in the tragic comic final phase of the so-called peace process, instead of mediating, the united states negotiated with israel in terms of palestinian capitulation. not with the palestinians about self-determination. the u.s. effort to broker peace for israel is now not just dead but so putrid, it isn't fit to show at a wake. israel didn't believe in it, so it killed it. may it rest in peace. from the outset, israel used the peace process as a distraction while it created facts on the ground in the form of illegal settlements. israeli expansionism and related policies have now made israel's peaceful co-existence with the palestinians and israel's arab neighbors impossible. the united states created the moral hazard that enabled israel to put itself in this ultimately

untenable position. 40 years of one-sided american diplomacy aimed at achieving regional and international acceptance for israel, thus peversely produced the very opposite. increasing international isolation and a program for the jewish state. we will now cover israel's back as the saying goes as the united nations as its angoing maltreatment and intermittent muggings of its captive arab population complete its international delegitimization and ostracism. we'll pay a heavy price for this, political price, globally in the middle east, and very likely an escalating terrorism against americans abroad and at home. it may satisfy our sense of honor but it more closely resembles assisted suicide than a strategy for the survival of israel and our position in the middle east. americans like to have a moral foundation for foreign policy,

for our policies. in the middle east, and not just with respect to israel, the geology has proven to be complex to allow such a foundation. to take our professed desire to promote democracy. in practice, the united states has made a real effort at democratizing only countries that it has invaded, like iraq and afghanistan. or those it despises, like palestine, iran and syria. the rest we carp at but leave to their hereditary rulers, dictators, generals and thugs. when democratic elections yield governments to which our allies object as in algeria, palestine and egypt, washington tries their overthrow and replacement by congenial despots. if democracy is the message, america is not now its prophet. our willingness to rid the

region of troublesome democrats has, of course, appeased israel and our friends in the arab gulf, but it has greatly tarnished our claim to seriousness about our values. it has produced no democracies. but it has pulled down several before they had a chance to take root. egypt is a case in point. after raising hopes of a democratic awakening and electing an islamist government, egypt is now an economically sinking military dictatorship, distinguished from other tyrannies only by the grotesque parodies of the rule of law that it stages. not much we can do about this. u.s. concerns about israel's security dictate support for egypt regardless of the character of its government or how it put itself in power.

america's arab gulf partners are committed to military dictatorship and suppression of islamist in egypt. it's hard to think of a place where there is a starker contradiction between american ideals, commitments to client states and interests in precluding the spread of terrorism than in contemporary egypt. it's tempting to conclude if we'll be hard headed realists, we should just skip the off-putting hypocrisy about democracy and human rights and get on with it. that seems to be what we intend. how else is one to interpret the president's proposal for multiple partnerships with the region's security forces to suppress islamist terrorism? today's egypt is the outstanding example of regional cooperation in such repression. we have another model in mind? it's not apparent. but by leaving no outlet for peaceful dissent, egypt is

forcing at least part of its pious majority toward violent politics. this risks transforming most populist of all arab countries into the world's biggest and most deadly training ground for islamist terrorists with global reach. its true, of course, that egypt is not the only incubator for such enemies of america. americans went in search of -- went abroad in search of monsters to destroy. we found them and bred more. some have already followed us home. others are no doubt on their way. and that's why we have an expanding garrison state in this country. our counterterrorism programs, meanwhile, are everywhere nurturing a passion for revenge against the united states. we gave a big boost to the spread of islamist terrorism when we invaded iraq. our stated purpose was to deny

weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist to terrorists who weren't there. having removed functioning government from iraq, we then thought, we might as well conduct a sort of hit and run democratization of the place. so we replaced the secular tick fatorship with a sectarian despottism. not only did that not work but it set off a religious war that ultimately gave birth to the jihadistan that now straddles the border. what we did in iraq resulted in breaking it into three pieces. now in practice, we seem to be working on dismembering the rest of the levant. israel is gnawing away at what remains of palestine. a transnational coalition of jihadis is vivisecting israel and iraq. with our help, syria is burning,

charring lebanon and scorching jordan. as it does, the kurds are making their escape from the existing state structures. the syrian government is loathsome. but we fear that if, as we hope, it is defeated, it could be replaced by even more frightful people. bombing can't prevent this, so in a triumph of magical militaryism we propose to arm a force of mythical syrian moderates. we expect this latest coalition of the billing to fight both the syrian government and its most effective opponents while nobly refraining from making common cause with the latter or transferring weapons to them. this sounds like a plan for pacifying capitol hill if not syria. and if our objective is to keep syria in flames, it's a plausible plan. perhaps that's what we really want. after all, the anarchy in syria

is a drain on iran, which we have identified as our main enemy in the region. destabilizing syria arguably adds to the pressure on iran to give up the nuclear weapons program that israel's and our intelligence agencies keep telling us it doesn't have. and that iran's leaders have said they don't want because it would be sinful. our frequent threats to bomb iran seem to be a devilishly clever test of its leaders' moral integrity. if we give them every reason we can think of for them to build a nuclear deterrent, will they still not do it? judging from friday's news, this experiment will go on for at least another four months. this brings me to a key point of policy difficulty. we've repeatedly told people in the middle east that they must either be with us or against us. they remain annoyingly unreliable in this regard.

iran's ayatollahs are against us in syria, lebanon and bahrain. but with us in afghanistan and iraq. the assad regime and hezbollah oppose us in syria and lebanon, but are on our side in iraq. the salafi jihadis are with us in syria but against us in iraq and elsewhere. israel's government is with us on iran but against us in blocking palestinian self-determination and favoring it for the kurds. saudi arabia is with us on iran and syria but against us in iraq. it was for us and then against us before it was again for us in egypt. it is against the jihadistan in the fertile crescent, but nobody can figure out what its stand is on salafi jihadis elsewhere. how can you have a coherent

policy in the middle east when the people there are so damnably inconsistent? outsiders can't manage the middle east and shouldn't try. it's time to let the countries in the region accept responsibility for what they do, rather than acting in such a way as to free them to behave irresponsibly. it's time to recognize that the united states can't solve the israel-palestine issue, can no longer protect israel from the international legal and political consequences of its morally deviant behavior. and has nothing to gain and a great deal to lose by continuing to be identified with that behavior. israel makes its own decisions without regard to american interests, values, or advice. i think it would make better decisions if it were not shielded from their consequences or if it had to pay for them

itself. america should cut the umbilicus and let israel be israel. it's time to stop pretending the united states is signed any real importance to democracy or human law or human rights in the middle east. we pay for gross violations of all three by israel. we support their negation in egypt. and we do not interfere in the politics of liberal monarchies like bahrain, saudi arabia and the united arab emirates. clearly u.s. policy is almost entirely about interests, not values. if that's the case, let's not violate our laws by dishonestly claiming there have been no misuses of american weaponry by israel and no coups, judicial horrors of violations of human rights in egypt. we should not have laws that require us to be scoff laws. if the real interests of the united states in syria relate to

iran and its context with israel and saudi arabia, as well as to our new cold war with russia, let's admit that and behave accordingly. this would be axing the geneva convention on syria. that excluded key parties making it a public relations issue. only if we engage all the parties engaged in proxy wars, including iran, can we hope to end the mass murder there. i'd say the same thing is true of the situation in gaza. it cannot be ended without talking to all parties, including hamas. it's time in syria to end mass murder not just for humanitarian reasons, compelling as those are. ending the fighting in both syria and iraq is the key. both to containing jihadistan and to halting the further

violent disintegration of the region. we should not be upping the ante in syria by pumping in more weapons, many of which are likely to end up in jihadi hands. we should be trying to organize an end to external involvement and preventing the emergence of an expanding terrorist bastion in the fertile cressent in the levant that will serve as a homeland for the growing number of enraged muslims our drone warfare is rallying to the black flag of islamism. the jihadistan calling itself the islamic state is a menace to both iran and saudi arabia, as well as to us. distasteful as they might find to work with each other, iran and saudi arabia have a common interest to discover. the new state was born of geopolitical and religious rivalry between iran and tehran

and can only be attained by their cooperation. depending on how u.s.-iran relations develop, america might be able to help them do this. but if the united states and iran remain enemies, the obvious alternative for the united states would to be accept the inevitablity of an expanded salafi dominated state that will replace much of the current political geography of the region. to work with saudi arabia to tame extremist tendencies within such a state and to yoke it to a regional coalition to balance iran as the iraq/u.s. intervention destroyed once did any and all of these approaches would demand a level of diplomatic sophistication, imagination and skill that the united states has not displayed in recent years. the more likely outcome of our current bland of baffled hesitancy, diplomatic ineptitude and militarism is, therefore, that the events will take their

course. that means the growth of a credible extential threat to israel. perspective political explosion in egypt. the disintegration of iraq, jordan, lebanon and syria along with palestine and the diversion of a considerably part of the resources of these countries to terrorism in the region and against the american homeland. we can and should do better than this. >> i'd like to thank the speakers and ask if there are any more in the audience with questions and for my staff to bring them. i would like to start with a couple of questions.

remarkably, in this stack of questions i've been given, there is no question about iraq. so maybe we could start there. can you -- you spoke about missed opportunities. what do you think we could have done, if anything, in iraq to get a better outcome than the one we have now? for example, do you think a greater effort to get a status of forces agreement that would have left americans there to train iraqi security forces? and paul, maybe you can comment. everyone, i hope we get a cross talk here among all the panelists. everyone can respond to these questions. but, paul, you questioned the labels we've put on people when we call people partners, call people foes is the al maliki regime really a reliable partner

for the united states? >> i'm going to answer your question in a way you hadn't intended. i thing mistakes we made and missed opportunities are too many to mention. i have been turned off by the blame game that's currently going on in washington. i think the obama administration's iraq policy was dreadful. i think the bush administration's policy was dreadful. both of them contributed to the current state of affairs in very significant ways. having gone over that history time and again and each time i find a mistake that obama made there is an antiseedent that bush made. and every time there was a good move that either made you can find it traced to a good move the other made. and the latter are far fewer than the former. what i would say is that to my mind one of the great lessons of iraq, and there are many. what i'd like to see us focusing

more energy is on this question of what lessons we should be learning as opposed to who is mistaken and who should be blamed for the current impasse. one of the greatest lessons, of course, was that whenever we take on a problem anywhere in the world but certainly in the middle east, whenever we plan for the best, we get the worst. and when we plan for the worst we often do better than that. sometimes we even get the best. 1991 gulf war comes to mind as an instance where you had a very conservative small "c" leadership that planned for all contingencies and did quite well. obviously, it was not a perfect war. there was unfinished business there as well. but by planning for the worst case, they headed off a lot of potential problems there. and from my mind, this is one of the issues that i've seen time and again with american approaches to the middle east.

which is what i've consistently seen from american policymakers is a sense that the middle east is just too hard. it's a mess. we don't understand it. what can we do to push it on to the back burner and move on to something else we might understand and be able to solve. of course, the middle east doesn't go away. as i've said elsewhere in print it ain't las vegas. what happens there doesn't stay there. and when we do rouse ourselves to make an effort. i'd like to see us making more of an effort. not entirely across the board. i think that there are issues that it's best we keep our noses out of. but where the issues matter, where they do affect our interests, i think one of the greatest mistakes we have made is to simply try to put a band-aid on things and walk away from them. the problems of the middle east don't lend themselves to that. >> tom, prime minister nuri al maliki is an excellent example of what i was talking about

before and not making policy according to our customary maliki and division between good guys and bad guy. and what chas freeman was talking about and how players in the region so inconveniently don't fit into those two bins of being for us or against us. mr. maliki is for himself. he's doing his best to try to have a third term as prime minister. of course, that's what most politicians aim for is to stay in power, although one might add that if one had the larger interest of iraq at heart, he could step down in favor of someone else. he has a view of what democracy, if you can still call it that, entails. and there's no question that his very narrow view of how it ought

to work has badly antagonized the great majority of sunni iraqi arabs. it is not just isis or the islamic state that's been able to score those gains that so alarm us in the west. it's been because of the much broader disillusionment with the regime. in all those senses, he's not a very good partner at all which isn't to say we shouldn't do business with him and if he does continue as prime minister, we'll have to do business with him. but the thing we have to keep foremost in mind is that the united states definitely does not have an interest in taking sides or being seen to take sides in sectarian disputes and conflicts in this region. >> i think even if those disputes weren't sectarian, that would be the case. there's a very convenient narrative now in washington that if maliki could just be disposed of, things would get better in iraq. we've heard that before with

south vietnam. and what we should learn from our own malpractice in that area, to use -- go back to the hippocratic oath which is not a bad bit of advice is that perhaps as lincoln said, changing horses in midstream is not wise. it's more likely to cause more problems than it is to solve. so that isn't the solution for iraq, if, indeed there is a solution for iraq. if, indeed there is an iraq because it turns out that in our eagerness for regime change we manage regime removal but no change. and it turns out that in trying to change the regime, we destroyed the state in iraq. and it seems that the moment that the kurds are busily making their way for the exit. secretary kerry, i think,

correctly stood for the territorial integrity of iraq and advised against that. prime minister netanyahu has made it clear he thinks they ought to leave. and we'd be happy to see iraq broken up. i thing kurds are going to do what kurds want to do and i don't think they're going to listen to us or the israelis or anybody else. we have a problem. we now have something that has many of the attributes of a state that is run by vicious extremists. and that has erased the border between iraq and syria. and i think that is the main iss issue, and it is also the case that the shia, not withstand playing maliki's aspirations to lead them all, are divided. and there may end up being two states among the shia, rather than just one if iraq indeed goes the way it seems to be going which is toward partition.

that, by the way, i will say is not an impossible outcome in afghanistan either after our departure. so i think we need to be a bit cautious. final observation. what we can learn from the gulf war and the iraq war, gulf war to liberate kuwait and the war asubjugated iraq is simple. you should not invade without a strategy. how your going to end it? it's not enough to get up on an aircraft carrier and proclaim mission accomplished. wars don't end until the depeted admit defeat and accept terms. we proposed no terms to saddam. we sought to impose a u.n. resolution on him which he did not agree with. we had nobody left in baghdad to surrender. after we took the place.

we need -- before we start intervening in places like syria and libya and iraq, we should think, what's the end game? how does it end? we should always be asking the question, and then what? and we don't ask that question and that gets us into trouble. >> just very briefly, for us, iraq is a very open wound. and there are a lot of marines and other service members who have come out and when they look at fallujah, the way it is today or ra meharamadi and see what t to secure it. a lot of questions. we are talking about foreign policy but domestically, we have to think that we are asking a lot from this military, which is the greatest military, but there's a lot of questions which i think will catch up on us as a nation how we use american

forces. i'm not going to go beyond that. there's a lot of talk about the state. there's a lot in my head. i'm trying to use my academic side. i don't know. because of the state in the middle east is changing fundamentally, we, when i say we i don't mean the u.s. alone. europeans, the west, the mind looks at everything as a state, as a holy grail that you can't touch it, that everything works in that concept. our international system is based on a conceptual state that we have taken from whether it is from the treaty of -- that is shifting under our noses fundamentally. i'm not saying because of the islamic state or whatever they want to call it. that is our manifestation. even the states we look at, is

afghanistan a state. i mean, i can go on to a lot of. these states, we still treat them with attributes we either believe that exist or at least that's the only norm we work through. i think one way to look at this part of the world is to try to, sometimes our models if it looks like this bottle and the reality is this, let's not change reality. let's change the model sometimes. and i think that's an idea that it's a long-term again. it's not immediate but to think about the concept of state and how it works and that it is even shifting. i'm not going to talk about -- so we have to at least academically, this is not lilly. academically try to start thinking about that. i think that would behoove us to be prepared when these states look like things we have no idea what they are. then we call them failed states. they may work very well.

i'm not talking about islamic state working very well. i'm just sag that things are going to shift. thank you. >> okay. well, let me follow up with, really in this same vain as the last question. is there something that we could have done in syria to avert the situation as it exists now. again, a missed opportunity is something you spoke about. should we have insisted on a safe zone or no fly zone? and more important lie what can we do now? in your foreign affairs article you spoke about training moderate opposition to the assad regime. i believe chas was indicating he doesn't think that's a possibility. so could you elaborate on that and, again, other comments,

please? >> sure. thank you, tom. first, i'll start by saying that for several years i was quite ambivalent about what we should be doing in syria because on the one hand, what was going on in syria is a tragedy. and i am one of these humanitarian interventionists. and i believe that where the united states international community can intervene to save lives we should. and it pained me deeply to see what was going on in syria. by the same token, the united states doesn't have particular interest in syria. and so the hardheaded realanist me was saying this is going to be a very big problem. this is going to be a very big deal. and it's not clear for us to do so. it's not clear to do so. the issue i was watching this entire time is the question spillover. would the syrian civil war affect other parts of the middle east in such a way it would begin to affect our interest? i think we got our answer on june 10th where the spillover

from syria became so bad that it has now helped reignite the civil war in iraq. i'm not suggesting that problems of iraq were caused by syria. quite the contrary. anyone who knows anything about what i've been writing about, those problems are entirely internal to iraq. but there is no gain saying it was a group that abandoned iraq, moved syria, was able to just stay in syria. it has brought iraq to its current impasse. and so that leads me to conclude that, yes, the time has come. the united states should be taking a more active role in syria. i have a piece in the new foreign affairs. and what i have in mind in just a nutshell but really will have to wait until the foreign affairs piece comes out because it's a long argument and requires a lot. it is what we did with the

croats during the bosnian civil war? nobody remembers this? everyone believes what brought us to dayton was the nato bombing campaign? it wasn't. what brought us to dayton was a croatian military that was able to defeat the serbs. and this is the simple problem we have in syria right now. the two groups with the greatest military capacity are the jihadists regime. as long as that is the case they'll continue to fight and we'll not want to support either of them. so the question arises, as we did in iraq, 2007 to 2009, or actually vietnam from 1968 to 1972, could be built a conventional nonpartisan syrian military. one that is capable of defeating both the regime and the jihadists. i think the evidence available is, yes, we could. i think that the problems that everyone has identified are important problems, but they are also not irremediable.

we have dealt with them in the past. i've been able to do it without boots on the ground. it would require advisers, more money than we are currently spending, $500 million is more than adequate to get this problem well off the ground and well under way? i'm not quite sure what they are doing with the $500 million if it's not what i'm talking about. the idea i know that the pentagon has been pushing for some time. but it is something that would require greater commitment than what we've been doing so far. it is also the only option out there that actually offers a way of solving the problems in syria? ambassador freeman spoke of a diplomatic solution. the only way is when we chaunng the calculus on the battle field. until that happens they'll continue to fight and nothing our diplomats do is going to make any difference. so the question is, do we want to support one of the two loathsome groups currently battling in syria or build a new

force, one we could get behind and help it to bring this to an end? we've done that before. i think we can do it again in syria and while it's not a great option it's certainly the least bad. when obama spoke about our national interest in syria is how it impacts syria's neighbors. our partners. so chas -- >> i don't think it's useful, frankly, to go over what could have been done when it wasn't do done. it's a little like raking over benghazi murder of our ambassador endlessly. what are we going to learn from that? absolutely nothing. so i would say, however, since the question has been raised, the two things we did that

brought us to this past were -- paths were first to say right at the outset, assad not only must go but will go. that ended any possibility of a negotiated solution inside syria because it sotold the oppositio the superpower will make sure that this bad leader is deposed. assad overreacted himself, looking at the arab uprisings and what happened to hosni mubarak and to ben ali in tunisia n what seemed to be happening and did happen to abdul assad in yemen and what was happening in bahrain and so on. he looked at this and panicked and he determined to nip the whole thing in the bud and used force. and that escalated the thing very quickly, especially because there were people happy to supply weapons to counter him.

we made the mistake of believing that because hosni mubarak had been overthrown with a little push, assad would go. and yet the realities of syria internally in terms of sectarian interests, ethnic interests, balances within the sunni community, secular versus religious were vastly more complicated. and assad is winning, despite all the predictions that he would be overthrown. so i'd say the first thing is stop taking sides in syria. try to loy lower the level of the fighting. reduce the flow of arms. talk to the iranians, the russians. talk to the saudis. act ourselves to try to lower the level of the fighting, not raise it. and so this is, i guess, a second principle in a way, which is don't add fuel to the fire.

essentially what we're proposing to do since there are no effective moderate forces in syria is scour the bars and brothels of the world. find the mythical syrian moderates. beat their teaspoons into swords n send them over the border after appropriate training and how to use reforged teaspoons. what are u.s. interests? israel. israel is going to be vastly worse off with the jihadi area, too, along its border than it has been with the atrocious dictatorship, but very cautious government of bashar al assad. turkey, which is a nato member to whom we are committed by tre treaty and whose interests have

to be taken into account. the main interest now is just as iraq has broken out, syria has effectively broken out. the kurds have left and they are associating themselves with the kurds in iraq but are no longer under central control. syria has broken into at least two other major parts. more than that actually. and i'm not sure, just to go back to the point that syria ever was a state in the western sense of the word and certainly the creations are all falling apart under the impact of what's happened. perhaps what is required to create a state, centralized patronage. if you are in baghdad and you are handing out largess to kurds, they pay attention to you. but if you leave them alone to make their own separate arrangements with the turks,

they don't. but if you are in damascus and handing handing out largess, you are the sole source life-being in the entire expansive syria, then people pay attention to you. but we have the example of lebanon which is a very weak state where the largess is not controlled by the government but by various factions. hezbollah being the main one. and that seems to be the model that to's emerging which is one of statelets, states within states, maybe in the region. in any event, i think we should be very cautious. 160,000 syrians have died. does that count for nothing? nobody has mentioned it. there are 10 million syrians displaced and 5 million who aren't getting an education. there are 9-year-old girls being

sold into marriage because their parents can't save them any other way. does this not count for something? i think it should. and dealing with it is key to dealing with what the main problem is which is the growth of islamist extremism and its establishment of a territorial secure area in which block further action. this change in name in isis from iraq and syria to the islamic state was an indication of a global ambition of the four objectives that that group sets, hitting us here is right up near the top. we should be concerned. i don't think that state is going to last. i think it will fall of its own weight and its own abuses. and i think we should learn something from containment in that regard. george kenan, 1946-'47 argued if

we contain the soviet union it would eventually fall under its own -- of its own -- it would fail of its own defects. isis, whatever it calls itself will do the same. but i don't think we can imagine the current state structures are going to be there much longer. it's not secure. not a secure assumption. >> i'm actually 12% syrian so, you know, the world right now it matters when policy is affecting crisis or not. some of us do feel it, but it's not -- that's not the most important point unfortunately. it's a reality but it doesn't go through. i would highlight turkey, but beyond that, i think something that we need to look at syria, there is a difference. just recently last week there was a conference with the mayors of dutch and belgian cities.

there's a lot of people who carry the same passports that we do. some of them even were born into mixed european background. they are american but not as many as europeans. and these folks are fighting in syria right now with a lot of know-how of their own home countries. i know that there's a lot of prevention measures, but there's a new dimension that you didn't have when the old al qaeda, where they put -- most of them came from the region. here you have a dimension that these europeans are very, very worried about, the blowback if you would of syria coming back. whether or not this continues or not, if it continues, they go back and forth. if it doesn't continue, they actual l actually come back and export this ideology.

i don't think in the modern world we can be isolated. i agree with president obama's approach on collective work. syria is one where i know russians are -- i don't know where russia is right now. look what's happening in ukraine, but there is a collective approach. turkey is very much affected. it's nato, but there's other countries in the region that, or europe that may have to take a bit more of a slack. that's where leadership comes in. how to bring these partners that are affected, maybe more so than we are directly. forget about the terror aspect. just the very security aspect of it, how to collectively bring them. to say we're the -- geneva or whenever it happens to have some kind of effective measure that looks at something doable.

you can't dream solutions. i think we have to be realistic. thank you. >> i am not a member of the humanitarian industrial complex. and i -- i think this has to be approached very, very realistically. i think ken correctly said that what happens on the ground is the ultimate determinant of almost everything. we have thethe ability to effec it. we need to confer with the neighbor neighbors and be prepared to act internationally. not to defer to particular syrian factions. two quick points. the fact is, people and fighters move around. ordnance they use moves around.

often the allegiance that any one fighter has to any one group changes quite rapidly according to who is paying him, who is giving him food and so on. so the concept of vetting recipients of aid is one of those concepts that sounds very nice in theory but in practice is virtually impossible. the other point concerns the backward looking at where all these things began. and i would just remind us that this fear group now calling us -- calling itself the islamic state began in iraq. as al qaeda in iraq and it did not exist before we unleashed the forces we did when we went in and started the war in 2003. >> the idea of moderate insurgents is a contradiction in terms. if they are moderates, they aren't going to rebel. if they rebel, they're not going to be moderate.

>> yesterday the negotiations with iran concluded without an agreement. and they've been extended for another four months. it surprises me again that there's not a question here about this. so i will ask, what kind of terms have been agreed upon so far. what kinds of terms are necessary offer the never the n months and what do we do if we succeed and what do we do if we fail? if we fail, ken, could you talk about deterrence and containment as options? what will the role of the saudis be in the region under those circumstances? and if we succeed, how much

opportunity is there for us to work with iran in various venues such as geneva over the syria question, and how will other partners who have been our partners for a long time, and who are concerned about our policies react to this new royal that -- rule that iran might have. anyone? >> i think the extension has something to do with the fact that we have an election november 4th. perhaps i'm too cynical to bring that up, but we will have a changed circumstance presumably as a result of that election, and either more or less flexibility. it's always been hard for me to imagine whatever agreement might be reached with iran surviving

the israeli lobby and the congress. so there is a connection whether we like it or not. it's the first observation. the second is that what seems to be at issue here is the quantity, the velocity of enrichment, not the entcentrifu so much, but it's the amount of enrichment that those centrifuges or other more modern centrifuges do that's really the bone of contention with iran wanting to increase its enrichment activity to fuel the reactor that the russians are supposed to fuel. but which iran doesn't trust them to fuel. and are demanding they decrease enrichment. and the second related issue is what the term of any agreement would be. the iran, i think, wanting it to

be five years or maybe seven and we wanting a much longer term. i'd just make one general observation, however. tom, when you open the session, you referred to multilateral sanctions against iran. there are some u.n. authorized sanctions. most of them are unilaterally concerted between the united states and our european allies. and they are enforced by swift which is the clearing house for dollars that operates, i believe in belgium. and they reflect our sovereign control of the dollar. now the -- our use of that control, particularly in the case of iran to disreport the oil trade for india, china, korea and other major consumers

has been mighty annoying to those countries. and it has driven them to bebegin to consider ways of avoiding clearance through swift and new york, the new york banking system. and in brazil a few days ago, monday, i think, july 15th, last week, the so-called brics -- brazil, russia, india, china and south korea, agreed on the extebsion of a new gibank to parallel the bank and the imf. along with this, they are all agreeing on new clearance procedures which avoid the dollar. so i would draw two conclusions from this. one, i think we're cooking our

own goose by abusing our currency, treating it as a solely national currency when it is the international currency. and that gives us a great deal of power in the world. we are dismantling that power advertebraantly, second, we cannot assume that in the future, five, ten years from now, iran will not be able to circumvent any sanctions that this u.s. and european group imposed. even if the u.s. and europeans continue to maintain the cohesion that we have had, which is quite doubtful, given the differences that have arich over nsa's spying, cia spying, the issue of ukraine an so forth. so i think we're dealing with a lot of imponder ables here, and we cannot assume that our level

of control of the global economy will be what it is, with 2021 the final observation, iran may or may not have a nuclear weapons program. our intelligence people say that it doesn't. like japan has to go nuclear. i don't think that's stoppable, so the question is how to deal with it. if we try to stop it, we will end up not stopping it, and we will end up with a greater risk of iranian nuclear quote breakout than we would under an agreement that's monitored internationally, so i hope there will be an agreement, but i am not optimistic.

with regard to the november time frame and how congress has worked into that, has been mentioned before, before a possible republican majority in the senate might be the best time. nonetheless, i think it's a simpler interpretation of what's going on. this is a complex negotiation, dealing with a lot of technical, nuclear and financial issues. need an extension was built into the agreement, so it's not some big surprise. there has been a lot of progress made by all reports, although we don't get, you know, direct

indications from negotiatoring about specific terms, which itself is a good sign. if we had more leaks, that would be a bad sign. in terms of the overall shape of an agreement, i think we've had an excellent idea with the preliminary agreement, the joint plan of action reached last november, because that is basically outline for the complete agreement, where the key provisions are, number one, enhanced vigorous are more frequent inspection and monitoring. until a final agreement it would be more complete and enhanced. that in my view is probably the senle biggest reason to get the agreement, so we know exactly what the iranians are doing with their declared programs. serious restrictions on the amount and extent and degree of uranium enrichment. in that respect, if you remember mr. netanyahu's cartoon bomb at the u.n. assembly, that's an excellent prop.

what the join plan of action, the november agreement did was, as my friend joe puts it, drained the bomb. what the iranians have done and what the iaea has confirmed they have done is to live up to their agreement of taking the medium enriched, the 20% enriched and either diluting it or converting it to oak i'd. with the last extension they made the further commitment to speed up the using of the oxide to make it into fuel plates for their tehran research reactor which puts it farther out of reach with regard to possible proliferation concern. there have also been formulas that have address the the plutonium route with regard to the iraq reactor, which appears to be involved, which -- so we've got the outline right through.

it's a bit of a further chalen for the obama administration in selling the final agreement, to put it bluntly, we bot the better side of the deal. we got the key providers that drains bb's bombs, and in returns the iranians got minor sanctions relief. airplane parts, petrochemicals, trade in gold, a small fraction, access to a very small fraction of their frozen assets. all the big debilitating sanctions are still firmly in place. as they put it, we will come down as a ton of bricks, as they always have, on anyone who deems

to -- so iran is still hurting economically. they have already made the big ones. we have not made the big one in terms of sanctions relief. one last comment, which is why it might not be a matter of the administration trying to fine tune it so we end during the lame duck period, i sxekd the admrgs and its p-5 plus one partners will still be holding out for a fairly extended transitional period in which the sanctions would be relieved only gradually, and that the administration, even without the congressional opposition would be looking for a formula for sanctions relief in which over the first year or two it would

be only the source -- that the president could take through executive action and only later on, as the agreement is upheld, if it is upheld by the iranians as well as our side, that the greater sanctions relief that the iranians crave would come into effect and at some point congress will have to act, but it doesn't have to be in the first few months. >> i agree with everything that paul said. i want to address the other question, if i could. what could we do with iran? one issue we are going to have to deal with in the future is afghanistan. we will not be there forever, and iran will always have a border with afghanistan. in the past we were able to work with iran quite effectively.

toe keep the lid on. i think we'll have to do that again. i think there is a possibility -- i think that if we have an improved relationship with iran and we are adroit in the manner in which we exploit that, we can help to dampen the sectarian war in the middle east by helping to broker a better relationship between riyadh and tehran. in a sense that relationship has become so bad in part because of our perceived enablement of reyaw. that allows them to do things they might otherwise not risk, pretty much as israel does, and i think we could play a more constructive role if we had a relationship with iran that enabled us to do that. it might also help to find some

resolution of the internal civil strife in bahrain where we have an important naval headquarters and long-standing relationship that we want to preserve. but the major think, if it does not collapse of its own defect, we're going to need iran's help to deal with it. >> it's been talked about. two aspects that i think i just want to put down there. one has to do with -- we talk about saudi arabia benefiting. there's an aspect of oil that i think we need to put out of the table. if iran was to become a normal state tomorrow, not a u.s. friendly state. normal -- or u.s. friendly for that matter, first and foremost,

my view is russia will never allow that. russia will do anything in its powers to keep iran simmering, at least. why? because iran coming into the market. it's the only one that has access to the caucasus and the lake -- it also has access to central asia. also, if iran was to come into the normal sea, u.s. or other western states can leave the pipeline which exist but need a lot of repair. they they can go straight to the gulfage out. that breaks russia's monopoly over oil and gas, which is east/west. this would be a north/south way. i personally do not believe until any circumstances mr. putin would allow that.

whatever we think about iran, we have to think about this aspect that is absolutely very important. therefore, i don't think russia will play games. they always play back and forth, and they know how to play the game and they have played it for a long time. that's one aspect. number two, saudi arabia somehow rush or maybe a few other companies, they say, we let this go. at that point, saudi arabia is one of the most important aspects. it's not the amount of oil we get, but saudi arabia's power -- exclusive power, unique power to control the markets. should there be a cry or if there's a natural disaster, they are the only country that could allment as a top saudi secret how much they can put into the

mark. this allows them to get away with a lot of things that they were. every talks about 24% of proven reserves. it's how the market is manipulated. this is incredible. that doesn't matter. we have fracking now, the world economy depends on this disability. there's only two countries in the world that can change that. some of those -- if you remember, one of the ideas is iraq comes in to attack. a nice guy comes in, and selling off the oil, and democracy will take over, at least one reason was to break this impasse of one country controlling oil and gas markets. the second country, the most important country after saudi arabia is iran. normal iran coming into the market breaks that saudi monopoly, forget about the shia/sunni issue. these will make these two countries apart. i'm not saying it's impossible.

i am an optimist i don't want to quote a marxist, but i will. however, the question here we have to look at is if you want to go forward, these are the big things. the nuclear issue it self-is very complicated. it's not just shia/sunni. thank you. >> i think that raises several important issues.

the hostility or tension between russia and iran, perhaps adding in the oil factor if we didn't have the syrian issue as an irritant, russia would be a big factor in the gulf arab strategy for balancing iran, because it's in the rear on the other side of the caspian. that's the first point. the second point is iran and saudi arabia have always been at odds in opec on price. the reason is iran has a finite supply of oil, it has, by the way, since the revolution grossly mismanaged its reservoirs, its oil reservoirs, damaged them. its potential to stimulate production is limited. saudi arabia has always wanted to strike a balance that's high

enough for financial the state, and the well fair system it provides on the one hand. not so high as to kill a demand for oil. this contradiction will continue regardless, but i'm not optimistic that iran will add much to the global oil supply. it has, by the way, lost its exports due to the -- so it's really hurt. that is a factor to be brought in mind. there's another company that's disturbing the global oil market, and that's the united states, which has used fracking for tight oil and shale gas to very good effect. i they that is probably a very limited phenomenon, maybe 10 or 15 years, but at the moment at least, it's a very, very important factor in the global

oil market. incidentally, saudi arabia has huge potential in these areas too. so we're talking about a very different energy wording down the road. >> leaving this question of soil aside. they view iran's agenda as enim cal to theirs. they've got expressing concern about our policies for some time. in fact, are concerned that in pursuit of a nuclear agreement with iran, we are going to acquiesce in the expansion of iran's influence in the region. is there something we can do to ease that concern for then? anticipating possible success

with iran in these talks. secondly their role will be quite important if there is no agreement with iran, because then we have to go to deterrence and containment. that's where we will be basing and already are basing forces. we will have to convince them that we are willing to use them. so ken, maybe you could comment. >> sure, tom. i will say on the last point, that's the piece that has me least concerned. if we don't have an agreement, i think the gulf states will be frightened of iran and will want us there. i think there are other aspects worth talking about. yeah, i think why your question is important. we need to recognize that even if we fail to get an agreement with iran, it doesn't mean that the negotiations have to stop. they may take a very different form, though.

this could be both cooperative and antagonistic, if necessary, but we need to recognize that our goals aren't going to end. we're simply going to have to pursue them in a different fashion. where i start is to say, look, there's a reason that iran came to these talks in the first place. i would tally up four different rationales for iran deciding to get involved in the nuclear talks, for us to sit down and negotiate? a way they hadn't wanted to previously. the fear that the sanctions were sap iran's strengths, sap its power. second, i think it was fear of the chinese in it can lard, but to a lesser extension some countries like the indians. it's worth remembers that in 2010 before the passage of resolution 1929, the chinese went to the iranians, and they want to the iranians, the americans are giving you

everything that you need for a -- you should accept their offer. when the iranians didn't, the chinese then joined us in the passage of u.n. resolution 1929, which is the cornerstone of all the international sanctions. it points out that the chinese have been in a very different place than certainly where the russians are and where they're obvious portrayed. 9 china' don't necessarily want the iranians to -- but they have been trying very hard to move the iranians in the right direction. the iranians seem to recognize that. i think they are very concerned that if they didn't come to the negotiating table and try to get the sanctions lifted, that the chinese would increasingly fall into line with us. a third one. i think hamineh is terrified of what he keeps calling the u.s.'s solve war against him. he believes that the u.s. is out

to get him, and he believes we're actively trying to do so, but i think it's also clear from a investigate the pieces of information that he believes we could do more if we chose to do so. part of what they seems to be looking to do is answer this question, can he turn off or mitigate the soft war? >> and then of course, the last one out there, which i think is the least important is perhaps noting, a fear of a strike. i actually thin that the iranians wouldn't be at the table if they thought we were going to hit them. i think under those circumstances, they would definitely want a nuclear weapon, but nevertheless it's out there. to me it sets of the a process that could move forward. things we may want to try to employ in a negotiation, even if an indirect one. we should remember even if the negotiations break down, the president's red line is still there, and you know what?

it's the right one. we don't want the iranians to have a nuclear weapon. there is a world of difference between the iranians in their current situation, or the iranians with a tighter breakout window, and the iranians have been an actual honest to goodness recommendation. it is enormous from the perspective the crisis management, everything else you can think of. that's where we need to focus our efforts. even if we don't get the deal, can we keep the iranians from crossing that red line. again, those different interests, those reasons that brought the iranians to the table create both things we might off to the iranians and things we may use to threaten the ravenance, should they choose to cross those lines. finally a whole other set of issues, because it's too big to talk about in these circumstances. that is, whether we get an agreement with the iranians or not, whether we can keep them from acquiring nuclear weapons or not.

either way we're going to have a whole slew of areas where our interests clash severely with iran's, and a few areas where our interests will coincide with iran's. we've got to think through how we're going to deal with those. that also doesn't end with the nuclear negotiations. it would have been nice or may till be nice to get that deal. it may open up the prospect for greater cooperation, but eeven if we didn't it, it doesn't mean we stop and it doesn't mean we don't have other ways of negotiating. >> in the time that remains let's discussing the palestinian/israeli conflict. to give you a flavor of the kinds of questions coming from the floor, they are whose

interests are we safeguarding? ours or the israelis? which comes first? are we not responsible for this situation given or support for israel. that's the flavor, and i believe it was paul who was speaking about the necessity of political courage here, if we're going to deal with that issue. so i would like the panelists to comment. before they do, i would say president obama said resolution of these issues was in the national security interests of the united states. because it provides a grievance

that extremism and results in terror hoe even said resolving the conflict would ease those conditions and therefore make it easier to negotiate with iran. once you say it's a national security interest and then you ought to succeed in your efforts. if you don't, then we need to talk about how we're going to be in jeopardy. what would we be doing to bring these parties to a conclusion and an agreement, because clearly it doesn't seen that the palestinians are going to accept being occupied and being block aided. they're going to resist. if the resistance is always met with this kind of force and these kinds of casualties, we shouldn't be too surprised if some people do blame us.

comments? >> i think the objective is clearly to destroy the unity government that has been formed in palestine. that's quite clear. the sequence of events began with the murder of three young jewish boyce. incidentally responsibility for that was taken by the islamic state. hamas denied responsibility. it was politically convenient for in netanyahu to attribute the murders to hamas, which he did. that was followed by the roundup of roughly 600 palestinians associated with hamas in the west bank, two houses were destroyed, eight palestinians died in the roundup. there was an israeli raid into gaza that drew rocket fire from

gaza. rocket fin fire then was used as a justification for the current operation. the problem here is also of war determination. the so-called truce offer was scorch coked between israel, egypt and the united states without reference to the other side. not only is that inch silting, but inherently unworkable. it is the opposite of diplomacy. mr. kerry has been in egypt, talking to whom we don't know, because talking to the egyptians who are the enemies of the people in gaza right now is not going to do a damned thing. it is a nice show of activity, which seems to be our specialty these day. frenetic activity is us, but the prospects for it producing

anything are extremely poor. so how will this end? let's not forget that there is a broader context in the palestinian camp -- by the way, the so-called peace process which concluded in april i think once and for all, because i think people have had it with u.s. mediation, which wasn't mediation, that process was fraudulent in no small measure because the palestinians were not represented there except through mahmoud abbas, the palestinian authority, which has no constitutional mandate to rule, which lost the last elections. it competed in.

not represented there were the people of gaza, the palestinian refugees, or the palestinian diaz ma. there's a basic rule of negotiation, which is if you wish to achieve a result that is worth anything, those with the capacity to direct the result, as well as those who must sign on to it, have to agree or at least be neutralized. that condition was not even considered. i don't know how all this ends, but the broughter context is palestinians as a whole are moving toward law-fare. the use of international law, international organizations. to put the squeeze on israel. and i might add.

they are not bound any more than the briics have. they can call ad hoc conferences, organize boy counties, sanctions, disinvestment without reference to the united nations. so i think we're headed into a period in which our defense the israel, which i'm sure we will be digging them out, is going to become keshlably more difficult, and there will be no resolution of the issues on the ground in the foreseeable future. >> chas has appropriately summarized the background to the current events. i would just add a couple other observations in terms testify hamas' point of view. hamas had been observing the cease-fire after the last round of violence in 2012, they

continued to eastbound it even though this were incidents initiated by the israelis along the border. it was after the kidnappings and murders and the israeli response, which include beside forcible action along the gaza border, it also included wholesale rounding up of the usual hamas suspects numbers in the hundreds, a number of whom were the ones who had just been released not all that long ago in the deal that freed corporal shali.

i would just make one other point, again putting on my hat as an old counter terrorism officials, and you alluded to it, tom, in terms of the president's remarks, both the unresolved nature of this conflict and extremely close identification of the u.s. with one side of it is indeed a major factor throughout not just the middle east, but beyond. what one often hears in response to that, the straw man kind of argument that, well even if we resolve it, it wouldn't clean up the other problems and there would be a whole host of other reasons why people become radicals. that of course is true. it does not refute the fact that this issue has been a biggie, and if you look at the

statements of captured terrorists who have been interrogated, as well as the propaganda that reflects their calculation as to where they can most appeal for support. this thing comes up again and again and again and again. until that changed, we have a major factor stoking anti-u.s. radicalization. i realize just to add to that one thought, 9/11, if you read the statement of the perpetrators, this issue was very prominently cited as motivating that. so it is not the case that is trivial matter or, as ken began this session that it can be

downgraded or ignored. it cannot be. it touches on the security interests of all americans. >> i would just say something about the topic i said perhaps it's too naive to think that democratization has any room in the middle east, but these ad hoc supports of democracy is what created hamas -- not created, but gave it legitimacy that it has as a government. that is why i mention initially that we have to be careful to promote elections or whatever aspect of democracy as legitimatizati legitimatization, whether they're a state or not, they won an election. this goes deeper into that. that's why i raised it. when we go and make democracy a pillar of u.s. -- fundamental pillar of u.s. security policy and support or not support, but

allow a group such as hamas to run for election, then they gain legitimacy, how you take that legitimacy back out. therefore the problem partially goes back to my initial argument that in my view, to create these aspects without proper groundwork, which is a long-term generational aspect, democracy does not fall from the sky, it has -- this is one of those rammicses, which i think we need to look at. beyond that, i think personally the other aspect, while this is a very important issue, i still believe that the importance of it, again today we can't say it with what's going on there, but when you look at what happened during that uprisings, or what is happening today in egypt, the same egyptian papers that -- if you read egyptian headlines, they are blaming hamas for almost everything. this comes from almost the

spectrum of egyptian newspapers. yes, it's there, but i personally think there is an exaggeration of the importance of it. again i'm not diminishing that it has to be something that happen, but it goes up and down depending on what goes on on the ground in the middle east. thank you. >> i don't think legitimacy can be objectively inferred by outside forces. elections are not the only force of legitimacy. there can be other sources, as the middle east apt ll lly illustrates, but if a -- and we treat that an inconvenient and invalidate the result of the election we are at a minimum not being true to our own values. >> and another issue is how plo,

fatah, the palestinian authority, how their legitimacy and stature have been diminished by failing in negotiations for more than 20 years. i'm struck by the interview that two administration officials gave after the end of these talks when they said the primary reason was continued so when we know what the outcome ought to be, and when you say it's in our national interests what should we do about it? >> i think chas covered that.

long-term israeli interests in terms of the jewish state living in peace and prosperity forever. the current course doesn't do it. >> we just heard from four very experienced people. i want to thank all of them. i also thank you for coming. please visit or website, mepc.org. if you want to watch this video in a day or two, or videos of our previous conferences or real articles from the journal. thank you very much for coming.

at the white house today president obama took aim at russia, saying the government there has direct responsibility for providing international investigators access to the site where a commercial airliner was shot down in eastern ukraine last week. given its direct influence over the separatists russia as president putin in particular has direct responsibility to

compel them to cooperate with the investigation. that is the least that they can do. president putin says that he supports and full and fair investigation. i appreciate those words, but they have to be supported by actions. the purpose is on russia to insist that theists stop -- grant investigators who are already on the ground immediate full and unimpeded access to the crash site. the separatists and russian sponsors are responsible for the safety of the investigators doing their work, and along with our allies and partners, we will be working this issue it is united states today. the president also address the the conflict, saying why israel has the right to defend itself, the international community must come together to -- all of the president's remarks are available at our website

cspan.org. live coverage tomorrow beginning at 10:00 a.m. eastern. that had be live right hoar on cspan.org c-span3. then, president obama pick. that's live at 3:00 eastern, also here on c-span3. the acting veteran affairs secretary sloan gibson appeared before the same committee last week to testify about the actions taken by the department in addressing delays and the backlog of waiting lists. also testifying was the assistant deputy veterans affairs undersecretary for health. this hearing is 2 hours, 15 minutes. let's get to work.

good morning to everyone. we welcome mr. sloan gibson, acting secretary, who will be discussing with us what he has been doing and what i perceived to be an active six weeks since you have held that position. we also look forward to hearing from him as to what he perceives the problems facing the v.a.s. for bob mcdonald, the president's nominee for secretary of the v.a.

to vote in fair of the significant peek of legislation, which we hope will address many of the problems facing the v.a. it is my hope that that legislation, and the conversation committee we are having will be completed by the time we leave here for the august brea. >> the v.a. faces many challenges and they are well document documented. we have many, many, many veterans to have parts in this country, who -- we have

significant problems in terms of account data has been manipulated. there is another additional part we have what are the real needs facing the 22 million veterans, and how as a congress

are we responding to those needs? so the v.a. has to be accountable, has to be official. and haz to address the problems that we have all heard in the last several months. secondly we have also got to ascertain the problems that is phasing the veterans community and do everything we can to maybe sure that the v.a. is on the kind of position that it needs to be. let me mention just some of them. of the 2 million men and wen who served our countries, studies suggests 20 to 30% have come home with ptsd or tbi. simply stated that means those wars have created some 500,000 mentally wounded american veterans, and as a result very

serious problems regarding suicide, and this committee will be dealing with that issue. substance abuse in ability to hold on to a job. it is not just the veteran, it is the right and the kids. the number of -- has risen from just over 927,000 veterans to more than 1.4 million in fillsial year 2013. this means since 2013 over a quarter -- over a quarter of those receiving car at v.a. were being treated for mental health conditions. in other words, v.a. currently provides 49,315 outpatient mental health appointments a day. a day.

49,000 a day. imagine the scope of it. imagine the challenge. if we had endless supplies of money. if we had the best if we had at quad numbers of psychologists and psychiatrists, which we do not have, this would be an insurmountable problem. yet we are where we are. that is the cost of war. ensuring timely access to high-quality mental health care is critical for our veterans and for their loved ones, and the stakes are high. it is a tragedy beyond words. not easily dealt with, we are all concerned about the tremendous waiting periods. i know mr. gibson will be

talking about that in his testimony. let me just go through the numbers to understand the scope of the issue we are dealing with. 46,000 are on lists waiting to be scheduled for medical appointments. over 8,000 of them have waited over 120 days. we can have an argument, though i don't think there is much whether 14 days was an appropriate number. i think it was not. i think it was overly ambitious, but i don't think we have the resources to deal with it. i don't think there's much argument when you have over 8,000 veterans waiting over 120 days to receive an appointment, that's 120 days before they are told when they're going to be seen, that that is unacceptable. more than 600,000 vet advance have an appointment that is more than 30 days from the date that the appointment was initially requested or from the date that was desired. that's not acceptable, et cetera, et cetera.

the numbers are staggering. that is an issue we are obviously addressing right now and will hear from mr. gibson as to how he is going to go forward with that. i think the gold of every member of this committee, and i would hope and expect of every member of contingencies gress, and tha deserve it in a timely manner. what i look forward from hearing from mr. gibson is straight, honest talk about the needs of the v.a. in achieving that goal. if we are talking about a staggering number of veterans coming home with ptsd or tbi, how many mental health workers do you need? and how will you get them? as it is, we don't have enough doctors in this country. how many primary care doctors? how many specialests? if the gold is to provide timely health care in a cost-effective

manner, we need some answers. needless to say, the other issues that the notice members of the committee will be asking is what actions the defendant has taken to reprimand employees who have lied or manipulated data. that is something that no one on this committee tolerates. what has the department done to assure that manipulation no longer occurs. identified by the inspector general. gao, and other organization. so with that, let me give the mike over to the ranks member senator bure. >> thank you, mr. chairman and acting secretary gibson, welcome.

there have been several developments. they have begun to take the necessary steps to address the corrosive culture that have been identified and stanch yaled by several independent sources. however, these changes will not happen overnight and this committee must provide the critical oversight to ensure those exchanges occur and are effective. even with the steps the v.a. has taken to improve access, there will ten to be records and allegations regarding health care facilities and workers. these reports will not only highlight critical areas of needed reform, but identify the magnitude and breadth of the systemic issues facing the v.a. the ongoing internal investigation as well as vargz currently being conducted by the office of special counsel are

essential to rye building not only veterans trust, but the trust of stakeholders and employees, to undertake the needed reforms within v.a., the role of office of special counsel and the inspector general are even more crucial now than ever before. i'd like to highlight critical reports at the time of may 15th action hearing, there were several stakeholders who did not want to rush to judgment until the allegations had been substantiat substantiated. northern did it. >> but the ig identified roughly 1700. and we're not included on an

appropriate. the ig found that scheduling the irregularities are systemic, and that this was not an require allegations regarding i quote, mismanagement, inappropriate hiring decisions. and bullying behavior. these allegations speaks to the corrosive culture that has taken deep root throughout the entire department.

harmless errors, unquote. is their defense, when the department acknowledges the department, but claims patients weren't -- their cases were unaffected. the letter details ten cases of egregious patient care provided by v.a. facilities in which the omi substantiates, but dismiss potential patient harm. in one case two veterans were -- at the brock ton v.a. facility, didn't receive comprehensive evaluation for more than 7 years after being admitted to the vicinity. another case in the letter describes how pulmonologist copied previous provider notes in more than 1200 patient medical records in which of reporting current readings. i want to be crystal clear. the culture that has developed at v.a. and the lack of management and accountability is

simply reprehensible. and it will no longer be tolerated, second tear gibson. you've taken several actionable steps, and i commend the work that you have done. however what has happened over the course of years says a horrendous blemish, and much more work will be needed as they continue to -- and changing the culture that has taken deep root within the department. this committee has a lot of work to do. the committee needs to take an active vigorous oversight role to ensure that the problems that have been identified over the last several months, and i might say over the next several months as a host of ig reports come out are effectively and probablily

addressed, and they aren't allowed to happen against. again, secretary gibson, thank you for being here, and mr. chairman, i thank you. i yield. >> thank you. senator murray. >> mr. chairman, thank you so much for holding this hearing. this is a critical time for the department. the v.a. is still struggling. there are and most importantly veterans are still waiting too long for care. secretary -- son, as we talked about yesterday, i appreciate your stepping up during this crisis. the department needs strong leadership right now, because the v.a. is facing serious challenges. rob nay bores' reviews identified several issues which we have been discussing for some time. a corrosive culture has developed, one unworthy of v.a.'s many dedicated and talented medical providers who do only wand to help. management failing injures, lack of communication is a problem at

all levels of the vha, and v.a. needs more provider, more space and modern i.t. systems, as we continue to work in the conference commit year, i hope an agreement will be reached so we can send it to the president and start making the changes needed at the v.a. so veterans get into care. the compromise will be the important first step, as more problems are found, we will need to take additional steps. we cannot lose sight of many other pressing issues. too many veterans still die by suicide each day. sexual assault survivors still need help. the v.a. has to continue to make progress toward the commendable, even more challenging goals of eliminating homelessness and reducing we've been working on

this, as you know, for a very long time. now hundreds of veterans in that area will be able to access the long-term care that they need. as i have said repeatedly here in this, when the nails goes to war, it also commits to taking care of the veterans. their needs are a cost of war, and we will provide for them no matter what. we know many veterans will need v.a. care for 1e6r8 decades. others will come to the v.a. for the first time many years after the service has ended. today i'm hoping to hear about solutions and smart ways to strengthen the v.a. for the long term, because the v.a. does need to be there for our veterans ready to help right away every time. thank you. i yield to senator isaac done.

i'm still not saturdays filled, to the president of the united states which i want to quote -- i remain concerned about the department's willingness to acknowledge and address the impact of these problems, which means the whist 8 blowers problems may have had on the health and saved of the veterans. particularly the office of the medical inspector has consistently used the quote "harmless error" as a defense. to provide quality care. and it delineates specific cases where veterans health suffered because of the agency looking the other way. i have become personally convinced that this begins and ends with the failure of senior leadership and the v.a. for years to overlook or to look

over the manipulation of numbers, to makes things look better than they really were, to hope that congress wouldn't come and look. i think congress is partially to blame for not coming and looking enough. i learned when i was raising my children, if parents come and every now and then open the door, you have a better -- than if you never look inside. i think some of the departments are the same thing. the evasive culture for cooking the books for personal benefit is absolutely inexcusable. lastly i hope -- and the august 26th of 2010 that delineated specifically many of the problems we are now discovering. this was four years ago. how they could have gone totally unlooked at by anybody in the v.a. and the problems we're now trying to fix lasted four more years because there was a

culture of just looking the other way when there was a criticism. while i appreciate very much your willingness to come forward as a citizen and take on this interim responsibility and as a sit wherein acitizen and take o responsibility, i'm not satisfied that the v.a.'s culture is different than it has been and we have to see to it that the culture changes. and we have accountability from top to bottom, but in particular in the senior leadership of the v.a. and i'll now yield to -- >> i'll say a vote has been called so a number of senators will be leaving. we'll go to senator tester, moran, and then johansson. the chairman will return. >> thank you, senator murray. i want to thank you sanders and bereaven though they're not here for the work on this committee. access to health care for our veterans did not pop up over night. this is a topic that many of us have been working on for years. solutions must be based on good information. you can't make good decisions

without good information. and hopefully the conversation today will be straightforward and frank so we can get down to some solutions. it's going to require tough decisions. it's going to require some creativity. it will require focus and engagement from folks on the ground, in washington, that last well beyond the media span. veterans deserve better than to have folks jump on the latest crisis or two and then you never hear about it again. they want answers. they want solutions. they want the benefits that they have earned, not press releases. i'm approached by veterans every time i go home, whether it's in the grocery store or at the service station. they are direct. they are straightforward, and they give me the best view of what's going on on the ground with the v.a. in fact, this friday i'm going to be holding another roundtable, this time in the capitol city in montana to hear from veterans about the v.a. and the services they're getting and

the difficulties they're having along with the successes. since our last hearing on v.a. health care, the v.a. kublthed a nationwide audit. they found the biggest obstacle to timely medical care alt the v.a. is a lack of service providers. it's a lack of service providers. i'm looking forward to hearing from the v.a. on this audit and the follow-up actions moving forward. the white house has also completed a review on issues regarding access to care. this echoed what we heard, that the v.a. provides high quality health care once the veterans get in the door. the realso found out that the scheduling technology is outdated. it's secondary to the need for additional resources such as doctors, nurses and other health care professionals, physical space, inappropriately trained support personnel. since our last hearing, the senate passed a bipartisan bill that would address major issues impacting access to timely medical care at the v.a. and passed by an overwhelming 93

votes. we seldom get 93 votes for anything in the senate. we're in the fourth week. there isn't much to show for it. those questions would be good to get answered today, too. because some members of this body, i think, of the conference committee are bolalking at the cost. we shipped 800 folks off to iraq. i didn't hear one person talk about cost. back in 2003 when i invaded iraq, i was not here, but i certainly never heard anybody talk about the cost, and making sure that there were offsets for that cost. look, these folks went to war. they performed incredibly well, some of them came back missing arms, legs. some came back with mental health conditions that they didn't have when they left, health problems they didn't have when they left. it is very frustrating from my perspective when i come from a state when we're about 22 docks down to hear folks on the

conference committee a few weeks back say what we need to do is we need to schedule more patients for the doctors. that will solve the problem. that will not solve the problem. we need more health care professionals on the ground, and sloan, i hope to hear from you today on those issues about what those defish aenlss are because i think it's critically important we get our arms around that as a committee so we can move forward, so we can provide the accountability that needs to happen within the v.a. to make sure ultimately the veterans get the care they deserve. i will tell you something right now. i am very concerned. that this conference committee will end up taking a step backward for veterans health care in this country. that cannot happen. veterans deserve better. they have earned the health care. we need to make sure we step up to the plate, give them the resources they need, and then hold them accountable for the job that they do. veterans deserve our best. they've demonstrated their best in the field. we need to demonstrate our best

as policymakers and you folks as leaders of the v.a. with that, i would yield the floor to my friend, senator moran. >> thank you very much. mr. secretary, thank you for joining us. thank you very much for having a conversation with me by phone several weeks ago. i appreciate that outreach. it's one of the experiences i had in recent years with v.a. is just no ability to convey the concerns of kansas veterans. we have the ability to convey that information to the department, but virtually no response time and time again. and so i appreciate the fact that you took time to have a telephone conversation with me. i'm going to present to you today or shortly a letter that i have compiled addressed to you. i heard the testimony from the house veterans affairs committee last week in which some of the topic was about whistle blowers and the apology that the department made. what i have discovered as a result of what's transpired over the last several months is that many kansans, veterans in

particular, but many employees of the departments of veterans affairs are presented me now of problems of stories within the v.a. and they're reluctant, in fact, declined to present that information to a whistle blower, as a whistleblower to -- in a formal way because of fear of retribution and concern about their future and their employment. so mr. secretary, we will be providing you an outline of things that we still consider significant challenges and problems in my home state of kansas. i indicated several months ago that i had been a member of the veterans committee since i came to congress 14 years in the house, four years in the senate. and there have always been challenges at the v.a. there's always challenges in health care. what seems to me to be different today, mr. secretary, and it's occurred over time, is the recognition that the v.a. in a sense was just shrugging its shoulders.

no real attention to problems. and what that resulted in, then, were veterans telling me that they no longer had faith in the department of veterans affairs to provide the services that they are entitled to as military men and women of our country. and so i'm -- i thought a change in leadership at the department of veterans affairs was required. it's now taking place. i look forward to meeting mr. mcdonald this afternoon in my office. but what i know is that only changing the secretary, only changing the top leadership is insufficient to solve the problems that exist. and so i look forward to working with you at your time at the department of veterans affairs to see that the results are things that we all can be proud of and that the commitments that we have made are kept to our veterans. most of my conversations with secretaries of veterans affairs, i think there have been nine of

them in my time, have dealt with rural issues, and i want to explore that with you today in your testimony, but i'm very anxious to hear about the steps that you are taking to change the nature, so it doesn't matter whether you're urban, suburban, or rural veteran, that the veterans affairs department is something different than it has been over the last several years. and then i'm happy to get to the specific issues that we face in a rural state like ours. mr. secretary, as we know, change is necessary. i want to do everything i can to make certain that the department of veterans affairs has the tools necessary. it's been my commitment since i came to congress. but i need the commitment from the department of veterans affairs that those resources that they're provided, the tools they're given are going to be used in a cost effective, compassionate and caring way and there's an attitude at the department of veterans affairs there's no higher calling than to take care of the men and women who serviced our country. thank you, sir.

>> thank you. >> thank you, acting secretary gibson for being here. and thank you, chairman sanders and ranking member burr for our continuing focus on the issues and challenges facing the v.a. when the issues relating to wait times first arose over a month ago, the situation was described as an emergency. there was a sense of urgency. and i want this committee and this congress to continue to be motivated by the sense of urgency and to continue to recognize that this emergency needs to be addressed because there is every potential for other issues to come to the fore and for congress to be distracted. important as these other issues may be, we owe it to the veterans to stay the course, and so i share the sentiments of the chairman and many of the members' statements this morning that we need to hear from you as to your short-term solutions in

addressing the issues at hand and over the long-term, too, address the systemic problems and challenges facing v.a. i, like so many of my colleagues, have been visiting with the veterans in my state, frankly long before the particular crisis arose. they have shared with me their concerns about the lack of doctors, of a changeover of doctors. those are some of the practical considerations that they have raised with me. and so most of us, i think all of us, have had the opportunity to talk with veterans in our communities one-on-one. and we have a commitment to make sure that we continue to stay the course. that, to me, is the most important thick this committee can do. i thank the chairman for not allowing us to move on to other matters that may be