this clearly continued during your tenure as secretary of state and you write about a lot of this sort of, the. there were dark days obviously benghazi being the most obvious that there were a lot of funny things that happened and i'm sure in retrospect they seem even funnier, sort of comedic moments. of course there had to be a hair story so there's a hair story in bulgaria and there's a shoe coming off an opportune moment in france.

there is a neat you need to floss moment when president obama poe suicide in the meeting and points out that you have food in your teeth. [laughter] and then one of my favorites is a funny thing and i wanted to mention it a little bit. a funny thing happens at the end of your trip and you are on the plane and everyone can finally relax so your staff turns on a movie. tell us about that. >> the first thing i would say is the choice of movie was often really low grade. [laughter] and i think that's because by the end of those trips which were very long moving from timezone to timezone everybody was exhausted via nobody wanted to thank. everybody just slumped back in their chairs and voted for the most mindless entertainment that was available on our plane. but the movie about this by -- reach? >> it's called reach.

>> and there's a scene in which the actor playing the character, what was this person? robert something. anyway he says you know we don't need any more women in pants like hillary clinton. [laughter] >> i love that story. >> and the whole plane just burst into laughter. but lissa is right because they are all these things going on while i am you know wading through briefing books that are 3 feet high or on the phone arguing with some foreign minister i am about to see about something or consoling someone who has had a terrible incident in their country. so i don't know half the things that were going on but we had a lot of misadventures.

now one which is kind of consequential and it ended up being fine. [laughter] but we would also go on the strips and we had a great press corps in the state department. many really experienced journalist who had covered the state department and stationed overseas and it was really a pleasure working with them because they were always asking very substantive questions about how does this compare with what secretary powell did or what do you think if you would take what madeline albright said? they knew the whole landscape but they too were kind of letting down their hair so to speak. so we are in lima peru and we are trying to, i'm trying to work. i had to go to the meeting of the organization of american space oas and i'm trying to finalize the conditions that are going to be posed by the u.n.

security council on i ran. we came in with our two-part strategy and we knew it wasn't enough for the united states to be putting the pressure on. we need to get the international community and that meant primarily convincing russia which i think we succeeded in which the president i and national security jim jones told medvedev and sergey lavrov and a three on three meeting that the iranians had elton underground facility and the russians didn't know it. i think that surprise them and made them much more amenable to going along with the security council. the chinese who needed oil and gas from everywhere did not want to see that supply cut off so they took a lot more convincing and working and working. the chinese ambassador very able diplomat ambassadoambassado r to the united states was covering the oas meeting in lima and i was trying to get a meeting with him to see if i could get them to sign off on the final

language because he had been authorized to convey that back to beijing. he had meetings and finally we were worried we wouldn't get to the meeting so the press was having a day piece goes sour happy hour. [laughter] and apparently piece goes sours in that very happy especially these that were made in lima. so we where looking for the ambassador to try to find a time and i went down to the bar in the hotel and we were trading stories and chatting each other up and i'm having a piece goes sour. pretty soon things are looking really positive and optimistic. [laughter] and then all of a sudden one of my core service officers comes up and says madam secretary the chinese ambassador is here. i said where? right there.

oh mr. ambassador please come in. i taken to a back table and we pull out all the papers. mark wendler the excellent, now he is a white house reporter for the times and went to the state department he sees me sitting with his chinese man and we are looking and he comes over varying too big piece company sours. here is one for you madam secretary, here's one for you. ambassador, yes there he is. you had to be flexible and agile and roll literally and figuratively with whatever was running. >> i want to take a question from the audience and this is from jersey anderson. this is really a hardball. did you really autograph all these books? [laughter] >> you know what? i really did. i really did.

[applause] and between the time that i finished the book and went in and set it to printing i had a three-week period and they sent me 21,000 pages so i started signing hillary rodham clinton. i thought this is going to take me until labor day. i talked to lissa and some other people and they said they'll personalize it. you say hillary. that i can do so i sat in the turn down the old movie channels because it was relaxing and just sat there inside. the ones that you are getting have all been personally signed by me. [applause] >> you mentioned beijing. the 20th anniversary this year and i want to tell a quick story

and it does want to ask you about this. you almost didn't go. you almost didn't go because the chinese had arrested a naturalized citizen saying he was an american spy but we ended up going and worked really hard on this speech. i think i've told you this once but there was an amazing thing that happened personally which was that i walked up and we had gone from washington to why he. we met with the president of white and then we flew to guam and went from guam to beijing and we were on the last draft of the beach that have been closely held. i took it up to him and you obviously obviously knew this speech inside out. i will never forget this. it was very corny but a experience for me. i gave you the speech and you didn't say anything for a moment moment of any set i just want to push the envelope as far as i can on human rights and women's rights. [applause] i was so struck by that.

this is the corny part. i was so glad to be in america and to have a first lady who is going to go into what was kind of the diplomatic minefield at that time and make this assertion. you went on to say after that that women's issues and women's rights are the unfinished business of the world. i'm just wondering where do you think things stand now? >> listen that speech which you worked so hard on an madeline albright was with us and she provided great feedback as we were going to the drafts, was so important to me personally because i thought the united states needed to leave on women's rights and this was the opportunity to do so at this international conference. and it was very important to set forth an agenda. out of the conference despite all of the difficulties 189 countries agreed on what was

called the platform for action, the full participation of women and girls. i use that oath as first lady and then a senator and certainly secretary of state to refer to and to engage with leaders and groups, civil societies all over the world to say your nations signed up for this. how far have you come? then when i left the state department i went to work with my husband and my daughter at the clinton foundation and there were a lot of the important programs that my husband had established and chelsea was instrumental in. i wanted to add three more. one of them was what we called the no ceilings full participation project. what we are doing in partnership with the gates foundation and many other partners, the u.n., is gathering all the data that we can find.

i was just at the world bank two weeks ago with some important announcements that the bank was making with president jim kim and try to put it all together in one place where we can measure the progress we have made but also makes make clear that gap that still remain. it's been already a very meaningful experience for me because we still have lots of countries with laws that are women from many professions. we still have countries where they don't even record all the girls births because it's just not that important. we have made progress under the millennial development goals on primary education and then we just drop off dramatically with secondary higher education. we are doing a better job of combating maternal mortality but we still have hundreds of thousands of women die every year and on and on.

what we want to be a is a centerpiece for a robust discussion in the next year as we approach the 20th anniversary in 2015 about what we have achieved, what has worked in other countries and how much more we have to do. there is a divide. there are countries where law still need to be changed. laws in the books need to be implemented. cultural and religious barriers to women's participation need to be questioned from within, on and on. in the developed world we also want to look at the disparities that still exist between the opportunities for women and girls versus men and boys. a lot of those are what we call internal barriers. my friend cheryl sandberg in her book lean and writes about a lot of the research, the famous research of two resumes exactly the same one is labeled by henry

brown and one is by heidi brown and people are much more favorable toward henry and raising questions about heidi. the same information. the same profile. these deep cultural psychological internal barriers that people have about women and girls and the women and girls have about themselves. that's a more difficult area to explore and to measure but you look at political participation in our country and you certainly know we are near half. we don't have half of the appropriations for corporate officers held by women on and on. so i think it's going to be real food for thought for both countries where there is so much work to be done to just in the oppression and the abuse and the dehumanizing of women and other countries like our own where we made so much progress but that

we still have so much more we can do, no question. just to go back for second you were talking about melekian what a frustrating leader he was. you have traveled almost a million miles a secretary not to mention as senator and first lady and probably the only foreign leader has been kim jong-un speaking of bad pronunciation. the question i want to ask what i'm going to put it out there and we are going to go to another question because we are almost out of time is when you look into vladimir putin's eyes. [laughter] do you see the soul of a man who cares deeply about his country or the soul of a kgb agent? just asking. [laughter] do you want me to come back to that? >> fascinating. [laughter]

[applause] he and i have exchanged a few verbal volleys going back to the last several years. his most recent was to call me weak but then quickly adding weaknesses probably not so bad and a woman. [laughter] yeah me too. at. [laughter] [applause] when i wrote about him what i tried to do is demonstrate obviously that he is a very tough person who embodies a lot of hard choices. but the real sadness and i do say that deliberately is that his view of russia's greatness is rooted in the past, not the future. think about how well-educated and how successful so many

russian immigrants are in europe and the united states and elsewhere. one of the cofounders of google. think of what could be happening in russia today if you had leadership that wasn't trying to extend a sphere of influence, dominate central asia, intimidate central and eastern europe, prevent countries like ukraine from making their own decisions, impose a few of greatness that is rooted in the past instead of working to create a modern economy, diversified beyond oil and gas, create more opportunities for people but that's not his goal. his goal is to as much as possible re-create the past. that to me is yet another chapter in the missed

opportunities that we have seen time and again suffered by the russian people. i have a couple of stories in my chapter about him. i do talk about why we really did push to get the so-called reset done when medvedev was president and we were successful in the security council sanctions on iran getting a new s.t.a.r.t. treaty to limit nuclear weapons between us and restart inspections and transport important material and troops into afghanistan across russia. but when putin made his announcement he would be president and odd sort of presidential campaign if you stop and think about it. they were both standing there and i think they both had on like black leather jackets. poured medvedev who really did try to expand russia's horizon and went to silicon valley and saw what was possible and putin

says i will be president you will be prime minister and then they had parliamentary elections for the presidential election and they were filled with irregularities and i criticized the elections but it wasn't my opinion that counted as much as the tens of thousands of russians who filled the streets. putin attacked me for having caused the protests. when i next saw him i said you know mr. president that's not the way it works. he is a determined, relentless pursuer of his vision of a russia from the past and it is as i said unfortunate. the united states and the west has to make very clear that whatever his vision is a cannot upset the stability and order that was established in europe first after the second world war and then after the collapse of the soviet union and it's going to again take patients but

firmness to send that message unequivocally to him so it's a complicated situation and one that we have to watch very closely. >> there are a lot of stories about leaders and semi-really connected in the book and is one of the most fun parts of the book to learn what these people are like as real people and not just as figureheads. we are actually i hate to say it just about out of time so we are going to have one last question and i'm going to take it as an audience question but i just want to sort of ask a little set up to it. that is that you acquired a new title during four years as secretary which was mother of the bride. you are about to acquire another new title, grandmother. [applause] you suffered through some difficult losses including especially if your mother too many of us knew that she worked

with you at the end of her life. she was adored by her staff. i was struck by the memorial that you held of the number of chelsea's friends who spoke about her and her staff who spoke about her. everyone she came in contact with and now of course a grandmother to your daughter in chelsea was so close to your mother, to her grandmother. you have a lot to play looking ahead which gets to the last question and it comes from tyler smith via twitter who says what do you want your legacy to be? >> for the state department or my life? >> he just says what you want your legacy to be. >> well i guess one way to think about it might be as we look ahead as a grandmother and you know better than most people the world that this child will be born into. you have to think about your life and caring for your grandchild and you probably have

given a little thought caring for our collective. [laughter] so how do you balance all of that. [applause] >> well i don't think about a legacy. i think about my life because i have had quite an unpredictable life and i thought a lot about that when i was writing the book i could never when i was growing up in cambridge illinois have imagined what i have had the great pleasure of experiencing, the challenges and difficulties along with the extraordinary experiences and opportunities and i think that really is at the core of what i care the most about both for my own family my future grandchild but also for

our country i want young people particularly to feel as though the future may not be totally clear to you but it looks like it's full of promise for you, that you have the opportunity because you are acquiring an education, because you are willing to work hard, to be given your definition of the american dream. that is how i was raised. my mother who did live with us during the last 10 years of her life was the product of a very abusive neglectful home but all along her much more difficult life of her childhood she would encounter people who showed kindness and who are part of a

broader community than just the family is so let her down. so she learned how to user education even though she only graduated from high school. she was incredibly intelligent and kept taking college courses almost into her 80s. she was supported by the community and really nurtured by her belief in what this country meant. she instilled that in my and everyone that she touched. but you had to take responsibility and you had to have a good work ethic but you were part of a community. it wasn't just either the individual or a member of a community. it was be an individuaindividua l within a community and in a larger community of our country. so what i hope is that my grandchild when he or she comes into the world this fall, will

have that same view of what america means and why america matters. i had such a perspective from outside for those four years, i saw us once again using our innovation, our energy and our resilience to come back from a terrible economic crisis that is still not fully resolved. but i also saw so much disagreement and argument about what we were doing and what we stood for and what were the right decisions and one particular moment that i read about in the book happened to me when i was in hong kong in july 2011. it was during the first serious effort by some in the congress to default on our debts. i had a pre-existing speech and there were all these asian

business leaders there. they stood in line to say to me what's happening in washington? what is going to go on there? is the united states really going to default on its debts and i said oh no of course not. we will figure it out. we will work her our way through the politics of it and i had my fingers crossed behind my back. what i noticed on that first occasion was bewilderment, confusion. how could a great country do this to themselves? this is about paying debts that they are devoted for whether they agreed to or not it was voted for. fast-forward to last fall and we have a government shutdown that prevented the president from going to important meeting in asia where the president of china, president putin of russie united states was absent. and once again talking seriously about defaulting on the debt. i asked my team to give me the news coverage about what people

were saying around the world reticular leann asia and not exclusively europe and latin america and it was no longer be wildermuth. it was contempt. it was how can you trust americans? i can even run a government anymore. one chinese official said it's time to de-americanized the world. let's move toward a different reserve currency besides the dollar. those are consequential assessments of us because we cannot be strong abroad we are not strong at home. we cannot continue to try to argue for and implement a rules-based order in the global economy where people have to play by those rules and where there are measures of accountability if they don't if we can't demonstrate that our economy is working for everybody. so the book is about my time as secretary of state that i carry with me all of my life experiences.

i'm not ready to stop and think about the legacy because i want to keep thinking about what my life has meant and what my obligations are to my grandchild and everyone else and i'm going to do that through the work of the clinton foundation in other ways. but it is -- [applause] [applause] [cheers and applause] >> i will hasten to add, it is a question in the responsibility for all of us and a hard choice and a very hard choice. it is a very hard choice but i think all of us have some hard

choices about what kind of citizens we are going to be, what we are going to ask of our leaders but also we are going to ask of ourselves and what has always made as strong as americans goes back to that incredibly astute observation by de tocqueville when he came to walk around and understand what this country is about and understand with his countries about any look at how we organized herself and how we were democracy and the institutions we were building. he said he came down to the habits of our hearts. i think we have got to ask ourselves what it means today to be an american in the 21st century and what we expect from each other, what we expect from our government and what we expect from our businesses are academic institutions. because i'm more optimistic and confident about what our potential is but i know we have some hard choices to make to try to realize that so thank you. [applause]

>> thank you so much. i'm sorry we don't have more time. thank you all very much. [applause] thank you. thank you all. [applause] hello, how are you? hi create thank you. how are you doing? how are you? nice to see you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

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[applause] be there something that drives them to this ideal of service and a so many people i know who served in war that the intensity and the experience. the intensity of the relationships they have with their combat buddies are so

strong and so pure and true that they look back on those times was longing and so i have always asked them, you know do you wish this had never happened? and they are like i would do it again in a heartbeat. i think there's something else that goes on there too and it is that going through a near-death experience somehow seems to give them so much strength and courage and optimism that i think that's one reason why they would do it again.

>> the pentagon's press secretary says the u.s. military is preparing for different options for presidenpresiden t obama to consider in iraq. in recent days islamic let's into capture territory in iraq. rear admiral john kirby says the u.s. military is disappointed that iraqi security forces have been unable to defeat the islamic militants. [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon everybody. let me just start with a brief update on iraq. secretary hagel continues to monitor the situation there as to defense and military leaders here at the pentagon. over the last 36 hours the secretary has meant a number of times with leaders to discuss events on the ground and to prepare options for the president's consideration. i won't detail those options.

they cover a wide range of military capabilities and will be designed as the president said to help bring the momentum of isil's progress to bolster iraqi security forces but any decision rests solely with the commander-in-chief. i think it's important to remember that for several months now we have been working as close quarters with the state department to augment the capabilities of the iraqi security forces. our focus has been on increasing their capacity to defend themselves and their people and remain responsible for taking on the threats over the long-term. in march we delivered 100 hellfire missiles on an expedited timetable the total to some 300. that's in addition to millions of rounds of small-arms fire tank ammunition helicopter fired rifles. late last year we delivered additional armed scout helicopters to the iraqi armed forces and a few weeks ago we notify congress of an additional $1 billion in foreign military

sales. secretary believes is imperative that iraq and its neighbors have strong security forces to meet evolving threats from the violence spilling over to borders. in keeping with that ever be contained to provide counterterrorism support. that support is included isr capabilities and we have intensified this isr support in recent days at the request of the iraqi government. i also think it's important to remember that we have some 35,000 u.s. military personnel in the middle east region. our forces were closely each and every day with our partners to defend against external aggression. they threaten america and its allies. before i take your questions i do want to say a few words about secretary hagel's meeting this morning with the prime minister of australia. they discussed the posture that he and the president amounts yesterday. this is a 25 year agreement that will provide an enduring framework for the initiatives are government will embark in

2011 and that includes rotation of presence of marine corps and air force assets as well as partnerships on space and cyber. we are deeply grateful for partnership with the australian defense force. secretary hagel looks forward to discussing for the defense cooperation at the annual australia united states ministerial consultations later this year in australia. with that i will take questions. >> jack can you just provide me maybe a little bit more detailed? do you know if the bush has indeed gotten into the gulf war is heading for the gulf at this point or generally can you say what it should be expected to get there? and can you give any sort of rot assessment of the isil numbers or capabilities that the u.s. believes they may or may not have? >> on your first question i have nothing to announce with respect

to force movements and the central command area of responsibility. the aircraft carrier bush and her group remained in the region and ready for any tasking that general austin cares to give them. but as we speak right now there is no aircraft carrier's arching into the persian gulf. on your other question, yes i did use that verb. on your other question look i mean we have been watching events in iraq for some time and watching isi l.'s -- isil's movement and development capabilities. clearly they are well-resourced and what we are seeing is a not

unsophisticated taghreed of cooperation and organization on their part and the president spoke to that earlier today about the need in the near term to help iraq break that momentum as for their capability this is an armed militant extremist group and we do know that as iraqi security forces have pulled back or left and vacated areas and bases and we certainly have reason to believe that isil have benefited from bath with respect to some captured equipment and systems but we don't have a really perfect sense on exactly what they have got in the capabilities of using what they have got. but look we have seen the video. you can see that they are driving some of these vehicles and they are in possession of some of this stuff but i'd be loads to tell you that we have a

really solid sense of what they have got. did that answer? >> numbers. >> numbers i mean this isn't an army. like a nation-state army so i think any estimate of numbers would be imperfect but clearly i think they are in the thousands and we know and we have said for quite some time that they gain sustenance and reinforcements from foreign fighters from syria as well. but i think if you were to characterize it in the thousands i think that's accurate. >> less than five? >> i would stay with thousands but i mean i'd be hesitant to give you a hard number on this. hang on just a second. let me finish the answer. it's not the kind of force that is easy to put down numerically and to count. this is not an organized

nation-state army but i think if we left it at thousands would be fine. >> just in. what realistically are you looking to do if you as you say you are not clear in what they have where they are and what their command-and-control assets are. >> just in what i said was we don't have a perfect indication of the captured equipment that they have. what we have a ching as i said at the outset of my answer we have certainly been watching the growth and development in their activities inside iraq. it's not that we haven't been mindful of the threat that they pose for what they are capable of doing. i'm just simply not going to detail options that secretary hagel and the leadership here in the pentagon are proposing. >> you have good options to take them out if you are told to do so. >> our job is to provide the commander-in-chief options. we are doing that and as we have

been on so many other places in the world we are confident that we will be able to provide the commander-in-chief options to be as flexible as he should choose to want to be. joe. speak it and the lack of intelligence that the united states has on the ground in iraq iraq -- i don't know if you agree with this -- are you confident that these options that the pentagon leaders are working on to provide to the president can give the iraqi government the opportunity to retake what they have lost like the city of mosul and other cities? >> well joe your question gets do you know objective. i'm just going to point back to what the commander-in-chief said a little bit ago that there is a near-term objective here to help iraq break this momentum and again we are going to provide options that try to meet the

commander-in-chief's intent in that regard and i'm simply not going to go into much greater detail than that. but i think it's important to also make it clear that over the long-term this is as i said on tuesday this is a sovereign state of iraq. they have security forces. this is ultimately a threat and a challenge that the government of iraq and iraqi security forces have got to be able to rise to meet. >> in the same context are you aware that the iranian revolutionary guards have sent special operations, special forces inside iraq and if they did so what's the pentagon reaction on that? >> i have seen the press reporting on that show but i have nothing to confirm that there are iranian special forces inside of iraq. and i'm not going to get into hypotheticals. the only thing i would say that

it's been said before is that we encourage all of iraq's neighbors including iran to play a constructive role in iraq clearly and given the challenges they face. >> the president said he was not under consideration to send u.s. troops back into combat in iraq or does that imply it would be or would it be under consideration to send american soldiers or dod civilians to do other things in iraq like advising isr support under dod authority under osc-i authority? >> well i'd remind you that we are to have in iraq and have since 2011 a small number and again i'm not going to get into hypotheticals about what options may or may not descent over for the president to consider. i think he was pretty clear about today what he didn't want

to do and you know our job again is to provide him options to consider when doing that. but i'm not going to speculate about that -- what they are. >> you mentioned at the beginning that you've increased isr in recent days at the request of the iraqi government. so in response to this crisis when did they request? can you tell us anymore about what you are doing and to follow up on justin's question if you don't -- at the pentagon can't even confirm that there are iranian fighters on the ground what is the quality of the intelligence? how can you give the president realistic options that there are so many holes in the intelligence? >> i didn't say they were holes in intelligence are. let's go back and unpack this a little bit. at the request of iraqi government we have for some time now been providing some isr support. as i said it's not like we

haven't seen isi's developments inside the country. in recent days this week if you put a time on it, this week we got additional requests from the iraqi government for additional more intensified isr support and we are providing that. >> can you say how? >> no, i cannot. typically we don't talk about the methods through which we conduct isr missions and we said we don't talk about intelligence matters here public way. and also you know let's not forget the larger point which is we have been sharing information with the iraqi government and the iraqi security forces since we left the country in large numbers down do you know to what we have had there since 2011. this idea of an information-sharing arrangement is not new. but yes it's intensified this week in conjunction with the activities.

>> and the lack of precise on the ground intelligence if you can't confirm, if this department cannot confirm that there are iranians even confirm that they are reigning forces in iraq how can you credibly give the president viable options when you don't have the full intelligence picture? >> intelligence is never perfect. it's not a perfect science. it never has been. never will be. it's an important capability and one that we continue to develop with the iraqi security forces and as i said to justin's question i'm comfortable and confident and so is the secretary that the options that the military will provide the president will be robust enough for the commander-in-chief in the decisions he needs to make. >> don't you think it's important to know if there are iranians there are? >> art, we are working on this as hard and as fast as we can with our partners in iraq.

and as i said i don't have anything to confirm iranian special forces inside of iraq. we have also been clear not just this week that we have been consistently clear that iran needs to be a responsible partner in the region and we continue to urge them to do that. >> just on this answers that you said you want iran to be responsible and prior to this answer you said they should play a constructive role. can you first outline what a constructive role with the? >> they could stop supporting extremist networks. that's one thing. >> military involvement by a rand being constructive or not in this situation now? >> look i'm not going to write an action plan for the iranian government to play in the region.

we have been clear about what our expectations are for iran and i think i've certainly been clear today that we want all of iraq's partners to play a constructive role as they face this very real challenge. but iraq and iran are sovereign states. the degree to which they talk to one another and make decisions, that is between the leaders of those two sovereign states. but this is a very real threat inside iraq. it's certainly a threat in the region and again i think this is a time for everybody to make sober deliberate major decisions. >> so based on your assessment in the situation in iraq do you envision any scenario where the u.s. can provide some kind of assistance to the iraqi government without getting directly involved in a military way to stop this moment and you have been talking about? >> that is why the president has asked for options and he is

reviewing options. again i would remind you it's not like -- the premise of the question is that we just walked away from iraq and we didn't. there has been since 2011 a small number of u.s. military personnel working in the embassy to help continue to advise-and-assist iraqi security forces but i also think it's important for people to remember that the iraqi security forces work for the government of iraq and there is a limit to how far advice and assistance can go in the course of three years. some of what we have seen, some of what we have seen from iraqi security forces in some parts of the country. >> to the deeper challenges inside the iraqi government to include local differences.

you know and i remind you of something we said that in 2011. the best safeguard against a return to violence -- this is back in 2011 is continue commitment of iraqi leaders to resolve their differences through politics. what we have seen stem from ongoing political challenges that have been made inside of iraq. >> but art goes forces, the iraqi forces capable based on the assessment capable of this moment to break that momentum you've been speaking about? >> i think the president made clear in the near term he wants to have options available in the near term to help break this momentum so to clearly have us help them in the near term break this momentum. and i'm not going to be cute about it. we are certainly disappointed by the disappointment --

the performance of some iraqi force units with respect to the challenges that face the last few days but over the long term these are threats and challenges that the iraqi government and the iraqi security forces have to meet for themselves. and for the iraqi people. >> you have been sharing information with the iraqi government since 2011. all the training that has gone into building up iraqi forces and equipment that is in seoul to to help them for form their duties. how surprised you were -- were you or were you not all surprised at how they performed so poorly when they were confronted by a real threat? >> as i said before we are certainly disappointed in the reformists of some of these units and i think it's fair to say that we didn't expect for them, for those units, to not

have stood up to the threat. we certainly didn't expect that level of her formants. but again the president said over the near term we are going to look for ways to help them break the momentum here and then we'll do that. >> you have any concern that perhaps some of the iraqi commanders may have been feeding information to a isil or in other words underminiundermini ng the performance of the unit's? >> i have not seen any information to that, no. i'll let you guys go. >> admiral as we know the original iraqi army under saddam hussein was disbanded soon after the u.s. invasion in march of 2003. a new army was totally reconstituted and trained and use. in mosul and other areas is that kind of a poor commentary on the

training that the united states provided to iraqi security forces? >> absolutely not, no. >> why not? >> when we left iraq in 2011 we left iraqi security forces at a level of competency particularly on counterterrorism that we believed was appropriate to the threats that they faced. i would remind you not that i probably don't need to but there is a lot of blood and treasure that went into the giving the iraqis that opportunity. a lot of young men and women didn't come home giving them that opportunity. i know secretary hagel believes that that is exactly what we did but that was three years ago. to a degree the iraqi government

has to speak to the proficiency of their armed forces. yes we have a small repair who has stayed at the embassy help advise-and-assist but it's not an overt act of training mission we got them through what we believe was inappropriate level of competency in 2011 and obviously the threats have changed too clearly but as i said earlier this is a sovereign country. these are sovereign armed forces and while we are going to tee up options for the president to consider for a near-term break in this momentum ultimately over the long-term this is the responsibility of iraq, iraq's government, iraq's people in their security forces. >> did the u.s. have requested the iraqi government some sort of inventory assessment of the equipment that was seized by these people and how important this could be in order to

prepare? >> i'm not aware of any inventory we have asked. as i understand that it the iraqi government is investigating the events of the last couple of days and as i understand it they are looking into the scope of captured equipment and systems that belong to the iraqi government but i wouldn't project how that's going to come out. >> is there a note for intelligence now to provide some aerial support in case the commander-in-chief requested? >> i don't understand the question. >> the president order some aerial support to control the advance of the people, do you have enough intelligence to avoid massacres? >> let's not get into hypotheticals right now. i don't think that's very helpful at this point we had. >> thank you.

of your policies on afghanistan are based on your iraq model so how can you ensure people of afghanistan and also the u.s. that -- now in iraq is not replicated in afghanistan after 2016 when you withdraw the troops? >> well i think your premise of your question is the decisions in afghanistan are not dealt on in iraq model. there is no iraq model and this is a completely different situation. the president has made some decisions about what our force presence will look like in afghanistan after the end of this year assuming that we get a signed bilateral security agreement and with the mission with the likes in both size and complexity over the next two years. i fail to see a comparison to iraq in this regard. and i would remind you that we have remained open to discuss it a follow-on presence in iraq

assuming we could get the same sort of agreement legal protections for our group which the iraqi government will produce. .. a