to a risk of being used as a mule of families being exported to subject them since they have less security things to go through, do we do the reverse and expose them to extortion? ..

>> i want to expand on the ground we have covered before did the government concluded there is a very specific effort by the forces to appreciate themselves into what looks like diplomatic actions through central and south america which can be utilized as a staging platform for other kinds of activities, some of them supportive of their efforts to utilize drug gangs or other things to raise money to bring back to hezbollah and some other proxies, some who are a staging ground for activities within the united states. we had testimony about iranian

trained hezbollah who were working with the drug dings along the mexican borders, and they were teaching tunneling technology that has been developed on a utilization against israel to smuggle in weapons and other kinds of things. what the extent to which we are comfortable that we have identified the scope of activities in central and south america. what, in your estimation, is the possible thing we can do to combat against that influence? i will ask the panel -- anybody who thinks that they are in the best position to answer it, anyone who has observations. >> this is something that was supposed to be lengthened in a previous subcommittee. i was honored to do that.

one of the things we talked about in light of testimony from others from the tremendous and recent expansion of the iranian diplomatic presence that can't be explained by normal diplomatic activity, and given what we do know about iran's diplomatic cover and other activities, we need to find a way to pressure allies in the western hemisphere to constrict their presence. and another way to do that, you can constrict able from traveling around the country. which we do in new york. >> we know that there are involvement in places like venezuela, are we involved in ways with countries that are more traditionally operative within the united states can ask the mac from previous testimony that i listed out -- and again, the numbers and names of the countries have been put up as well. my concern is there are things that can be done diplomatically that can be constructed on their

diplomatic efforts to be an advantage. there is one example we know where hezbollah had two individuals that had been designated by the treasury department and were doing things in that capacity on behalf of has blood. groups also do have the capability is sometimes to penetrate into governments that may not be as cooperative. maybe even a little supportive of terrorism to provide that kind of -- do you see that as an effort that sets him apart from their interest in trying to obtain iran's interest -- trying to obtain in a particular capacity, and what are taking a more proactive step and encouraging our allies and others to crack down on that, will it have some kind of an ancillary impact on iran's ability to obtain nuclear weapons? >> it is not irrelevant. for example, i was in the

treasury when he started coming up with the sanctions program in around. i'm very proud of the way it has been working. one of the ways is by leveraging financial institutions and south america, several of which we have publicly. there are areas that these two different issues intertwine. >> if i had any extra time, i would give it to my good friend, mr. long, but i do not. >> mr. clark, recognized a five-minute. >> thank you, mr. chair. it is apparent from this testimony today that both iran and hezbollah pose a great threat to this country and also to a ally of ours, israel. i believe we need all reasonable options available in order to protect americans and protect our ally, israel, from an attack. my concern though is that as we strive to protect our people and our interests, we don't further

engage in profiling and stereotyping against law-abiding american muslims. there has been a belief that many american muslims are not fully cooperating with law enforcement. perhaps, mr. silber, you have made some -- had some experience with the new york city police and muslims, do you have any thoughts you can share with us on the relationship between new york city muslims and new york city police, as well as any of the other members, regarding the role of american muslims and working with local or federal law-enforcement. >> one of the unique things about new york city is the vast scope of its diversity in terms of populations that we have in new york city from around the world. we do have a large and vibrant, very multicultural muslim

community in new york city. there have been a variety of different conduits through which the department works with these different communities. some elements run through community fairs, specializing in dealing with community leaders, other elements focus on the police commissioner, and other elected officials reaching out, traveling and meeting risks. frankly, nypd, which is as diverse as the city of projects, has a number of officers who are all different types of diverse backgrounds, including muslim, who are frankly working on counterterrorism and they work for me. it has been multifaceted in new york city. working with the community, having good relationships is really our best set of eyes and ears to detect early. >> thank you, mr. silver.

>> and thank you, mr. chair i yield back the. >> gentleman yields back. and now, gentlemen for texas, former member of the committee,. >> to you, mr. chairman. i greatly appreciate your allowing me to be a part of this body. i want to thank all of the witnesses for your appearance today and for the intelligence that you have accorded us. i am greatly benefiting from what you have shared. i do want to focus momentarily with doctor levitt. doctor levitt, you talked about the traditional profile, which would lead me to conclude that there must be a non-traditional profile. you did mention at least one example. before i go to my question, would you go back to the example of utilizing persons to drive

cars -- i want to make sure i understand the example you were sharing. >> sure, with pleasure. this is a charlotte chase which this gentleman was part of in the prosecution. correct me if i say anything wrong here. >> individuals running the scam were purchasing cigarettes in the carolinas and driving across state lines to michigan and not paying the tax. this made it a federal crime. they were speeding as they were driving up to michigan, and we're getting speeding tickets, and i assume it was because they were being profiled as muslim americans. and so they decided to have caucasian blonde women drive the cars and the van. they too were told to speed. they too got tickets. they couldn't understand how it was that american law

enforcement was profiling caucasian blonde women. the criminal element of speeding did not occur to them that they assumed it must have been some type of profiling. >> i don't think that there is a nontraditional profile of hezbollah. it is just that law enforcement is aware that we do know that hezbollah is interested and has been for years in seeking out people who may not get what they believe -- hezbollah believes, we would see, american law-enforcement, is a traditional profile. meeting someone from lebanon, someone from certain types of places in lebanon in the east where some of the towns and villages and others in the south and every one from these places, there might be certain types of places they assume, this is

their assumption we would be looking at. the fbi has noted that. there are has -- hezbollah operatives that are iranian, iraqi, or otherwise. that is something we should be aware of. >> is it possible that they would be persons who are of american ancestry? >> we have not seen that as much as we have seen with sunnis. people converting to sunni islam. there is a small number of that kind of thing. it is their ability to leverage criminal networks of the types that mr. braun has discussed. they are not hezbollah, by virtue of working together, they are able to do things on behalf of the group, knowingly or otherwise, and we know that hezbollah leverages criminal associations here am i in europe, for operational

purposes, in particular on the extra restrictions that have been put in place post- 9/11 ?-we mac when we talk about the networks, are they likely to be persons who are from the country? >> the criminal networks -- not necessarily. in the charlotte case, almost all the individuals were from the lebanon, with the exception of some of the people they married and sham marriages. >> are you getting close to saying that we shouldn't worry about persons who were born in this country coming -- becoming a part of any of these criminal activities? >> no, not at all. anybody from any place is liable to get involved in criminal activity. that is what makes these relationships so powerful for group like hezbollah. >> is there a reason for us to make sure that our vision is brought out and we don't exclude

persons simply because they happen to be from a given place? >> exactly. >> mr. schweitzer, would you say a word on this thing? >> i think we don't want to get locked into a certain paradigm. i think it is very logical and this group acted logically in having a white american female driving the cigarette loads up to detroit. once they realized they were getting stopped all the time, because they were speeding, they thought it was because they were being profiled. they get in it -- they did get nervous when they were -- they begins this cell -- send other people when they were buying the cigarettes. the short answer the question is yes, we have a full vision. we can't get locked in to one paradigm. but i don't think we are. i think that there is -- very much a realization that we can't

just -- a person doesn't just wear a dark hat and mustache and look a certain way. >> mr. green, the time is expired. i want to thank all of the witnesses and members for further questions. i think it is interesting to note that there is not one word of testimony and certainly no question from either side which disputed the fact that there are hundreds of hezbollah operatives in this country. and that they are capable of turning operational, it is really a question of when and where and when that decision is what. when that decision is made. i want to make it clear that everything we have heard from experts on law-enforcement and brought up at the hearing and questions from both sides, i think it has been proved that hezbollah is a growing threat

and has gone from terrorist financing to being capable of being fully operational of terrorist operations in the country. i want to thank the witnesses and mentioned the witnesses and members of the committee, additional questions, if you have them, need to be handled in writing. they will be open for 10 days. without objection, i yield. >> in a few moments speeches from the speeches from the senate floor on the future of the health care law. in the little s. than an hour, congressional testimony on u.s. military operations in afghanistan. and then we will re- air the hearing on the iran and hezbollah assessment. the commander of u.s. forces in afghanistan returns to capitol hill tomorrow morning to testify

about military operations in afghanistan. marine corps general john allen will report to the senate on services committee, along with acting defense secretary james miller. that is live on c-span three on 930 eastern. also at 4:30 p.m. eastern, the director of the centers for disease control and prevention, doctor thomas reardon, talk about u.s. and global efforts to work on the aids pandemic. this conference are expected to preview the international aids conference this summer. >> in march 1979, c-span began televising the u.s. house of representatives to households nationwide. today, our continent of politics and public affairs, nonfiction books, in american history, is available on tv, radio, and online. >> we sell the american public

short. >> they know better than that. you have to say to them, sure, there are taxes to spend. it is more honorable than borrowing. >> c-span, created by america's cable company as a public service. the supreme court will hear oral arguments next week in a series of cases on the constitutionality of webb -- health care law. and will provide same-day audio next monday, tuesday, and wednesday. you can hear the oral arguments each afternoon as they are released around 2:00 o'clock eastern time. coverage will be on c-span three, c-span radio, and at c-span.org. senators this week are also focusing on the future of the health care law. this portion from the senate floor is a little less than anro

hour.we a i >> i rise to speak on the seconr year anniversary of the health care patient protection and affordable care law. i will be joined shortly by aw few of my colleagues, and inanis would ask unanimous consent that at that point we engage in ae ed colloquy --icker:hank >> thank you -- madam president, on friday of this week, two years will have passed since president obama signed patient protection and affordable care act into law. this actually is a sad anniversary. more than enough time that has gone by to reveal the failures ma of this massive burdensome piece of legislation. states, more than half of the states, are part of the legal challenge currently under review by the supreme court points out the inevitable truth.

this is a law that simply does not work. the case which will be argued in a few days will be one of the most consequential supreme court cases of my lifetime. consequential not only because it deals with this massive, burdensome piece of legislation, but because the implications goes so much further. the implications of this supreme court case will decide the scope of the commerce clause. and, indeed, madam president and my colleagues, if the supreme court decides that this law can withstand constitutional scrutiny, then this large, massive federal government can in fact do almost anything. there will in fact be hardly any limitations under the constitution in the bill of rights on the power of the united states federal government. americans are right to be

disappointed with obamacare, and they're right to want to repeal. and regardless of the outcome of the supreme court case, this congress can decide -- and as a matter of fact, the people of the united states will have a chance in november, as we do every two years, to decide. a recent gallup poll shows that twice as many americans think the law will make things worse for their families than those who believe it will make things better. 72% of americans believe the individual mandate is unconstitutional. the truth is that americans deserve affordable, high-quality health care. not a 2,700-page, big-government piece of legislation that taxes, spends and regulates. the president's health care law has not lowered the cost of health care as promised. it has not created jobs as

promised. it has not reduced the deficit as promised. and so, this week we mark an anniversary, not with progress but with bitter realities. president obama and his joint session to congress in 2009 assert that his plan -- quote -- "will slow the growth of health care costs for our families, our businesses and our government." in fact, last week the nonpartisan congressional budget office and joint committee on taxation updated their outlook of the health care laws' impact on the federal government. not surprisingly, their latest analysis says obamacare will cost even more than anticipated. and the anticipated costs were high indeed. but they say that the health care law will cost nearly $1.8

trillion over the next decade, or double the estimated cost that accompanied the bill when democratic majorities, democratic super majorities passed it in 2010. this is hardly the relief that president obama promised. during his campaign, the president said the plan would reduce health care premiums by an average of $2,500 per family. instead premiums have grown by nearly that much since he was elected. i see i'm joined here by two of my colleagues, the distinguished senator from wyoming and the distinguished senator from kansas. there are a number of other promises that we can talk about today. i will -- i know we don't impugn motives around here. it's against the rules. but one has to wonder did advocates of this massive law

actually believe these promises or were they simply duped and mislead? and i don't know which is worse. but i know that my colleague, dr. barrasso, himself a physician, who is on the front line of this issue, has griffin this a great deal of thought. so at this point i ask him to join into this colloquy. mr. barrasso: madam president, i stand here with my friend and colleague from mississippi because he and i both attended in his home state of mississippi, a meeting at a hospital where we met with doctors, also met with patients, met with people from the community while the debate and the discussion was being conducted about this health care law. at the time people were asking the sorts of questions because they had heard the promises. would this actually lower the cost of insurance by $2,500 a family? that's what people wanted.

that's what they expected. the other question: will i really be able to keep the care that i have and the doctor that i have if i like it? now here we are a couple of years later, the second anniversary of this health care law being passed, and i'm here with my friend and colleague from mississippi, and it just seems to me that the questions that were asked by your constituents, by the doctors in those communities who take care of the patients, by the patients, the hospital administrators that we talked to that day in his home state of mississippi, and it does seem that many of these promises have been broken. the costs seem to go up higher than had this health care law not been passed at all. the numbers and the statistics that we're hearing now from the budget office on the cost seem to be much, much higher than what the president promised. parts of this health care lawmakers the so-called class act -- law, the so-called class

act, it comes out with schemes to make it seem like the cost of the health care law would be much less than what the american people now know it to be. it's no surprise to me -- and i see this in wyoming and i'm sure you see it in mississippi, and i would imagine the senator from kansas who is on the floor, has seen the same thing at home. he has gone to hospitals, in just about every hospital in the state of kansas as he's traveled around. what we're all seeing is this health care law is even less popular now than when it was passed. that's what i hear at town hall meetings. when i ask do you think you're going to actually pay more under the health care law, every hand goes up. when you say do you think the quality and available of your -- availability of your own care at home is going to go down? again every hand goes up. if i could ask my colleague from kansas if he's hearing the same things. then i know we're also joined by the senator from arizona. mr. moran: i appreciate the opportunity to join my

colleagues on the senate floor today, especially the senator from wyoming, a doctor, who is such an expert on the topic of really not just the moment, not just the day, but the topic of what our country faces. i would tell you that i do spend a lot of time in hospitals across our state talking to health care providers, talk to go patients, to doctors, to administrators, trustees. in fact, there's 128 hospitals in our state. i have visited all of them. and there is just genuine concern about the future of the ability for health care to be delivered in communities across our state. and you add to that the physician and other health care provider community, this health care reform act is creating significant challenges. my interest in public service started a long time ago with the belief that we live our lives in rural america, in my state of kansas, in a pretty special way. when i came to congress, it became clear to me that if our communities were going to have a future that it was dependent

upon the ability to deliver health care close to home. and those rural communities across our nation often have high proportions of senior citizen populations where medicare is the primary determining factor of whether or not they can access health care. and so when the affordable care act was passed, many promises were made. but one of the things that was sold to the american people, or at least the attempt was made to sell to the american people was there will be greater access. i would certainly say that one of the promises that is not being kept about the affordable care act is the likelihood that there is going to be greater access for americans across our country to health care. because this bill is underfunded, it's not paid for. the consequences are that the administration is already proposing, congress will always be looking for ways to reduce spending when it comes to health care. and the most lickly target is the payments that medicare

phaeuplts -- makes to health care providers which sometimes doesn't cover the services. when we look for access to health care, every time a decision will be made in order to try to make this more affordable, we're going to see fewer and fewer providers able to provide the services necessary to folks across the country, but especially in rural communities where 60, 70, 80, even 90% of the patients admitted to the hospital are on medicare. one of the problems with the affordable care act is the reality that it will reduce the access to health care by people who live in rural america. and we will see fewer physicians accepting patients on medicare. we will see fewer hospital doors remain open, all done in a way that, as this bill takes $500 billion out of medicare to begin with, we set, the congress that passed this, the president who

signed this legislation set the stage for there to be less affordable health care available to americans across the country, but especially for constituents of mine who live in a rural state like kansas. mr. wicker: if i could jump in on the issue of medicare, because i have a quote here from president obama, july 29, 2009, quoting specifically from the president. medicare is a government program, but don't worry, i'm not going to touch it. as a matter of fact, only months later, he signed into law the obamacare act which takes half a trillion dollars from medicare and it touches on the very issue that the senator from kansas was referring to with regard to medicare access for people in rural kansas. i yield to my friend from -- mr. mccain: i point out to my friend from mississippi that the first amendment we had on the floor of the senate when we were considering obamacare was to

restore that $500 billion and it was voted down on a party-line basis. i want to thank my friends for allowing me to engage in this colloquy. i'd like to discuss with my friends, probably in my view what really encapsulates the problems with this legislation. the commitment began was that we would provide affordable health care to all americans, which meant we had to put a brake on inflation in health care because health care was becoming unaffordable, the highest quality health care in the world. nothing in my view -- i'd like to ask my colleagues -- describes that more of how this whole plan went awry than the so-called class act. late in the debate, the class act was thrown in to provide long-term care for seniors, which seems like a worthy cause, but the whole thing was a gimmick. it was described by senator

conrad, our distinguished chairman of the budget committee, called it a ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that bernie madoff would have been proud of. so they foisted that off on us. why? well, initially because of c.b.o. scoring that it would show an increase in finances into -- and revenues into the whole obamacare program. but as soon as those people paying in became eligible, then obviously the reverse happened. thank god for senator gregg, former senator of hall of fame, who had an adopted -- amendment adopted that said the program would be solvent over 75 years before the program could be implemented. if it hadn't been for that, the class act would be here today. and then in october, last october, the secretary of health and human services issued a

report confirming that what many of us knew was inevitable, that the secretary could not certify. the class act solvency is required under law. here we went through this exercise franticcally searching for ways to increase revenue, at least the way that c.b.o. does scoring, so we did the class act, and thank god senator gregg of new hampshire put in an amendment that said it would be viable over 75 years. there is no way. not a snowball's chance that they were ever going to be able to certify over 75 years that it was going to be a viable program. so it was kind of entertaining. guess what late on a friday night the secretary of health and human services said that she could not certify that the program would be solvency throughout a 75-year period.

so the result of this was obviously that they didn't have the false revenues that c.b.o. could score, they didn't have a program that could provide long-term care for seniors, and again, as the senator from north dakota aptly pointed out, this ponzi scheme of the first order faced and met a well-deserved death. but that's why the american people, the overwhelming majority of the american people, disapprove of this whole exercise, disapprove of obamacare. they want it repealed, they don't support it, and i'm proud to say that in this election, we will decide whether we repeal and replace obamacare or not, and the american people care about it. mr. wicker: let me summarize what the senator from arizona has just said. the class act was sold to the american people as a budget deficit reducer. it was going to reduce the

deficit. no sooner was it signed and they started looking at it that the administration itself said we know it's unworkable and we abandon it, we're not even going to try to enforce it. that's the result. mr. mccain: they would have kept it on the books had it not been for the amendment of the senator from new hampshire that said they had to certify that it would be solvent over a 75-year period. now, if it hadn't been for that amendment, we would have the class act today, a ponzi scheme in being where people are paying in and that is scored as revenues, and then some years later when they retire, obviously, the reverse would have been true. and i have yet to hear one of my colleagues come over and admit that they were wrong about the class act. i'd love to hear some of those who strongly advocated for it. my friend from iowa, senator harkin, said so we get a lot of bangs for the buck as one might

say with the class act that we have in this bill. senator whitehouse said certain colleagues on the other side of the aisle have argued that the class plan would lead to a financially unstable entitlement program and would rapidly increase the federal deficit. that is simply not accurate. i look forward to my colleagues who supported and voted for the class act to come over and agree that it was, as senator conrad pointed out, a ponzi scheme. mr. wicker: i know our friend from south dakota has joined us and is eager to join in this discussion, so i wonder if he has anything he would like to add about the broken promises that were made during the passage of obamacare. mr. mccain: let me just say, the point is, the whole point of reforming health care was to reduce the costs of health care. that was the -- that was the goal. we all know we cannot sustain, medicare cannot be sustained for

the american people if the inflation associated with health care continues. so the whole object of this game was to reduce the costs of health care and preserve the quality of health care. does anybody think that that was achieved with this legislation? that's why the american people have figured it out. i'd ask the senator from south dakota. mr. thune: i would just echo what the senator from arizona has said about the class act. he was down here as was i and i think many of us when we were debating this to say this is a program that is destined to be bankrupt. in fact, if you look at what even the independent medicare actuary was saying, that was described, the class act was, as unworkable, and they said it would collapse in short order within the health and human services department, there was a nonpartisan career staff who privately called the class program -- quote -- a recipe for disaster, end quote. there was plenty of advance warning that this thing wasn't going to work. as the senator from arizona correctly pointed out, it was used as a gimmick to make the

overall cost of this thing look less and therefore bring it into balance. we now know, of course, that the class act couldn't work. they have had to acknowledge that and the amendment that was put on by the senator from new hampshire, senator gregg, that forced them to certify and made that abundantly clear. but to the senator from mississippi's point, the whole purpose of the exercise was we have got to do something about the cost of health care. we have got to get health care costs down for people in this country. in fact, the president of the united states when he was running for president said, and i quote -- "if you have got health insurance, we're going to work with you to lower your premiums by $2,500 per family per year. we won't wait 20 years from now to do it or ten years to do it. we will do it by the end of my first term as president of the united states." end quote. i'm sure the senator from arizona probably remembers very well many of these statements. but the facts tell a different story, madam president. if you look at what health care costs are doing and even what was predicted by the

congressional budget office, they said that the law was going to increase health insurance premiums by 10% to 13%, which means that families purchasing coverage on their own were going to have to pay an additional $2,100 a year more because of the new law. that's actually been borne out. if you look at the cost of health insurance for people in this country today, it's gone up, not down. it's gone up dramatically since the president took office, about 25% for most americans. so all these promises about getting costs under control, all the promises about being able to keep what you have, all the promises about, you know, this being done in a way that would protect medicare, we all know that medicare was slashed to the tune when it's fully implemented of a trillion dollars. and if you look at the taxes that were imposed by this, a trillion dollars in new taxes, the american people got a bad, bad deal. they know it. that's why the public opinion polls show that. mr. mccain: even though we

have shut down the office, the class act, even though the secretary of health and human services has said that they can't certify that it will be fiscally sustainable over 75 years, it's still on the books. isn't the class act still on the books? do you think that it might be appropriate since we can't comply with the law that maybe we could repeal that portion of the law? would that be something we might think about? in fact, i think it might be a pretty good amendment. mr. thune: a good amendment. and by the way, we have that amendment. we would be happy to offer it. we tried to call the bill up. it was objected to by the democrats to get rid of it. because the bad thing about bad ideas around here is they tend to come back. this is a bad idea that ought to be put away once and for all, and yet it is on the books, as the senator from arizona has pointed out. i don't know why after all the evidence out there now that has been put forward, including the health and human services

secretary saying this will not work, we continue to maintain this on the books in hopes i think that for some at least in the administration that it can be resurrected at some point in the future. but this is a bad idea. it was a bad idea then, it will be a bad idea in the future, because it can't -- it just doesn't pencil out. you cannot make it work. the only thing it does is saddle future generations with massive amounts of debt. mr. wicker: let me ask my colleagues about another promise. i know they are going to call time on us in just a few moments. does anybody recall hearing this staple from the president of the united states in 2009 -- if you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan, period. no one will take it away, no matter what. unquote, the president of the united states, june 15, 2009. what happened to that one? mr. barrasso: even the administration admits that wasn't true. small businesses, people who get

their insurance through small businesses are going to have a very difficult time continuing to provide coverage for people because of the mandates, the washington mandates that say you have to provide washington-approved insurance. i mean, that's the problem, is that people have what they like. it may be something that they want, that they need, they can afford, and now they are being mandated to have something that they may not want, may not need and may not be able to afford. so, again, you have another broken promise, which is why senator coburn who has practiced medicine for about a quarter of a century -- and i practiced medicine for about a quarter of a century, have come out with a report released yesterday, called warning, side effects, a checkup on the federal health law. fewer choices. that means people can't choose to even keep what they had. fewer choices, higher taxes, more government, less innovation. none of those things are the things that the american people have been promised by the president. mr. mccain: in addition to that, could i ask the senator

how many new regulations have been issued and how many new regulations do we anticipate as a result of this legislation? mr. barrasso: from the looks of this over 2,000-page law is going to result in over 100,000 pages of regulations, pages worth of regulations. i know there is one part of the law, a couple of pages, four to six pages, they had 400 pages of regulations and 50 pages of legal guidance. you talk to hospitals, and i know that those of us travel and visit with hospitals in our states. they say we're spending money on consultants and lawyers to help us understand the law, and it's money we ought to be spending on patients and on equipment and on technology for our hospital to provide care in our community. the senator from kansas has visited over a hundred hospitals in his state. i think he's heard exactly the same thing. mr. moran: it's certainly true. the point that was made earlier

about benning this cost curve down, it doesn't do it, it can't do it. that creates the problem that we now all face, how do we have access to affordable health care if you're not reducing the cost of health care. and so the end result, in my view, is that americans will have less options, less options for their own plans. as employers, they will provide either less options or no options for employees. so the idea that you're going to get what you -- keep what you have, that begins to disappear if you're employed. if you're a senior citizen and medicare has been your primary provider, again back to this idea we didn't bend the cost curve, so in order to make health care affordable, when the legislation fails to do that, we find other gimmicks to do that. and one of the things that this bill creates is ipab, this so-called independent agency that is going to make decisions about what is covered by your health care plan, and the goal will not be to be better quality health care. the goal of the ipab will be to

reduce expenditures. so as the promise was made you get to keep what you have, it becomes something totally different than what you experienced in your health care plan, either in your own private health care insurance or as a beneficiary of medicare. and so even though presidents own medical actuary estimates that the law will increase overall national health care expenditures by $311 billion during the first ten years alone and that private health care insurance premiums will rise 10% in 2014, so if we're complaining today about the increase in premium costs, there's more to come. 2014, the medicare actuary says another 10% increase in your health care premiums. at the center for medicare and medicaid services, their economist found that the increasing growth rate in health care spending will occur in every sector of health care, and

more recently the congressional budget office, our neutral provider of analysis, says the cost of the health care law may be substantially higher than earlier estimated. one of the things that i would suggest that we should have done that never happened -- if you want to keep what you have, if you want to have access to health care in rural and urban and suburban places in the country, one would think we would do something permanent about fixing the reducing payments to physicians, so-called doc fix. one would have thault in health care reform -- would have thought in health care reform that would have been front and center because if you don't have a physician providing the service, you don't have health care. yet, we have a medicare system that's going to reduce the payments. in fact, expected this year it would have reduced payments to physicians 30%. the reality is that no longer will physicians accept medicare patients, and that option you were promised to keep what you have disappears one more time. in fact, town hall meeting parsons, kansas, this year a

physician on the front row says senator, you need to know that i no longer accept medicare and medicaid. i will take cash, but i'm not able to afford to provide the services based upon the medicare reimbursement rate that i get. and you add all the paperwork in trying to comply with medicare and medicaid, and it's no longer financially feasible for me in this small town to provide the services that my patients need under medicare. we're going to see a lot less access because, once again, the failure, the promise that have made to reduce, to bend the cost curve down, to reduce health care costs, to reduce premiums, was totally false. mr. wicker: so the promise was not to touch medicare. that promise has not been fulfilled. the promise was to reduce the deficit. that turned out to be an empty promise. you know, also we were told by the president and by speaker pelosi that this bill would

create jobs. the president said it was a key pillar for a new foundation for prosperity. how has that turned out? former speaker pelosi said in its life, the health care bill will create four million jobs. 400,000 almost immediately. of course neither of those has come true. the nonpartisan c.b.o. has estimated that the health care law will reduce america's workforce. this is a bipartisan c.b.o. reduce americans' workforce by 800,000 jobs over the next ten years. and that fact has been confirmed by the united states chamber of commerce. mr. thune: i say to my colleague from mississippi is one of the areas where jobs may be created is in the federal government because it's going to take an awful lot of federal bureaucrats to oversee and lots of new i.r.s. agents to complement this legislation --

to implement this legislation. when it comes to private-sector job creation, the thing about this is it raises the cost for hundreds coverage -- for health insurance coverage for employers. it raises taxes on a lot of people involved in health care -- the presiding printed in the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. harkin: i'd like to be notified when i have one minute left. the presiding officer: okay. mr. harkin: two years ago president obama signed into law what i believe will be remembered as the most forward-thinking and humane -- humane -- reform of our health care system since medicare. just like the republicans opposed medicare when it came in, and they still want to get rid of it -- if you look at the ryan budget that came out, what do they want to do? privatize medicare. they have been at it ever since. and now they don't want this humane reform that we passed two years ago. when the affordable care act became law, i said this, i said we have made america a more compassionate and a more just society. i believe this with even greater conviction now. and in listening to my

colleagues, my friends on the other side of the aisle, you would think this is all just about little nuts and bolts and this and that, but it's about humaneness. it is about compassion. it is about justice. and, yes, it is about making the system -- the system -- work better for patients, not just for insurance companies and the insurance industry. now, we've moved ahead to implement the law. the results have been striking. every american now is protected against abusive insurance companies practices of the past. let me put it another way. because of the health reform law, americans now have protections that every senator in this chamber has enjoyed for years. under the federal employees health benefit program, we now have extended that to americans. i listened to my friends on the other side of the aisle, they want to take it away from americans but keep it for themselves. oh, no, they don't want to give it up. well, i think what's good for

senators ought to be good for the american people. this is a chart of -- this is emily schlichting. she testified before my committee last year. here's what he *f -- here's what he she said. young people are the future of the country. we need the affordable care act because it is literally an investment in the future of this country. why did she say that? because she suffers from a rare autoimmune condition which insurance companies would not even cover. but because we have said that they cannot now discriminate if you have a preexisting condition, emily gets insurance coverage. plus she can stay on her parents' health insurance program. so far the law has extended coverage to more than 2.5 million young people like emily, and they want to take it away.

they want to take away emily schlicthing's insurance coverage. that's what it's all about. they want to appeal the affordable care act. obamacare. and what it means is that 2.5 young people like emily will lose their insurance. they don't talk about that. they don't talk about that. now, right now here's the coverages that americans have: banning lifetime limits. let me read about ross daniels and amy ward from wes des moines, weigh weigh. after developing a rare lung infection, amy needed intensive treatment including a course of medication at -- get this -- $1,600 a dose. $1,600 a dose. her insurance policy had a $1 million lifetime limit. without health reform's ban on lifetime limits, this couple would have had to declare

bankruptcy. after this experience, ross said he couldn't understand why opponents wanted to repeal it. he said -- and i quote -- "it is hard for us to believe that so many of the g.o.p. candidates would have us go back in time where an illness like this would have forced us or any other family, for that matter, into bankruptcy. so, as to what the republicans said, they want to take this protection away from amy ward, ross daniels and millions of other americans. 100 million people are helped by the banning of the lifetime limits. we've covered vital preventive services, free of charge, that benefited more than 80 million people now get free preventive care. it allows young people to remain on their parents' coverage until age 26. i can't tell you how many families i've talked to in my state of iowa who said this has been a godsend to them and to their kids. here's a preventive.

we all know prevention is the best thing we can do to change our sick care system into a health care system. here's what the affordable health care act does on prevention. before health care reform, colorectal cancer screening was covered only by 68%. 68% by insurance companies. cholesterol screening only covered by 57%. tobacco cessation, only 4%. under the affordable care act, colorectal cancer screening, cholesterol screening and tobacco cessation, all covered at 100% by every insurance company. 100%. not 57% or 68%. but 100%. and we all know that early screening means that people live longer, and it cuts down on health care costs. so millions are now receiving free preventive care. 86 million americans had at least one free preventive service in 2011.

a million iowans in my state received at least one free preventive service in 2011. the republicans want to take this away. that's what it's about. americans now have preventive care. they now are able to keep their kids on their policy until they're age 26. they now have a ban on lifetime limits. we now have a ban for children up to age 19 on preexisting conditions. that is all -- that's what they want to do. they want to take this away. i say don't let them take this away from the american people. the presiding officer: 50 lot higher than that, senator. mr. barrasso: it does seem that way to me with the fact that two years out, senator coburn and i put together a report on what we're finding, a checkup on the federal health law, and the title is -- "warning, side effects" because there are huge

side effects from the health care law. the four that we have written out on the prescription pad as we see it as the prescription pad handed out by president obama, number one is fewer choices. number two, we have higher taxes. number three, more government. and four is less innovation. that's what the american people are seeing of the side effects of this health care law, thanks this they don't want. they don't want fewer choices. they want more choices. people don't want higher taxes. they want lower taxes. they don't want more government. they want less government. they don't want less innovation. they want more innovation. that's what the american people ask for. there was a reason to do health care reform because people wanted the care that they need from a doctor they want at a cost they can afford. and i know that's what my colleague from iowa sees when he goes home every weekend and talks to people in his home communities. mr. grassley: could i add one thing at this point? we don't really know how bad this bill is yet -- or this law

is yet, and i'm going to add something to what senator blunt said when you quoted the speaker of the house saying we don't really know what's in this bill. you're going to have to pass it to find out what's in it. that's what had you to say to get a majority vote even of her own party to get it through the house of representatives. but in a sense, she is right. you can read every -- you can understand every letter of this law, but it has 1,693 delegations of authority for the secretary to write regulations, and until they are written, you aren't really going to know what's in it. and you remember the accountable care organization rules that came out. six pages out of 2,700 in the bill dealt with accountable care organizations, but the first regulations that were written were 350 pages long. so we really don't know what -- how bad this legislation is maybe for a few years down the road, and hopefully we never get that far down the road.

mr. barrasso: and my understanding from the accountable care organization component of this is that the very health programs that the accountable care organizations were referred to, the ones that the president held up as the models across the country -- and one was in utah, one was guizinger in pennsylvania, i believe the mayo clinic may have been a third. once all of those pages of regulations came out, the programs that the president says this is the model that we want to follow, they all said we can't comply with these regulations. they are too stringent, they are too confining, they won't work in our program. so if they are not going to work at the kind of places that the president said are doing it well, to me that means they are not going to work anywhere in wyoming and very likely not anywhere in iowa or anywhere in missouri as we go and try to make sure patients can get the care that they need from the doctor that they want at a cost that they can afford. i mean, those are the things. and that's why i continue to look at this health care law and go home every weekend and talk

to people and continue to hear that this bill is bad for patients, bad for providers, the nurses and the doctors who take care of those patients, and bad for taxpayers. when we take a look at -- and senator blunt made a comment about this with medicare, some of the changes, who is going to make these decisions, it looks to me from reading through this law that it's unelected bureaucrats. 15 unelected bureaucrats with this so-called independent payment advisory board. people who will decide what hospitals would get paid for providing various services, so that in small communities, the hospital may say well, we can no longer offer that service. and i have heard my colleagues talk about the specific loss of the availability of hospitals to even stay profitable with some of the cuts, taking $500 billion away from medicare.

again, not to save and strengthen medicare but to start a whole new government program for others. i mean, those are the things that we're dealing with and why at town hall meeting after town hall meeting, people continue to tell me they want this repealed and they want it replaced with patient-centered, patient-centered health care. not government-centered, not insurance-company centered, patient-centered health care. that's what people are asking for, and they get tired of all these broken promises that the president has made. i remember he said he's going to bring down the price of premiums by $2,500 per family per year. what family wouldn't want that because the whole purpose of the health care law initially was to get the cost of health care under control. this didn't do that. if i go to a town hall meeting as i did not too long ago in wyoming and say how many of you under the new health care law are finding that you're paying more for health insurance.

not the 2,500 less a year that the president promised. how many of you are paying more? every hand goes up. and then you ask the question how many of you believe that the quality and the availability of your own care is going to go down as a result of this health care law? every hand goes up. and i know in the show-me state of missouri, that's not what people want. they don't want to pay more and get less. i don't know if my colleagues have been hearing things similar to that at home. mr. blunt: that's exactly what i think we're all hearing. whether you are for this bill or not, my guess is if you're hearing that, if you're asking that question. the president's promised, another promise, that the average family -- if his health care plan went into effect, would have $2,500 less as you just said, doctor, per year. in fact, since he became president, insurance premiums have risen by $2,213 a year.

not a 2,500-dollar cut, but a 2,213-dollar increase. in 2008, the employer-provided insurance, the average family premium was $12,860. last year it was $15,073. these are incredible increases for families that, along with the bad energy policies and other policies put families into a condition that they would hope not to be in and we would hope for them not to be in. so you have got increased cost to families, increased cost to the system. that's the other thing the president said. another broken promise was that this health care bill would control costs. and recently, according to the medicare actuary, the person that calculates these costs, the estimate was that national health spending would go up at

least $311 billion over ten years under this plan. now, that's not cost control. that's $311 billion, almost a third of a trillion dollars in increases, payment reductions to hospitals. you mentioned this board that will make these decisions. i'm not sure that there will be enough people on that board that understand rural hospitals, to understand why it's critical that rural hospitals that are critical care hospitals continue to have different arrangements with the government than others do for the government-provided health care like medicare and medicaid. and if they understand that, there may not be enough people on the board that understand the unique needs of urban hospitals that have a heavily uninsured population. how is this 15-member board going to be better than the 500 members that serve people in washington now trying to look at specifics and then be accountable? who is this board accountable

to? what decision do they make that somebody can challenge in a meaningful way, in a way that they would be really concerned about? so it doesn't control costs, as the president said it would. it doesn't reduce insurance costs as the president said it would. i think it will wind up with maybe even more people uninsured as long as the penalty that you pay is less than the premiums you're going to pay, particularly for young workers who are outside the system today, and the president's plan, you eliminate the advantage that they have for being young and healthy by saying no, you can't really classify groups. where if you go get life insurance, you certainly pay more if you're 75 for life insurance than you do if you're 27, if you have -- you're just going to pay less. and it's the same way today for health insurance as well because it's clear that the likelihood of your using that plan at 26 is different than it is at 62.

so all of these things just don't add up and people are beginning to figure they don't add up and i thought senator grassley made a very good point about even when we passed the bill, you won't know all of the costs of this bill till it actually goes into effect. and i'm very much in support of his view that we never want to let this get so far down the road we know how much it would really cost or all of the rules and regulations you would really have, because it will -- it will head health care in a direction we might not be able to reverse course and get to a health care system that's really focused on patients and health care providers rather than government bureaucrats deciding what's the best health care for everybody. i want my doctor to decide. i want to be part of that discussion. i don't want some government bureaucrat deciding what procedure is the only procedure that's acceptable for me. mr. barrasso: it's interesting.

you go home as i do, very, very often, to talk to many of the small business owners in the state of missouri as i do in wyoming, as senator grassley does in iowa, and one of the promises that the president made is he said four million small businesses may be eligible for tax credits. four million small businesses may be eligible for tax credits. well, turns out that the key word there by the president is "may." may be eligible. even though the fact that the white house has sent out postcards to all these small businesses, the i.r.s. sent over a million dollars in taxpayers' money to send out millions of postcards promoting the tax credit. the treasury department's inspector general recently testified that -- quote -- "the volume of credit claims has been lower than expected." as a matter of fact, only 7% of the four million firms the

administration claimed. why? well, because of the complexity and the whole way the system was set up, the president was able to talk big and deliver very small. and that's why so many people are very, very unhappy with the claims in the health care law because they know these promises have been broken. with regard to the nancy pelosi's famous quote that first you have to pass it before you get to find out what's in it, that's why i come to the floor every week with a doctor's second opinion because it does seem that just about every week we learn some new unintended consequence, something new about the health care law, and another reason why americans are unhappy with it. why it remains as unpopular if not more unpopular today as when it was passed. and why so many people believe that -- that this -- that the supreme court should find this bill unconstitutional for the

reasons that really do have americans at home really in an uproar. very unhappy that the government can come into their homes and mandate that they buy a government-approved product, and pay for it or pay a fine. nothing like this has happened before, and people are frankly offended. we don't know what the supreme court is going to do, but i know what this body ought to do. this body ought to vote to repeal and replace this broken health care law and really get a health care law in place which is what the american people wanted, which is the care they need from the doctor that they want at a price they can afford. and we have not seen that yet but that's why we are here on the second anniversary of the president's health care law to continue to point out the flaws of this and quite interestingly, when you take a look at some of the national poll numbers for people who have

talked to a health care provider, whether that be a nurse, a doctor, a physician assistant, a nurse practitioners, no matter who they are, even less supportive of it than the gin public. the presiding officer: the senator has my statement not related to senator mikulski be placed at a separate place in the record. the presiding officer: without objection, it will be so. mr. durbin: by this time next week, the supreme court will have finished hearing oral arguments in the case charging the constitutionality of the patient protection and affordable care act. how important is this supreme court case on health care reform? well, health care is such an important issue that congress spent one year drafting and debating a bill that the court is going to consider next week. health care has been a critical issue for so long in our country that in the last century, nine different presidents have spent time, energy and political capital fighting for reform. it's so important the supreme court reserves six hours for oral argument over the course of three days to consider the act's constitutionality.

the last time the court dedicated that kind of time to any one case was in 1966 -- if i'm not mistaken, that's 46 years ago -- when it considered miranda versus arizona. nevertheless, not even the health care case is important enough for the supreme court to justify breaking its antiquated tradition and allowing cameras to televise the proceedings. so the american people are not going to have a chance to see and hear these historic arguments for themselves as they take place. i can't predict the outcome of the case, but i can tell you what to expect just outside the doors of the supreme court. it's a scene that we have seen over and over again for decades. thousands will gather outside the court. many are going to camp overnight, sleeping on the sidewalks in the hopes of getting one of about 200 seats available to the public. the vast majority of those wanting to see the supreme court argument on one of the most important cases of our time will

be told no, you're not allowed to come inside the court, we don't have room for you. in a democratic society that values transparency and participation, there can't be any valid justification for such a powerful element of government to operate outside the view of the american people. for too long, the american people have been prevented from observing open sections of the supreme court -- open sessions of the supreme court. except for the privileged few, the v.i.p.'s, members of the supreme court bar or the press, the most powerful court in our land, some might argue in the world, is inaccessible to the public and shrouded in mystery. i'm pleased to stand in the committee, judiciary committee with senator grassley, the ranking member of the judiciary committee, asking that the senate pass our bipartisan bill that would require televising open supreme court proceedings. with the benefit of modern technology, the supreme court proceedings can be televised

using unobtrusive cameras and the court's existing audio recording capability. our bill respects the constitutional rights of the parties before the court and respects the discretion of the justices. the court can decline to televise any proceeding where the justices determine by a majority vote that doing so would violate due process of one or more parties. in our view, senator grassley and myself, this is a reasonable approach that balances the public need for information and transparency, the constitutional rights of those before the court, and the discretion of the judges. it's no secret that senator grassley and i have strong disagreements about the actual law that's going to be considered by the court. we have taken to the floor many times to explain our positions. despite our disagreement on substance, senator grassley and i agree on a bipartisan basis to stand united in support of s. 1945 to finally bring transparency and openness to our

supreme court. we're not the only members of this body who believe that these proceedings would produce greater accountability. in past years, the cameras in the courtroom act enjoyed bipartisan support. the last sponsor of the act before he left the senate was senator arlen specter of pennsylvania. this version of the bill, very similar to his own, has the support of senators cornyn, klobuchar, schumer, blumenthal, gillibrand, harkin and begich. as senator grassley would note, democrats and republicans from both chambers have written to the supreme court asking it to permit live television broadcasts of the health care reform arguments next week. in november, senators bloomen that will, schumer and i wrote -- bloomen that will, schumer and i wrote a letter to the chief justice making the request, open the supreme court for this historic argument. let the court make the argument before the supreme court and the questions asked by the justices in open court. well, chief justice roberts

responded to our request last week, and it sounds like he sent the same letter, incidentally, to senator grassley. the chief justice informed us that the supreme court has respectfully declined to televise the health care arguments, but that the court would graciously offer an alternative. here's the alternative. now the court will post audio recordings and unofficial transcripts to the court's web site just a few hours after the arguments are over. for that gesture, i guess we can congratulate the united states supreme court for entering the radio age. america entered the radio age 90 years ago. the supreme court is catching up with a delayed broadcast, audio only, but i think america deserves better. decisions that affect our nation should be accessible by the people who are affected by those decisions, and they should be produced in a way that americans can both see and hear.

the day of the fireside chat is gone. the day of radio transmissions exclusively, those days are gone. television and even the internet are the dominant media for communicating messages and ideas in the modern america. it's not too much to ask the third branch of government at the highest level to share the arguments before the court with the people of america. understand, there will be hundreds of people present and watching this as it occurs. it isn't confidential or private. it's only kept away from the rest of america because this court doesn't want america to see the proceedings. the supreme court is an elite institution in our government. every member of the supreme court went to one of two ivy league law schools. most of the clerks before the court come from one of seven law schools. none of the current justices

have ever run for public office. none of the current justices have ever tried a death penalty case, and the lawyers that appear before the supreme court are part of a small and exclusive club. perhaps this limited exposure is why many on the court don't seem to fully appreciate the impact its decisions have on everyday america and why the american people deserve to have more access to the court's public proceedings. since the supreme court is the final word on constitutionality, on issues that impact every american, the american people should have full and free access to its open proceedings on television. now, let's be clear about one thing. our bill only applies to court sessions already open to the public. supreme court justices should be able to consult with each other, review cases and deliberate privately. no one, no one in this bill or otherwise is calling for those

private deliberations to be televised. i believe that televising private deliberations or closed sessions of the court could cause harm to our judicial system. our bill doesn't require it, i wouldn't support it. open sessions, already open sessions of the court, however, where members of the public are already invited to observe are a different matter. they should be televised in real time and widely available. some who oppose our bill say that the elite cadre of seasoned lawyers with the rare opportunity to argue before the highest court in the land will grandstand in front of the cameras, risking their professional reputations and even their clients' cases. some say the court's justices who have been subjected to the most rigorous vetting process known to man and widely covered confirmation hearings, will suddenly shrink from asking tough questions because of the camera's glaring lens. i don't buy it. the experience of state and federal courts that have allowed their open proceedings to be

televiseed proves these fears unfounded. while the federal courts of appeal have not yet permitted live cameras to broadcast all appellate proceedings, there was a three-year pilot project in 1990 that assessed the impact of cameras in the federal courts. listen to what happened as a result of that pilot program. at the end of the day, 19 of the 20 judges most involved concluded that the presence of cameras in the federal courts -- quote -- "had no effect on the administration of justice." end of quote. don't take my word for it. kenneth starr, former solicitor general and independent counsel, supports our bill and said this -- "this fear seems groundless. the idea that cameras would transform the supreme court into judge judy is ludicrous." for more than 30 years, state courts have broadcast their proceedings, and in fact what they found is it hasn't detracted at all from the pursuit of justice.

every state in our nation permits all or part of the appellate court proceedings to be recorded for broadcast on television or streaming on the internet. expanding access to the supreme court by televising its proceedings shouldn't be controversial. public scrutiny of the supreme court proceedings produce greater accountability, transparency, understanding and access to the decisionmaking in government. congressional debates have been fully televised for more than three decades. there are people who follow c-span broadcasts religiously. i know. i meet them regularly. as i have said in the judiciary committee, people will come up to me and say one of your colleagues looks a little bit under the weather. has he got the flu? is he sick? just by observing c-span and following the floor of the senate and knowing each of us they think on a more personal basis. they hear these statements, they listen to our debate, they feel better informed about their government. wouldn't the same apply across the street in the supreme court? opponents of our bill say the public will be misinformed

because all they will see a brief clip of the court's proceedings which can be misconstrued, leaving the public with the wrong impression. as i have said previously, this argument sounds a lot like an editorial from a few years ago. here is what it said." keeping cameras out of the supreme court to prevent people from getting the wrong idea is a little like removing the paintings from an art museum out of fear that visitors might not have the art history background to appreciate them. in 1986, chief justice berger wrote the following words in the supreme court's press enterprise company versus superior court opinion. these words are true today as they were in 1986. people in an open society do not demand infallibility from their institutions, but it's difficult for them to accept what they are prohibit interested observing. the time has long since come for the supreme court, for the highest court in our land to open its doors and allow the open its doors and allow the

finally nailed down a raft date for when the epidemic starts and described tinderboxes has most the world is but moss and most part of the world there isn't that much h.i.v. yet in some places there is a ton and it's incredibly destructive, so understanding that these categories exist allows you to think what happens to keep the fire is moving and what can we do has the world to end it?

afghanistan war commanding general allen says the mission is on track and he's confident combat troops can be withdrawn by the 2014 deadline. general allen testified before the house armed services committee for the second time since taking command of the war. this is a little more than two and a half hours. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> the committee will come to order. >> good morning ladies and gentlemen the house armed services committee meets today to receive testimony from the acting undersecretary defense for policy dr. james miller, and the commander of the international security assistance force in afghanistan, general john allen. gentlemen, thank you for your distinguished service for the nation the especially during this critical moment in afghanistan, and thank you for joining us here today. the last year has been a consequential time for coalition efforts in afghanistan. during this time period, with the surge forces in place in the united states and nato forces have conducted major operations to push back the taliban and the

south of afghanistan, launched operations from afghanistan to kill osama bin laden and further disrupt al qaeda, trained thousands of afghan security forces so they can secure their territory from the insurgent groups and return countless numbers of civilians to school and to work. however, in the last few weeks the united states and nato are making in afghanistan have been called into question by some deutsch to the actions of the road few. some afghan soldiers have taken up arms against the isaf soldiers that could dimness trust against forces that are supposed to be partnered to read a sober assessment, however, shows the partnering is valuable and necessary. there are steps that can be taken to minimize such instances, and these criminal actions are relatively isolated.

moreover, the incident of the u.s. army staff sergeant who allegedly took up arms against afghan civilians also is both isolated and a criminal act that should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. these exceptional incidents are not reflective of the hundreds of thousands of u.s. soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who fought honorably served in afghanistan, nor are the reflective of the many thousands of afghan soldiers who are being trained and are helping to secure afghanistan today. additionally i remain very concerned about the president's decision last summer to speed up the withdrawal of troops from afghanistan as well as his original announcement in a speech at west point for the date certain in 2014 to withdraw all u.s. combat forces. these decisions the president has made it increasingly difficult to build up trust and confidence with the afghan institutions that will ultimately ensure that the

security of the political gains by the u.s. and nato efforts are sustained into the future. moreover the exit sign uncertain whether we will be able to achieve the tenants of the president's strategy and the president himself has put in place. it's been reported in the media the u.s. and afghan governments are attempting to achieve a negotiated solution with the taliban and get the taliban can continue to operate with impunity of pakistan because they already know when we will be leaving and pakistan has been unwilling or unable to address those safe havens. furthermore, due to the president's decision to begin withdrawing the search forces we increase the risk to the forces to effectively address the second part of the afghanistan campaign plan, shifting the main effort to eastern afghanistan and applying military pressure on the haqqani network who are responsible for the most dramatic attacks and afghanistan

what's more in the absence of the sustained public opinion to support the mission in afghanistan from the white house on down many have begun to question what we are fighting for. with friend and foe alike knowing the u.s. is heading for the exits it is likely viewed as a preamble to retreat when the mission becomes redeployment rather than the mission's success the outcome can quickly become disorderly. general allan, i have total confidence in you and your command that the challenge in afghanistan continues to be great, but i'm certain we can achieve the united states core strategic objectives by resolving to provide you with the time and resources you need to be successful. i think this hearing today is extremely timely with the american people needing to hear from you and what is really going on over there on the

ground. i look forward to your testimony and the insights into the challenges and the wait for word in afghanistan. thank you, member smith. >> thank you mr. chairman and for being here. dr. miller, appreciate your leadership and support and on to start by agreeing with of the trans opening remarks about the progress that has been made in afghanistan since the surge was announced there's been considerable progress made throughout the country come and i am aware of the progress made goes to the bravery leadership and the considerable efforts of our troops and our partners. we have pushed the taliban back particularly in the south and we traveled there regularly to tangibly see that allegedly are able to walk through that were major combat zones just a few months before and there's evidence of the hard work and progress is being made. perhaps it is important as a security game you're seeing on the district on the provincial level, sycophant improvement in government, one of the things i was impressed of the last time i was there was i saw a great deal

more of the u.s. aid state department, people of the judiciary site. basically the basics building blocks of government being put in place and that gives sustainability. unquestionably we've made enormous progress in the last couple of years towards giving the afghan government and the afghan people the chance to have a stable and a lasting government. progress should not underestimate the challenge the remains. afghanistan is a very difficult country. it's very poor, its economy is a very difficult to read the history of now well over 40 years of the civil war and the insurgent groups are present. we can't imagine that we are never going to lead a perfectly stable perfect democracy in afghanistan. but the progress has been made and i think the thing we can all feel good about is we have a much better chance that when we leave there will be a stable government that will be able to stand and stop the taliban from returning to power and we must

remember the was the goal of the president stated. a defeat, dismantle al qaeda and insure they and their taliban allies cannot come back. we are further along the line to achieve that more than we were two years ago and that is due in large part to the efforts of the troops and we must thank them for that. but the bottom line is we are not going to stay there forever. i don't think that anybody should say we should and if we are not going to stay there forever then we need a plan to leave and leave responsibly. and that is what was first put in place by the president in 2009 and solidified the conference in 2010 with nato. what we have is a realistic plan we simply cannot say well, we are never going to leave, we are going to stay because we are fearful of people think we're going to leave that there forgives them at vantage. the truth is it gives it and it if we leave in the minds of the afghan people we are not going to leave. the effect of that is number one it undermines the confidence in the karzai government, the confidence in the district of the provincial government because they do not look like the governments that can stand on their own they look like

governments will be forever dependent upon foreign forces. it also gives the company in a very strong propaganda argument that the government is but a prop for a foreign occupied force and that will fuel the insurgency. we have to balance that out and we also have to understand that having well over 130 tells of foreign troops in the country does cause destabilizing effects. imagine your own community if every day you have the foreign troops will land on the street as if they own the place we need to get the point we turn this back over to the afghan people as soon as we irresponsibly can and the progress that we have made gives us the opportunity to do that. but to simply say we are going to stay forever is something goes wrong undermines the plan so it is my hope to lay off for us how we are making progress on that and as we go forward how we are going to make that responsible position that i think everybody in the room once.

we want our troops home, we want the afghan people back in charge of their own security come back in charge of their own government. that's where we want to get. the path is not easy but it's one we must go down and i commend both of you for the progress we've made and i looked forward to hearing about how we can complete the mission and bring our troops home. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you. dr. miller. >> chairman, ranking member smith, members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to testify today. i'm very pleased and honored to be here with our outstanding commander in afghanistan, general john allen. mr. chairman, i ask that my full remarks be entered into the record and i would like to summarize them. >> without objection, so ordered. >> can pull the microphone will but closer, please? estimate mr. chairman the united states objectives in afghanistan remains to the united saban to al qaeda and deny the taliban the ability to offer for the afghan government. this administration is committed to meeting the court objectives

and while we have faced serious challenges our strategy is succeeding. counterterrorism efforts against al qaeda has been extremely successful. although the job is not finished there is no job we have degraded al qaeda's capacity. as a result of the surge launched in 2009 we've broken and reversed the taliban momentum in afghanistan. and the afghan national security forces are increasingly capable and increasingly in the lead. mr. chairman, on the forces of the performing extremely wrong as i saw firsthand a letter to afghanistan less than two weeks ago. we are willing to a process of transitioning to the ansf leadership has agreed to the 2010 nato lisbon summit. in fact today almost 50% of afghans already live in areas that has become the transition process to the ansf lead. as an interim milestone at some point in 2013, the ansf will be in the lead for providing

security across afghanistan. at that time, the u.s. coalition forces will be in a support role which will take a number of forms. this includes u.s. and coalition forces, partnered with afghan units as is already occurring in many places today, and it will include the smaller footprint associated with u.s. and coalition forces and a trained and advised assist role. by the end of 2014, the ansf will be responsible for the security of afghanistan. by that time, u.s. and coalition forces will have moved to a much smaller presence focused on counterterrorism and on training advising and assisting afghan forces. mr. chairman, there is no doubt that the afghanistan war has been a tough fight. in the last several weeks there have been particularly difficult. the inappropriate handling of the crown at the bagram air base was an error that while unintentional sent precisely the wrong signal.

this unfortunate act stands in stark contrast to the years in which u.s. forces demonstrated a deep respect for the religious practices of the afghan people. even more recently, the afghans and we have had to respond to the terrific killing of 16 afghan civilians in the district in kandahar. the department of defense is conducting a full investigation of this act could as you know a suspect is now in custody and is at fort leavenworth kansas. justice will be done and the one responsible will be held accountable. we've also been challenged in the recent weeks in attacks by elfgin personnel by u.s. and coalition forces so-called green on blue attacks. we will have to work through these incidents and these challenges as president of, and secretary leon panetta discussed in the last week with president karzai. but it is critical that these tragic occurrence is not blind us to the sycophant progress we have made. i'd like to give some examples.

from 2010 to 2011 the attacks and afghanistan were down 9%. the trend has continued into 2012. for january and february this year the enemy initiated attacks are further down 22% from 2011 for the same months. in october, 2008 there were only 140,000 afghans in the ansf to read today there are approximately 330,000 we expect to reach our goal of 352,000 ansf ahead of the october 2012 target date. today almost 90% of the coalition operations in afghanistan are carried out in partnership with the ansf and to the ansf is in the lead for more than 40% of operations. as you know, we are negotiating the strategic partnership between the united states and afghanistan that will frame our enduring relationship. the strategic partnership will demonstrate the we learned the lessons from 1989 when our of

brough departure left our friends confused and enemies emboldened. in partnership with president karzai and the afghan government, we've recently completed a crucial milestone when general allan cook signed a memorandum of understanding on the detention of relations with the defense minister. we are also working on the afghans special operations which when completed will further strengthen our partnership. concluding the strategic partnership will send a clear signal that the united states remains and will remain committed to the afghan security. such an assurance must continue beyond our planned transition of 2014 to read as obama -- excuse me as president obama said in a state of the union address, quote, we will build an enduring partnership with afghanistan said that it is never again a source of attacks against america. the need for a long-term commitment extends to our coalition partners as well and

as the secretary-general nason said, quote from our current doesn't end with transition we will finish the job to help create a secure afghanistan for our shared security. achieving a durable peace afghanistan will require some form of reconciliation among afghans to read it is by no means certain that this effort will bear fruit in the near term but it's very much in our national security interest to try to be jessica clinton said in a negotiated outcome of the insurgents must beat our deadlines for the riggins of the vision and insurgents must draw on the violence and number to commerical ties with al qaeda and number three, allied by the constitution of afghanistan. afghanistan will depend on as a part of afghanistan's neighbors particularly pakistan. like afghanistan and other neighbors pakistan has a legitimate interest the should be understood and must be addressed and his responsibilities. most important it needs to take steps to ensure that military

and extremist groups cannot continue to find safe haven in pakistan territory. the powerful incentives to do so. in 2011 alone some 2,000 attacks in paris and resulted in 2400 deaths mostly from the improvised explosive devices. mr. chairman and members of the committee think for the opportunity to testify today. we embarked on this fight a decade ago to ensure that terrorist that works that stroke in new york and washington, d.c. and in the skies over pennsylvania would never again be able to use afghanistan as their sanctuary things to the courage and skill of the u.s. armed forces and civilian personnel to our coalition partners and our afghan partners our strategy is working while success and warfare is never guaranteed the right path to meet our objectives to the my stevan to al qaeda and denied him the ability to overthrow the afghan government. i would like to conclude by

thanking the committee for your continued support of our effort afghanistan and your strong support of the great men and women of the u.s. armed forces. mr. chairman, thank you and i look forward to the committee's questions. >> thank you, dr. miller. general allan, welcome to your first hearing since you assumed this command. we're very appreciative of having your today. the time is now yours. >> thank you. it's an honor to be with you today. german mckeon, ranking member smith, distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. to discuss our operations in afghanistan. it's a pleasure to be here with my friend, dr. miller, the acting undersecretary of defense for policy. chairman, i ask that my remarks be entered into the record. >> without objection, so ordered. >> thank you pilat let me begin by expressing my gratitude to all of you on the committee for the support that you provide our

men and women in uniform every day, that they are well equipped, well-trained and well fled as a great testament to the efforts of this committee and to the great work of this congress. and on behalf of those troops and on behalf of their families, i want to thank you for that. in the past eight months i've walked the ground afghanistan with many of those troops. along with my friend and partner, ambassador ryan crocker coming into my nato country the senior civilian representative ambassador sir simon gas five met with of the leaders of most of the other 49 nations that serve alongside of us in the international security assistance force. and all through this i've been in close consultation with the afghan civilian and military leadership most of whom have experienced the years of soviet occupation, the civil war, the darkness of the taliban and

shorty have been enmeshed in their country's conflict for over three decades to read and from all of this, i can tell you unequivocally three things: first, we remain on track to ensure that afghanistan will no longer be a safe haven for al qaeda and will no longer be terrorized by the taliban. second come as a collision the largest in the recent history, we are well aware and well along on the progress to meet our 2010 lisbon commitments to transition security lead to the afghan national security forces by december 2014 and third, our troops know the difference they are making every day. they know it and the enemy feels it every day. to be sure the last couple of months have been trying in the wake of the revelations that american troops have mishandled religious texts to include the kuran protest some of them

violent occurred in several but only a few regions across afghanistan. 32 afghans lost their lives in these riots and even more were hurt. just since the recession over the coalition has lost 63 troops in action from six different nations. 13 of them were killed at the hands of what appeared to have an afghan security forces, some of the more motivated we believe in part by the mishandling of religious materials. and just as tragic as dr. miller mentioned we are investigating what appears to be the murder of 16 innocent afghan civilians at the hand of a u.s. service members. each of these events is heart wrenching, and my thoughts and prayers go out to all of those affected by this violence. coalition and afghan alike. but i assure you the relationship between the coalition and our afghan security forces remains strong.

two weeks ago i was down in the helmand province does sitting with marines and the local left and commanders. this was in the wake of the kuran burning incident and violence was says peak. a young marine said he and his unit were told about the demonstrations by their afton counterparts, the afghan troops told them let us patrol outside the wire for a couple days. we have got this for you to be understanding the gravity of the risks, the afghans had assumed for these marines this particular marine continued our afghan brothers were trying to protect us. this one statement spoken by a young marine conveyed the power of this brotherhood in arms that has been forged in the battle now over the years. it speaks to the trust that we've dealt with the afghans and should shock absorbency of this relationship. yet we know there is much hard

in the deadly work that remains to be done. with the progress israel and importantly that progress is sustainable. the of severely degraded the insurgency as one afghan commander told me on the south and the latter part of 2011, could come this time around, the afghan tel dan were the away team, end quote. on top of that success as a result of a recent winter operations we've seriously degraded tilden's above the to the mount a major spring offensive of their own. this spring they will come back to find many of their cash as empty, their former strongholds unattainable, and a good many of the foot soldiers absent or unwilling to join the fight, indeed in kandahar back in december, 54 mar decided to reintroduce on short notice beckon to the afghan society, and when we asked them why the lead on their arms, the complaint the unrelenting pressure that they feel.

they said they found themselves up against capable afghan forces in greater numbers with greater frequency. and while they were willing to fight foreigners, they were unwilling to fight their afghan brothers especially afghans who fought back with courage and with skill because of the training that we had provided them. and the training we provide them is critical to our mission. throughout history come insurgencies have seldom been defeated by foreign forces in fact they've been ultimately beaten by indigenous forces. in the long run our goals can only be achieved and then secured by afghan forces. transition, then, is the linchpin of our strategy, not merely the way out. during the past 12 months, afghan security forces have expanded from 276,000 to 330,000 they will reach their full strength ahead of schedule, the deadline having been october.

the expansion of the professional edition of the afghan security forces allows us to recover the remaining 23,000 u.s. search forces this fall and enables them to continue to pressure the taliban to reconcile and makes possible security transition to the afghans in accordance with our commitments and on time. a security conditions remain good in areas that have transitioned this far from kabul in the east and to the west and to the north and the south. later this year afghan security forces are expected to assume security leave for as much as two-thirds or possibly more of the afghan population. as the potential unifying influence in afghanistan, the afghan forces are better than we thought they were coming and they are better than they thought they were when tried in combat. so as we move them to the floor,

they are gaining more and more confidence and they are getting more and more capability in the past five months, 89% of the total conventional operations or partnered with both coalition and the afghan forces and 42% four elfgin lead. over the next two years coalition forces will remain combat ready but increasingly focused on security force assistance missions as we continue to move the afghans into the lead. in this process, afghan leadership is simply a key and i can tell you that the afghans want to leave and want the responsibility that comes with it. in fact, for the very first time, our joint coalition afghan operational campaign planned for january, 2012 from july, 2013 was conceived, developed and planned with the afghans in the lead. they're truly emerging as the real defeat mechanism of this insurgency and increasingly as an emblem of national unity, and

this is the essential for the long-term security of the afghanistan. but none of us harbor illusions. we know that we face longer-term challenges as well and we know that al qaeda and other extremist networks, the same that killed afghan and coalition troops every day still operate with impunity across the border in pakistan. we know that the taliban remain a resilient and a determined enemy and that many of them will try to regain their lost ground this spring through assassination, intimidation, high-profile attacks and the in place it on etds. we know that iran continues to support the insurgency and fuels often the flame of silence. we know that corruption still rob's afghan citizens of their faith and their government and that poor governance itself often advances insurgent messages. the campaign has been long. it has been difficult and it has

been costly. there have been setbacks to be sure and we are experiencing them now and there will be setbacks ahead. i wish i could tell you that was simple and progress could easily be measured but that's not the way of counterinsurgency they're fraught with successive setbacks which can exist in the same space and the same time that each must be seen in the larger context of the overall campaign, and i believe the campaign is on track. we are making a difference. i know this and our troops know this and i would like to take just another moment of your time today, mr. chairman, to and where i began with our troops and thousand of american and coalition partner troops bearing the weight of the conflict and those that will never return to their families. notice, they are central to my every decision that my every word to this committee. one of them a young marine who was laid to rest tuesday in arlington cemetery was a hero.

he knew what she stood for and he knew his mission and he knew the risks, he knew he might have to get his life for this cause for which we fight. so sergeant william stacey prepared a letter from his family to be read in the event of his death and a net he said there will be a child who will live because men left the security they enjoyed in their home country to come to his. and this child will learn in new schools that have been built and he will what his streets not worried about whether or not some leaders henchman will come and kidnap him and he will grow into a fine man who will pursue every opportunity is part could desire, and he will have the gift of freedom which i have enjoyed so long. if my life by is the safety of a child who will one day change the world, then i know that it

was all worth it. mr. chairman, i can only add that i'm confident that americans are safer today because of the service of members like william and i'm confident we will prevail in this endeavor thank you again for this opportunity today for the support that you and this committee provide everyday to our magnificent young men and women in uniform i am so privileged and honored to lead thank you, chairman and ranking member. estimate general, we hear conflicting accounts in the press about both of our goals and afghanistan and in the means to achieve those goals. i'm hoping that you can clarify the current thinking and what you are being told. what our mission in afghanistan is an are we exceeding -- succeeding?

>> chairman, our mission is to keep the taliban from overthrowing the government of afghanistan and provide the capacity to the afghan national security forces to provide the security to the government over the long term but also to the my al qaeda safe haven in afghanistan. thank you. i have a series of questions to further clarify what you just told us. following the security made in the south by the surge forces last year, does your campaign plan still call for collision operations to shift focus to the regional command east? >> at this particular juncture we intend to consolidate our hold on a population centers in the south. ensuring that we have it is my intention to examine the shift of the main effort to the east at this point. i've not yet made a final decision on that regard. we anticipate shifting resources to the east in any case because

it remains the principal counterinsurgency side will ultimately be shaped in 2012. >> does your plan called for a continued counterinsurgency mission? connect yes it does, sir. islamic to your knowledge as the administration committed to this plan and sustaining the counter insurgency mission? >> yes it does, sir. >> in your best professional military judgment, what level of force is to you require to the end of 2013 fighting season, and what are the associated objectives you'd want to achieve with those forces? >> answer to that is a bit more complicated. we are in the process now, and in the process of making decisions with respect to the recovery of the second phase of the search forces to anticipate to have been made for my submission of that recommendation sometime in early

april. we are going to spend the preponderance of the high up-tempo period of the summer of 2012 both continuing to fight the counter insurgency as i said to consolidate our gains in the south to expand the security around kabul and at the same time recovering the second phase of the search forces, the 23,000. on the first october, we will have approximately 68,000 u.s. forces remaining to read somewhere around 40,000 isaf forces and by then 52,000 ansf. because of the nature of the recovery of the force, because of the progress of the campaign that i anticipate in 2012, it's my intention to take the time following the recovery of the forces to examine the insurgency, to examine the progress that we've made in the development of the ansf to see

the posture of the battle space as it has developed throughout the fighting season of 2012, and then before the end of 2012, i intend to provide for my chain of command for the president of the recommendations on the kind of combat power i will need for 2013 and 2014. i don't have a decision at this point and it's not my intention to begin to make the decision today. its plant requires an analysis after the conclusion of the fighting season and the recovery of the 23,000 troops in the face of the surge draw down. >> thank you. have you been given assurances by the white house that could have the forces that you believe you need through the end of the 2013 fighting season? >> and assurances that we are in strategic conversation, chairman. there has been a member mentioned, there's been no number that has been specifically implied. there is an excellent strategic conversation that is going on

that will account for my recommendation, the recommendation of the theater commander of the joint staff in this process and i am very pleased with where we are in that conversation now. >> has the white house always followed your best military judgment? >> as a commander in afghanistan at house, sir. >> "the new york times" reported last week that there is a growing belief in the white house that the mission in afghanistan has now reached the point of diminishing returns. do you agree that the mission has reached the point of diminishing the returns? if not, why and is the progress you are making sustainable? >> i don't agree with the article. i read the article and in fact i know that the article was disavowed by people who were quoted in the article. we are making progress to mr. sherman and we've made progress as the dr. miller indicated for example just in the last 12 weeks the enemy initiated violence across the

country has 25% less than a was in the same period of time last year. in the same period of 12 weeks the civilian casualties were 74% less than it was during the same period of last year. the birth of the ansf has been dramatic and the special lawbreaker's has been dramatic and as the ansf continues to move to the floor in full partnership with us with and the screens of counterinsurgency campaign, i believe there is a great potential for us to accomplish all of these objectives and i remain committed to the campaign and i remain optimistic that with the right kind of free sourcing and the comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign continuing as we currently envisioned at that we will be successful. ..

we have to stay there. if anything goes wrong, that means we have to stay longer and in greater numbers because it's not going well. that is not the point of our mission. as i said at the outset nobody on this committee and nobody in this country wants a permanent presence in afghanistan so you have to step back and say okay if we don't want that and we want to sieg in the mission that general allen clearly described to make sure that the taliban did not find safe haven, then how do we do that? we build up a force of afghans who can make sure that does not happen. that is literally the only option. it is not an option for us to stay there forever in order to

make sure the taliban and al qaeda don't come back and therefore we need to build up a local partner that can do that. what we have described this morning, even the chairman, show we are making enormous progress on that but we don't succeed until we make that transition. general, you mention some of the numbers a couple of times but if you could lay out for us the progress that has been made in terms of the ansf, all security forces in terms of the national military, local police. i think that will give us some idea as we drawdown from a relative number, i don't know cusack do the what the numbers are. nato has drawn down a little bit. give us an idea of how that compares with how the ansf and domestic security forces have grown. if you could give us those numbers, the key part of the transition.

>> thank you for your comments because i absolutely agree with you that transition to the ansf is the key to the success of this mission over long-term. in january 2011, there were 155 battalions ice formations in the ansf and 101 of those were ranked in the top three of the categories of measure for capability. effective with independent advisers effective with advisers and effective with partnership. in the years since then, that number has grown to 138 battalions that have grown independent with advisers. >> we are tracking, you went from 101 to 138. >> went from 155 battalion sized formations to 168 battalion sized formations so the force has grown significantly in just a year but it is has grown in its capabilities in just a year

and we have seen that not just in the army but also in the afghan national police as well. we have seen the emergence of the afghan special operations capabilities also dramatically enhanced over the period of the last two years but in the period of the last years as well. the 72 special forces operational detachment, the eight teams if you well. the emergence of the special police units within the general directorate of special police units within the ministry of interior. this has been dramatic progress and those units at varying levels of capabilities either with advisers or with partners continue to make progress and as i said earlier, 89% of our operations are partner operations today. their operations on the ground as we speak right now in afghanistan were afghan units are in the lead with

partnership, partnered operations with isaf forces that we have seen that progress. we intend to continue to pursue that progress. among the four priorities that i gave to my commanders and i believe those are still operative, why we will continue with my first priority which is pressure the insurgency and a comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign. the second priority which is only slightly behind it is to do all we can to accelerate the movement of the ansf, that we are going to pursue that progressively. >> one more question. president karzai has made a number of comments being concerned about the troops and ending night raids. do those comments reflect domestic pressure? do they reflect the afghan constituents being concerned about the foreign military presence and while president karzai is aware of the problem there he is also aware that the most the people in afghanistan

with or to the day when we are not. so is that an accurate reflection in your view of what president karzai and some other domestic politicians in afghanistan are reflecting an number two and this is for dr. miller and the general, how do you make sure that the transition continues to happen in a responsible way and not in a rush way given some of that domestic local pressure? again i will point out that domestic local pressure that president karzai and other and in the afghan are feeling they reflect a strategy that things are going well and just stay there forever. there is the reality of the afghan population but how are you managing that relationship to get to a responsible transition given those pressures? >> i think, if i may, there is no part of our strategy which intends to stay in afghanistan forever. infect our strategy which is a part of a larger isaf strategy which was agree to ultimately

with nato isaf in afghanistan and the lisbon conference in november of 2010 call for us to work through the business of transition moving the ansf gradually into the lead for security across the country in a process that will be completed by the end of 2014. the campaign accounts for that. the campaign that counsel to moleh for the drawdown of view as an isaf forces. as the ansf moved to the floor gains in full capability is fully capable in the battlefield in that process is on track and in fact envisages the reduction of u.s. numbers in the reduction of isaf forces in direct support of our isaf enlistment transition goals of 31 december, 2014. with regards to the voices that we here in the afghan government, the afghan government is on path towards sovereignty. this is the whole process we are talking about with respect to the lisbon convention,

anticipating security lead by 2014. and we should encourage the voices of sovereignty. we should encourage actions within the afghan government that seeks sovereignty. the mou that i recently signed with minister wardak was one of the great technologies of afghan sovereignty where as they harden are increasingly with us tonight comprehensive counterinsurgency, they will take responsibility for the administrative insurgents in the battle a battle space and american forces will cease detaining afghans for long periods of time in the afghans will pick up the responsibility. that is appropriate and is a great indicator of sovereignty for example. with respect in night operations we have been in a long-term conversation with the afghan government in that regard. i believe that just in the last three months we have come a very long way in creating greater capacity amongst the afghans to conduct operations in a very credible way.

we are still partner with them and we will be for some period of time but not only do our operations, all of our night operations are partnered with afghan forces their own commandos which are very good commandos but we are in the process now of building 12 afghan strike forces of their own. as you know sarah have a number of strike forces that are detailed that operate under the control ultimately of jsoc and those are the strike forces that are so famous for the success of the night operations which have been enormously successful in shredding the enemies network command and control. we are building that capability with the afghans. that is another step towards sovereignty and these are all steps toward the strategic partnership with afghanistan which we hope ultimately to have completed before very shortly the heads of state of the 50 isaf nations in chicago posted by the president of the united states. so i think we are in tracks are and i think even though there

have been domestic rhetoric from the president on departing the villages early etc. i will say that both our president and president karzai had an extended conversation the other day. in fact they have spoken three times just recently where both of them were in full agreement that the lisbon-based process and formulation of transition is on track and they both support it which calls for the complete ansf lead by the close of business on the 31st of december, 2014, sir. >> thank you during much. >> mr. smith let me say aubrey sully general allen said it all but i want to reiterate three points in the first one is a commitment to the strategic process across all the elements that the general talked about. the second is the relationships and we have one of our finest commanders in one of our finest diplomats in the country with general allen and with

ambassador crocker. in addition to that, secretary of defense and the president have been in contact with president karzai multiple times within the last couple of weeks. i want to emphasize also that the next level down if you will with minister wardak, with mr. mohammad d. from interior, getting the deaths of those contacts is also important to improve our mutual understanding with the relationship. finally, i finally want to say that long-term strategic heart worship is going to be vital, not just moving forward but then understanding of us having that commitment, moving to support to sustaining this relationship in the meantime. >> i appreciate that. you gentlemen have unique job and you are doing it well but there are no guarantees. we have to move to afghan sovereignty as quickly as we

can. >> thank you. mr. bartlett. >> thank you very much for your service to our country. i know that everything we read and hear is not necessarily true and stories get warped. but there are a series of events that give me some pause, if they are true. i would like for the moment to imagine that you are a taliban fighter, and this is what you have heard. a number of months ago the president of the united states said we are pulling out of afghanistan in 2014. we are gone. several months ago the secretary said in 2013 we are going to stop combat operations and just continue with security and training of the afghan forces. that position is corroborated by the white house, and then just a

few weeks ago i hear of a program that will give me 125 to $150 a week if i stop fighting and i can still keep my gun. now i am a rational taliban fighter. what do you think might need a rational position that i would take with those facts in mind? >> mr. bartlett let me answer in two parts. first i want to be absolutely clear that the lisbon transition strategy is still, this administration's policy and is still the direction in which we are headed. and that includes the transition to afghan leadership throughout afghanistan by the end of 2014 and afghan responsibility for security throughout the country by the end of 2014. the u.s. coalition at that time

we expect would still provide some support, including train advise-and-assist in including the capacity for counterterrorism operations. at that point in time. with the secretary of defense and others have talked about in the 2013 timeframe it is a milestone on the path. in 2013 we expect that each of the tranches of transitions that are to afghan lead that were announced that lisbon will be gone so the final tranche will happen sometime in 2013. at that time, there will be afghans in the lead for security throughout the country, but they will not have full responsibility throughout the country until 2014. in 2013 it will be very much of the mixed model. in some cases it will be partners units as is occurring very much today and in some cases we may have moved our

forces and coalition forces may have moved to strategic overwatch but in other cases it would be much more of a significant role for u.s. forces in that intervening period. so this is part of that transition process and sometime in 2013 we will see that milestone with the start of that final tranche. but that begins an additional round of transition. we expect the conclusion of that to occur by the end of 2014. >> in the meantime if we are offered -- mind offering the taliban 125 to $150 a month if you'll just stop keeping and he can keep his gun, do you think he might just stop fighting and keep his gun knowing that we are leaving in 2014 and he can then pick up the fight and we won't even be there? >> mr. bartlett i don't reject that possibility but i want to

offer to contrary points if you will. the first is that if a fighter wants to pick up his gun at any point in time in afghanistan, that is likely to be a possibility and if you look at the availability, this is a country that has had a significant number of weapons for a long period of time. second, critically important, particularly with what secretary clinton stipulated for fighters of taliban who come off the field, they need separate ties with al qaeda and they need to renounce violence and they need to agree to the afghan constitution. if they do those things, if the gun will be silent and in many cases it may come to the other side is part of the national security forces over time. so sarah i think what i would hope and expect that the taliban

fighter would see is a commitment not just between now and 2013 or now and 2014 but an enduring commitment to see increasingly capable ansf the general allen is talked in detail about and what they are seeing is that they are going to lose. if they want to come across to reconciliation they have an opportunity, to be a part of the solution and not part of the problem and that the ansf and coalition will support. >> the time of the gentleman has expired. ms. davis. >> thank you very much in general allen thank you for your dedicated service. i wanted to just follow up on those numbers for a minute and sustaining that effort on the part of the afghan army. it's my understanding as you are speaking about the battalions we are looking at a force of about 352,000, up until about 2014, but after that in the budgetary

regions and certainly our own investment in that, we are looking at about 230,000. is that a correct number that we are downsizing to that level? you are anticipating going to that level? the ms. davis at this time the only figure that is taken as a given us a 352,000 as a target for the size, the combined size of the afghan national army and the afghan national fleets for the ansf overall. we expect that at some point in time, and that time has not been determined as a topic of conversation, both in the united states and within the coalition with the afghans. at some point in time it will make sense to reduce that level to a long-term sustainable level but the point of of time that make sense will depend fundamentally on conditions on the ground.

some of the calculations that you have heard and some of which have been in the press some accurately and some not so accurately are looking at a point in time in which they taliban has been significantly reduced and the scale of an afghan national security forces required to cope with that would also be -- so neither the end number or the point in time is determined at this point so people have talked about numbers and people of talked about timelines. none of that is decided and we have not heard direct provisions. >> i certainly want to clarify that because i think there is a concern that if we downsize to that level obviously the budget plays a role but we would also have a lot of former afghan soldiers in the country perhaps without a job. is that something that we are also looking at, that transition and what happens after that?

>> general allen may want to wish to add to this as well but the sign of success down the road is that the taliban was significantly smaller in the afghan national security forces there could or could be smaller in the challenge associated with that would be reintroducing those forces back into the economy. and the good news is that because of what they would have gone through to become part of ansf they would be trained with respect to litter safe. they would be more capable of contributing to an economy but the demobilization process is something that would be full over time and for which we would need an explicit plan. >> thank you and certainly literacy is a big concern here. we are talking about first grade level for many of the troops and whether or not that is sustainable to have them continue to be able to develop

that economy. general alan? >> we have continued to emphasize literacy and the soldiers that go through the police that go through their basic training that obtained first grade level will be given the opportunity to continue that literacy training. we require that certain leaders have a minimum standard of letters he, and so as you correctly point out, should there be, and there will be a drawdown at some point of the ansf from 352 to some number in the post-2014 period. there are options now for those soldiers that there would not have been before and so i would imagine in a managed force reduction the plan remains to be developed but we will have to start to think about it. there will be such aspects of that plan such as vocational training. >> all important, i agree. in in the remaining time general, can i just ask about

morale. you can date a thing quite eloquently feelings of the troops i think and how they see their mission but clearly these kinds of setbacks can be devastating and i wondered if you could speak towards that and also whether or not we are doing anything differently as we redeployed in looking at records and number of deployments. this obviously is something that bears on everybody's responsibilities. >> the time and of the gentlelady has expired. can you please answer that question. >> i will. >> mr. thornberry. >> thank you should chairman. general my understanding from people who should know and it's been written about it in the press, was the original search, the military commanders ask for a floor of 40,000 troops for the original surge in afghanistan or

to they said the best would be if we can get 80,000. what they actually got approved was 30,000 which was a 25% cut from what they said should be and there are some people who believe that it has -- lives in time because that request was not agreed to. now that was before your time but i notice in yesterday's "wall street journal" it says that the plans, and the result of that 25% cut, was that the campaigns have to be done sequentially. you couldn't do both east and the south of the same time. you had to do this out first in the plan was to move things. yesterday "the wall street journal" said it was too late to make that transition from the south to the east these because things were not wrapping up in the south as was planned and i take it from your answer to the

chairman's question that is true, that we are going to have to stay in the south longer than -- anticipated. >> we have to consolidate the population centers in the south. that surge, those forces that we had in conjunction with the ansf in the development of the local afghan local police etc. has in many respects permitted us to be successful and ejecting the taliban from the key to rain down there which is the human terrain. so we are going to need to ensure that as we develop the ansf that those forces are able to consolidate the hold on the population to prevent the re-entry by the taliban and to those forces, into those areas. that is a sensual. we do intend to conduct

comprehensive counterinsurgency operations in the east end the east will be very well-resourced. we are going to do both of those simultaneously so any suggestion that we are going to hold in the east while we conduct operations in the south is not in fact correct. potential differences whether i ultimately declared that the geese will be the main effort which permits me to shift other resources like isr and potentially some rotary-wing assets to the east but i will tell you that the rce's commander is fully capable of conducting aggressive operations against the insurgency and as well-resourced to do so but my number one role will be to continue to deny the enemy access back into the key terrain of this insurgency which is the pashtun population. the pashtun population in the south, sir. >> let me just throw briefly. success in the east is going to be essential for the overall success of the mission ultimately isn't it because of

the proximity with afghanistan? >> success in the south. >> i agree with you on the south. i'm asking about these. >> will have to conduct conference of operations for some period of time. the lines of movement are much closer to kabul so we will anticipate continued operations there for for some time. >> up talks a lot about the growth in the afghan security forces and i among others have been incredibly impressed by stability operations in afghan local police but it is also my understanding that takes time, that there is a clear timeline, say 18 months to two years, during which this daschle of rations team may be augmented by additional forces have to live in that village in order to conduct the training and get those afghan local police on the same -- on the right path to stabilize the period you have just been describing.

i'm a little too concerned that we are too focused on numbers here particularly tremendous growth that will make it hard. how are you ensuring that the quality stays there as we have had these tremendous increases in numbers? >> and may i a clarification? quality of the k. lp? >> quality of the troops and the ability for them to stabilize as you were just can describing in the south have to hold their own from the taliban coming back but it's more than just the number is. >> it will be important that we continue, as you have correctly pointed out, the deliberate process of creating the village stability platform which ultimately creates the community mobilization for the development of the afghan local police. we have 99 sites that have been approved ultimately for the location of the afghan local police and we are well on the

way, we are over 50% of that in terms of the creation of those afghan local police garrisons and most of those, the vast majority of those, actually support the campaign. many of those village stability locations we began operations in the months ago. so that progress is continuing. we are using our special operators now to be the core element or the creation of the village stability platform to create the community mobilization to ultimately embrace their own security to be the trainers and ultimately the mentors for the afghan local police and as time goes on sir, sir, it is our intention to use afghan special operators ultimately too, just as we are in other areas, to transition our special operators out of those garrisons and move them on to other areas where they will continue the mission. >> thank you. mr. larson. >> thank you mr. chairman.

hermelor, you probably could have been in that chair in that position. in 2002 and 2003, and the military at the time was in afghanistan and we need to train 70,000 folks in afghanistan and we are going to do 10,000 here in seven years or 7000 a year for 10 years or something along those lines. that number is clearly increased overtime to 253,000. what can you tell me that is going to assure me that in july you aren't going to come back or even say after me in chicago, you are not going to come back and say we may lose -- what we meant was 450,000 security forces we needed to train.

>> mr. larson there is some pretty in-depth analysis between the number 253,000 i can tell you or shouldn't be 351 or 353,000 but very good analysis in terms of their requirements for the afghan national army and afghan national police and corresponding the afghan local police and other elements that can provide security. sir i guess i would turn it around and move forward to the secretary of defense and forward to the white house. we have a lot of analysis and the current session based on not just to the assessment of what the situation is in afghanistan or where it may go, but a pretty

good in-depth analysis of past counterinsurgency effort so i don't expect that there's going to be but if there were i would feel obligated to ask general allen for his assessments and feel all at -- obligated to take that assessment for. >> i hope you would be obligated to come to us as well. i'm satisfied with a 352 number. as we have seen this year's campaign of boldly believe the partnership relationship that we have now with isaf and the emerging ansf ultimately if our drawdown as they continue to grow to their full search strength and 352. i think that is an adequate number. the issue really is and the number. i think over the long term that issue will be the disposition of the force on the ground and it goes back to mr. thornberry's comments about operations in the south versus operations in the ease. we may well see that we will have to pick in the defenses in the east over the long-term if

the safe haven situation doesn't change so it is less about the number then probably it is about the longer-term disposition of the forces on the ground to defend key population centers. >> general allen i'm not asking the next question to get too much in the weeds on sergeant bales because that is going to be elsewhere by with gore guards to the investigation related to command in afghanistan, the situation on the ground that he was operating and, and are there separate investigations going on separate from mcconnell case in afghanistan? >> we are conducting a administrative investigation as well as a -- it will look at the the entire command-and-control process, how would he was assigned and why he was assigned. it will look at the command relationships associated with his involvement in that combat

operation. >> was someone assigned to do that? >> it's being assigned for u.s. forces afghanistan. >> thank you. and then finally, general allen, can you discuss the attrition rate for the afghan national army? it's noted that the goal for the current is 2% attrition rate. this sounds like a lot but when you are talking 352,000 people, 2% could be a lot. >> that is not a significant number of church so we are working hard within the ansf to ferret out the regions for attrition. a variety of those reasons are pay and quality of life, leadership the missions in which those forces have been involved

and to the credit the ansf have embraced many of these issues and in fact are studying them with great detail. they are removing incompetent or corrupt commanders and seeking to improve the quality of life of their troops. they are ensuring they get out on leap which is a important dimension of the moral. all of those things i think of pushed down in fact attrition and very shortly with the expiration of a presidential decree, those individuals that go in unauthorized absence are going to start being held accountable for that as opposed to being able to just come and go as they have previously done. that is all part of a disciplined force. it's all part of a professional force and we are seeing all of that improve on a regular basis, sir. >> thank you mr. jones. >> mr. chairman thank you very much. of general allen for the past three years a former boss of you has been advising me on afghanistan. i cannot say his name but i will

say that he has great respect for you and i would like to use a couple of of the words he has used recently in an e-mail. a brilliant statesman, talking about you general allen and that you are honest as the day is long and i think those qualities no matter who you are, if you can't say anything nice about an injured ritual than that. over the past 10 years i've been hearing from the administration and those who were in your position prior to you being in here today. and dr. mallor your comments and general allen's is what i've been hearing for 10 years. gains are sustainable but there will be setbacks. we are making progress but it is fragile and reversible. going to walter reed and bethesda recently, had i had a young marine lance corporal who lost one leg and he said, congressman matt asked you a

question? certainly you may, sir. his question was why are we still there? i looked at this e-mail from your formal boss -- former boss and i would like to read just a portion of it. the answer to the problems in afghanistan would take decades, decades, not years. and drain our nation are precious resources with the most precious being our sons and daughters. simply put the united states cannot solve afghan problems to matter how brave and determined our troops are. that gets me to the point that, what is the metric? what is the event that the administration and general allen you, sir, are going to be candid with the united states congress and more important than the in the congress, the american people, as we are spending

$10 billion a month and we can't even pay for it. the chinese are lending us to pay the money that we are spending in afghanistan. when does the congress have the testimony that someone will say, we have done all we can do? bin laden is dead. hundreds of tribes in afghanistan and everyone has their own mission. i hope that sometime between now and 2014, if things are not improving or they are fragile like they are now, somebody will come to the congress and say, the military has sacrificed enough. the american people have paid enough and somebody will shoot straight with the american people and the congress. do you know what type of metric and i will ask both of you dr. mallor and dr. alan -- general allen what type of metric that you will come back to the congress and say our troops have done everything we can to clear victory now that

there is one thing we cannot do and that is change history because afghanistan has never changed since they have been existing and i yield one minute and 41 to you. >> i think it's a very important question and as you have, i have visited the wounded and bethesda has well and there are many of those young troops as the lance corporal you talk to the other day, who are very very dedicated to this mission. they want to see it be successful. they want their sack of rice and meaning and i think that's campaign is going to give their side surprise meaning. we are on track to have the ansf move into the lead. that is what we want success to be in afghanistan. >> general, if we get into 2014 and have present a bomb or a republican president and the afghans did not train where they need to be and we are spending money and losing lives, will you be honest with the necks of administration and say to the

next administration, you need to stick the timetable because we have done although we can do and we are not going to change history? >> congressman i will be honest with you now and i will be honest with the next administration. it's my obligation, my orb moral obligation to ensure that this force is resourced and committed to a strategy that i think will work and i believe the strategy will work. it's not about americans or forces are isaf forces even fighting to the end of 2014 and bearing the burden of this campaign. this campaign very clearly envisages that the ansf will move to the front and the ansf will have the lead and the ansf will row were were stored to publish in afghanistan and if i see that coming off the rails congressman i will let you know that. >> thank you, sir. >> thank you. ms. bordallo. >> thank you mr. chairman, general allen, thank you for your testimony today. general allen many have noted

that corruption is endemic to afghanistan and at this corruption predatory powerbrokers and mafias. over the years we have made occasional efforts at combating corruption like setting up task force transparency in dari but judging from recent new stories about billions of dollars in cash being poured out of afghanistan every year, the former head of the kabul bank going free and afghan national army helicopters possibly being used to smuggle drugs. it doesn't seem like we are making much progress. what can you tell us about success is to address corruption and do you believe these efforts will last really address corruption especially the kind of predatory corruption that feeds on, and people, sufficiently to allow the afghan government to function after 2014. >> maam, that is a really important question, and we should not be surprised that

there is corruption in afghanistan. after 30 years of virtually every institution in that country having been destroyed in some form or are another whether it was from the communist coup or the soviet invasion are the civil war of the taliban darkness, an awful lot relied ultimately on the wiles of patronage networks which became criminalized overtime. the question is whether they exist or not. the question is whether we can ultimately oppose the influence of those criminal patronage networks and restore a system of the rule of law and credibility and integrity to the government of afghanistan. i have no illusions about how difficult that will be and the efforts that we undertake in isaf to address those efforts, those influences i think have the gun to take shape in important and meaningful ways are cousins i have been in afghanistan, through the use of task force transparency, through

task force 2010, which has done a great deal about contracting and ensuring transparency and contracting, and in direct conversation with president karzai, we have taken steps and president karzai has appointed a commission to burden her with us. for example to begin the process of removing organized crime from borders, and when customs depos at airports. the profits of being able to do that will recoup substantial amounts of revenue to afghan government coffers. it will reduce the very thing that you mentioned about the flying of cash out of afghanistan and the president, president karzai who talks publicly and often about this culture of impunity has in fact commissioned the presidential commission to partner with us in that process and we are starting that process now. i think importantly as well, both the security ministries,

the ministry of defense and the ministry of interior, led by the ministry of defense has just completed something called the transparency and accountability working group. this has been a complete inventory of all the functions of the ministry of defense all the way from systems acquisition, personnel assignment and they are looking to remove criminal capture and criminal influence from both of those security ministries and that is very important step as well, maam. >> general i have a follow up russian. general petraeus cited this exact case and the success story over year ago. has the afghan general been tried yet or have any high-profile or senior officials who have been protected are members of these criminal patronage networks been tried? you didn't specifically mention this, but this was an afghan army surgeon general. >> the short answer is no, maam. the longer answer is i went to

see minister wardak. i wrote a letter to the president. i presented the evidence of this case to the palace and there is now a comprehensive investigation underway underway about the national military hospital, which we hope will ultimately result in irrefutable evidence for the prosecution of the commander of that hospital. the jurisdiction needs to be determined whether or they try to the attorney general's office or military jurisprudence but that is a technical outcome and the investigation is underway at this time. i think that's a great step forward frankly. >> it's been a year. >> the investigation has only been underway for several months and i'm very glad to see that it is, maam. >> thank you very much and i yield back mr. chairman. >> dr. miller thank you for being here in general we appreciate you being here. i support what you do. the only thing, sometimes appear we talk about winning and losing and we are asking questions of the american people who will say

that is not really the question i wanted to ask. one of the things, the realities we deal with is that congress spend $825 billion on the stimulus package in three and 45 million for the interest on that and we are now taking almost that exact some out of the national defense is a country and as a result we are hearing our carriers are going to be postponed. we are taking ships out of commission. we are reducing weapons systems and force structure and everybody that comes up says we have to do that because of the budget we are dealing with. so the question i hear from a lot of folks around, when i talk about afghanistan, is this. you said earlier that the actions we have had their have made americans safer. you are the best person we have to articulate how that can happen. how would you tell the average american that what we have done in afghanistan has made them safer? and then how would you justify

the fact that we should continue spending money there as posed to the ships, the weapons, force structure that we see being reduced here? and in the then the final one is this. what assurances do you have or what in your projections as far as the economy in afghanistan after 2014, to be able to sustain the investments that we have put there? and i'm going going to give you the rest of my time just to respond to that. >> i may call upon my wingman to give me some assistance on the policy side to this. we remain in hot pursuit of any presence of al qaeda in afghanistan and there is some al qaeda in afghanistan but we want them on their back heels. they know we are in pursuit and we are aggressively looking for them and when we find them we will deal with them. that is the first way americans are going to be kept safer. the second as we will continue

to pressure the insurgents. we are going to create the opportunity for the afghan national security forces to be a defeat mechanism of this insurgency because our goal beyond ensuring that all qaeda cannot use afghan -- afghanistan as a launching pad for national terrorism is to provide the security to the state for the development of democratic institutions and ultimately economic opportunity. so with a stable afghanistan, americans are safer. with us in hot pursuit of al qaeda, americans are safer so i believe americans can see that the result of the sacrifices that have been made by the american people to resources were half in many respects a direct line relationship to 11, september 2001 where unimpeded, the taliban provided safe haven to al qaeda which plotted and ultimately executed the attack upon the united states on that day from the safety of afghanistan.

is going to be very difficult for that to occur today and it will be our hope that in the end a stable afghanistan guarded by a credible ansf will make it impossible for to happen in future but that is in the future and we will continue to work at that. you asked about the money for the support of the campaign versus potential decisions or program trade-offs. clearly those are decisions that will be made by the secretary of defense in consultation with the service chiefs and the joint chiefs, the same people in most cases. but i have to thank you all and i have to thank the congress of the united states and the elected representatives of the american people for having so resource this campaign, we really need nothing. we want for nothing for the great support that you have given us, the support we have received through the cert program in and the afghan infrastructure program, the great support that we have received in the armor that has been provided to us through the

m-atv and the mrap system. we have been very well provided for and i know the service chiefs remain in their way committed to continue to provide us with the weapon systems and the capabilities and the well-trained troops necessary ultimately. >> general i only have about 30 seconds. could you just take the last part of that. what is your forecast on the economy in afghanistan with the feel that is going to be sufficient in 2014 to be able to continue and to be able to continue the investment that we put there? >> i think we need to watch this very closely. as they think he knows or they will be a conference there follows the chicago conference. it will be in tokyo which will be in essence an international conference that will look to gain money for development over the long-term. after the bond to conference that occurred last year, there was a commitment by the international community to support afghanistan for what they call a decade of transformation that followed the lisbon transition.

that decade of transformation we hope will see the international community t. provide the necessary support in the period of time after 2014 so we don't ultimately have the experience of an economic security issues as opposed to the security issues as it relates to a continued insurgency. >> thank you. mr. courtney. >> thank you mr. chairman and thank both witnesses for your testimony. some of the comments that have been made oath in this room and outside of this room have again sort of focus on whether not the president's timeline that he laid out you know is somehow sort of putting at risk our policy and the successes that you have fought so hard to accomplish in afghanistan. i would like to again, come if i could, go a little bit deeper in terms of what has already happen in terms of the trooper cover your drawdown. again we now have completed the

initial 10,000 troop drawdowns. first of all i just want to ask the general, now that we are some months past that are you in any way, do you have any concerns about whether or not their production force has hobbled your efforts that you have been describing here this morning as far as accomplishing the transition to the afghan national army? >> the 10,000 that came out last year, i am still in the process of making a decision with respect to the 23 that will out. i will be balancing in those decisions the amount of the combat power versus the headquarters and the general manning of some of of the task forces etc.. and i have to tell you that those will be difficult decisions but i believe we can make that. >> the 10,000 which is already a fait accompli, is that in the

headquarters? >> that is correct and they are gone. they were gone by the end of 2011. >> and when we talk about the leadership that you said is so critical for the afghan military, one way that you stimulate leadership is with both sort of carrots and sticks and certainly as we saw in iraq having a timeline can be a very healthy thing in terms of also when you're trying to accomplish the transition, that you are again telling people that they can't be dependent or count on you know, the u.s. to always be there to provide their own security goals. i wonder if he could just sort of talk about that a little bit, but whether not having a timeline is also provided as an incentive for the afghans to sort of step up their game? >> it has indeed sir, and the value of the lisbon transition

process is that it is a process. it is something that is measurable and as you know the lisbon transition process occurs to over five tranches of terrain that comes off the map and ultimately goes to afghan sovereignty. each one of those tranches is accompanied by detailed conversations and conferences between isaf and our ansf partners to ensure that the security forces in those areas are poshard and ready to take over the lead for security. not to be finished in terms of security but the lead for security in those areas. it has i believe that very seriously focused conversations both in terms of the development of the ansf and the resourcing of the ansf and in that sense has been -- >> thankthank you. i. i would like to turn briefly to another topic. last fall we talked about a

group which was the issue of safe haven in pakistan and the challenge that poses with all of the good intent and great success in terms of training up afghans if the taliban can operate with impunity in and out of pakistan. that really provides a real weakness in terms of accomplishing the goal of denying the taliban and the ability to overthrow the afghan government. i was wondering if you could update us in terms of what you're seeing right now in terms of trying to plug that hole? >> it continues to be a threat to the campaign. as you know, been a tour of the taliban in the safe havens differs, there is according to where they are geographically. i believe that in the south, the

southern taliban elements of the taliban have been successfully, their momentum has been successfully thwarted both by isaf forces and the forces of the ansf. it is in the east where i spent a great deal of my time focusing on the haqqani network. now, on the haqqani taliban pakistan and other taliban elements, the commander and the haqqani network in north waziristan. so i spent a lot of my time dealing with that. as i said before with respect to the numbers associated of the ansf, in the end i think it's less a function or a factor of what the numbers will be at the ansf then it will be fair posture over the long-term. if we don't see some political outcome from reconciliation,

which can have the effect ultimately of reducing the effectiveness and the effectiveness of safe havens, if we don't see pakistani action to address the safe havens, then ultimately we are going to have to thicken the defenses of the afghan people super bite as much friction as possible to protect the strategic center of gravity which is kabul and the security zone around kabul and we anticipate that is probably going to have to become an outcome. we will watch the campaign unfold this year and next year to chairman and ultimately in consultation with our afghan partners how they will dispose their forces in the end but the chances are very good that the issues in the pakistani safe havens are not result in our favor one way or another we will probably have to have a larger presence of ansf then we anticipated which may require two then the ansf in other areas in afghanistan.

>> thank you chairman. >> the committee will recess for five minutes and when we return mr. wilson to be on for questioning. thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> the meeting will come to

order. mr. wilson. >> thank you mr. chairman and general allen, dr. miller. we sincerely appreciate you being here today. i am very grateful that in my home state of south carolina my former national guard unit, the 218th brigade surfer year in afghanistan in general they felt like you. and commanded by her adjutant general of livingston that they were working with afghan brothers, they were truly making a difference. they were helping train the security forces of afghanistan to protect themselves. additionally, this past weekend i was honored to be in the deployment of personnel from the army national guard, general livingston. the day will be going as an agricultural team to help the people of afghanistan develop their economy and to see the military families there, the dedication, the servicemembers and veterans who came.

it truly is the new greatest generation. with that in mind i am very concerned that "the wall street journal" last night reported that the administration is offering a compromise regarding night raids in afghanistan and specifically that it would subject operations to advance reviews by afghan judges. one option under discussion and in talks would require warrants to be issued before an operation got a green light. can you comment on the accuracy of the report, why it is such a compromise in the interest of the united states? >> first sir, thank you very much for your comments. your chips are magnificent and bob livingston and one of the great soldiers i've had the honor of serving with overtime so thank you for the service of those troops in afghanistan. sir, i would like to decline answering the specifics of that question because we ar