prerogatives of the church were protect it, the other thing would not did involved in. three days after being selected and you need to assure him that the new regime was about to have one remedy to return to the relationship and i won't take any of that. what is part of that is something that follows and that the church be protected.

>> are there other questions? [applause] >> please line up along the back wall. and we will definitely go ahead and answer some questions. >> for more information, visit david kertzer.com. here's the primetime lineup for tonight.

>> his book is my country, tisza beat. and his book is mother of invention, robert field. how the government created free-market health care. battle happens tonight on booktv. this is about an hour and a half >> it's a great pleasure to

welcome you here and to welcome the author with his stunning new books. we've done deep research and that is a key event and has a real history and there is an element of a memoir and it's also known that he is a professor of the united states. and we will have the senator with us who will be producing responses to a we have talked about.

and i am told that he is studying for his phd. the british experience in iraq is worth the americans variance in iraq. and we are really pleased to have both of you here and we will come up to the podium now. >> thank you, peter, thank you for the kind introduction and thank you for coming today. i really appreciate the new america foundation and i appreciate being able to sponsor this talk. i was not going to write this book. although i knew that there was a story to be told. i was going to let it take some time and there is a history of the iraq war. but in the summer of 2000 and i was at a conference with a who's

who of experts in the united states. of course what to do in afghanistan in 2010 was an issue of major concern in the united states and invariably the discussion evolves what had happened during the search. and not one of them had a holistic understanding of the iraq war and research. and so the liberation of the philippines in 19441945 is going to be the subject of my next book and we are writing about people and they are going to disagree with what we have to say about this.

and i decided to write this book and this is three years in the making now. and i understood where the forces were part of the office urges ongoing with an eye towards history, eventually. and i'm indebted to the folks there in both of those places and declassified summary of the documents that i used to write this history and it would not have been possible and it would not have been possible without their assistance in so the bush administration made some assumptions that it would be a war of liberation is the iraqi people would support it taking down saddam hussein is a brutal dictator. and they would cooperate with

the government and infrastructure that are largely remaining intact. therefore the united states didn't plan for a long occupation were dented revocation of the country. and they also looked on as this to validate this really and the idea that high tech forces and robust intelligence from the conference aspects would be a part of the enemy state very quickly and then wind up fairly rapidly with fewer casualties and this was the sort of wave of the future with the u.s. military that was going to take advantage of this. unfortunately the enemy did not

cooperate and general scott wallace, he is marching up towards baghdad. making the comment that this is not the enemy and this is sort of how the secretary of defense and administration do with things that went against the perceived notions and they stuck their head in the sand and said that it's not happening. so it wasn't an insurgency of the last remnants of the saddam hussein administration. once we got rid of them, then everything would be okay. president bush and the meeting said don't tell me that there is

not an insurgency in iraq because i'm not there yet. and he gets to baghdad in may of 2003 and he talks about iraqi society. so some of this is going to have to take ways in the probably would've been okay. but instead, they decided to go all the way down to the circle on the division level and thereby got rid of not just iraqi government and their

advisers but tens of thousands of iraqis because of was the only way to get a decent job. including university professors and civil servants and all the same people that would remain in place in the postwar period and with one swoop of a pen we got rid of them. and they were participating in the political implication of it and they started to, instead of agreeing that saddam hussein was bad and they would help us with the new iraq, i think initially i got that stepping on the

ground. and instead we alienated them with one stroke of the pen on the greater political basis of uncertainty. the second decision was a national institution that they thought for a years against iran and that wasn't an instrument of regime control. so we had to eliminate those but not the iraqi army, they are an institution that could have been rehabilitated and used to help stabilize this for rock and instead he disbanded it. in his memoirs he said that he is acknowledging the obvious and it was a pretty disingenuous take because he wasn't home with

them. so had he wanted to call them back and how i know this? because it was pointed out that we now have several hundred thousand armed young men and he decided that we would offer them back pay to come and collect their back pay and that would give them something to start their new lives with and they all showed up and it would've been very easy to have a recruiting table right there sang you want to continue your job in this country and so forth and we wouldn't have gotten all of them but we would've gotten significant portions to re-create these forces been so what this dead is not only put hundreds of thousands of armed young men on the street, but tens of thousands of officers and they were denied their jobs and most importantly deprived of

their honor. many of these officers decided that they would take their considerable military towns with them. the second stroke of the pen show that they created a military bases for basis for the institute. we capped off these two desires by empowering and sectarian group of iraqi politicians and 24 of them, they proceeded to divide up the iraqi government among themselves and they actually had to create three new members streets so they could control it. and then they proceeded to fire everyone and their that wasn't a member of that particular political party. and so what little confidence that remain in the iraqi government was done away with by this decision.

so this for the political basis for the downturn in the country of iraq. and then by our decisions there was an immediate postwar period i love gary larson. connie frank was planning a baton pain on the calendar, as you notice and it really says something about the american army in the beginning. it's very focused and operationally excellent. and they didn't know a lot about counterinsurgency. so the idea that they would go out and capture insurgent terrorist operatives, not a lot of thought putting this into the

other aspects of counterinsurgency but they eventually became very good at it. and so we were there now and things were spiraling downward, although not rapidly. so what were we going to do? well, that is a good question. i don't think we had a good answer to it. we lacked a strategy to guide things in the way forward. and we lacked an operational concept that rose the operations in a uniform and coherent manner and we lacked the resources on the ground even with these headwinds. there were some good things that were done. unit by unit there were a lot of things regarding learning that went on. and i think iraq were covered it pretty well. but it was hit or miss in a

dependent upon the unit commander. there was a lot of learning and then by the time they left they were framed a pretty good in the new units came in and we had that learning process all over again. even so there were discussions that we failed to capitalize on. we defeated that first moment on offensive in october 2003. and this includes decrees and local outreach that we should've brought them back and help them with the way forward. the period from january to march

of 2004 was relatively peaceful. and we didn't take advantage of it. instead week created a transitional law without a lot of input, and therefore they revisited it. this and the after the uprising in the case of the south-central iraq was put on by the first armored division and this includes the fairly significant blow the air of press was firmly against what was happening and there was a lot of that with civilian casualties and so forth

it spiraled downward and they ended up seizing the city and holding it until the second battle in november of 2004 and we didn't take advantage of these opportunities that we have there. in the spring of 2004 and i know that we had four major operative basis and we are predicating it on the belief. his belief that we were a virus

that had effect did iraqi society and be positioned among them in the city and the more antennae got in the form of this. and we were the problem and it wasn't the iraqis. so the problem was when we withdrew from the city's from those operatives and we could not control the neighborhood from this. so the result is that the people who were positioned locally rose up and begin to control the urban terrain and that was increasingly part of this insurgency and the militias that were gaining strength and power as well. and so a study in contrast shows the different approaches and i describe one approach as well in 2004.

another was the regiment in 2005. faced with a similar problem in the center of the city, he surrounded and isolated it and then bit by bit he cleared it and he positioned his forces inside the smaller outpost make sure that the insurgents could not rise up to control this. so by doing this he altered the dynamic of the battles in this way. and so it was a great example of counterinsurgency warfare and one unit among many. nevertheless it was pretty clear that the tactics to save them was not the answer and it was to end in this way.

and for this war spiraling downward ended in february 2006 with the fourth holiest shrine in islam. and so up to this point they had been fairly responsive and we finally understood that they outnumbered the other ethnicities and they would eventually gain power in iraq. but after this incident with this shrine destroyed, the iraqi security forces talked about this and that was all they needed to rise up again here and elsewhere.

they kidnapped and tortured and killed the sunnis and the campaign began after february february 2006 with air force and strength throughout the year i'll qaeda was gaining control on both sides according to that intelligence report is that we are no longer in control of al qaeda. but even then there is a grim glimmer of hope in the city of romani more than 3500 were killed due to violence and the problem is that it failed to adjust this approach with the operative to iraqi security forces that were unready to accept those and in some cases

they were complicit in the violence that was ongoing. part of it is they simply didn't understand what was going on on the ground. and i know this because i got a hold of the documents and if you look at the campaign plan in april of 2006, this is two months after the bombing and things could go wrong. on that list of wildcards is a major shrine that sparked sectarian violence throughout iraq. and we are still putting it in the plan is something that could happen. and it is in the willingness to recognize the realities of what was happening.

and this shows what was happening. the blue is coalition data and honestly they are in more places than we are and as you can see this trend upward throughout 2006 with a number of civilians and by december it had reached vertical proportions, critical to more than 30,000 u.s. citizens. so was pretty significant as a number. and so here is where we are as this amount is shown. we don't understand that this is going to happen. and so if that is a start, that is what we show. okay. what i just do?

okay, there we go. and this shows in geographical terms the orange areas or areas where insurgents have more sway and you can see the tigris river valley and the euphrates river valley and portions of baghdad as well but have significant concentration of insurgent terrorist forces. and it was a fairly significant challenge. it's a lightweight summer it was clear that the united states was part of this. i worked for the joint chiefs of staff and we put it in this way that we are not winning, but we are losing.

it was undertaken by the national security council and the state department and but to his credit president bush won and victory has this with general odierno and it was president bush against every political headwinds to include members of his own party saying get out. but more important is how those forces would be used in accordance with the new counterinsurgency documents that were published in december 2006. first it was a provision that enable them to change the approach and more importantly dan, the movement of those forces backed off, positioning them within the community that they would protect and detecting the population was the only way

to drive down that violence and thereby enabling politics. ..

we finally had enough forces to pursue the enemy throughout iraq and eliminate the "safe haven" that cropped up in the previous three years of the war. we created a force of strategic en-- opportunities to -- insurgency and bring in support of the government. you can never defeat them all. beat them all, that's pretty tough tall order especially in a period of insurgency such as that we face. there was learning and adapting going on. it was more systemic because you had a counter insurgency docket thrain everyone had to follow. you had two leaders in general ohed od operated under the same doctrine. it was a hit or miss affair that it had been since 2003. finally, revamped our detention

procedures to make sure that the jihaddists didn't control the inside of the detention facility and weren't simply turned to jihaddist universities. so what did the surge do? it act z as a catalyst to compel a lot of others taking place. the most important the triable rebellion which began. the surge the reason. most people don't know which i cat log in my book general petraeus went there a week after he took command. he saw what was going on and ordered them to support the awakening of all the force and tools at their disposal. this is allowed the awakening to take off. off the the surge, the

awakening, in my belief is confined to it. maybe the creation of the suns of iraq program that was the early part of the surge. they were neighborhood watch units that reported to u.s. military leaders. general petraeus learned about one such opportunity. when he learned about that, he basically in the usual manner said it's a great idea. we're going to implement throughout. as the insurgent and various militias came in and offered to secure their own communities because they were tired of the separate nices on their communities by other folks to a

coherent chain of command they make them wear a compliant uniform. only later, did we agree to pay them. we did it to prevent backsliding to make sure they wouldn't turn back to the people who could outbid us. the crease fire in august of 2007 would never have been declared or accepted had already aimproved security cramatically in the country. finally the willingness to confront them would not have been accomplished or attempted of the surge not provided the where withall day and, again, the environment in which he felt emboldened enough to do it. i'm going cover it quickly. the ten myths and we'll have some conversation. the first smith that the change in counter insurgency doctrine

didn't matter. they already adapted to the environment. and in any case security was already improving in iraq. i think this is false. counter insurgency that produced in published in 2006 family put a uniformed stamp on the operational construct in the tactics used by u.s. forces in iraq. before then it had been hit or miss. as far as security being good before the surge or -- that violence already ebbed. here is a graph of the violent incidents in iraq. you can see that as the surge begins in january of 2007, the number of incidents is remains high for several months it isn't until june of 2007 --

ebbed substantially. you can see right here and right here how it drops. the surge begins here. the violence had not ebbed. number two, the awaken was a real reason for the improvement security. it was a huge reason. general petraeus. one of the primary sheik in the awake,ing. right out of lawrence of arabia. i think i describe this as general petraeus push that gave he to the awakening. number three, all we did was put it on the payroll. i think i already addressed this. agree knee have --

geneva convention. it works for me. by the way, we only paid them $16 million a month and that's cheap about five times the price given the amount of security they gave to their hole community. it was 103,0003,000 we added for a fraction of the cost. number four, it wasn't a strategic shift. it was merely a tacticalled a adaptation. it was a strategic chift. here is the strategy is the application of ways and means to achieve an end. here is the ways and means that were adjusted in the surge. in the middle of the dialogue everything al-qaeda needs to survive and on the outside is everything we did to counter that. that is the significant amount

of action. t not all tactical adaptation on the ground. in term of ends, this was the change in that as well. the ultimate goal was full of representative iraq democratic iraq that could be a u.s. ally in the middle east ally -- but in the near term what we decided is that sustainable security was probably the best we were going to do and we get together local initiative and eventually get to a long-term situation where reconciliation was possible. number five, surnlt was merely a hearts and minds campaign. if that's the case why is the six months the deadliest period of the war for the u.s. forces?

it's not a campaign to win heart and minds. it's a campaign to control and protect the population in order to defeat the insurgency. there was a heck of a lot of fighting involved. number soaks sectarian cleansing already stabilized prior to the surge. here is the map of the secretary -- there was a lot of sectarian violence. sectarian cleansing had not solved problem. by july of 2008 when the surge ends, there's no violence to speak of. and thus the surge that --

i already covered this. he would not have offered a ceasefire had the summering not improved security. basically says we are losing. many of the risks identified in the campaign plan have materialized. the assumption did not hold. we're failing to achieve our objectives. we need to protect the -- sectarian violence. so he didn't believe that his strategy was succeeding and neither did the folks that worked on the creation of the surge. and the iraq study group report we were caught in the mission that more foreseeable end at

that point in time. unfortunately they were right. myth number nine the real reason for the improved security was the improvement capability for special operations forces. general mccrystal would degree with this. it's the synergy between the conventional and the special operations forces. the conventional forces taking and holding ground and the special operations forces being able to target insurgent and terrorist operative that created the dynamic that improved -- helped to improve it on the ground. if you have a pure counter terrorist campaign and insurgency such as that that existed in iraq. it was no way that can solve the problem. and all the surge did was create decent for the orderly withdrawal u.s. forces from

iraq. it's all designed to do. may be the way it turned out, perhaps. we'll see. this goes to the perspective of two presidents. george bush looked on iraq as his model would have been south korea for u.s. forces. 60 years on is still there. helping countries stablize after a difficult war. south korea wasn't south korea for a several decades. it only became several decades after the end of the korean war. president bush wasn't able to see it through to the end. president obama was elected on antiwar platform. his vision of iraq, in my view, was more of that of vietnam. unfortunately removing u.s.

forces in my view remove the dpliew that holding security situation together. when you renew the glue, then the political dynamic we tamped down raised their ugly heads again. it has to do a lot with how we hands the election of 2010. the situation unfortunately, is spiraling downhill. it remains to be seen what is the future end of the war in iraq. that's it. here i am watching general petraeus' back. i would be happy to have a conversation now. >> thank you to everyone who is

here today. and it was just slightly over seven years ago that walking across the deserted food court of pentagon city mall the night after general pee -- petraeus -- then he was on the phone to someone motioned me to walk over maybe open a little more ground for discussion. reading "surge" with military eye. as someone who was there the

level of complex activity was going on in the headquarter at the different level. at the force level, at the core level. leeliaison to the u.s. embassy and the iraqi government and unh unh and so on. it's amazingly complex landscape that general petraeus have managed and sink niced which is difficult thing to do. and so it is -- among other things, it reminds us of the complexity of an endeavor like that. reading it with military eyes, it also reads like cook book to me. because every few pages as i turn every few pages i'm reminded of the strategic counter insurgency has to be prepared to deal with the particular problem. it has to fulfill the kind of role and execute this kind of responsibility.

and dc dpufns of different strategic functions not yet captured in military doctrine. ting would be important for us to take tour and gint process of getting in a military doctrine so we don't have to relearn this every time we do major contingency campaign in some foreign country. which as limb as we want it to happen, it is certain to happen at some point in time. i hope we are better equipped so we can have the knowledge of how qowrnt insurgency command u mission in iraq worked so we can have -- we can be in a mored a venn teenage use starting point the next time we have to do this kind of thing. also a reminder as you flip through the page of military eye of the different lever a strategic commander like general

petraeus has to pulp. he has an operations command which is doing tactical -- overseeing tactical operations and train and e qipt command under lieutenant general jim. generating 135,000 rocket forces which you mentioned inside the wire so no longer argue detention center for the insurgency terrorist academy which are using intelligence to map out the insurgent network inside the command so you can have an effect on those that are still out on the battle field. there are so many levels they have to pull and the ability to sink nice all of those is a rare trait i would say.

a lot of those levers didn't exist early on in the war. a lot of those were not present early in the war. it's only -- i argue you get to the latter stage command and general petraeus senior command. he to create some of his own levers. in order to have the tools to fully address the complexity of the problem. and it goes to a second team -- could you pick the surge up from 2007 and 2008 and put it down some other point in the war? could you have done in 2003 what was done in 2007 and 2008? could you have done it earlier

there are precursors for the surge i argue. unfortunately weren't present earlier in the war. the first is that there's a change in the secretary of defense. in december of 2006. it's a sea change between sum tear rumsfeld and secretary gates. would say that surge probably couldn't have taken place without that change. secondly, one of the things that you get in the pages of surge or michael's book "the end game" and some others is a near enpsych low pediatric knowledge of iraqi politics and society and culture.

iraq was such a black box to us in 2003 when the invasion took place. it was a very hard-learn progress excess. it was one that we unfortunely had to pay for in blood between 2003 and 2006. just to get the knowledge so you know. stepping to a larger role. why? the major sheik have fled from al-qaeda pressure in there and aman jordan. i mean, would we have known that kind of thing in 2003? the level of knowledge you had to gain to be able to see where the scenes were that you could exploit is extraordinary.

one of the things. let say in the opening chapter you describe what went before the surge. the major development that is missed, i think in the campaign as it is planned for in 2004 to 2006 is the indicators of an emerging sectarian war. we can see in 2004, i think, that the major problem. there's an insurgent problem and a problem of incapacitated state. you have to build it to be able to hajtd the problem on the own.

i think that's the point you come in 2006. i think that is the major fact they're confronting. that's the pulling out it underpin the campaign plan. expands to the entirety of the command. some things learned by trial and error in 2004, 2006, and 2005. and as one former senior coalition general officer put to me.

the adaptability of the tactical units, u.s. units and sam other coalition units in 2003 and 2006 a process of buying time so they could do the thinking they should have done in the first place and the codifying they should have done in the first place. third point i would make. one of the take away i think from your book is that the iraqis are dealing -- the nature of the problem the iraqis are dealing with is anth no sectarian struggle for power and resources as you put it. i would add in many cases survival. to fill a vacuum when he disappears. they're also dealing with the after math of complete state collapse. and it is different to overstate, i think, the extent to which the disappearance, the

collapse of the iraqi state is cataclysmic politically, socially, economically that touch every iraqi. then the difficulties a foreign army has in trying to restore order, stablize an environment like absent all infrastructure of a modern state. yeah. a modern functioning state whose infrastructure disappears just as completely gone. that is something to difficult to appreciate outside iraq. the people on the ground like in baghdad and later can understand what i'm talking about. there were places in west baghdad in 2007 i remember seeing. well to do upper middle class neighborhood had been turned to utter waste land separated from the rest of the city. cor donned off by mounds of

trash and car and barbed wire. the residents themselves put in place. in some sort of post apop limittic scene. what would beverly hills california look like if you turned off the electricity, remove all police, picked up no trash, no running water and had the situation for four years. that's what parts of baghdad and other major cities look like. that was the extend of the problem. not an easy problem. to draw another analogy about the unnecessary collapse of the state in 2003.

that probably should have been done in my opinion. having said that, let me add i'm not speaking on behalf of u.s. army or the department of defense in any way. lastly to extrapolate from your book to the situation today, i think unfortunately you give us the key to understanding the violates that is rocking iraq today because the various strategic problems you describe being resolved or at least being tackled in the course of the surge i'm talking about the awakening and plitting of the main stream from al-qaeda and other insurgent and elite power

shaking pact that takes place among the ladies and gentlemen political party. create the situation as it stands today. unfortunately if we were to continue on with the violence chart that we would see it creeping back up today to probably back in 2006 in iraq. in the early part of 2006. so, you know, hopefully you identified very well the things that need to be done in iraq to prevent that kind of outcome.

unfortunately the dynamic are moving in the opposite direction now. thank you. that naturally segues how you ended your talk. is it entirely fair to sort of blame the obama administration for the lack of deal to keep american forces in debt. the negotiator played a keel role in the bush. he made a big effort to make it work and the iraqi parliament was a problem. how would you assess that negotiation? two ways. president bush personally got involved with discuss negotiations with the prime minister. almost on a weekly basis. and president obama never developed a relationship with him.

it was the difference between the vice president and the. if you backtrack before that, i think the it was a presidential in iraq. hef rubbing in a party that was by most sunnies in iraq and sectarian people. we've been telling the sunni enter the political process. thing will be okay. your voice will be heard through politics. it was valid. they won the election.

was their voice heard? no. we didn't back the winner of the election. we didn't give him an opportunity try to form a government. he might have failed. we didn't even allow the process to go to fruition. instead the ambassador said no -- it was cut in tehran, you know, the e qvc lebt of the smoke-filled rooms in iran a deal in which the office supported him for another term this is the reason that no one support the u.s. forces next

year. what good were we? we were supporting the other side. what was our reasoning? and it wasn't. now back in the situation we were in 2008 with 8,000 deaths civilian deaths every year. the number could go up. what can the united do in your view to tamper that down. >> i don't think we should do anything.

he needs to stew in his own juices for awhile until he reverses the political discussions suppressed and alienated them. until he does that, until he agreed to share power there was an agreement in 2010 he didn't abide by it. until he agrees to top persecuting sun any politicians he's done on a number of indications until he allows legitimate protests against his government then why should we help him with a problem of his own creation. how would you assess the strength and/or weaknesses in al-qaeda and iraq now? clearly they are making a comeback. the tribes have not aligned the way they did before 2006. this is the good news. the tribes know that al-qaeda nothing good will come of

allying with al-qaeda. so what has happened is the alliance that we created with the tribe is broken down. they haven't gone back to supporting al-qaeda either. they're more on the sideline and fighting for themselves really. i don't think al-qaeda can create a "safe haven." every time they try to take a ground they position themselves such as combated. on the over hand, the situation throughout iraq continues to spiral downward. and political violence until you have, again, resolution among the elite and buy in among the elite that the best way forward is a political way forward and not violent. if your presentation you were critical who was sitting in tampa during the war. is the concept of a war that is

administratered out of it several thousand miles away does it make sense? other investment learned about how does that structure make sense? >> it does becausety has a wider responsibility. the problem in 2004 during the surge wassed a mirlt is they should have been focusing on the wider region. like kids playing soccer. everyone wanted to toll the ball. they county want to look at the

wider field. what we thought they should be doing is looking at the wider region. do something about all the suicide bombers flocking in from all of these arab countries in to iraq. >> really dealt with that from a diplomatic point of view. and general petraeus ended up doing why is the commander doing that. we felt there was too much emphasis on looking at what we were doing and not enough on the rest of the region. obviously the u.s. military has gone through a major experience where lesson were unlearned because they were too difficult to kind of process.

obviously vietnam was the big one. we're never going to do that again. we don't need to learn about it again. how is the military position this time around learn the hard lessons you learn about. how would you seas -- clearly there's an effort underway to make sure that. he said the lessons are difficult to learn. if we could do that and every half century the army would be happy. we have to learn how to fight wars we have to fight. and, you know, i agree none of us want to do a long-term counter insurgency big unit

campaign again. i hope it doesn't happen but it would be nice to be ready in case it does. i'm a little bit encouraged that the a army is diswrurnd taking this operational study of the iraq war while -- it reminds me of the lessons learned. they never publish it. the french army cherry picked a couple of battles and develop their doctrine based on incomplete view. the only army -- the american are i did us good job. the army that does the best job. 400 officers and as a result they create tactical doctrine whenever you can say about the strategy in world to war ii it

was found. it was firmly roaded in looking at the experience of the past war. it's a untrue statement of military that look at the last war are doomed to fight the last war aren't ready for the next. it's when you are able to look at the last and get the right context and learn the experiences and understand what went on. you can then prepare your forces better for what they might face in the future. it would be the case looking at iraq and afghanistan and the lessons they have to offer and lessons they have to offer if we have to do an industrial strength counter insurgency. final question in term of the research for the book. how do you go about it? what i needed the primary source

document in the general petraeus paper at the university. a lot was requesting declassification of chunks of his archive it was sort of an easy research for me. i didn't have to spend extended time and archive where and dig through paper. i already knew what i was look. it. i knew where it was. the fact it ended up being send on a cd. if you have a question can you wait for the mike and take this question here.

the lack of success. are you being a little rough on jerry and easy on donald rumsfeld on the issue and on the dismantling of the iraqi army having done a couple of tours in the pentagon it's inconceivable, to me, to believe those decisions were made in isolation from leaders in the defense department. >> it's a good question. i think there is probably a good book yet to be written when actually we have some hard and fast facts. i know that the ambassador was president's representative. he used to tell him i'm the president's representative. if he was willing to do something he felt was not right

he could have gone to the president and said, you know, secretary rumsfeld said declassify the society extensive ly at the level of national security counsel. president bush in his memoir said we should have discussed a the national security counsel. we didn't. i take responsibility for that. you might be right. we don't know. but breamer, in my view, clearly didn't push back at all. >> tom. research fell lore here. i have a question in term of the other myths you painted you never mention the population

displacement trends happening at the time. so after the bombing in 2006 there was significant displacement internally and out of the country and segregation of population separate from the sectarian death. i argue that a, it was one of the other variable that contributed to some of the draft on violence. the population were self-segregates themselves and not returning home. they were moving out of mixed neighborhood. img it is interesting point if it happened a the another point in time without the other variable you present as myth would have been possible? the awakening the ceasefire. the sectarian violence reaching a saturation point had to have been there for the surge to have

impact it. i was wondering for you could respond. on the first, it goes to the slide i show on sectarian violence during the surge. at least in baghdad. this is the only place i have knowledge of in the granularity. there was a lot more mixing of the sex even throughout the surge even by the end of the surge. that's not what the commanders on the ground were reporting. in the census they were taken.

there was a lot of mixing of the population. nfts the gated community and the biometric scanners and security check points. that stopped them from preying on sunni and made it more difficult for the terrorists to inject car bombs and suicide bombers in to she ya neighborhoods. on the other point. i wouldn't agree with you. i don't think i presented a explanation why it exceeded. in the book in the conclusion, i say that the surge i never make the claim it was the way to go before 2004 and 2006.

i fully acknowledge the other factors came in to play and extremely point. my point without the surge i think absent the surge would have broken apart the country. the way it was trending. was it an important signal to the iraqi population that the united and was there a sort of not using a per jourtive term we're staying. absolutely. i talk about that in the book. i didn't mention it in the talk. the impact we're with you pather inning to the end. they take the cue what the president of the united states was saying.

the last picture on the screen is here in washington behind general petraeus when they are testifying on september 10th 2007. tell us the atmosphere of that. that was one of the most important hearings of the post world war ii era. it was tense. it was surreal, there was the new york city times ad attacking his character and personality. that he was a mouthpiece for the white house.

it was the high stakes two days. i thought that general petraeus and the ambassador handled themselves greatly given the amount of pressure they were under and scrutiny. it was a wonderful experience. there's an empire chapter in the book. nothing but that testimony. there was a move to force a withdrawal time line on the administration. when the hear, were over i knew the way they had scwawrned that. it wasn't necessarily his intent to create a political dynamic but the outcome of him of what was happening on the ground. when the hearing ended i looked at him and said you bought six more months. >> it's true.

[inaudible] there was operational docket rib special. am fibbing use. we took -- we forgive you. made them work together. i was impressed by that. i'm saying that as a person who was used to joint task organizations you did a great

job in doing that. what would you say to the state department supplement your effort in baghdad with a lack of funding and honestly leadership and state department. given the fact that the defense department had significant resources and the state department get the money in congress what would you say to the state department's role in

the war fair. and how you use it to compliment your program military programs in this kind of war fair? >> we need the capacity that civilians could bring to the counter insurgency campaign.

force of vietnam as a result of the program. i don't see that happening. there's no really political energy to give the state department more resources in that regard. because, again, most people don't think we're going to fight the war like this again. maybe in our lifetime we will. it certainly would be nice to create the capability or at least have it in germ nation and be able to ramp it up when needed. but anyway you're right. i would say, though, that

civilian capacity that the state department got were absolutely critical. our point introduction with the new currency in iraq which couldn't have happened without the treasury department officials that made it happen. it worked wonderfully stablize the iraqi. and the military didn't have that capability. so state department folks and the broader civilian capacities is really crucial. they weren't perfect, but they were desperately needed. >> a few more minutes left. get the questions together because he has to leave after he does his book signing. >> department of state. [inaudible] you make policy by personnel. could we have picked better -- [inaudible] could we have picked better people at the beginning and the

mistakes are people like it was good later. >> your question. the gentleman in front of you. [inaudible] the u.s. peace. i have a comment. if you advise court parts in the iraqi army today the people involved in the what would you advise from the lessons you have applied? >> okay. behind you. thank you very much george mason university. an analyst and war gamer. i appreciate what you're trying to do and the importance of it. i think your presentation underscore two problems. one is a poll making problem. and the other is planning problem. i wonder if you could talk about the role of your organizations

in better informing the -- to even go to the war. there were war gaming that was done in the '90s that did a pretty good job of anticipating the kinds of problems that would arise from an invasion in iraq. and secondly, once -- better informing the policy making process and then the planning process itself. okay. a final question in back. [laughter] i was admiring your memory. [inaudible] my name is phil from retired state department. i want to ask you about that map president bush and his commitment to south korea and obama. big -- [inaudible] maintaining a 60 or 70 year occupation of south korea was the defense of japan. is there a parallel strategic

ration tell me for maintaining a 60 or 70-year-old operation of iraq. >> thank you. we'll begin with the great man theory. if we had better people in place that things would had gone more smoothly. and i reject that notion. we didn't have the right people in charge, nibble 2003. either the military or the political level. we also didn't have the right organization. we had the mo junior -- in the imriet army with an organization not defined to conduct the responsibilities as well as operation gnat responsibilities. it wasn't until the spring of tower we had a four-star command and three-star command side by side. and the division of the responsibilities. it was too much for