written in the is in that challenge. >> good luck. >> we are listening. >> these are very difficult challenges and particularly after the tragic death of an ambassador and several others and we need to pull together. i have been reluctant to criticize this administration because i have appreciation of this. this issue about crisis management and shaking events, we are in a period where in response of pretexts of the tape in the united states there are

people expressing rage, famous groups taking advantage of an opportunity to try to demonstrate against the united states and to take some fairly moderate governments that are opposed revolutionary in the middle east that want to work with the united states and try to shove them away from us. the worst reaction to this tragedy would be for us to pull away from the middle east. we need to engage the middle east. it is fashionable for people to say the united states doesn't have much influence. it is an excuse not to act. we have a lot of influence. but in any event we do have influence and there's no excuse not to use it to try to shape a better future. the real thing i am worried about in the middle east news what is going on in syria and has been going on for 18 months. it is a struggle that is becoming increasingly violent,

increasingly sectarian, sunni against shi'ah and opening the door for al qaeda who loves to exploit chaos for its own agenda. it is now to the point where we have the risk of a sectarian war in syria that not only destabilizes syria but destabilizes lebanon, iraq, jordan and potentially turkey. the opportunity is to move with countries in the region like turkey and jordan and others in iraq who are waiting for u.s. leadership, and to bring an end to that regime sooner because we have seen the longer it goes the more people die, the more sectarian it is. the more it upsets the neighborhood. in destabilizing the neighbor the question is how to do it. we can talk about it.

i think the way you do it is to empower those people who are fighting for their future and give them the weapons so that they can topple the regime themselves. but the mindsets that any president needs to have is this is not just a single crisis management situation. we handled tunisia, libya, egypt and syria. this runs the risk of a meltdown in the middle east. it is a strategic challenge but also a strategic opportunity to try to further emphasize and establish yet another example where sunni and shiite and other minorities are working together to define a common future which is what the middle east needs because elsewhere for hundreds of years the model has been sunni against the at and she again sunni. that won't work. that won't bring stability or a better life for folks and we

have an opportunity to establish a different model. we started that in iraq. we need to start that in syria. we need to bring this to an end. >> do you agree? >> i agree with steve emphatically. one of my favorite sayings is virtual presence is actual absence. if you think about how you want these things to come out and we have an interest in that obviously, you have to understand you just cannot sit back and hope. hope is not a strategy. since the fall of the shop of iran particularly in the middle east, the people who have emerged from the toppling of dictators are generally the people who are the best organized and people who were the best organized are generally

radical. if you don't want to go through another bad period you need to do things that counter that. steve's point about friends and allies in the region have significant -- significant equities. the president of the united states with these allies can maybe for example bring back -- help the israeli turkish relationship which would be instrumental. the two countries have best interest in how this plays out. i do think that the syrian question is particularly important because of what it means to iran and its future. the new stereo that gives hope for this future and more

opportunity would be devastating for the iranian goals but i think that we need to see more international involvement, more assistance to the people who were fighting for this ideal. when they comes assad leave the office if you don't have a plan in place it is already too late. >> no wonder if you can pick this up. listening to these two gentlemen that there is no u.n. security council resolution. you have a chinese and russians against any action. different situation for a lot of reasons than libya, a country that is tired, of afghanistan and iraq. talking to the president of the united states you're looking at the stakes and the stakes are outlined dramatically here.

what does he do in syria and what contacts should he do it? >> that is the fundamental question and it would be nice if syria were as compact and differentiated that the answers are obvious. i don't think they are. i think if assad left tomorrow you wouldn't have a very different syria. syria and lebanon are the most intermixed countries possible in the world. ethnically, religiously, very complicated. yes, you have a seat shift sunni. that goes -- the turks's attitude and iraqis attitude. not on the same side on this one. if we intervene in syria, it is not obvious to comes out ahead

and who would want to come out ahead. the majority is 60% sunni but there are very different kinds. the dream is the christians, a lot -- the palestinian refugees in syria don't want the sunnis to win because assad regime has been more protective of them than the sunnis were. this is extremely complicated and i think we need -- i think we need to talk more seriously with the russians. the russians are the last foothold in the middle east. when i first joined the nsc russians were dominating over half of the middle east and now they are down to one.

if they move assad they are finished. they have an equity in preserving some of their positions in syria. theoretically they ought to be willing to help. i think it is really complicated but especially a military intervention in syria would put another country -- we already have iraq and afghanistan. >> you would not go further than where the administration is now? >> i would go further in some respects. we need to go a lot further with the turks. it is not clear to me what the turks want but what they need is a huge amount of help with over 100,000 refugees. >> i agree with brent. he described the problem in

syria very well. the problem is we do nothing. the outcome is going to increasingly be worse and the risk of violence against those minority groups go up. the only solution i can see and this is where the opportunity is, you have got to work with the opposition and the administration is trying to do this and this frustrating work. you got to convince this opposition the core of which is sunni that they need to include representatives of these other groups and give them a genuine role and have a message to syrian society that the new syria has a place for all minorities and they will be protected. they don't need to cling to assad and if they go down with assad will make their inclusion difficult. is this hard absolutely. [talking over each other] >> possibility to protect. >> there is no real alternative because if you leave it alone it

will be sent into claims. on a russian point brent is right. we need to shift. right now assad thinks the russians and chinese can save him because they prevented any action in the security council and i think in the short run the president needs to say i am not dealing with the security council. i will deal with turkey, jordan and all the rest and we will deal with assad and when that is clear it will help to break away from assad. it may bring the russians to their senses and once the train gets moving and assad is going there is a question of opening the door for the russians to come in. maybe they can at some point in this end be part of a solution for the end game but at the moment you have in the short run a lot with the russians and chinese because they are impeding any action and my analysis is the longer this goes

the worse it gets and the more out of control that situation. is this a problem? absolutely. it is not going to get any easier leaving it on the table. >> one thing i should have mentioned is barbara haley who is the new envoy, one of the wisest men that i know. we ought to be looking for ways we can help him to get a cease-fire. whatever he thinks. and listen to his judgment. he is out there talking to both sides. to see what if there is that we are missing, that might give us some leverage we don't have now. >> before i go to the audience. >> this is an important question. i just want to make sure i am

clear that i don't advocate military intervention in this. >> including a no-fly zone. >> you could talk -- [talking over each other] >> not talking about boots on the ground. i do think -- i do think that when the united nations proves itself to be ineffective as it has, united states has a moral obligation to find another solution, however temporary it might be. to see if's point of opportunity. there's a tremendous opportunity for the united states to work with modern arab countries. the tremendous opportunity to work with the nato ally. tremendous opportunity to bring israel into the equation. you have to do that skillfully. don't think there wouldn't be

willingness to do that. but to weight and let the thing metastasize even more, escalate even more is a big mistake. on the humanitarian side, i thought after the libya operation a great move would be to take the uss hope and put it off the coast of libya and fly out any of the civilians who were wounded and maimed in the fighting and i still think that is a good idea for the refugees in syria. i don't think a great nation with the privilege of leadership in the world can sit back and watch this thing escalate like this. >> thank you very much. let me go to the audience. i think the way it works is people stand in front of the

microphones. if you will identify yourself and please put a question mark at the end of whatever short statement you want to make. the only thing i will say is this was quite intentional. what you saw here was a way of macrothinking about where the world is and microdrilling down on an issue that is very real. huge stakes and no easy solution and fees men have been in a position where you can't just write a paper on. you have to decide you have no option and in decision is a decision. please. >> good afternoon. i am a candidate at the studies program. a pleasure to see you again. you spoke to my basic school class some years ago. it is mentioned that al qaeda killed one of our ambassadors and launching attacks and very ironically the number one book selling in america this week is

written by one of the osama bin laden seals. the national security joint special operations command didn't even exist. see if called wrote in his book that sandy berger, authorize the elements of the united states to kill osama bin laden because there was a different understanding about use of force in that situation and since then mr. hadley and general jones have been national security adviser and taken a more kinetic approach, non state actor threats that have been mentioned. can you please talk about the role direct action under title 10 or title 15 took when you were a national security advisor, how you thought about it and defies the president and what you think we should do with

that particular tactic in addressing this global threat we face all over the world? >> since you are the most recent serving national security adviser, steve was at the outset of that and i will be happy to follow. which of you would like to handle the first? >> the 9/11 commission found president clinton had authorized the cia to use legal authorities to get osama bin laden. you can look at that but it is important and i want to do justice. what we used to call the war on terror has been the project of three administrations. vice president bush and the reagan administration. there's continuity with a lot of administrations.

the framework of president bush in award on terror was take the fight to the enemy overseas, treat those who harbor terrorists on the same terms as the terrorists and at the same time promote democracy and freedom and social justice as an alternative to the vision of the terrorists. gives people some hope rather than despair. to involve over 80 countries in that effort, direct action has a role to play but it is at peace of an integrated strategy and that is how it has to be seen. is a new instrument starting in iraq. since the integration of intelligence and operations is remarkable what has now been achieved and general jones on this, is an opportunity we made

in places like yemen and somalian deal with the terrorist challenge without having to do the kind of things we did in afghanistan and iraq but through a combination of intelligence, intelligence sharing with the local government and strengthening local security forces and law enforcement leaders will helping local governments get legitimacy among their people, sharing intelligence with them and doing some operations through remote vehicles, special operations forces, there may be a way to keep the country safe using these different set of tools in places like yemen and somalian and the like and that is an evolution in the strategy of how we deal with these problems militarily but back to general jones, he was the guy in the hot seat after i left.

>> in a perfect world you would like to have all of your allies agree with what you do and give you permission to do whatever you think needs to be done. it is not a perfect world unfortunately. the direct action voice, they have a place but nobody should make the mistake of thinking it is a panacea for the long term solution. it is not very strategic. it is tactical. we can marvel at the precision, progress and the precision that has been achieved in the last 10 or 15 years and steve is absolutely right about the clinton administration. secretary of defense and during the clinton administration and osama bin laden was clearly someone -- we had the kind of

precision we had, for reasons having to do with potential for mass casualties we didn't always take advantage of it. but today is a different day. to the instrument i think you have to be as much as possible to incorporate it in your overall strategy and how you deal with sovereign nations so if you do use it will be in that as well. in the case of pakistan which is my biggest frustration, national security adviser, could never get a clear sense, what the pakistani military was willing to do more not willing to do. it became clear but in 2009 we hope we would have a willing

partner that would help us by eliminating the safe-haven for terrorists and vote leaders who went with it. when it is clear they were not going to in order to reduce the number of americans being killed and allies being killed in afghanistan we had no choice but to go after the leadership and a tactical targeted way with tremendous excess. the lesson here is you want to get within the envelope of sovereign nation relationships and not have to resort to taking things into your own hands that leave you open to international criticism. >> what i am going to try to do because i see quite a few questions, if you could say who

you would like to address, go back and forth. >> you already mentioned pakistan. how would the challenges for a new government differ in dealing with pakistan given next year it is expected the government and leadership would change. the challenges get better. >> say one more time. >> for the leadership of pakistan is expected to change next year where do you see the direction of u.s. relationship with those changes? >> that down of general chianti. from my standpoint since i

mentioned pakistan, i would hope in the interests of pakistan, not the interests of the united states that pakistan finds a way to bring in an era of civilian leadership in which the military plays its proper but subordinate role. my experience with my dealings with pakistan is that is not the case. civilian leadership could be very well intentioned but the military was certainly going to do exactly what it wanted to do. it was my personal biggest frustration because had we been able -- pakistan as a country been able to accept what it was to the rest of the world offering in particular the

united states which would have transformed over within a few years much of the economic situation in pakistan that would benefit the pakistani people would be in a different place today in pakistan and afghanistan but that was not achieved. there is hope. i am hopeful that next generation of military leaders will subordinate themselves to civilian control and the next generation of civilian leaders will assert that control. >> i am a sophomore in the school of foreign service. i am wondering where the u.s. should draw the line in terms of humanitarian intervention with military force. we have a history of doing it in the balkans and libya. where do we draw that line in deciding if we should intervene in terms of saving people?

>> where do you draw the line responsibility to protect humanitarian of -- >> that is a very good question. the un has come close to declaring responsibility to protect as a world mandate. but the responsibility to protect when a country -- leadership of a country cannot or does not protect major elements of its population is the duty of the international community to intervene and that is a very appealing notion. unfortunately article ii of the un charter says nothing in this charter shall give the right of the organization to interfere in matters in domestic jurisdiction of its members.

we have a fundamental conflict between the charter itself and this new law that is developing. we need to work on that, we need to clarify what it means and how it means it. it is a step forward but i think is still defined and leads to a conclusion -- confusion. >> you want to pick that up? >> i am a senior in the school of foreign service and my question has to do with the role of u.s. leadership in the world. all of your comments imply the u.s. needs to be a leader of the world but if you look around you find a number of countries not only unwilling to follow us but also opposed to our leadership. at one point do you assess our role in the world and check our

extremely aggressive approach to the world and focus on problems that are pressing for here at home? >> we have all said we need to fix the problems here at home because we need to fix the problems here at home to have a more prosperous society but also because they're a foundation for our role in world. there is no conflict and i would say to a new president your priority is your top domestic priority and your top national security priority is the same thing. fix the economy. get the economy growing and deal with the debt and the deficit. what general snowcroft was saying is there is some reallocation in the world in terms of power and influence that results from the 2008 financial crisis. it is beginning to be reflected in global institutions.

it should. the g 20 which include the additional countries like india and brazil and others replacing the g7 and g-8. that is all to the good. president bush used to sometimes say to me this is a problem. we have a lot of problems. why don't we give this to the unaided nations or give this to nato and always made me uncomfortable and i used to say these are terrific institutions. they have some capability and there are forms for bringing the nation's of the world together on a problem, but all of these institutions need to be animated by the energy and leadership of their individual country members and preeminently that tends to be the united states and a few others. there has been some reorientation and there needs to be straining of international

institutions and countries like china and india and brazil need to be given a larger role but these institutions are not self executing of. they need leadership from within. brent's point is there are not a lot of countries capable or trusted to provide that leadership and that is why even though there is the diffusion of power in the world and even though that will change how the united states leads in the world i think brent is right and general jones would agree. we need to get our house in order for domestic purposes and also so we can help provide leadership for the international community. >> the attitude is understandable. the world doesn't appreciate it, let's just take care of ourselves. we are not talking about leadership in the world as an altruistic thing that we owe the world. it is america's interest to have a world which sustains the kind

of things we believe in which we can trade with, which helps america's prosperity. this leadership is not something we be so on the world. we are the only ones that can do it. it is essentials to america's well-being that we do it. >> thank you for the question. >> imus senior in the school of foreign service. a follow-on question. america has created an international system more beneficial to limited democracy and free enterprise that ever existed in the world and has done so through leadership in a wide variety and it will continue to do so in coming decades but it seems inevitable for a lot of reasons that americans' economic dominance and military dominance will not continue in the same way it has. america will not be able to

continue to fight two major military operations at the same time. does america's leadership depend on the military? >> let me add to that question. i just returned from the gulf and i saw this remarkable airbase where american power is powerful. you talk to gulf officials and they say we know in times of war you are going to be there and we have security guarantee but right now we need you engaged everyday in a much different way and we don't think war in the sense you have to be so picking up that question and all so -- >> it is an excellent question because it really does pose the challenge of whether we can put it into a different thing gauge went. the short answer to your question is i don't think the american military will play the

same role it did in the 20th century. hopefully there will not be another global war this century as we had in the last century. it is going to be an element of projecting. i think that it is likely -- let me give a personal sense. i do a lot of traveling in different parts of the world and privileged to meet with heads of state and senior officials in different governments. inevitably the question comes around to we really love the united states. you have done so much to make the world what it is but we don't see you anymore. we see chinese companies coming in without much competition,

buying up all natural resources and giving contracts. where is america? that bothers me a little bit because if that is the case and in some parts of the world it is, it means we are not competing adequately enough. that is part of this reshaping of our response package where you can in fact respond with public sector involvement and private sector involvement and depending on what you are trying to do your strategy can be shaped appropriately and you should be able to call on those things and harmonize them. this is a different model than the 20th century where we were so dominant you could not pay much attention to american industry because they did fine by themselves but that is not the case when you have china where the public employment policy, slammed together and

rising brazil and india where the government and the private sector are one and so the decisions that they make a very rapid as opposed to ours so we need to fix the things we need to fix. we need to change some laws and reform export control reforms and do a lot of famous to enable the american giants to be that giant again but it will be completely different than having the world's most powerful armed forces by a factor of 12. if they're not going to be as instrumental in shaping the new world order in the twenty-first century, that is the case. >> i am a graduate of the s s p program and i teach at the naval academy. my question is for snowcroft and general jones. you served on both sides of the

divide. >> it is -- [inaudible] >> what were your relationship like with senior uniformed military leadership? do you think they were more collaborative or cooperative and were those relationships dependence on the rolls or was it personality and personal relationships that you build? >> that is a very hard question to answer. when i became a national security advisor, i retired from the military. are the matter of principle and partly a matter of u.s. law at that time.

the military and the pentagon haiku change my ability to understand the world. and certainly how our military culture thinks about it but in my own dealings with the secretary of defense, the civilian leader of the defense department and not that directly

with my former colleagues because that is the way our system works. with secretary gates when he came to the white house he brought the chairman of the joint chiefs and that was his call. he didn't have to do that but that is what he did. and the chairman of the joint chiefs and secretary of defense but when i pick up the telephone to call the pentagon i didn't call a former colleague who happen to be in a big important position to get a military viewpoint. i got everything i needed from the secretary of defense and the secretary of state and civilian officials. you can spend 40 years in uniform and not be colored little bit by your experience and know something about it but i generally factor that in to

help me understand things but i didn't carve out a special relationship with the military. >> in your perspective do you see a difference? >> i dealt with the secretary of defense. if he told me i should deal with the gemini would but i would never do it without having done so. i made a practice i never called out to the field for the commanders. that was reaching into the chain of command. national security adviser in the chain of command is the president and secretary of defense and down. military experience helps you understand what you are hearing but the patterns of the interaction are pretty well-established and consistent with the notion of civilian control of the military making as different from pakistan.

the strength of our system. >> i am a sophomore in the foreign service. i want to shift the focus to asia. just wondering. the issues considering china and its neighbors are seen as the issue of a rising power challenging the listening power and challenging the united states. how locked are we in looking at the situation in that kind of framework for is there any other realistic way we can tackle the issues we are facing in the west pacific and a different framework without looking at china as a political adversary and is there a realistic way to deal with that? >> maybe you can pick that up first and deal with south china sea issues/asia and that context

as well? >> our relationship with china needs to be looked at in the light of the new world. not the 20th century world. i don't think this is a 0 sum game between us and the chinese. they are a rising power. they are getting stronger. they have had enormous economic success and they have enormous political problems. all kinds of problems. as you look at the issues around the world. the general issues that preoccupy us, we and the chinese are not fundamentally at loggerheads on any of them. this is a relationship where we didn't use to see the chinese

anywhere. when nixon went to china in 1972 we had no contact except in korea, no contact with them at all. that developed only gradually and now we run into them in all kinds of different areas and we have very different ideas. different histories, different cultures, different methods of thinking. very different people. i don't see the irreconcilable bloody when we look at rising powers like germany in the late nineteenth century or japan before world war ii. i don't think we ought to look at it that way. the south china sea is a very

interesting and complicated issue. it came apart couple of years ago and it is not clear exactly who brought it up. whether we did or whether the chinese did. that the issue relates to a line that the chinese some centuries ago drew in the arianna as being the chinese border and modern law as to how you differentiate territory as sovereign territory, as your exclusive economic zone and other things. it is a very complicated issue and we are not taking a position on what we are seeing as it needs to be worked out by the parties. the chinese want to work it out bilaterally because they are the big guy and all the others are the individual little guys.

but this is a part of if you will minuet between the chinese growing self-confidence and wanting to assert themselves and their sovereignty farther and farther from their shores and as insisting on freedom of the seas and the rights of passage and so on. i think it is not a fundamental issue. it could become a very vexatious issue if it is not carefully handled. but i believe we can handle it carefully and that we will handle it carefully. it would be helpful if the u.s. senate would ratify the law of the sea convention because we have no standing right now. >> i completely agree with

general snowcroft. when i heard the term of its high winds. words are important. people you are pivoting towards interpret it one way if you are european or south american you are saying to a global influential nation that causes think tank business and what does that mean. >> we want to pivot with our allies -- it is rebalance. the pivot is out of the bag.

but it is important. words are important and we should choose an carefully. sometimes actions speak louder than words. >> i also want to say as a former basketball player, general jones knows about pivots. >> a lot about bench time too. [laughter] >> i was able to study the game. >> chinese last year asked me to explain to him what pivot really means in english. >> thank you for joining us. i am a senior in college at georgetown. this question is relevant two years back with a god burning organized by after jones in

florida and in afghanistan. so in light of the killing of the ambassador christopher stephens, is very point that as a national security adviser that you would advise a curtailing or tampering of certain forms of freedoms of expression, americans abroad? >> do it very briefly. i say this not as a constitutional lawyer, not an expert on freedom of speech but common-sensewisely used as a freedom of speech does not allow you to yell fire in a crowded theater and the kind of thing we saw is exactly that. figuring out as a country, in the context of the new media. how we draw that line between protected speech that is fire in a theater and will put innocent

lives at risk. there is a line there and we need to figure out how to draw it. >> we have time for two more questions. >> thank you for being here. honor and privilege to speak to us. i am first year in the graduate program and we touched on general theme. that would be more specific direction. general jones, you talk about the need to -- in places like east asia. and mutual defense treaty, with changing relationships, if they're not sustainable how can we do so in a pragmatic way, that we are abandoning them?

>> let's pick up the last question. >> i think that it is interesting that the philippines who asked us to leave not too long ago are now almost the entire philippine government came to washington recently to ask us to come back. south vietnam or vietnam, vietnam -- i am dating myself little bit. [laughter] >> pretty good day too. >> vietnam is a former adversary really worried about the rise of

china, asked us to consider more engagements. taiwan has always been of that mind. you are seeing with this pivot announcement you are seeing some reactions on the global playing field that to your question would tend to leave me to conclude that we could be in the position of if not read the fighting and rewriting some of these treaties that at least giving them more meaning. i agree with -- all three of us agree on the same thing. the likelihood of a major conflict with china and any other country is probably pretty slim but the likelihood of brushfire challenges that have to be responded to in the

presence of actually important being there is a deterrent it is a deterrent that works both ways. i think we're into a period of much more negotiations with some in asia and other issues we talked about. occasional spikes. the trick is to make sure those are brushfires and not force fighters. >> i met with the clause the chinese official and made an impassioned plea thatq chinese official and made an impassioned plea that our existing military alliances-he said you are right. that was not in the reporting cable that to beijing that there is some adjustment in these relationships. they continue to be an element of stability in asia.

>> last question. >> i am jason marshall. i have a question for general jones regarding iran. do you believe that the obama administration should have clear red lines involving iran's nuclear program and if so what do you think those red lines should be? [laughter] >> you go back and look at the president's pronouncements on this issue, even in 2009 you can see where he was very clear in terms of the national purpose and the national goal. to my knowledge that hasn't changed. i think our policy is informed by pretty good intelligence and

quite possible that the sanctions -- first of all i think the sanctions are having an effect and they cause the regime to come back even though the talks have not amounted to much. notice a country like turkey which originally in 2010 really was championing the iranian position, now seen the scene of light. it is important to articulate your red lines. no question in my mind what our policy is and no question in my mind that a nuclear weapons capable iran is a clear danger. they said so. it is the country that would

trigger a nuclear arms race in the middle east and a country that it would export that technology for the first time on stage actors and in my view non state actors have weapons of mass destruction changing the world you and i live in. i am comfortable with what i hear from our government. we have worked on this. steve did as well, working assiduously with our friends and allies. we gave a good shot in 2009 to let iran declare itself an show itself to be reasonable if they wish to be reasonable. there are still some options that are played out before we

get any kinetics stage. >> you want to draw the red line? >> i agree completely with jim's approach. >> i think we should play out options. i am pessimistic and worry about this time next year, that will require tough decisions. >> that may be the case but we have changed the whole issue of iranian missile from iranian nuclear weapons from anybody else who has gotten nuclear-weapons. we didn't have this argument when israel got its weapons or pakistan got its weapons. we had a problem with india but it was separate. we need to be careful how we proceed. >> back to the central point and

that is the middle east by the middle east problem i mean the israeli-palestinian question is still the big rock that has never been moved. the fallout from any successful in of progress in solving this problem the ripple effect that affects everything else going on in the world, the danger of the prime minister's position in israel is that he is thinking tactically. he is thinking regionally and he is not thinking strategically and you have three former members of very influential members of the government. the director, chief of staff of the army and head -- all left

the government and openly critical of the prime minister's position, striking iran. the danger is you to be stampeded and doing something that a political function, a cataclysmic regional war. >> we need to be thoughtful leaders will not impetuous. >> that is something we need to be thoughtful, not impetuous. general jones has once said the 20 first century won't be a century where you can sit back and take a lot of time making decisions. because of the amount of issues we face every day it is a daunting proposition to think you can take time to reflect the

you have to. what you have really allow us to do the three of view is reflect not only on the media see of some of these issues and difficulty in solving them but also the underlying requirement to come of with a strategy and a way of thinking about this remarkably change world we live in. on behalf of the audience, thank you so much. [applause] >> when i first came to washington i didn't know what and i g did. my experience was as a prosecutor we seldom occasionally ran into law enforcement arms and arrive at doing mortgage fraud cases and the start of the mortgage fraud unit and dealing with the

inspector general for a good law enforcement agent but i didn't know the big picture of what an ig was doing. when i came down one of the first things was meet the different igs and setting with those meetings and over the next couple years i found the inspectors general unfortunately although they are supposed to be fierce watch dogs looking out for a waste, fraud and abuse. magic words written into their statute and we're supposed to be doing. just like any other governmental agency, their number one concern is things about their budget and how to preserve their budget and they are very worried about clashing with management and very worried about too much interaction with congress. very much a go along get along type of attitude. what i kept hearing over and over again, three types of igs. a lap dog that would curl up in the lack of management and that