guest: in the direction of people who basically are opposed to the deal they had a strike for the bailout. now, the irish government is still obliged to follow the requirements of the bailout. but by the same token, it is a new government and they could resist that and this could create new problems in the financial markets. >> bruce stokes of "national journal," thank you for being on washington journal. it is friday, so c-span2 starts at 8:00 a.m.. you can go to c-span not work, but you can go to booktv.org.

i want to let viewers know that sure, "washington journal" watcher and multitask at the same time, if you want to join the conversation, there is a lot of irregulars there. the conversation goes on while we are doing the show. there is the online conversation at twitter.com/cspanwj. always enjoy reading the tweets and the twitter convention. thanks for joining us. enjoy your weekend. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010]

>> secretary of state hillary clinton is scheduled to talk about middle east policy tonight. she is joined by the deputy middle east prime minister. we will have that live for you starting at 8:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span. >> this weekend on "after words," noah feldman. now the people who began their tenure as friends and up as scorpions. book tv alerts in your in box.

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span at checkout. place your order by december 15 to receive your order in time for holiday gift-giving. >> new orleans judge thomas proteous is the first to be impeached in many years. watch at the c-span video library. it is washington your way. >> next a panel discussion on al qaeda and terrorism around the world. it is presented by the jamestown foundation. it is about one hour and 45 minutes. >> i think we are ready to get started.

it is a great pleasure that everyone is here for our fourth annual terrorism conference. this has become an annual thing for the jamestown foundation. we have a full program ahead of us. we have a lot of exciting discussions in store for the day. we are going to give you a glimpse of many regions of the world. we felt that it was always appropriate to begin each conference with a strategic overview of the state of al qaeda. there is probably no one better in washington to do that -- to do that ban -- that than bruce hoffman. usually, we have one keynote speaker. today, we have to keynote speakers. we have someone all the way

from afghanistan. he has just arrived from the airport. we are doing some transition here. he is getting ready for his presentation at noon. he will be followed by the former director of the cia. we are happy that everyone is here and we are going to be videotaping this event. parts will be available after the conference. the first person needs no introduction. he is well known in washington. the most important thing about bruce is that he has a new forthcoming book about the rise of israel. it is the history of palestine between 1917 and 1947. it will be published in 2012. we will look forward to that book. bruce is also -- maybe you

already read his book, "insight terrorism." i would like to go ahead and introduce him to you. he is also a member of the jamestown board. [applause] >> thank you for the kind introduction. welcome to everyone who is here today. i promised i would speak for 20 minutes. i would move rather quickly. i have been studying terrorism for 34 years since i went to graduate school nt -- a graduate school in 1976. one of the neglected areas in government research and analysis is an understanding of what a terrorist organization or terrorist movement strategy is.

too often we tend to focus too much on individual tactics or targets of terrorist attacks rather than stepping back and try to understand the strategies. what is the broader plan that animates our motivates and enables a terrorist group to survive. in that respect, what we can see is that al qaeda is surviving. if i had been invited to years ago to give the same presentation, i would have shown a map with an al qaeda network or an al qaeda universe that had eight separate entities. one of them in the far east would be the real success story, the one area where al qaeda has faltered. over the past 12 years, while the rest of the world is undergoing a depressing and melancholy process of financial

and economic retrenchment, the shrinking of personnel, what we have seen is an al qaeda movement that has been able to expend its network by more than 50%. from eight entities to more. the current director of central intelligence has said that these two entities have become as threatening, if not more threatening, that al qaeda central. that is evidence of the viability of the al qaeda message and the resonance it continues to have to tell the world. al qaeda is returning to the sudan establishing an embryonic operation.

even more astonishingly, one has to say that al qaeda has put into place a small and viable means of recruiting and radicalizing individuals, american citizens and american residents in this country. it is bold to put up on the slide al qaeda in the u.s.a. as one of these networks. i feel i am on solid ground. when general petraeus was in washington and gave a public address at the woodrow wilson center, he had his own slide that had the al qaeda network throughout the world. he had on it. -- aq-usa on it. al qaeda has created a

transnational movement. it is no longer a single entity in one place to be destroyed. each of them have different capabilities, different resources, and each of them present different and unique challenges for particular countries in which they have situated themselves and the governments that they are against. what this means is that when we are in economic entrenchment, any hope of a one size fits all strategy to counter al qaeda is inappropriate given the different strengths and capabilities of these other al qaedas throughout the world. how is it that al qaeda, even though it is under immense pressure -- i do not want to pay a picture of a resurgent al qaeda or and al qaeda that is as powerful as it was on 9/11.

that is completely incorrect. al qaeda is a shadow of its former self. it is a shadow that has demonstrated formidable ability to adjust and adapt to even the most consequential countermeasures directed against it and to survive. i would argue that a movement like al qaeda that is under the intense pressure it has been under in recent years can always survive it has in place a strategy. that strategy is six critical components. it is the wage of a war of attrition, to exhaust the adversaries. first and foremost, what al qaeda attempts to do today and encourages its associates throughout the world to do, is to our well, distract, and exhaust its adversaries.

there are two strategies. what is economic. al qaeda has never claimed that it would defeat the united states militarily. they could never defeat the united states on the battlefield. their strategy is to wear us down and to force us to spend more money on domestic security and to prolong our overseas military commitment to the greatest extent possible. during the cold war, our adversary was the soviet union. khrushchev took off his shoe and play it on the table and threaten to bury us. al qaeda, as it has repeatedly stated, been lot and himself said in his last --osama bin laden stated in his last significant appearance, that he intended to bankrupt us. i am not say that there is any

anger between reality and their strategy. but they all believe their own propaganda. they have to. how can they sustain themselves. al qaeda finds that this message, which has dubious credibility, dubious resonance when they first tried it out in the summer of 2002, when the economy was going down and our gdp was stronger, no one paid attention to it. today, as the voice as it is from reality, al qaeda repeatedly claims responsibility for the economic travails of the united states. it promises is always if they are just patient, if they stay with the struggle, they will topple the united states much as the mujahideen defeated the red army, toppled russia in the

1980's. this is a message today that has a greater resonance than ever. secondly, there is an operational dimension, i would argue. al qaeda 62 blood -- seeks to flood law-enforcement departments with noise, with rather -- with radicalize individuals. that has to consumed the attention of the authorities. nonetheless, what i think al qaeda's goal is is to engage in widespread radicalization, encourage self-radicalization in hopes of distracting us, in hopes of fixating us on these low-level threats so a more serious al qaeda threat can see -- sneak under the radar with

what they think it's a devastating blow to us, at least psychologically. second, they seek to encourage divisions within the alliance. this is one of the reasons why in southern afghanistan, the al qaeda allies have concentrated on a tax of the united states' closest allies, the australians, the french, the battalion, and the dutch. they believe the strategy -- the i italians -- the italian and the dutch. they see their ability to focus on our allies as not only succeeding, but as isolating the united states gradually and imposing more of a burden on the united states in terms of military personnel deployed overseas and financial spending.

third, al qaeda is anything --if al qaeda is anything, it is opportunistic. seeking to take advantage of opportunity, they want to establish a foothold. here we see al qaeda encouraging local campaigns of subversion and destabilization. they regard this as key operational theaters. afghanistan, yemen, and somalia. al qaeda works behind the scenes. they deliberately do not put an arab face on its support to any of these entities or its presence in these countries. one could argue that they have learned their lessons from the 1990's. they were fired and center in the sudan. they became -- they were front

and center in the sudan. they do not have the numbers. their operatives play key role in strength and a the capabilities of its allies elsewhere. just as our allies in bed officers in forces to train them and strengthen their command capabilities and provide them with additional training, that is exactly what al qaeda does. interestingly, al qaeda's focus of improving the capabilities of its allies is not just restricted to kinetic. somalia is a perfect case in

point to demonstrate. this is across the board. we know that a senior al qaeda commander was indicted in u.s. federal court for his role in the 1998 bombing of the u.s. embassy in nairobi. he played a key operational command role on the attack of two targets in kenya. he was in somalia training militia and many somali- americans who left this country and where radicalized and recruited in minnesota. he was training suicide terrorist. it was a somali-american who commited the first known terrorist attack by a u.s. citizen two years ago in october of 2008. at the same time, al qaeda was advising and helping to develop

information operations. you see this with the appearance of the faith of abraham. al shabob's online magazine. we see this replicated in the thoughtless and -- replicated in pakistan. adversaries who we dismissed 10 years ago now have multiple online magazines, multiple web sites. they have slid pr operations that in some cases trumb our -- trump our own efforts. they seek adversaries that have clean passports. they are valuable in two respects. they can navigate within those

societies where they live and work. they can provide strategic intelligence and planning. they have no prior experience and no prior background in terrorism. they can more easily sneak peek the radar and avoid detection. this is why such a tremendous emphasis is placed by al qaeda by recruitment. there passports -- placed by al qaeda on the recruitment of congress. their passports bearing their birth name. they have recruited sleeper a dislike --sleeper agents like david headley. then there are low wolves and

hangers on. -- lone wolves and hangerson. these are the self selected and self-radicalize individuals that have been motivated, inspired, and animated by al qaeda propaganda to engage in violence in hopes of furthering the al qaeda cause, but whom are not part of the al qaeda command and control. al qaeda existing and surviving because it has been as opportunistic as it has been. they continue to monitor, identify, and exploit gaps in our defenses. this has been one of the keys up al qaeda's success. we look at the al qaeda media

arm for its output mission, the dissemination of propaganda. from its inception 22 years ago, it has had an important input capability that you mean tricky dick intelligence up its allies. let me give you-- that the main strategic intelligence of its allies. al qaeda regularly monitors congressional testimony and hearings, especially those hearings by the homeland security committee, the armed services committee, the judiciary committee, the select committee on intelligence rarely meets in open sessions. they watched the video. they monitor the testimony. this is manna from heaven. you have the heads of government agencies sitting in a panel and

subjected to withering questioning, scrutiny by congressman and senators. they are asked to explain their mission and how successful they have been in their missions, how sufficient their budgets are, what their plans are. this is information that al qaeda gathered to facilitate its operations. what we can see is that al qaeda is achieving eat up its strategic objectives. -- its strategic objectives. it may not be winning, but it is also not losing. it still exists. they believe time is on their side and they will be triumphant. they believe they are engaged in a divinely ordained struggle that they cannot leave. they are convinced about the power of their own historical

narrative. it does not necessarily have to be true or be anchored to reality. it just has to be believed by their followers. there narrative is that they believe that they successfully defeated one of the world's two superpowers and that they precipitated the collapse of the soviet union and the demise of communism. they forced the soviet economy into bankruptcy. they believed the jihadis can push the united states into bankruptcy. they are most dangerous when they have a sanctuary or a safe haven. this you can see al qaeda has in many places.

the highest priority for us must be to concentrate our attention on al qaeda at a global phenomenon, not as we have done too often in the world fight against terrorism. whether it was in iraq during operation iraqi freedom or more recently in afghanistan and pakistan. this requires continuing operations in both those countries, exactly the places where al qaeda began to collapse in 2001. it has now recruit answer by. we need to be more effective in countering this expansion to failed states and stopping al qaeda before it gets when told in these places. this focus will require recognizing that al qaeda cannot be defeated by military means alone. success will require a dual strategy of systematically

destroying weakening enemy capabilities, capturing and killing al qaeda leaders and doing what we have proving ourselves what we have not been terribly able to do in the past -- breaking terror recruitment. how do we manage the to heidi -- the jihadi direct? we have to do much better of watering down the al qaeda brand. we have to communicate more effectively to the core demographic from which al qaeda draws its strength. i will give you one quick example. it was of america in the united states dedicates 90% of its budget to additional communication, newspaper, radio, and television. that only reaches elites and

people in my age group. only 6% of its budget is dedicated to the internet. there are more than 7000 terrorists and insurgent internet sites that communicate to the core demographic of terrorist movements. these are young people who do not listen to radio news and get all of their information from the internet. we persist in our efforts of not targeting this important demographic. we also have to be more effective in assisting and abetting efforts to isolate al qaeda intellectually and theologically. we have a history of missed opportunities. one key opportunity is to harness the power of the victims of terrorism throughout the world. i know of no government agency that is doing this on any kind of organized and systematic basis. to my knowledge, it has fallen on a young woman in washington,

d.c. in her mid-30's who lost her mother on 9/11. she created a film that was nominated for an oscar. it puts the victim of terrorism front and center, using victims from jordan, indonesia, and other countries. she uses these victims to confront radicals on camera. she shows up the hollowness of their ideology and their clarion calls. we have to continue to put pressure on al qaeda's finances. unfortunately, we are supporting many of the people who support terrorist groups. there was an opinion piece that said we have to break our dependency on overseas oil. we had to develop tailored local initiatives in concert with host nations to destroy the al qaeda

entities that have taken root in yemen, somalia and elsewhere. finally, we have to recognize that only by destroying the organization's leadership, which we are doing an effective job of doing, that is only one dimension, one side of the coin. what we have to do with similar resources and with similar priorities is to disrupt the continued presence of al qaeda's message. only by doing both of those things will we be triumphant against these enemies. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, bruce. we will now move to the next panel. if you have questions for bruce, grab him and talk to him about that presentation. we will have all of this for you in the form of a right up.

>> good morning. a second welcome. my name is michael ryan. i am an associate at jamestown. i joined jamestown after retiring from the federal government and retiring from another think tank. i wanted to work on projects on hindered and work with an

organization that does not had unhindered and is not driven by a political bias. i think this panel emphasizes deep knowledge. all the panelists have that. the most important thing is to get right to them. the first is known to most of you. the general has a distinguished and long career in the pakistani military. i could take up all his time talking about his accomplishments, but working with president bush our -- working with the present of pakistan and being involved in

the policies that are important to us today with regard to pakistan. i have talked to the general this morning. he says he is happy he is not handling policy because he can speak from the heart and enter frankly. he will answer your questions and i will give him that opportunity. when you ask questions, ask a question and do not do what i'm doing now, make a speech. because the general was kind enough to fit us into an opportunity had this morning, he has an appointment right afterwards. i will break with tradition and ask the general to make his presentation. then we will break for questions at that point and then the general will have to leave. thank you.

>> it is a privilege to have an opportunity to share my thoughts in this distinguished forum. i will speak on two points. i will briefly talk about the situation in pakistan and the situation we face as well as how we perceive the relationship between al qaeda and the taliban. as you are aware, pakistan has been confronted with overlapping crises extended over a long period of time located at the crossroads of south central asia and the persian gulf middle

east. it has been affected by the continuing strife in afghanistan and the presence of foreign forces there. the unrelenting and magnifying kashmiric of india and and super powers in our part of the world. the effect of this in our men have created a complex security situation with external and internal by maintenance d- imensions of -- dimension of the

existing jim demint is. we have democracy and it has been welcomed. it has been unable to provide a stable political million or measure -- we are trying to manage the serious challenges that face pakistan. as you are well aware, pakistan has been a victim as well as it has been on the front line against the scourge of terrorism. over the last nine years, pakistan has been the main ground up al qaeda-affiliated terrorism. there has been heavy losses of human life. our national leadership, security forces, and

intelligence forces have been repeatedly targeted. the targeting has not been them individually, but their families as well. the number of casualties suffered has exceeded 10 times the number that were caused on the day up 9/11. of these, 10,000 our military casualties, including 2700 fatalities. even the most unfairly isi, which i had the honor to head after 9/11, suffered almost 350 casualty's, twice as many as at nearby -- as at mumbai.

therefore, while terrorism is a concern for the world, it is a life and death issue in pakistan. no matter how an acknowledged it it be, -- unacknowledged might be, the people of pakistan are resilience. extremism and terrorism is a complicated phenomena. it warrants a holistic approach. pakistan has been implementing a multi-pronged strategy through political and developmental measures.

dialogue, bill demint -- dialogue, the development, and the terrorists. -- dialogue, development and deterrence. prongs of the strategy have been successful. but there is the potential for relapse in key areas.

pakistan's accounted terrorism strategy has serious issues. -- pakistan's counterterrorism strategy has serious issues. there are short and long-term objectives in this strategy. the counterterrorism authority has been formulated, but has not yet been fully functional. there are adverse affects that i feel our training political consensus on our counterterrorism strategy. montforts agencies have been clearly highlighted. there has been a serious lack of capacity to drain the terrorists' financial and

logistical support. in my view, and the center of levity of terrorism and extremism reside in the ideology rather than leadership. the leadership is being targeted to a tax. unfortunately, work on developing an alternate their attempt to defeat the ideology of hate has not been prominent. i will briefly talk about the relationship between al qaeda and the taliban. this is a fundamental question with strategic connotations for several reasons. firstly, because it was a

perceived allegiance to the taliban by al qaeda before 9/11, this led to the invasion of afghanistan. secondly, as the united states and nato readjusts strategies in accordance with the prevailing realities, focuses on seeking solutions, it is essential to have a more incisive determination of the enemy and the nature of al qaeda and the taliban. it is vital in this context. this is a critical question for us in the region, particularly in pakistan. al qaeda has an international agenda, which has no hesitation in the targeting the state of pakistan. there has been extensive media coverage.

we just heard dr. hoffman top on it. an analysis of the big ship between al qaeda and the taliban. -- of the relationship between al qaeda and beat alabama . -- the taliban. there are social and ethical positions and approaches to come back as well as the dynamics to the ship and personalities. these are all sides to the current debate on pakistan and afghanistan and global terrorism and extremism. there will be a trove of references to extend specific

arguments. i would not delve into the details. we will address them if you have questions. it can be the basis of subsequent discussions. despite distinct differences of ethnic and cultural backgrounds and a political and ideological agenda, al qaeda found a base in afghanistan and were not given up by the taliban in the wake of 9/11. there are now more and more voices i like seeing the tension -- voices highlighting the 1010 between al qaeda and the taliban. a political solution may have been possible.

secondly, the comment and additional text -- the common existential text and the effect al qaeda continue to recognize the commander of the faithful. what did this sort of integration for this relationship will lead to a new generation of the calabash -- taliban with a new agenda lies in the ranks of the taliban. despite these profound experiences, there has been more

fear and integration with them retain their identities. there are reports of continuing rips and tension. we keep hearing about the al qaeda link. this is indicative that there is no consistent -- no consensus on the issue. the taliban has guarded the exclusivity of the right to govern. al qaeda continues a non- regional hierarchy despite operating in pakistan. you will not see a pakistani case amongst them.

whether it is to give it a local flavor or to remain an arab phenomena which does not accept local integration, that is something for you to discuss. the debate on whether al qaeda and the taliban can be separated in my view is conducted in the context of military counterinsurgency strategies. it is unrealistic to think that the two can be divided as long as there are hostilities under way. only a terrible political tract that offers realistic prospects for peace and that issue is the participation of the calomel leadership -- taliban leadership

will put the taliban to a real test. that may become a necessity. thank you. [applause] >> i am going to call for questions. i would take the privilege of asking the first two questions together. they are related. the first is a general question that gets at professor hoffman's presentation. the you have an idea about a strategy that al qaeda has for its international agenda. secondly, a report came out on

december 6 that representatives said they were planning for a summer offensive and they were training now and you might want to tie down the army in pakistan. >> that is a legitimate question. please permit me to disagree, prof. hoffman, to disagree on one respect. i took over the isi on the day the bombing of afghanistan started. i do not have an intelligence background. at the leadership level, you do not require that. i heard the term al qaeda and what it actually meant after

9/11. yes, it was there. it was more in the world of intelligence discussing it. in 2001, i remember telling my counterparts in the united states and elsewhere that the way we started projecting al qaeda and the way we started ascribing objectives and capabilities and structures to is not a multinational with franchises in every country now. it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy because we are projecting it that way. that is exactly what happened over the last nine years or six years. if you look back at 2001, you

did not have an al qaeda in the arab peninsula. you did not have it in so many other places. the way we projected it, and we started making a those o rganogram trees, we let them start picking up. they monitored what we were saying at everything else. they started structuring themselves and organizing themselves accordingly. today we have an al qaeda that would have been weaker than it was in 2001. my view is that it is far more diffuse. it has been disorganized in many ways. become a linkage has been ideology.

that is what i mentioned. that is where the center of gravity presides. that is why all of these successes we have against picking up a kind of leadership were picked up by the eye as i and we continue to line them. almost everyone of them was picked up by the eye as i and i -- isi and i happened to lead them. despite losing all of that leadership, it continues to thrive because we have not done anything about the ideology. the narrative has not happened. when it comes to pakistan, i feel we are saying that al qaeda is down to less than 100 in afghanistan and a couple of hundred in the pakistan.

yet, we ascribed to them capabilities and agendas and objectives and missions which, even an organized military structure has failed to work out. i feel there have been activities in our part of the world. but to say that al qaeda has a clear-cut agenda is more diffused than that. with regard to your information on so what -- swat, there are people thinking al qaeda is about to divide the insurgency in swat. the pakistani armed forces have

had tremendous success in these parts of pakistan, particularly swat. it is an example of a stunning military operation. the army has done a good job of securing the area. they are holding it well. there are lapses this -- lapses because the civilian machinery has not been able to come up to be expectation that they should have taken over from the military and stabilize that part. the possibility of a lapse is there. i think it would be exaggerated to think that al qaeda is going to raise an insurgency in swat.

>> if we can open the floor for questions -- again, i asked you to ask questions. the microphone is coming. >> general -- you were pointing that al qaeda is not able to or does not want to connect with the local people. >> i did not say that. >> it is an external force. >> there is an extra regional phenomena.

when i say an actor regional phenomena, imagine, they have been in our part of the world for the last 20 years. and yet, there is a hierarchy. they are all arabs. they are from saudi arabia and they are from mauritania and there should be some other ethnicities. they have been there. they are not there. >> thank you for clarifying this. if i may ask you, if they are an external phenomena and they are not putting a roof down in different regions, two things are possible. they will not be as widespread

and easy to single out. it will be easier to extinguish them. why has this not been possible to do. >> i will answer that question for you. is there another part of the question? first of all, as i said -- i am speaking out of conviction on this. the center of gravity is the ideology. it finds enormous attraction anywhere in the muslim world. unfortunately, the policies of the west have been the best recruiting force for them. they can find support in any

part of the muslim world. you must understand that. secondly, they have been intimately involved in the jihad starting from 1979. many of them have reference from back jihad. they quickly settled down and mixed. many of them have married in that part of the world. they have pashtoon wives and children and family. they have been able to integrate into the local population. it shows a certain arrogance and a certain reflection of the difference in what you would call a sect. they are not prepared to accept

anybody from pakistan to go into that hierarchy. it continues to be dominated or exclusively handled by arabs. this is what i wanted to explain. given this experience in that part of the world over the last 20 years, it is not easy to segregate them and target them. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> we have time for one more question. >> i am another professor on the subject. general, i wonder if you could enlighten us as to your outlook for lashkar-e-taiba and its

various creations and offshoots given that al qaeda may not constitute the existential threat in pakistan, given its ion.ural isolated likes certainn't words being described to. when i said al qaeda was not a threat to pakistan. it is a threat. al qaeda may not have that sort of capability to pose an existential threat. when you say lashkar-e-taiba, shkar are so many laws can

groups. it is unfortunate that in places in lashkar-e-taiba which has been embroiled in the mumb ai incident, so that when it hits the headlines in jamestown, it is coming from somewhere else. unfortunately. but let me tell you, lashkar-e- taiba has been in existence right from day jihad days. the names might have been going up and down. and into the cash mayor -- ka

shmir freedom struggle and and they were banned by the government in 2001. and its reincarnation under various names have been banned from time to time. it is unfortunate that the name was involved in the mumbai incident. on whatever evidence was provided the government of pakistan, the key leaders mentioned by the indians in the context of that incident, have been under arrest. and their case is in the courts. now let me tell you one or two more things.

i am somewhat surprised. with my background, i am very disappointed that lashkar-e- taiba should be projected as an organization that is on par with al qaeda. i am shocked that this sort of insinuation. i am shocked. it shows the total lack of awareness of the situation in our report of the world. -- our part of the world. it has been involved in only one incident. it's a very valid question. a country like pakistan, which has suffered 30,000 casualties in the last 10 years. that is like 9/11 every 10

years, more than that. we have 160,000 troops deployed on counter-terrorism and 70,000 troops in another area. that means, given the armed forces is 600,000, there is a system of relief and rotation. that means 160,000 have come out and another group preparing to move in. it takes care of the entire armed forces of pakistan. sometimes when you are asked to do more, when you look at our commitment of forces and look at our successes, we are not amused. with that sort of environment and that sort of commitment, we have to prioritize.

i will be very blunt, you have to prioritize in the united states, despite the fact you have far more resources. you would prioritize al qaeda up here and not the name of another group. because you are prioritizing. this is the one hitting you. first it seems that you would tackle the one that is hitting you and not the one hitting iran. we must prioritize first ones that are hitting us and then those that are terrorists. that is how we view our terrorist organizations. we have to prioritize to protect

ourselves, given our resources. thank you. >> thank you very much. i appreciate it. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] our next speaker is muhammed, author and journalist with over 12 years experience, sort of symbolic of the kind of person that we like to have talk about the indigenous view of the situation. he served turkish television. is an ethnic turk and

discipline and all the regional languages. he will talk about the taliban and the situation in northern afghanistan. thank you. >> thank you very much for the kind introduction. we have had lots of ideas on many issues regarding al qaeda. it is not that hard situation in afghanistan. it's complex. everyone has their own ideas about the subject in the country. take my opinion as one of them. i will try to look at the situation in the light of what i have seen in my recent trip to northern afghanistan.

namely one province. i am from the region and i grew up with the threat of the taliban. respectfully speaking, before joining a european organization, i was working as a correspondent in the region. i frequently traveled throughout the region and in afghanistan. i belong to the region as a journalist during my last of years at the tv station and had been to each corner of the region and i found the entire region is what i claim as my = playground. in a recent trip i chose to travel to northern afghanistan. while in southern and eastern

and western parts of the country we already had the situation in afghanistan, things began changing in northern afghanistan. so, by being there, actually, i have tried to understand how in- depth it was. i was there in september of this year, partially to look at the election process in afghanistan. at this time i could only make it to a province in the north of afghanistan. its is an extremely difficult circumstances. it was not my first time and it will not be the last. when i shared my ideas to travel to that province, my colleagues told me it is extremely dangerous idea to do that. it is partly because of the security situation in the

region. since air traffic was already suspended to kabul, i had to make the trip by hwy. while my colleagues there in kabul told me it's very common that the taliban stops cars traveling on the highway for searches. if it would happen to my car, the following steps would be taken. after a few days of torture, they would put me in front of a camera and say that i am a cia agent because of my affiliation and accuse me guilty of something. at least put this recording on

youtube, which the taliban has recently used as a method to pressure on western countries. while my colleagues refused to join me on the trip, i decided to go ahead with the driver agreeing to take me there in his own vehicle. things dramatically changed. he said that he would need to hide me and play some tricks to make it happen in order to get me there. part of his plan was dead we would pass a zone during the rush hour and go during the second day of a time of high mobilization in a country like afghanistan. other than that, he also said that he would take his family in the same car because he

understood that when there is a female inside the car, the taliban is not likely going to stop them. so he put his wife and the front seat and put me in the back to higde. so we met in that way in that area. i was there last year. in that time i travelled throughout the region on public transport. i sent it down with the people at the bus stops. i ate with them and i drank green tea all the way into northern afghanistan and nobody stopped me or said anything. at this time i enjoyed freedom in the region. meanwhile, my colleagues also

said the this was a dangerous thing because on the way i have seen everything as far as security. i saw people with a similar experience like the taliban walking with an ak-47. i passed through abandoned police checkpoints throughout. i saw freshly attacked oil tankers through out. many of you might remember the issues that we have had, the story of a young couple in the province. this was involving a young couple the taliban brought into their own justice system. they found them guilty of a

loving each other. so they put them to death by stoning. in a country like afghanistan, there are attacks by highly mobilized bullfighters. -- guerrilla fighters. when you look at the case of the stoning in that region, it gives you an idea how comfortable the taliban became in the region. this issue was in focus for the taliban. then they later passed a verdict and scheduled an execution and executed the criminals according to their plan, reportedly as a public ceremony, which was attended by about 200 people.

this is the area that the afghan claims belongs to them. it shows how confident the taliban became in the region. we have 5000 german troops in that province in the north. when i said i went to the north to be able to understand the taliban, this is what i mean. if we consider the taliban as a militant and a pashtun-majority group, if we take their ethnic affiliation might expand them, then how they settled down is a big question. they are in very little minority groups. they are not in a position to tell the taliban to come over, because of the possible

influences they might face in the future. which means the taliban does not have the pashtun cards to play in the north afghanistan. they are increasingly expanding their presence in the north. therefore i focused my study on this province, where the government has already lost four districts of the total of seven districts to the taliban. in kunduz city it is a very dangerous place to live today. people in the north are not as religious as in the south. so what are the elements? my finding is different than the ethnic affiliation idea.

there were some local land purely practical ideas helping the taliban. the lack of security was among the elements. it was a lack of security which led to the stoning of the young couple. it was a lack of security which made traveling on that highway in the north dangerous. it was like of security when another district falls into the hands of the taliban. when the taliban begins showing their muscle in the district, there was not enough security forces to tell them to stop. so when the taliban gathers five people in any region, the next thing they do is send them to

set a police station on fire. that is the signal which shows who is the law of that town. the next thing they do is shut down the schools for girls. based on stories that i heard in my district, the situation has not changed very much from that. because there is still -- there are still the driving force behind the taliban there. now today they are crossing the border with tajikistan, with afghanistan. uzbeks and pakistanis and its

tajikistanis and some westerners are there and some southern african nations. this type of militant group, they are not an ordinary taliban group. they have nowhere else to go. they were driven from some other country or from waziristan or pakistan. the moment they are seeking any place to hide. the gap of security in northern afghanistan is providing them a safe haven. at the moment they are moving into northern afghanistan. one other problem with these any is that they don't have other place to go. at the same time, they are not even welcome by their families. so they fight to death.

afghan forces are a week. there are few police officers and have no way to make the determination of those guys in terms of fighting. that's how the taliban is flexing their muscles in the region. the other big issue i came across is the corruption among officials, government officials in afghanistan. i don't know whether it is as popular in other parts of afghanistan. whenever i spoke about corruption in northern afghanistan, people widely mentioned the issue regarding president karzai. when a few foreign delegates went to the president and said you have to stop the corruption in government and he said ok i will do that, but how much are you ready to pay for it?

[laughter] this is only an anecdote. but when it goes to the grassroots level, it's the impact. and there is a district much different from anywhere in afghanistan. in afghanistan you always have disputes between tribes and clans and neighbors. the disputes have always been there. so whenever you have a kind of shift in power, these disputes emerge again. after the taliban went there, we had the situation in the north. there were also some they're representing the government. in that case they played a negative role kind of, because

they were taking sides on the dispute. clashing parties would keep going within to buy their food. so, it is something that people are looking for someone to start. who's that someone at the moment is the taliban. the corruption was another aspect. lack of economic development is another factor that's helping the taliban. i have been to other regions in the north, i've been there several times, but i don't see anything is changing their. people do not see economy attached to the government. they are nothing changes. so they have to have some sense of attachment to the government. when you look at the economic

situation of the afghanistan, one of the poorest nations on earth, you understand the importance of the economic development, which is not happening at the moment. i am just going to conclude with two remarks. in a situation like this, it is not fun to live in an environment where you don't know what's the next day is going to bring. so people have no luxury to think about democracy, human rights, or fair and free elections. therefore some people do not support the taliban, but they don't oppose the taliban either. even today the taliban provides at least what is most needed to better than government in an area of the essentials.

a sense of security and a sense of justice. having said this, i don't think the taliban is a better option. but if the taliban has to be defeated, which they must be defeated if you want to have a stable government in afghanistan, then what is needed is government, which is supported by the international community, at least should perform better than the taliban. it's not. thank you very much. [applause] ? >> we are going to go directly into our next presentation. if you have questions at the end of the two. our next speaker is well known to us. executive director in islamabad at the center for research and security studies, which is focused on his second book which

is "al qaeda, the connection of taliban in the tribal areas." i hope we will hear lot today about that if and north waziristan and the new tinderbox. >> good morning. thank you, michael. i'd like to express my gratitude to the jamestown foundation for having me. it is always difficult to keep the audience engaged, particularly when three speakers have already spoken. and to bring them out of a slumber that we tend to have after listening more than an hour. before i launch into my presentation, i would like to leave denisad with you. a few months ago i was sitting in islamabad with two swiss ambassadors.

one of their meetings was at the state department in 1988. one of the ambassadors at that time, one of them was the reporting officer and the other was the ambassador or and he had just gone from pakistan at refugee camps and looked at the curriculum of the afghan children were being sought. so the ambassadorial along with his american interlocutor told him that he looked at the curriculum and it's very alarming. the american interlocutor said, you know, we are teaching them something with the help of which at russia.beco that's the aftermath of the early 1980's. a joint project.

today we are trying to get away from the threat that's on our heads. so let me --this is what i was just talking about. america vs. al qaeda. this is what we are down to. if you look at this, it's the tribal areas that have been under microscopic scrutiny just because of north waziristan up there and nwa. this is something that general petraeus ipo's is practical to any success in afghanistan. it is a tinderbox today because

it's a cauldron of crusaders of the past which have been treated as terrorists of today. this is the major question confronting us all today. if you look at how the militant complex has evolved in north waziristan in particular over the last nine years, on top you have al qaeda. we don't know whether osama bin laden is alive or not. we do here is audio messages coming out of the region. not north waziristan alone, it's the greater region, an area that borders south waziristan as well. most of one area it is

inaccessible to a coalition forces. we really have to keep that in mind when we are questioning ourselves as to why the pakistan army is not succeeding against them. this is the installation, the prime installation that comes from the organization. ipodalod try installation. if you look at what is happening, you would have many organizations that emerged. one of them used to fight in kashmir. and then you have another group

in the same stream. if you look at north waziristan, then you have this constellation of like-minded groups under the hot connie network -- haqqani network. and then you have south waziristan led by a mullah in a deal with the pakistani government. then have hakimullah mehsud considered the leader of another group. some people believe that he is dead as a result of an attack, a drone attack in january of this year. and a movement of uzbekistan is also reportedly located there.

its former leader was killed about a year ago in a joint attacks and now there's a new leader, leading these uzbekistan dissidents. then you have the one the general spoke about. i will not retreat into a state of denial on --because there are stark reality is we have to live with. there is a splintering of that group. i think we have something -- these are some of the leaders that you will be familiar with them. in the center is kashmiri, the reinforcement behind a group upper right now considered to be leading operations from inside north waziristan.

everybody knows mullah omar. hakimullah mehsud, his deputy is reportedly also did -- dead from a drone strike. we have had almost 100 drone strikes this year already. this is again basically what i just explained. the imu i mentioned, the others there, aris and chechens. what has happened over the years is a collision between militancy and crime has also emerged. this is what has kept us to stabilize as one element. crime -- criminal gangs have

disguised themselves as taliban, as militants, and are indulging in criminal activities like s.uctions for ransom in' in [ashawa --in pashawar there are many cases of deductions -- of abductions. i just spoke aboutalmi, it has splintered into other groups. -- about almi. another onere's

active in baluchistan and karachi. then there are the asian tigers. you might have read about the execution of a former operator. the asian tigers. claimed responsibility tigers. and then you have an organization that was born out of the red mosque operation in july of 2007. that operation probably killed 140 people in that mosque in the hearts of islamabad on and gave birth to a force that wanted revenge on the pakistani army as well as other security operators for having killed their people inside the mosque. that was in july. this is just a description of

how one group has evolved. are four or five groups around it. you defused the command and control structures so that they have a joint common agenda, but they can operate from different areas. i just mentioned the collusion of militancy and crime. operating inroup north waziristan that is using army fatigues and are involved in extortion, smuggling, and abductions for ransom. this is about the vice chancellor from one of the of a province has been in captivity for the past three months. the university has called to

demand for his release and apparently the government is helpless also. there have been many high- profile abductions and they eventually have to be released for payment of huge ransoms. this is one regular source of funding for the militant groups besides smuggling and trade, illegal trade, i would say. so some of the pictures like the response of the militants to the war on terror that we have seen the militants have continually attacked symbols and attacked the police and the army and attacked shrines. on the right is a shrine that was attacked with several hundred people killed. on the left is a symbol of unity ehore.

sunni saints were buried there. they want to discourage people from coming there. it is a typical al qaeda tactic. they don't like shrines or mausoleums. then we also had on october 5 a big attack outside pashawar killing several dozen people. emanating out of north waziristan, people hiding their, at least 50 suicide bombings we have seen this year so far. i think that the red mosque operation in july of 2007 was a game changer because it gave us a force. another group emerged in december, 2007.

and then there was the november -- the november 2000 attack in mumbai. it poses a challenge to all the stakeholders. the transnational militants, these are some of the groups share a commonou narrative, basically comes from al qaeda and then we have local units. i called them the local al qaeda auxiliary. they have basically the same ideologies. now to the baucus on developments, what to do -- now to pakistan diplomats, what

should they do. cancer is spreading. there's a big dilemma right now in terms of the pakistani policies, because they fear a wback from people who have tentacles all across the country. there's a tactless or deadly creeper is extending its tentacles all over, causing a threat not only to pakistan but the rest of the world. so i think this is a big dilemma right now that pakistan currently faces. the short-term years versus the long-term strategic sociopolitical interests of pakistan, i would say they have to make real ground to take on

these people, neutralize them, and stop their influence across pakistani society. thank you very much. [applause] >> we are running a bit late, but we can't take questions for about five minutes. i would ask you to keep the questions short. you can direct them to the panel in general or to an individual. let's start right now. in the back, if you could wait for the microphone. >> i am from pakistan. my question, is equipped correct

that there is a sectarian group that belongs to --, where as lot lot chardon tayba is basically a -- blach charlow lashkar-e-taiba is basically under the support of --right now and they are protecting it. >> is that it? thanks for the question. i think they operate in the same

tactical and political levels, because they share the same ideology. as long as it is any movement directly against the united states of america and its allies, they cooperate and operate and they inflicted and tried to inflict as much casualty, as much laws as possible to all of those that they see are the collaborators of the united states of america. both lashkar groups do this. >> my name is abraham. my question is, we have 100,000 pakistani troops and the police

in quetar, a city of 1 million people. they are controlling the taliban pakistan.in pockets do in the presence of 100,000 troops, does the intelligence agencies, they are searching for people house to house, how is it possible that a group still operates inside there and after 10 years not a single member of that group has been caught? >> thank you very much. if this question came from an american or european, i would

not be surprised, but i am surprised when it comes from new. i was in quetar three days before coming here. i spent three days and looked around. there are plenty of american officials. the american office of the defence rep has also been functional there. it was officially announced a few weeks ago in washington that it has been functional for quite some time, so there is enough fbi, cia representation in quetar. the way the issue has been projected, i think, is a little mindboggling. even when, and pakistani people visit from lehore, the common

pashtun people going to the bazaars, they would come across as pakistanis because they wear the same attire. the way this is being projected, i don't think it is correct. yes, afghanistan -- baluchistan, itself, shares 1,300 kilometers of border with afghanistan. they are being cross border relationships, for instance, business contacts. that is why people keep coming and going. if you say that taliban leaders are coming to pakistan and , it is quitetar probable. they're likely coming and going. in the presence of the in former's and a

network of intelligence operators, if it's happening in that manner, then i'd have to question the structure. if khalid shaikh mohammed could have been arrested from behind the headquarters of the potsdam army --pakistani army, why can't mullah omar or others be arrested if they are living in quetar? it is a very simple question for me. >> thank you. i think that's the last word. thanks to the panelists and thank you all. we are going to take a 15 minute break. before we break, i would like to encourage you. there is a fishbowl outside. we have four tickets to the

army-navy game this weekend. these are a club level seat tickets. put your business cards in the fishbowl out front and we will have a rifle later today to give away two sets of tickets to the game. please, if you are interested in the tickets and you really want them, each person that wins will receive two tickets. we will put that aside and see you back in 15 minutes after this break. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> secretary of state clinton is scheduled to talk about middle east policy tonight. she's joined by deputy israeli prime minister ehud barak and an event hosted by the brookings institution. we will have that live starting

at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> fourth amendment rights and illegal search and seizure, saturday on c-span radio, landmark supreme court cases. if >> does claim that there was a search warrant, there was no evidence of any magistrate that exists as per search warrant. there was no record of a search warrant. >> listen to the argument on c- span radio if in washington d.c. at 90.1 and online at c-span radio.org. this month for the first time on television, american history tv is showing interviews from the nixon library oral history project. a 1977 interview with richard nixon. also airing this weekend, from the truman library, a discussion of america's containment policy after the second world war, the soviet threat, and and the wars

in afghanistan. and the library of congress book on the federalist papers, a collection of essays encouraging the states to ratify the u.s. constitution. see the complete schedule online at c-span.org/history. you can also have our schedule e-mail to you. telling america's story every weekend, only on c-span 3. >> middle and high school students, as you work on your documentary for the student cam competition, here are a few tips from the judges. >> one of the things i look forward to is you the students in your video. i want to see your personality. that makes your video stand out from the rest. >> i like to see an investment and care in the topics you will be telling us about. be sure to be interested in what you are telling us. if if you are not interested in what you are presented, chances are below not be either.

>> a tiebreaker last year for me was people using c-span video. i want to see which elements of c-span video make the most sense for covering the story i am trying to tell. >> for all the rules including deadlines, prize information if, and how to upload, go to studentcam.org. >> there was a conference on child passenger safety from the ntsb. officials from the national highway safety administration as well as insurance and car safety groups discuss the best approach to keep children safe in automobiles. we hear from the cerda chrisman, following that is another panel with officials from national research center and children's research and discuss what the private and public sectors should do to increase safety for

children on airlines and in cars. this is four hours nearly. >> mrs. stephanie davis, a safety advocate in the office of communications is with me. our first presenter is mr. alexander sinclair. mr. sinclair is an experience traffic safety and communications professional life of the national highway traffic safety administration. for more than a decade he's been a leader in efforts to protect the nation's child passengers. in this capacity, he promotes educational, promotional, and law enforcement activities. please begin with your opening remarks, mr. sinclair. >> thank you.

first, it is a pleasure and privilege to be here. thanks to german hersman and the entire board of the ntsb and whose staff works hard on this issue and has for many years. people often mistake us for ntsb and we take that as flattery. irmanhanks to schermcha hersman. the ntsb has been very consistent about keeping child safety at the forefront of the agenda. whether it is testifying locally or using the bully pulpit that you have or keeping on the most- wanted list, we appreciate the support from ntsb to keep us on the public consciousness. let me just -- ok.

the first thing i want to talk about, we are looking at progress and challenges in child passenger safety. the slide looks at all forms of traffic crashes in which children 14 and under died. you can see the trends are in the right direction for us over the last 19 years. crashes do remain the leading killer of kids, however, ages 3-14, based on the most recent statistics available. in 2008 -- excuse me, in 2009, fatalities dropped by 3% from 2008, but if that is still over 1300 children who died in traffic crashes. if the result was a decrease from 2008 through 2009. -- resulted in children injured. four children every day in 2009

ages 14 and under or killed and 490 were injured in motor vehicle crashes. if we don't want to claim success or rest on our laurels. there were 222 passenger vehicle fatalities among children ages four and younger and 30% were unrestrained at the time of their debts. when we think about the progress we are making, we have to think about the unrestrained problem in addition to the issue of keeping children live in the proper restraint for their age, size, and state of development. car seats saved 309 lives in 2009 with the use of seat belts and child seats. if the usage had been at 100%, we could have saved an additional 63 lives in 2009. from 1975 through 2009, 9200 and lives were saved by child restraints.

we think we have of their track records. -- a fair track record. last year, it follows the familiar pattern, which is the younger kids are most-well protected and as they grow, the rates decline. you see that reflected in our most recent survey of the uses of booster seats. i'm happy to say that for many ages we have seen sustained rates over the years rather than wild fluctuations. that is to the credit of our infrastructure of child safety technicians as well as inspections at local levels, among other factors. just looking back from 1994 when we began some of our surveys, already at the

reasonably high rate of restraint use at 88%. they are sustained today at 98%. it is pretty unusual to see an infant not restrained. it does happen, but and we've been able to rsustain those rates for years. ages 1 through four, it increased from 61% up to 91%, the biggest single increase. today it's about 98% as well. key milestones in child passenger safety, safety standard 213 was established in 1971. in 1978, tennessee enacted the first state child restraint law, led by a pediatrician known as

dr. seat belt. by 1985 it was in effect in all 50 states. in 1996 there was a terrible series of injuries and deaths associated with index interacting with children in the long position in the front seat in particular. a major campaign was conducted. the ntsb was instrumental in that. heavily involved in the air bag and safety seat belt campaign issue. air bag fatalities today are relatively rare in the aftermath of that. there's no law that requires children to sit in the back. there may be some state laws. it has been much more of a behavioral change and other measures. in 1997, the child passenger safety technician training program was launched. these numbers are a little inflated, i'm sorry. if it's about 34,000 + technicians.

that's not such a small number. well over 1500 certified instructors. i apologize. the former chairman jim haol was the one to issue a call for inspections to be established -- jim hall. there are thousands of them now nationwide providing direct services to families. in 2000, congress passed an act that had numerous provisions to protect older children. they were not being protected enough. washington state that you're also passed the nation's requirement. latch became mandatory in 2002. that same year, congress

unveiled the rating system for ease of use. at the national level they passed a version of anton's law with similar projections for older children. d.c. has upgraded its laws. the ntsb is still testifying and providing other services to the states and has been instrumental in enacting those laws. let me go backwards once. this chart is an attempt to show steadiness in both the infant and toddler usage rates. the green bar is the infant population. this is by virtue of the annual surveys. you can see the green bars remain more or less constant -- in the high 90s. remains at high rates today.

i apologize if the color gradations might not be as explicit as they could be. these are for the older kids -- kids in the four to seven age group made progress, 8 to 15, steady -- 8 to 12, the new survey as of 2006 -- and then briefly i was asked to summarize what nhtsa currently recommends for the basics, what are the milestones, what of the recommendations for parents so they will know when and how to transition their child to the next level based on their size, age, and development. the first step is, of course, for infants.

we are extremely close to the american academy of pediatrics and other organizations heavily involved in this cause. the first recommendations its mature infants are in the back seat, we're facing as long as possible. at a minimum, keep them we're facing to at least -- i tried to put everything in the merkel or specific in red, to at least age 1 and at least 20 pounds. we obviously know children are safer the longer they can -- but that is the recommendation for the second step -- when children outgrow their rear facing seats -- and we reiterate that it is only a minimum -- again, they should be in the back seat. if they can ride in forward facing seats until they reach the upper-weight limit, usually around age four and 40 pounds

but restraint " g restraints go to much higher than that. that will have to devolve in the future. for the booster-age child, once they outgrow they should ride in a booster seats until the back seats until the seat belts fit properly and we define what we recommend as correct built it. -- belt fit. teens/tween -- when they outgrow their booster seats, and we know age 8 is the guideline -- many do not -- 4 feet 9 inches until well beyond -- it can use adult seat belts in the back seat if they fit them properly. one challenge facing the country as a whole is making sure older kids are restrained in the

appropriate restraint until they are big enough to go into a seat belt. the good news is all but three states -- you can see them highlighted in red and we chose them for a reason -- seat requirements in effect for a child restraint laws. however, in spite of the fact we do have a model law, and we do recommend specific -- specific provisions, the states are independent, highly motivated, however, and have taken steps by strengthening the laws but it is a rainbow out there. states have numerous requirements of age, height, sides. there are obviously many state laws that have exemptions that compromise these children restraint status. just a glance -- as the states have enacted those laws increasingly we have not really see much movement in booster seat use. many folks have been tracking booster seat use through their own metrics.

we used the knack -- national survey for use of booster seats and starts at 41% the first year we conducted a survey and for the most recent year still at 41%. at least it did not go down, although statistically -- not statistically significant. there are a couple populations, though, remaining at particular heightened risk, here it is really low income family and minority populations. the first graph, this is from the booster seat survey that captures race and ethnicity through interviews as well as observations, looking at both hispanic and african-american population. as you can see, the orange -- i think it is aren't on the screen -- is -- orange is hispanic population, 12 and under compared to national average. as with traditional child restraint use, though older they

get the lower -- particularly pronounced among hispanic children as you can see at every age. the african-american population shows a similar pattern. i am not sure those of you in the back and see the individual rates that are attacked. i call attention to the 1-3 year old and 8-12 below 75%, less than three out of four kids, according to direct observation and interviews with the kids, that is where we get the ethnic information. what does it translate into? looking at overall fatalities among chao the passengers, 2004- 2008 for 13 and under, the two slices, the blue and the orange -- more than 7000 kids who died in car crashes. the green part includes other at risk including asian american,

native american, caucasian, and others. when you look at it in terms of unrestrained child fatalities, a smaller number, but we still lose more than 900 children over the time span from the african- american and hispanic population and the reasons are complicated, of course, there is no simple answer or simple solution. but we are starting to do more to look into that and try to resolve it. the next couple of slides are a little more complicated so i apologize in advance. visa both attempts to show at each year of age, from 0-13 what is the rate of unrestrained fatalities among three year olds, four year olds, five year old, all the way to 13. this is the hispanic population. the orange or red is the

hispanic population and green is over all. hispanic rate of unrestrained fatality is higher at every age except 10 years old. could be an anomaly in the data. could be some factor. could be a one-time thing. we honestly don't know. for some of these groups in particular, seven year olds, 12 year-old, 30-year-old, more than two out of three dying when not restrained so we have a lot of work to do to provide debt -- direct service and education to those folks. my last slide looks at the african-american population 14 years and under. according to our database. at every year of life african- american child passengers died when unrestrained at higher rates than overall population and a colleted 26, 7, 13, and 14-year-olds, all of whom rates at more than two out of three who died while under restrained

at the time of their death. we are not complacent about the proper spirit we realize there are many challenges and that is one of the key ones we are trying to address is how to provide better services to those families. thank you. >> thank you, mr. sinclair. the second presenter is dr. kristy arbogast, engineering director for the center for injury research and prevention at the children's hospital of philadelphia. she is also a research assistant professor of pediatrics at the university of pennsylvania. please be in your opening remarks. >> thank you very much. i would like to thank the ntsb for continuing to shed light on the important issues facing children. you have done it for many years and i am pleased to see it continuing. i want to reflect some of the good news -- news mr. sinclair highlighted in his comments and

look at it in a slightly different way. if we consider the numbers of children dying on our roads, and we think if we would have continued the same rate as it was back in 1994, there are 3500 children alive today because of the policies, because of the product and advances that the safety community has achieved. and the reason we are at a children's hospital care about this is because not only is it a transportation safety problem for children, but it is really a public health problem. a motor vehicle crashes remain the leading cause of death for children. the figure on the rights of this graph shows in a very colorful way the leading causes of death from the centers of disease control data. i know you cannot read the words but the light blue boxes are

motor vehicle traffic injuries. you can see that up to age 24 how important these deaths are in understanding what is affecting our children. i want to go back to 1996. mr. sinclair reflected that in the mid 1990's we were in the middle of the child airbag crisis where there were several dozen children killed by deploying air bags. and one of the first children was actually seen and treated at our hospital. spurred on by state farm insurance we at the children hospital of philadelphia and university of pennsylvania created but department of child passenger safety, a child of- focus crash surveillance system. we used state farm insurance claims to identify children and crashes and then conducted statistically valid and representative telephone surveys on a large number of children in

crashes, a subset of those cases we study in an in-depth manner to understand the mechanism of injury. we collected data 1998 through 2007 and at the end of 2007 when data collection ended we had information on more than three- quarters of a million children and crashes. the depth and breadthth of this data allows us to achieve many successes in the field of child passenger safety. the impact of the quality of this data, both large number as well as specific data fields collected impacted at a variety of different stakeholders and every now as in a child passenger safety. we worked with many of the end -- organizations here today. my co-analysts from the

beginning of the data collection, and here are examples of what the type of data could do if you have enough members and of the quality of child specific information. we used the data to enhance the evidence days for legislation and regulation. our data evaluating the effectiveness of booster seats was used to upgrade many of the laws we just heard about. advocacy colleagues used the data to help set their own priorities. in a time of limited resources you want to make sure that your areas of emphasis are driven by data so that you can maximize the benefit from those limited resources. lastly the data served as a foundation for import and additional research. my area of emphasis is by a mechanic -- by mechanics so we use this data to improve pediatric crash test dummies

said the best -- better mimic real children. we heard from mr. sinclair the best practice recommendations and what we want to share with you now is how our data, data from others, helped create the evidence based behind the recommendations. they are not just common sense. they have been evaluated based on data with real numbers. i just want to highlight one of those numbers now. we focus on the youngest children to the oldest children -- i realize i cannot quite see that. looking at it on my computer. if we look at our infants and recommendations of keeping infants in rear facing child constraints, this is due to the fact that there is a 71% reduction in fatalities compared to unrestrained children. and 44% reduction in moderate and serious injuries compared to

children and forward facing child restraints. i have tried in my slides to indicate the peer-reviewed publication these data came from. i wanted to quote and emphasize the current policy of the u.s. american academy of pediatrics that encourages we're facing beyond the 20 pounds, 1-year cut off. specifically they say for optimal protection, the child should remain we're facing until reaching the maximum weight for the car safety seat this long as the back of the head -- top of the head is below the seat back. 20 or 40 pounds greater than year of age, recommendation forward facing child restraint. and the data that's supports that suggest that there is a 54% to 69% reduction in fatalities compared to unrestrained, 28% reduction in fatalities compared

to children in seatbelts, and a 71%-82% reduction in moderate and serious injuries compared to seat belts. i think the numbers are compelling. they convinced us it is more than just passion -- there is hard data to suggest these are the right things to do. if we move on to our booster seat age children. there is a 45% reduction in moderate to serious injuries compared to seat belts. and i would like to highlight for this recommendation as well as several others, and there is consistency among different datasets when calculating the effectiveness, which i think lenders credibility to the fact that the data are the facts. there is a 55% to 67% reduction in fatalities compared to unrestraint.

this shows an animation by -- when he worked with us with -- at its children's hospital. to show the importance of a booster seat. a six-year-old child on this top -- top schematic in a booster seat and the same age in a belt without a booster seat. if you could run it one more time. part of the issue of being in a booster seat is not only does it position the belt on the appropriate parts of the child's body, but it gives him a base to fit into the vehicle such that they sit back, they are more comfortable with their legs bending over the edge of the booster seat. you can see by the yellow line that traces of head excursion, movement of the head during the crash, the movement of the head and a booster seat is much less than that of a child in a seat

belt. i clinical colleagues at the hospital for emphasized to me regularly that the head is the most important body region we should be concerned about. it is those injuries, particularly in children, that we are most worried about and want to prevent. moving on to children in seat belts. the recommendation, once children are out of the booster seat, is that they should remain in the rear seat up to age 13. if you look at the data to support that, the rear seat has a 35% to 45% reduction in fatality risk compared to the front seat company -- for children less than 12 and a 31% 49-12 years old and 64% from zero-eight year olds. for all of the best practice recommendations we see benefits in fatalities as well as injuries.

i just want to highlight this with a real case because i think it really drives home the importance of best practice. so, this was a case through our partnership with state farm insurance in which two-door coupe impacted by suv. fairly high severity cash and the dutch -- crash and a driver sustained a fatal injury. the roadway was under construction. the vehicle we are talking about is the red one in the schematic. a topic that is of great interest these days -- the driver was distracted by his daughters in the backseat and drifted across the center line into the opposing traffic. the right rear passenger, you can see her child restraint was a three year old female and a forward facing child restraint. following best practice for her age. her injuries were minor.

she had no clinically important injuries. she was kept overnight at a hospital because of the clinicians could not believe in such a severe crash, that she was actually on injured -- uninjured. however, first sibling sitting next to her in the center rear was a seven-year-old, wore a lap belts only, should have been in a booster seat and had a spectrum of injuries -- brain injury, skull fracture, lumbar fracture and a nominal injury. in the same crash severity the difference between a child using best practice versus not really resulted in a dichotomy of outcomes. i heard this from mr. sinclair and i want to reemphasize, we have achieved success as a around child passenger safety.

the numbers have gone down. but we should not be complacent with that success. we have not cured the disease of pediatric motor vehicle injury. and it is a healthcare problem in addition to being a traffic safety problem. there are future challenges that we know and there are future challenges that we don't know. to the vehicles' safety and traffic safety is changing rapidly. we have vehicle manufacturers and child restraints manufacturers will continue to innovate. there are wonderful new technologies in our vehicles and we need to make sure that they benefit our child occupants and don't have any unintended consequences. the problems are really getting more complex. the low hanging fruit and a simple message of buckle up probably is not enough anymore. we need more detail the data up contemporary data to help us address these problems.

i just highlight one of those issues for you to chew on on why we need additional data. this shows the injury risk to rear seat occupants. if we look from left to right, on the left it is our infants in rear facing child seats followed by toddlers and forward facing child seats, 4-7 year old and booster seats and two different age groups in seat belts. the 8-12, and the 13-15 year olds. the important thing about the grass is each one of the bars represents those that are following best practice. they are following the rules for their age. i submit to you, why can we not lower the last two bars? why should there 8-12 year-old and 13-15 year olds at a higher risk of injury than their younger sibling? so, we need data to help us answer those questions and

continued to advance the field of child passenger safety. we are working very closely with our colleagues at nhtsa. their collection has and -- data collection has ended. we are partnering with nhtsa to explore how we can leverage to the infrastructure of the latch system to create a national resource a child crashed surveillance. nass child occupant special study, and we are working on feasibility studies and pilot studies funded by industry and insurance institute to help us evaluate the feasibility. the vision is a natural resource all stakeholders in child passenger safety can access. it would be nationally representative. it would leverage the existing

infrastructure and be a partnership between government, industry, and researchers to improve motor vehicle safety for children. and it is important nhtsa be given the resources to be able to create this data source. it is financial and people resources that need to be devoted to this important issue and there needs to be new resources. we can't take away from other important programs to devote resources to this issue. so, i would like to end by making really three key points on what i see our key principles and priorities for child passenger safety. child occupant protection is more of them children and child restraints. i did not know if it reflects the aging of my own children, but i want to make sure that my 9 year old and my 13 year old are also protected. we need to monitor trends

through rigorous child focused press surveillance and what we have does not necessarily have the right numbers of children or the depth of child a specific data. and i would like to issue a challenge to optimize the rear seating environment for all occupants, including the children that are back there. thank you. >> thank you. our next presenter is dr. anne mccartt. she is the senior vice president of research at the insurance institute for highway safety. she oversees the institute's research on child passenger safety. dr. anne mccartt, please begin your opening remarks. >> i would like to thank chairman person and the board members for inviting me to participate again -- today.

i am presenting also some historical data that it's a little different from the date you have been seen before. child passenger vehicle occupant death per population divided into the four age groups. a couple of comments -- one thing you see is the reductions in death rates are much stronger for the youngest group so that infants, for example, have experienced 74% reduction in the fatal crash rate. but are have been reductions for the older groups as well. if you look especially at the last two years of -- or so, i'm sure a lot is due to increase belt use but also all passenger vehicle occupants are safer as a result of improvement in vehicle crash worthiness. a couple of general points i would like to make. these are looking at children killed and passenger vehicles in crashes.

as you heard some of the other speakers, two problems still remain -- looking at the blue bars, still too many children not restrained at all, and the yellow bars, looking at the youngest age group, many children are not writing in the restraints that are best for their age, particularly if you look at 4-8 year olds. far too many are belted when they should be writing in a booster. -- riding in a boost. i will focus on two main topics -- boosters and some of the research, and upper 10 their use. -- tether use. boosters used with safety belts save this -- safest for children 4-8 to ride. too small for adults seatbelts.

research has shown boosters with belts reduce injuries 44-8 year old by 45 percent compared to safety belts alone. the concept is simple. they raised the child which results in moving the shoulder belt off of the neck and on to the middle of the shoulder. it improves the angle of the lap belt. they also have features that further improve belt use. not an important lake, more comfortable for children which helps children stay in the best position in the case of a crash. booster use has increased -- about 41% among 4-7 year olds in seatbelt operation. one of the things moving booster seats up has been the passage of laws. this summarizes child restraint or booster seat laws.

and you can see there is a big range although most states have laws requiring booster seat. a wide range among the states and how high the ages ago so there could be improvement. we believe these have been a really important force for getting more children into booster seats. but part of the reason we did our research in boasters in that they are not all alike. this slide illustrates what a good booster can do. if you look at the trial on the right you can see the knees are bent at the edge of the booster, the belt has been moved on to the fis where it should be, shoulder belt in the center of the shoulder. these are a couple of examples not doing such a good time -- job. in one case the shoulder belt fallen off the shoulder, to close to the neck, and then the lap belts are on the abdomen, the part of the body most the

vulnerable to injury. we worked with the university of michigan's transportation research institute to develop a system for evaluating how well lap belts and shoulder belts it for all of the boosters on the market. i will not get into a lot of detail, but used a six year- olds dumbly especially outfitted -- six-year-old dummy a specially outfitted. took the pelvic bone and measured how far the lap belt rested on the child from that reference point. this shows the range. the one on the right, lack about writing up to the abdomen, doing better in the center but then up the ball on the right where it is flat across the upper thighs. i do not have a slide.

one booster i measured where the lap belt went far to forward. on the 5. but that is valid not all that, but it is a problem. is similar process for the shoulder belt. we chose a reference point on the test dummy. and then we just measure -- we install according to manufacturer's instructions. we measure in reference to that point where the shoulder belt rested on the dummy. here you can see the range -- to close to the neck, snugly on the center of the shoulder and then beginning to fall off the shoulder. this is a picture of the test device that we used and the test dummy. again, we established a rating system and part of it is making sure that we use the test picture and a really specific

set of procedures that can be duplicated by other research outfits court seat manufacturers. you can see a device -- configuration of lap and shoulder belt. we use this device to test the full range of seatbelt configurations out there in passenger vehicle fleet. based on research, going out and measuring what the range would be this is -- would be. these are the results. we rated boosters for years so we had the different categories -- best bet boosters do well enough that it would work for the child in any passenger vehicle. good bets are those that did almost as well.

not recommended are those that give bad lap belt or shoulder belts for. on the right, another category where the fit of the belt is variable so it is hard to predict whether it would work in most vehicles. a lot of them are boosters that do not have a guide for the shoulder belt so the fit of the shoulder belt as much more dependent on the vehicle being used. the takeaway message from the slide is boosters are getting better. i can talk about that more and the questions, but we believe manufacturers responded to the ratings by improving boosters so now parents have a lot more options if they are looking for a booster seat they can be sure it will fit their child in more than one vehicle. i want to talk just briefly

about other research we have done, looking at the issue of upper tethers. upper tethers, the way the latch system was phased in by the government, it is part of the latch system. but i want to make sure i say it should also be used when a forward facing seat is secured with a seat belt. the system has an upper tether and then it has two lower anchorage points. effective 2001, top tethered anchor is required but even before they had bankers and 1999, forward facing child seats had the tether strap.

latch was intended to make child restraint installation easier, partly by standardizing the way the ford facing seat attaches to the vehicle. based on a story mixup funded, observations collected in 2005, report was published in 2007 -- the researchers took a look at house seats were being attached to the vehicle and this use of the attachment. the vehicles which had latch available. if you look at the forward facing restraints with top tethers that were in seating positions were anchored to were available, only about half were installed with the tether. if you look at restraints with the lower attachment with latch- equipped seating position for the lower attachment, 63% were

attacked using the latch system. the survey did find even with last, ms. hughes continued. -- latch use continued. what we are showing is where the head excursion is first with the tether. excuse me -- without the tether and with the tether. showing the benefits of using the top tether. it reduces excursion in event of the crash. the child, depending on the position of the front seat, a greater possibility without the tether that the child's head would hit the front seat.

tethers keep a child safer. we wanted to go back and take in more recent " look how frequently they were being used. last summer we did an observation survey in parking lot in suburban areas of maryland and district of columbia. take a look again at fort facing child restraints to see what percentage were attached with the tether. this summarizes the vehicles for 2001 model year and nowhere. what you can see is 47% of the ford facing child restraints were attached with a tender. when we saw if it was used tautly it was reduced to 43%. when we look little word -- further to see if it was attached to the correct anchor, it was 42%. a couple of more observations,

though. we did observe 13% of vehicles, they were older than 2001 and tether use was much lower in those vehicles. only 19%. we found a use similar in cars, minivans, and suv's. a small sample of pickups. this is not really a statistically significant difference but use was very low in pickups, 17%. we think it is an important message to parents that many seem not to be getting, attaching the top tether is a simple way to keep children safe for. we are not sure why tether use is not higher. one possibility does seem to us that a lot of publicity about tether use has been part of the latch publicity and many parents may not understand that they need the tether, even attaching

of the restraint of the safety belt. one last thing i wanted to mention, in terms of latched usability. we are now undertaking a study with the university of michigan's transportation research institute. it is taking a look at the fact that despite efforts to standardize child restraint attachments three use, -- through use, last visibility within varies by vehicle due to a number of factors, but including seat geometry, where they encourage are located, how they are angled. there are two independent recommended practices out there now through sae and iso but they have not been fully evaluated. the intent is to first document

the range of vehicle features and the current vehicle fleets and then to assess the usability of latch, meaning how easy it is to use it correctly using these two sets of procedures and determining whether the ratings that can be obtained by the iso system can be from real-world latch installation performance using real parents and grandparents. thank you very much. >> thank you. our final presenter -- presenter is dr. stephen rouhana, senior technical leader for safety in passive research in into every department at ford motor company. he worked with the occupant protection system design and was instrumental in the development of pediatric crash dummies. please begin your opening remarks. >> thank you. and thank you to the board for the invitation to present today.

i am going to talk about our work trying to protect rear seat occupants in miracles, in large part based on information you heard from the previous presenters' -- mirror -- rear seat occupants in vehicles. for a long time we recognized protecting front seat occupants has been improving and we have been looking for ways to improve protection in the rear seats. front seat occupants today have airbags, and there are of course significant issues putting traditional air bags in rear seats. they are largely occupied by children and for years we have been telling parents to place the kids in the back to eliminate exposure to air bags. we thought to ourselves, is there a way to bring some of the benefits of airbags to rear seats without all of the risk? our answer was, perhaps with an inflatable boats. what is an inflatable belt?

tubular air bags and was between two pieces of shoulder belt webbing. this is what it looks like before it is deployed in a crash. in the event of a crest the air bag inflates across the chest and about 10-20 milliseconds. that is what it looks like inflated. but will call the attention to the fact that she is still smiling. [laughter] inflatable belts have a number of potential benefits. first of all, as the bag inflates, the size increases to about 6-8 inches in diameter and that pulls the end of the back together which, in effect, sure as the delta system. in addition, a load limiter -- combination of features, what they will do is help reduce document had expert -- its version, nec loads as a bag increases in size, and it helps distribute the bulk load over more of the chest, reducing the

pressure and risk of chest injury. so, all we believe this will help enhance protection in frontal and pacs, side impact, and other crash mode. and we believe it will bring some of the benefits of air bag to the rear seat with less risk of unintended consequences. we believe it will have benefits for all occupants, but especially children, smaller occupants and elderly occupants. this is what the system currently looks like, two retractor system. so, we have shoulder belt retractor, which is emergency locking retractor, and lap belt, which is both automatic locking and to emergency locking retractor. this is a little different than many systems out there. many systems today you have to pull the shoulder belt all the way out to engage the locking mechanism. in this case it will not work, you have to pull the lap belts all the way out. the lap belt does not inflate,

only shoulder belt. we felt inflating the lap belt would increase the risk of -- this is what components look like, buckle and inflator on the right and latch plate on the left. inflator is the little cylinder on the bottom of the right hand picture. stored gas -- helium and argon. that gas flows through the buckle into the shoulder belt. you can see an animation of that now. you can see the gas cylinder, a little diaphragm will rupture, getting a signal from the crash, constraint control module. it flows through the buckled into the shoulder belt and inflates it. thank you. this is a video now showing a six-year-old child on the left and a small female on the right,

small adult female. small adult female also about the same size as a 12-year s -- 12-year-old child. inflatable belt -- can you play it one more time, please? one of the things that is very apparent on the six-year-old on the left-hand side, the six- year-old and a booster seat is that the chin is captured by the bag and therefore had excursion greatly load also coming down. this is just some of the data from our testing showing head injury criterion, two bars on the right, chest acceleration, and chest reflection, two on the right. red bars are standard seat belt. we use it to normalize the values of the inflatable belt in blue. this is from 30-mile-hour delta v, two cars hitting at 60 miles an hour or 30 miles an hour into

the barrier. what you can see is head exhilarations greatly reduced by a factor of two. modest improvements in test acceleration and deflection but chest injuries are not the major source of injury for children -- head injuries are. you see the improvement in had acceleration. of course, one might question if you put an inflatable build on their rear seat what might happen. we did extensive study in the child seat installation and integrity when inflatable belts and fleet. as far as -- in fleet. as far as both concerned, we got manuals from nhtsa's list of child seats and all the other child seats we could find in a normal places that you would find child restraints -- target, walmart, the retail outlets. we evaluated from the manuals

and from the seats themselves what possible -- impact with inflatable boats. we're facing infant seats you could have a lap shoulder belt routed through the base of the rear facing infant seat, you could have it around the infant carrier. also lapp shoulder belt with convertible seat -- we're facing or forward facing and combination -- rear facing or forward -- having it routed through various ways. i will show you what we actually did. we took each owner's manual and created in these charts which show how they are attached with latch, lap belt and shoulder belt. we evaluated from the right hand column lap shoulder belt what interactions we would need to test or do engineering judgement on or modeling.

the box and upper right hand corner with astrid is what we chose to test. well over 100 different combinations of child seats from every manufacturer sold in the united states. both did a fit and integrity assessment. this shows the rear facing infant seat with shoulder belt wrapped around it and belted deployed. you can see pretty much a -- nine event, a little bit shaking of the seed. that was a static test, not dynamic test. forward facing child restraint. you see the bad that the ploy. it is a non-events. i only show on camera for the sake of time but looking from the front you also don't see -- it is a non-event for the child in the seat as well.

so, our conclusion -- integrity is not compromised when an inflatable seat belt is deployed. we had a number of ongoing actions and we presented these to the juvenile products manufacturers association. on gone this -- ongoing discussions to include installation instructions for the manuals for inflatable built. what about children who are sleeping? in 2002 i was on my way home from a family vacation -- i forgot to advance the slide, sorry. i was on my way home from a family vacation. i have three sons. fred mcmurtry is my hero. i looked in my rearview mirror and is of what i saw, my son, youngest, 6, in his booster seat and fell asleep. his cheek is resting on the seat belt sandwiched between his head and shoulder. of course, i cannot do that with

a body builder pushing on my head. there is a reason for that. if you look at the anatomy of a neck for an adult vs six-year- old child, adult is on the right hand, if you look in the bottom row this expresses the reasons kids can do that and we cannot. as our cervical vertebrae develop they become you-shaped and they no longer slide latterly as easily as they do for the relatively flat vertebrae of a six-year-old. unfortunately the dummy does not get into that position, either, so we had to get creative and develop a modification for the dummy's >> that you can see here. neck that you can see. a small female dummy on the left-hand side and a child dummy in the video. basically we build a hinge on

the neck of the dummy so that it is fairly representative of a child sleeping. as much active musculature in play and as the head comes up and passes through the neutral plane the tension in the dummy neck starts to take over just like child ligaments and muscles would. we were not satisfied with that. the results were very good. we measured necked forces and head acceleration and did not see cause for concern but my picture planning in my mind. we also went beyond the dummy testing but tested post-mortem human subjects. nearly impossible to get child subjects so we tested very small, very old female post- mortem subject and they are also very difficult to get but we manage to get three subjects in

about three years and we ran tressed -- test. prior to deployment had was rotated, nec flexed and we had to raise the schold -- shoulder to get contact between the cheek and a belt and the shoulder. we also pressurized gas collector and inflated the belts. did a complete autopsy a head and neck and no issues -- and no vascular damage. based on that, we decided we were quite confident these belts could go into production. as i mentioned, last month when i was here talking about older occupants, these are going into production. first explorer roald of the line earlier in the week. they will not have in flyball belts until march but optional in the outboard seats -- inflatable belts until march.

to prevent serious injuries and fatalities for children in the vehicles in the future. thank you very much. >> thank you. i would like to thank all of the panelists. the technical panel would like to begin questioning. when we question, we may address a question to a specific panelist but if other panelists have specific information they would like to add, feel free. we heard a lot of information about how parents can exercise best practices. a lot of times when parents are purchasing a vehicle they may go to knits up's website to look at vehicle star rating system or -- nhtsa's web site or look at star rating systems. do any of the star rating systems address rear seat of vehicle or specifically child passenger safety?

>> about the institute's ratings, well, first of all i would want to say that all occupants regardless of age benefits from the better crashworthiness of vehicles. so, children would be protected to the extent of their ages would be protected. we do in our side impact tests -- they involve pretty severe crash using a barrier representing the suv or pick up into the side of the vehicle and in that test we do use a dummy in the back seat that is fifth percentile female, the equivalent to a 12 year old. i would also say about a side impact test is one of the things we have seen it is we believe it led to a point where almost all

passenger vehicles now have standard side airbags. but in our test suite don't specifically -- tests we don't specifically evaluate that dummy in the back seat for a side impact test. we did not specifically evaluate crashworthiness for children. >> i would only add to the closest thing we have is ease of use a rating system, the ease of installation for a child restraint as opposed to installation itself. are the parts previously assembled, instructions match labeling? making it easier for the consumer to install. >> i would like to add, too, that we have considered this from time to time. and parts of the difficulty is, when you are rating be a co crashworthiness you are reading

a vehicle so if you rate a make, model, a year, it is like every other make, model year of that vehicle. what the problem -- the problem looking specifically at child restraints or safety seat boosters is there is a lot of variation. one booster is not the same as another poster. it is a matter of the specific child safety seat and the specific vehicle. even trying to figure out how to do that in a useful way is actually logistically very challenging. >> i think that is a really important point, the absence of either regulation or consumer information programs that specifically evaluate rear seat safety for children in front of crashes. an absence of both of those,

manufacturers are not necessarily incentivized to put in ovations back of their. -- innovations back there. we have seen it with board today but manufacturers have many competing priorities -- economic, lowered the base, better fuel economy. so, unless we've incentivize them to put restraints innovations in their rear seat that are evaluated in some objective manner through regulation or consumer information i think we are not going to see the flow of innovations back there that we would like to. >> so, if i understand correctly, there weren't any regulatory incentives for ford to but these inflatable restraint in rear seat nor educational or testing systems that would have encouraged ford to do that. what was the incentive for ford

to go to inflatable restraint for the rear? >> ford is a family company. on by the ford company -- owned by the ford family. we all have families. there is no regulation requiring us to put anything in the back seat, and it is a disadvantage because we are spending money and resources to do something not required. but we looked at the data. we are data-driven we looked at what came out of children's hospital of philadelphia, nhtsa -- we have been working for 10 years to put inflatable built into production. we did not want a repeat of airbags so we went with due care analyses. the answer is, we thought it was the right thing to do and that is why we did it. >> thank you. i think we heard a lot of this

afternoon about how much we advanced child passenger safety but we also heard we should not assume that we are done. some of the aspects are that we have some children still unrestrained or need to be in the proper restraints but we also heard some of the complexity. just looking at some of the displays in front of us, we see the large variety of seats. in the automotive seat in the rear, this ball -- dol representl -- represents the size of a child who could appropriately where an adult seat belt compared to guidelines but that child is a very large child. there are complexities among all of the staging that we will look at to properly restrain a child. if we want to look at just one of them, one of the changes is the rear facing aspect of children not just one-year-old

20 pounds, keeping them rear facing as long as possible. it seems like it is really accepted in european countries. what are the obstacles for having that kind of system in the united states because it is somewhat of a challenge to keep children rear facing longer when you already promulgated the year of one-year and 20 pounds? >> i think you appropriately-the data coming out of, in particular, scandinavian countries where they keep their children rear facing to age three or four. i think are some important differences between the products that are available and the type of rear facing seats. i know this seat in sweden in particular are much larger so they accommodate a child that is three or four. also they have a particular design feature, a support leg