we are focusing infrastructure development to make sure that once the farmers grow the crops they can get them to markets and so forth. i think in the areas this is come together in the drc you have seen the drop in production. this is the new area of focus we will be putting all of those elements in place to make the same kind of progress but we

would be happy to come back up and brief you. >> the gentleman from connecticut. >> thank you, mr. chairman. secretary flournoy, you in answering mr. skelton's questions had a definition of victory as a plan which afghanistan has capacity to exert solvency and denied taliban safe haven which really seems to in my mind prioritize the need to get the functioning security forces. "new york times" yesterday quoted a pentagon report which said that the most significant challenges to fielding the qualified afghan security forces is a shortage of institutional traders. i know mr. ortiz touched on this earlier but again, the story listed the fact that nato and the u.s. agreed to 5200 trainers last january. this 2700 today. all but 300 our u.s. and obviously secretary gates i know

has been working hard to try to extract the bodies that were committed. but at the same time we are flowing 30,000 new forces and clearly this is so important to have the trainers. at some point it seems we should just do eight and stops short of waiting for that commitment to materialize and i just -- when you comment? >> the decision to deploy the additional u.s. forces as a bridge mechanism is to plug the immediate gap of what is needed now. we want to continue to incentivize our partners to step up with additional training contributions. but this is a priority and we will plug those gaps. the other thing that makes a difference here is the shift in

general mcchrystal's strategy to put an emphasis on partnering so that every unit, every afghan police unit has an isaf or u.s. partner this training, continuing the trend in the field, mentoring, during the leadership to the moment so there's the institutional training peace that is critical but the partnering is where you are really going to further develop your force and its competency to take leadership over time. so that is an area of focus and we are putting about as much energy as can possibly be put on this on closing the gap, sir. >> and the training is holistic, too so we are looking to trim the ministries as well as police and armed forces and within the police we are looking at local police, so it is across-the-board. we recognize in addition to the training in general and the training across the board in

specific, there is a unique requirement to train leadership. so one of the things we want to do as we get u.s. forces and allied and nato and coalition for strainers there is to concentrate on the in co and officer training. >> i guess you questioned or challenged the times numbers in terms of again the commitment that was made and where we are today? >> i don't have the specific numbers since i answered for congressman reyes the we know there's a gap in what was pledged in what has shown up and that's why the bridging solution is in there, the 850 that was alluded to in the post of the times article on monday is indeed part of an army battalion and then the increment of the marines going over there that the chief of staff of the army and the marine corps said these are available and ready and can help as a bridging solution and some of them already have a buchtel mechanism so that if by the end of their normal tender be it three months, four months, six months if we don't have the

contributions we can still again. we don't want to do that. we would like to get solutions from the nato allies but we can do that, sir. >> i guess -- i am so -- i understand your point we want to extract those commitments that were made. a deal is a deal. but on the other hand, the president's goal of 2011 as sort of a turnaround point and somebody over last week visiting the connecticut national guardsmen hit by an ied on easter sunday morning, waiting for our nato allies just time is the enemy and i guess if the training peace is so critical to get into that point that you define this as sort of success it seems we should just do it. we should move. >> we will come back to you in a more full explanation. but we are -- the gaps of what general caldwell needs now we

are moving to address those now and the rest will follow over time that we agree this is the priority and we are working with ways to address it as quickly as possible. >> before i call on mr. klein, let me address potential achilles' heel but we have to overcome before we can use the word success or the word victory. in each of these is a serious potential achilles' heel. take out, if you would, one or two of the list i give you better the most serious.

first, though corruption within the afghanistan government. next, bad governments of afghan government. next, bad military strategy in fighting. next, the afghanistan security forces collapsing. next, pakistan refusing to help fight the al qaeda and the taliban. next, the lack of resources to the fighters. next, the lack of resolve with our military and allies. next, logistics groot's being

shutdown. and last, the regional countries acting to underline the afghan government and support the taliban. which of those concerns you the most? which could lead to defeat allowing us to use the word either success or victory? madam secretary? >> when i look at that long list, i think that actually we have the right military strategy in place, that the development of the nsf is challenging the in the right direction and we are seeing pakistan stood up to the fight, that we are putting the right level of resource and against the problem and so forth and so i think the ones that really will be the greatest challenges longer-term are the

involvement of other regional stakeholders and ensuring that they do not interfere in or undermine afghanistan's progress towards security and stability. and i think overcoming decades of war to establish strong and good governance at all levels in afghanistan, not just at the national level but at the local level where most afghans actually experience their government. >> general? >> mr. chairman, i rode on the nine of them and highlighted the same to secretary flournoy did. they are all critical, they are all important, they all sometimes can appear tenuous but we have the capability and capacity ourselves as united states certainly with nato and allied partners and then growing an capacity capability with afghan both the government of afghanistan and the national

security forces. i think we are well on our way to tackling five or six of those. so my biggest concern would be those that have the for lack of better term the ljungqvist flash to bank and lead time before we see measures of success. so how they demonstrate good governance within the government of afghanistan and then how we get cooperation and support from regional actors and neighboring nations are the to that concern me the most. >> thank you, mr. klein. >> thank you, mr. chairman and both of you for joining again so quickly after your last visit. i must say that i was surprised and pleased to hear from both of you a response to mr. mckeown's questions about the troup cap, prez note troup cap. so i take it to me from that if general mcchrystal congenital petraeus need another 5,000 or 10,000 u.s. forces that that's fine, that's something you would take up.

there is no cap. if they need them they get them. i'm pleased to hear that, and that relates to a couple of other questions that i have. one, if for the record, general, i think this would come from your shot, we understand there are three packages deployed to afghanistan and they come to in combat forces and enablers and if you could get a break down in those packages of combat force in a dollars and i hate to do this to you but we are going to mark up next week so if you could get that for us this week for the record i assume you have them already and we would like to see that. and then in light of the troup requirement, do we already have a plan, either one of you, a plan in place to backfill the dutch and canadian forces leaving in 2010 and 2011? if you have an answer for that i would to get now and if not i

would be happy to take it for the record because i want to get to another issue again really did i believe to the requirement for forces. it was raised by i think the ranking member and perhaps others and that is the joint urgent operational need it came from centcom in july 2001 for the response capability and i want to focus on that and not force protection in the large. there was this urgent need that was identified back in july of 2009 and we worked up into march of this year when general petraeus to this committee that they were exporting the use of contractors to meet the requirements so my question is has the been modified and if so, why? and is it true that we are

looking at contractors because we either don't have u.s. forces or the decision has been made not to do them and i will tell you i am concerned about this because if we were to use the model we had an iraq we would already have soldiers with a lot of the capability in place. we have u.s. forces over there and i have a personal familiarity with that. my son happens to be not only one of those but commanding one of them. we ought to be providing them with the security they deserve. so the question is are we looking at contractors and if so do we have a contract in place? if not, why not? we are possibly not providing the force protection we ought to be doing. >> yes, sir. i will start and then see if we have time to go back to the

other questions on the dutch and canadians. it is a process obviously requirement based and general petraeus did submit and it is under review right now. >> if it is an urgent need that is the acronym is an urgent need and i would think so would force protection would indeed qualify as an urgent need so i am able but concerned that this is a process that is dragging out and according to our understanding that is what i am getting at are we still i hate to use the word dithering but are we still wringing our hand over we are going to use contractors or u.s. forces and are we not getting the contract in place? >> with that i will take it for the record to find out the status of the requirement and the thought process behind who is best equipped with a military or civilian to work with the system, sir.

>> mr. kissell. >> thank you mr. chairman. on the questions we had before i want to go back. general fields commander special inspector general for reconstruction was here and told us basically that we are making a lot of the same mistakes in afghanistan that we've made in my back in terms of not working with local people and not a building with the people needed. projects that were not being properly supervised and so forth and i advise the general come to my office for an update and he reiterated a lot of the same problems. invited the general back later on and said we had made some progress and the generals quarterly report cannot last week. wondering if you all had looked at that and where do we stand in terms of where the injectors of general says we're not

interacting with afghan population. >> i would say that one of the things we found coming into office was that the little efforts for the afghanistan war not harvest to an overall strategy. there was a lot of good effort to going in but a lot of different countries contributing in a lot of different ways based on their own national goal for afghanistan. it wasn't all pulled together in a strategy. one of the changes that we have seen under general mcchrystal and ambassador eikenberry and the civilian surges and integration to try to ensure all of our development efforts in the international community are actually synchronized with and in support of the government and security of adjectives of the counter insurgency campaign. and so that is something that has been happening over the last several months, and i think that

there are areas where particularly in the south and east that's coming together in a much more integrated fashion. given where we started that is still a work in progress but we are three much trying to respond to the insight and lessons learned that were in the report. >> i think the comments he made earlier that most afghans interact with local government and this is where the report seems to show that we were not paying attention. we were building roads but could not be maintained. we had energy projects they either knew the kid the diesel fuel or could not maintain that, and there were several, like 19 out of the 36 governors that said we were not asking their opinion before we did things. so we do need to watch that because that is a great in my mind measure of how we will not

success with afghan people as we go and i will be contacting inspector general asking his opinion and i would like to follow up with what mr. hynes said in terms of if we need to be providing more security for our that should not be something we are discussing. it should be something we are doing. with that i yield back. >> mr. kaufman. >> general paxton, think you for your leader to the country. general paxton, would you agree or argue that the center of gravity for the taliban is the ability to control the civilian population overtly or covert for the shella government the exact revenue from -- >> i would agree. >> looking at the operation next and kandahar which is the basis

where they originated from, if we were able to deny them the ability to exercise government's or covertly, what does that do in terms of an overall perspective in terms of afghanistan and bringing it to a close? >> first step obviously it denies them just so you have the physical freedom of movement it denies them the emotional government's suite of a populace they can't reach or a populist who does not believe the message or a populist and willing to follow them then the fertile ground that they seek to be fair control or institute through terror or provide of attacks, murder and intimidation, on questioning the sharia law so that they've lost that opportunity there. so what that does to both us and

the short term and more importantly the government of iraq and the long-term operating room and breathing space so they can build loyalty and get schools giving and clinics and the evidence of social services and infrastructure that the people of the afghanistan need. >> i was in afghanistan in november and -- general mcchrystal at that time and asked prior to the president making his announcement as to a timetable but we would in fact begin to be able to draw on forces in 2011 was the objective of the president i asked mcchrystal if he got the troops that he requested when could we expect to draw down forces and he said 2013. keep in mind -- and i asked him -- he was referring to the 40,000 at that point. he got 30,009 dustin from the

coalition partners. first full could you respond as to what the net is in terms of coalition partners since summer with trolling and number two would extend to the coalition partners that will exist going forward have caveat is that keep them from for dissipating to the operations? >> at this time mr. kaufman we have 46 contributing nations in afghanistan including the united states. it's almost a 50 slash 50 split. it's 22, 23. the number that are caveat free that can do anything and if some of them the national caveat will certainly restrict a sarnoff preemptive the does not preclude them from what they can do so i know the commanders on the ground to a close look at how the assigned adel space and missions to get the maximum use of the contributing nations when

they get there i would have to look at the master plan to see in the aftermath of kandahar as we stay there in the days ahead where the lead on a forces me the and i can get that to you. >> thank you. general paxton i appreciate that. secretary flournoy, i was listening to your statement in defining the mission as it exists now under this administration and i think at one point in time you said it's about keeping al qaeda out of afghanistan and then you qualified that further in terms of al qaeda and associates. what is the and state? is the in the state potentially since you did mention the taliban is a coalition government that would incorporate the town of panora elements of teleflex taliban?

>> i think the key from our interest perspective is to deny any safe haven for al qaeda and its associates. i think in any situation a point strategy and military dimension takes you so far and at some point there is a political set of comes reached. we saw this in iraq. i think that we are the -- we are working with the afghan government to try to get a better understanding of the process that they will ultimately lead on both of the reintegration of reconciliation. it's important set up criteria for who will get free integrated back into afghan society and how and whether it is disavowing al qaeda, laying down their arms, abiding by the constitution.

those are the kind of criteria the afghan government will need to articulate as they get to the point of defining what an acceptable political in the state looks like and we will certainly be in deep conversation with them about that. >> thank you. i yield back. >> mr. henry? >> secretary flournoy, i hate to be dated horse but since several of my colleagues have repeatedly referenced the suppose it 30,000 person troup cap, can you give us a one word answer has the administration imposed a troup cap in afghanistan? >> no we have not imposed the troup cap. what president obama did in november was to approve 30,000 troops, additional troops for afghanistan and the degree of flexibility for the secretary defense to authorize further troops in support of the force protection. >> has general mcchrystal requested a