progress. >> tonight on c-span, from the aspen security forum, discussions on iraq and the features of pakistan and afghanistan. later, a briefing on the mars rover curiosity. as the security forum looks back on the iraq war, with three former u.s. ambassadors from both the bush and obama administration's. this discussion is moderated by kimberly dozier. it is an hour and 20 minutes. >> needless to say, the long war

in iraq has ended at an enormous cost of lives and treasure. we're looking back at iraq war. we have assembled a superb panel to look back and consider the implications of the iraq war. i cannot think of a better moderator than kimberly dozier. she is an associated press reporter for intelligence and counter terrorism. she covered national security for pbs news in washington from 2007-2010. in her 14-year overseas, she covered at least in europe, the bbc. she was wounded in a famous car bombing in iraq in 2006. her memoir recounts her attack

and recovery. jews very gracious to donate proceeds to a charity. -- she was very gracious to donate proceeds to a charity. please welcome me in welcoming her. [applause] >> thank you. i appreciate that many people have come back to sit down for the panel in the middle of the afternoon. we have a great group of people here. three of them were last minute additions, the ambassadors have all had to drop out of last minute to engagements. i will introduce the panel in chronological order. we have stephen cambone at the far end. he was twice nominated by

president bush. he was the first undersecretary of defense for intelligence. second, we have john negroponte. he was the first ambassador to iraq. he was the first director of intelligence under president bush. third, we have christpher hill. he was ambassador to iraq from 2009-2010. he is now at a university for the school of studies. we also have james jeffrey.

he served 2010-2010. now that i have ever established, i want to give the panel a chance to look back and get some things on their records that you may not have heard before in the conversations over last couple of days. it is a chance to look ahead and ask how post-war iraq is playing a role from serving as a possible al qaeda is safe haven to set a more positive examples as a working democracy in a sea of conflicted areas. i will kick off with 50 mets talking about the history and

how we got into the war -- 15 minutes talking about the history and how we got into the war. the intelligence was cited as one of the reasons for invading. bringing in so few troops .onsulted -- resulte the dismantling of the iraqi army who knew how to build bombs and had nothing to do but attacked u.s. troops. also, why was the cia -- and insurgency that was ignored for

so long in washington? tough questions. we were talking about intelligence. what was the main reason we got into iraq? tell us what you think in retrospect in our reelected? >> i am not -- in how we reacted? >> he was a source coming out of iraq who had been debriefed some time prior to the outbreak of the war. he claims he had firsthand knowledge of some programs in iraq. there is a great discussion about his the briefing. there are other people in the audience who are probably knowledgeable about the specific details of his debrief. a short answer to your question, i do not think it was the

decision or the intelligence turned on him. he was found to be a fabricator and his information was upset and a proven to be false. i do not think he turned on that. i think it turned primarily on that evidence. it turned on the circumstances in which we found ourselves in at the time. proliferation was an ongoing concern. behavior of assad's regime at the time was forgotten. their military operations in birth -- both more than and southern iraq. there were constant provocations in that no-fly zone. since that war and amid aftermath, that is the first thing hussein did. there was evidence that led one to believe that it was reasonable to propose up there were weapons of mass destruction

in that country. i think he turned to be the eyes on that led everyone to conclude what we thought we knew to be probably right. >> a mistake to draw that conclusion? >> that is a more difficult thing to say. the conclusion was mistaken. to draw the conclusion was not a mistake. in that end -- again, there are enough people who understand this -- you only know what to know at the time and then you have to fill in their rest. at the time, the judgment that they did drop it probably was. was it accurate? no. >> i knew several teams that came ahead of that invasion force. they dropped into the site. they thought their dropping in on to a nuclear-weapons site. they found a sort of facility --

it looked like a facility from the air. was it meant to scare the regional countries? >> i do not know. charlie did a second look at the program inside iraq. he drew the conclusion that it could have been a real program had the intended it to be a real program. they were not there. some of you remember the rocks survey group. i was instrumental -- iraq server group. i did believe that we would find weapons of destruction. we took it quite seriously. we sent people across in full

mock gear expecting to engage. this was not the kind of a trumped up notion that there were capabilities. there was the belief that there was. we conducted ourselves accordingly. >> you were part of some of the discussions in the war. care to share any of those with us? >> i would like to take a wider aperture of it. i think it was part of the issue and the interpretation of the intelligence. we had censers turned up in the wake of 9/11. we listened to a lot of different things. the question was how to interpret the things you're listening to. i think it was a decision based on a brighter -- a broader concept. in this critical country, he had a reputation for murdering

people en masse. anyone has been to iraq could see that. i went to a place where he used the gas. this is a real compelling reason why been you want to go after this guy. also in the wake of 9/11, if you cannot let people like that stay out there. the real issue i think ultimately -- i think you can ask a question from that perspective, was it the right thing to do? when you are there and you look at some of these heinous operations that saddam hussein had, you have a sense that we're doing the right thing. maybe some things went awry, but it was the right thing to do. the current mood in our country when we look at these kinds of things now, my god, what

possessed us to do this? you have to be careful about pessimism. you have to remember what the mood was at that time. saddam visa and was a person who i think arguably -- saddam hussein was a person who i think arguably was a man you had to take off the board. >> he also took our attention away from afghanistan. he also took a number of troops and resources from us. >> i am dressed in that argument. people involved in that decision can talk about that. -- i can understand that argument. people involved in that discussion can talk about that. what happens in iraq and our policies go forth -- right now, we have a dicey situation. sunni arab states want to reinstate sunni rule.

this is really the issue. we jumped into it. we have a responsibility to stay engaged. the do nothing that involves people to be negotiating with shiks. it is up to diplomats to do that. >> we decided to invade. the number of troops we chose -- does the u.s. just not know how to occupy a place? >> it turned to be a the tories and not state to cause a revamping and reform of the intelligence -- it turned out to be a notorious enough state to cause a revamping a reform of

our intelligence. you take the intelligence given and then have the issue of whether we have enough forces. two of us are veterans of the vietnam, but in one form or another. we made a huge misjudgment in terms of how long it would take. i remember he was answering one question from a deputy ambassador there. how many troops do you need to clean up? he said when the timing could clean up this place in three weeks. -- one batillion could clean up the place in three weeks. we sometimes subject ourselves to wishful thinking. i think that is exactly what happened in iraq. there may have been some errors. when i got there in june 2004, it was clear to me that the term

reconstruction and we had $17 billion fund was a misnomer. it was all for water, irrigation, electricity, and what have you. i had to recommend to washington that we recommend billions of dollars for rebuilding the iraqi police and military forces. i see this pattern from vietnam through to iraq and afghanistan. we never early enough got committed to the idea of building local capacity. it always came too late. as a result, it costs us casualty's and lives. it prolonged the time the day we would be able to exit. >> i do not disagree with you at

all, but on the issue of how many troops were committed and when, there is a part of the story that is not well-known. the plan did call for another division to come in through turkey from the north and to come down to baghdad. that division did not come in until much later. had it come in earlier, the 173rd would not have suffered. he would have come in with the rest of the force. it is my belief that the political situation as a result would have been profoundly different. we would not have been -- in the aftermath in 2003, things

wouldn't change in the circumstances. we failed to get approval of the turks to move the forces through. we could not get there. forever reason, the turks were not -- for whatever reason, the turks were not cooperating. that happened prior to the upper possibility. as we go through and think about lessons, it is important that all of the parts be aligned and understand risks. >> he called for more troops than just one division. >> that is fair enough. the aftermath and that were two

different circumstances. you want to poke on the plan. where was a miscalculation? it was on the troops coming in from the north. how long it would take to take saddam out of the picture. right? in the end, they did that mesh. but does that mean there were -- was not a plan. >> looks talk about reaction times on the ground. if find out things on the ground. the iraqis are not reacting as what we expected. you all, especially three of you sent reports back to d.c. several times, what was your

response when it will people in the pentagon, we are seeing an insurgency? we are seeing signs but they are running? >> saw that we early were faced with a lot of violence and we did not have control of the famous airport and the embassy in the green zone. we were not focused on what we later came to focus on, which was protecting the population. the answer was to stand up there iraqi army.

finding the police and armed forces in directly through programs -- funding the police and armed forces in direct programs. we were passing that information on to washington. the solution was to stand up the iraqi army and they will be able to use to cover the job. the problem is that the iraqi army was not able to stand up. cracks in the meantime, the insurgency in the meantime, the insurgency established itself. >> it was a sunni insurgency. why was it a sunni insurgency?

it was sort of we were accepting the notion of democracy with shiia rule. the institution was to keep sunni in place -- we went after. >> i agree with him. i will take it one step further. we're very focused on what we're doing in there. we took out some and we wanted to leave the country into the hands of its population. 80% was non-sunni. these guys would be out of power. it was likely they would react violently. >> this is a a sort of an agonizing discussion. let me try to put it into three sentences. instead of the successful

invasion with the correct result and installing painlessly a new iraqi government, we found -- the said we had to go through a one-year occupation, billions of dollars in building up their police and armed forces, a secular war, and several elections. wherey, i think we're at we would like to have been in the spring or summer of 2003. it is an illustration of how things can take years longer than when you plan it. >> counterinsurgency takes about a decade. the painful part in some of the steps that we missed along the way. i still have to ask -- at the time, i talked to generals and

officers whose careers suffered because they stood up and said before it was acceptable to say, there is an insurgency building. i have to ask, what was happening was some of these reports that can back to the pentagon? cracks in their taken with a great deal of seriousness. i do not know about whose people -- which people said the career suffered because they said so. as i recall, the circumstances at the time were march-september of 2003, there was a good deal of uncertainty as to how all this would shake itself out. i was there with a delegation. chuck was there as well. the circumstances at the time

did not lend themselves. you get to the hull. the question then becomes, what was the implication of it being an insurgency. it is went through -- you just went through john's description. there was a center of gravity that was the insurgency in the fall of 2003. by the time you get to the turn of the year in 2004, it is becoming clearer. by the time to move into the 2004 time frame, that is where we are. these things do not turn around on a dime. the conversion of the force -- and i remember that vividly the

the the starts in august of 2003. the secretary said, why are people still inside their armored vehicles? why are they not in the ground patrolling the streets and taking care of the violence? with that began the evolution of the military side of the action of what was taking place. it was a vivid conversation. >> he was saying we needed a counterinsurgency on the ground? >> by the august of 2003. it is clear this thing was turning in a direction that was not anticipated or planned for in the detail that it was by the time it got to 2004. >> let's go to the next pitted. -- pivot. the next big it was 2006. you have an underground fight -- aal qaeda trying to trigger

sunni and shiite disputes. the two were fighting over government. we were trying to arbitrate that very well. none of the bombing of the shiite shrine. the decision of general casey at the time to have troops on base and let the iraqi try to handle the unrest -- i remember what happened over the next month. the shiite death squads started going out and seeking revenge. the elite 100 bodies per day started showing up in the streets. -- literally 100 bodies per day started showing up in the streets. this was really terrific stuff. -- horrific stuff.

is that something we should have prevented? anyone can jump in. >> i would say, in spain. -- yes. >> how so? >> we did have a lot of troops there. we were well over 150,000 troops. that is not too far down for more we were. did the troops have been permission to go out and secure the population. during my time there and working in washington in iraq in 2005 through 2006 and late 2007 until the surgeon's fee ended, i did not see that clear mission to protect the population. >> yet there was argument being made by general casey at the time by the iraqis that i spoke to, get out of our state.

get off of our streets. that was driving their decision making. at what point does having u.s. patrol on the street trigger more violence? what do you think about that argument? >> i was back in washington at the time. i recall not so much what the marching orders of our military was as much as the despair or the sense of despair that was felt in washington from the president and on down in terms of this violence. the whole project, the whole effort was going down the drain. that is when the commission -- he commissioned a small group of people led by his security

adviser to come up and spent several months to think abour what it was we could do next to try to salvage the situation. that is when the idea of the surge was conjured up. even that, i do not think it had much support. many of the iraq analysts were extremely pessimistic. they felt there is hardly anything we could do about the situation. >> i agree with jim. we should have and could have done more on the street. i would also make the point that it was a political issue that we did not understand. the american public was treated to a lot of statements.

this is not about party dead enders. this was eighth secretary and a problem. -- a slow secretarian problem. with that said, the shia i was in iraq when the u.s. military pulled out of the cities and towns as part -- the status of forces agreement from 2009. he said something to me that was hard to take. it said it was a great victory

for the iraqi people. then he continued in said with all great people, it would come with costs. as he completed his speech came to understand what he was talking about, which is everyone wants to see returned iraqi sovereignty, but everyone knew that the report -- iraqi army he was getting the population ready for those problems. understanding that have to endure that if they are going to regain sovereignty. i remember thinking this issue of sovereignty is a huge for iraqis. the fact that we try this one year occupation that john suggests, probably as we look back and we are looking at somehow in the wrong way of

thinking of the place. >> there to insurgencies and never quite different. is anyone of al qaeda coming in on top of it -- the sunni one. some of it was supported at various times by iran but much of it was basically bubbling up from below. whenever you go into a country, regardless of how good your motives or how important and necessary, you will generate very violent reactions. that will be stronger if you are out on the street growing water bottles that people. this is the history of iraq, turkey, and any other country. he saw that this was a way to build up his own political capital because that had

resonance among the population. >> let's talk about the search. prior to the serbs, there was the year of concentrated intelligence led special operations actions against al qaeda and a lot of actors got taken off the stage and then the surge came in. do you think it worked, or was it the special operations actions before that? what do you think turn things around? >> no military operations were received without their having been some amount of preparation going forward. the work that was done by general casey and others during that year was significant.

the arab awakening was terribly important. that had been underway for some time. those folks only figured out that this al qaeda thing was not working for them and that they would be better off coming to terms, at least with the u.s. military, the remains of reconciliation. the strike you are talking about certainly did have a way of setting the conditions on which the surge forces fail in 2006 and 2007. my view is that they gave the final push to allow the things that the exhaustion that had begun to overtake the parties, and allow them to back up and reconvene and come to terms with one another in the face of what

was a significant strategic and political decision by the president to say we are going to do the search. he was the principal supporter, there is no question about it. and he drove that. in my view, that was a courageous but essential strategic decision that played itself out. he took that decision and push it forward. >> use salt the end of the surge and saw the benefits of it didn't work when your there? >> it clearly worked, but i would be careful how you define surge. you have to this aggregated. we have to be careful that when we are in some messy situation we say we need a surge like it is something that will fix every problem.

it does not, and in the case of iraq, and i am pleased to talk about general casey's role before this was known as the surge, there was a lot of work with the indy -- within the sunni community. money was used as a weapon of war. if they don't stop shooting at us, i will not give this money. these were initiatives done by 22-year-old americans. one has to be careful about talking about these cosmic issues about surge when what we are finding is our well-trained troops were learning lessons on the ground and how to apply them.

finally, leakey said i have had enough of these shia groups in basrama. liki when in their -- maliki was then over his head. he was in trouble, but good thing we were there. he took a tough decision and created all kinds of problems, so much so that he had trouble putting together a coalition because he participated in a key way in the search. -- in the surge. there is a lot more going on and i would be careful about using it as a solution for other

problems in other countries. >> it seems to me that it is the surge plus the fact that you do have an iraqi government that is starting to evolve into a credible political entity, both through building up its security forces and having gone through a process of a couple of elections and the prime minister hints of demonstrating that he has a quite impressive political durability. >> let me jump in. we have been a little bit unfair on that issue and it is a subject i discussed with president bush several times when i was deputy secretary of state. ideally, in vietnam,

afghanistan, in iraq, we would like to have a residual force in the country. kind of obvious things you could do that are forced multipliers for the local forces. that is what we wanted it iraq. mr. maliki said no, he did not want a single u.s. troops left behind. george bush had a different view. do i run a risk of democrats winning the next election and just deciding we are going to withdraw from iraq immediately. what he decided, he chose what think he considered to be the lesser of two evils. the status of forces agreement that provided for complete withdrawal but by day that was far enough along so that at least the the withdrawal would be orderly. it is not right to suggest it is this administration that did not

succeed in arranging for a residual force to stay behind. george bush is the man who agreed to that. let's be honest. >> but we did plan to have up to 5000 troops on the ground continued to work with iraqi forces keeping iraq stable. your they are trying to negotiate. >> part of the deal was we would withdraw our troops and in the context of 2008, it was a big issue. the iraqis wanted to see their sovereignty manifest in the streets and in the basements. what changed between 2008 and 2011, first of all, the iraqis could see we were wrong to live up to our commitments. after we pulled out of the 2010, one tweak

the obama administration made on the 2008 agreement was to end a combat mission, because by and large all the fighting was being done by the iraqis. they could see we were on a path to pull essentially all of our combat troops out. then the question was, it is not such a big thing if we still have some american troops left. they were engaged in many military and intelligence operations and activities and it was of interest to them to keep some kind of american security presence because of the residual prep from al qaeda. maliki was interested in this as was the obama administration.

i would need all the other political parties to support me. between the time we laid out the plan in detail. what they disagree on was giving the americans legal immunity which is the key ingredient. we cannot put troops overseas without those kind of legal amenities. they said we are happy to give the the troops did we could not swear that, so at the end of the day we decided we would go more

traditional approach as we had done in saudi arabia and other countries, without forces on the ground but rather a large security assistance office and a large diplomatic and intelligence sharing to do most of the training and counter- terrorism operations. that is how that rolled out. >> it has been posited that the obama administration planned this, that they sabotaged it. >> i talked to president obama twice and vice-president biden innumerable times and they very much wanted to have a residual force, a presence of american troops during training, counter- terrorism and other such activities. the reason is they could see that this was a success. this was something that unexpectedly came out of the blue and was something that made america and their

administration and the last administration look good. >> i had the same conversation with vice president biden and president obama. they did want to make it a success. >> so the war is over, let's get to some of the aftermath questions. starting with al qaeda. the most recent u.s. intelligence estimates that have, at the al qaeda presence around the saw -- around one of the largest ranches -- branches, large and dangerous. over the weekend al qaeda talk about reviving the organization to full strength in iraq. we have seen a rash of calculated, coordinated, sophisticated bombings. have you produce something that

is going to be with us for some time? >> al qaeda was huge back in 2005-2007. subsequently it dropped and dropped to a pattern that was manifest when i arrived in august 2010. there was a world series a -- of attacks around the country right after i arrived. since that time, they are under continuing pressure from our special operations and intelligence and iraqi forces who are quite good in counter- terrorism. the tax dropped further, but still, about once a month he would get a series of attacks throughout the country. people thought they solis bike back in 2012. we looked at carefully and it was not much of a spike.

nothing very surprising compared to 2010, alone 2008 or 2006, but it is something you have to watch. the political brand of al qaeda has literally 0 support in the polling in iraq. for criminal activities that have a base in the only place where they operate a limited impunity. apart from that they have a skilled capability of infiltrating suicide bombers and explosives throughout the country and the will continue to have that. the political impact of that right now is not very high. once before it was able to expand. >> they are not holding territory. we are not seeing fallujah goal under al qaeda command. it is a different situation. it does reflect what is going on

in the region. probably some countries that were more helpful in terms of combating flows probably have other priorities right now. to some extent it is one of those externalities' of the arab spring or whatever we are calling in. it is pretty clear that with america gone, or the perception that somehow the with our troops gone, there is a sense among some people, including the extreme radical sunni, that somehow the country is once again up for grabs. >> when you look back that and think the invasion was about making it the u.s. state for, yet you have a large al qaeda presence that could present a

transnational brett. we'll get to the next question about the positive and negative. >> i tnk chris gave you a fairly reasonable answer as to why those things occur. they were not eradicated in the intervening time. there were people who survived. others have infiltrated back then. is it possible now for recruits to be drawn from that population to other places? yes. so is there a continuing underlying turmoil in the region? yes. it really points to the need for the united states to make plainer its intention with respect to the security of the region, its determination to stay a critical member of sustaining security in the

region, to do it visibly, but not in a way that is going to result in the reactions that one gets when one overplays the hand. the lesson learned is one of those. the administration has done a number of those kinds of things. the talk about the deployment of patriot missiles, reorganization of the fifth fleet. a number of those things have taken place as they have been trying to send the message that while there is not a large u.s. military presence inside iraq, at the u.s. has not lost interest in the region and will continue to play a leading role in the security of that part of the world. let's let me bring it back to the final question that we talked about earlier, before we open it up to the floor.

we lost 4500 american troops. a new study says we lost 17 other actors. what did we learn? who wants to start? they were much more talkative earlier today. >> first of all, we learned that we can succeed. iraq is a success today. it was a very difficult success. it is very precarious. every morning, the first thing i'd do is click on the iraq news to see if i have to modify what i say because it is still precarious. you have interference by the

sunni arab states and a great deal of activity in the north, but not just there. sitting on top of an embassy of 16,000 people and $6 billion, it is a success, but a very limited success. these things are very hard. they have a huge, typically negative impact on the population. some of what we see in libya and syria has to be a reaction to the negative reaction of the american people at various times to what we are doing or not doing in iraq. this has come up on almost every panel, the idea whether it is counter-terrorism or drones, and the long run and has to be the political and economic and nation-building and all that. we put huge amounts of money into that.

we had to double down on the budget at different times. it is very hard to do long-term nation-building and reconciliation of bitterly opposed political forces. if that is the exit strategy for american troops, we will have a lot of trouble. i will leave it that. >> in invading iraq, we took on the toughest problem areas in the region. after all, it is where the persian world needs the arab world, wary theshia world meets the sunni world. i cannot think of a tougher place. don't just do it on adrenaline. do your homework. i feel that we should have done an awful lot more homework. when you look at a dictator, the

first question should not be how do we get rid of him. the first question should be how did he get there? once you pick your york -- once you figure out how a person like saddam got there, that helps you figure out how to get rid of them. iran had to be ruled by some combination of those three communities. that has to be held it works. i don't think we really understood where the line redo the fault lines of that society really work did dictatorship and democracy was something we understood. we were right to rectify that. but the sunni-shia fault line

has been there for about a thousand years. it was a very hard thing. i agree with jim that is going in the right direction. i would put myself on the glass half full side. i hope president bush will -- will take a lot of grief for the rest of history about the great -- invasion of iraq, but he did have the guts to take on the problem. i hope it can stay with it. i hope the obama administration will stay with it. we do have the world's largest embassy. we have peruvian guards there still. are there.rdner's

it is a very unusual situation. at this point, i think we have to stay engaged on it. >> i agree with everything and has been said, particularly with the idea of staying involved. we need to encourage our other arab friends to be supportive of iraq. i know we have been doing that, but it is really critical. it is one of the most critical diplomatic elements in the whole situation. when we when then, iraq was really isolated from its arab neighborhood. that has started to get better. as we watch the situation politically going forward in providing we stand ball, we can influence their internal politics, not to the same degree as if you had 100,000 troops there, but through a over interest levels of support, we

can still influence political moderation inside iraq. the key thing to watch, apart from the evolution of their electoral process and political parties and so forth, is whether there are forces and their police can become truly national institutions. that is the real metric. can they become national institutions, or is the army going to become some kind of shia militia, which is what we want to avoid at all costs. >> let me give you what i think is actually a bright light in this. i think the decision to invade iraq will historically proved to be one of the great historic decisions of the first half of the 21st century, if not the greatest. it will prove to be the greatest if we see this through.

it will be one of the greatest strategic victories in the united states because if we can take and make it a success in iraq, if we take what considered to be some of the aftershocks that you see floating through the region, whether in libya or egypt or not in syria, and after syria, lebanon and in jordan. after that, saudi arabia. this place is in motion in a way that it has not been for a century. we have an opportunity to shape that and it comes directly as a result of having invaded iraq. the decision was taken and now the opportunity in front of us is enormous to see it through all the way to the end. i think history will prove that it was a success.

>> a provocative way to open it to questions from the audience. front and center. i was giving you the challenge to get the microphone there. >> until last ask this question, steve was a friend and colleague. if each of you would be willing to answer this question. if saddam and his sons were still in power, how would that have affected us through the last decade and the arab world? >> counterfactual history -- i

think my answer comes from what i said a moment ago. i think we would have seen the place still locked in a stasis that would have been relieved coli by the natural passing of the various dictators in the region. what has happened is there has been enormous acceleration of change as a result. i think we would have seen the place still locked down and it would not have been good for us. that was not a good situation for the united states. >> it is too big a question to answer in detail, -- one thing we have not focused on a lot. for most of the iraqi people, that would have been a far worse scenario, despite us going in

and allows the infrastructure and all of the problems. they did not get much electricity or any other services before then. >> i wish we had the iraqi ambassador here. >> we would have had a civil war in 2012. i think the kurds would have been out of there by now. it really started with the no- fly zone. it did not start in 2003. it started a decade before. some people argue it already has 1 foot out the door. it said on hussain was left in charge it would have had two the out the door. i think that is the one big difference. i think it would not have put up with them much longer.

i think there would have been a bloody civil war. >> i think everything has been said. >> another question. >> for the purposes of provocation, i sharpen the question and ask in a way i think only so far doctor cambone has answered. i will say said dom hussein was a bad guy and the government is better for iraqis and american interest. with the full benefit of hindsight, if you walk in and somebody offered to sell you the change for closer to $2 billion than $1 billion and the strains on the u.s. military forces, the destruction of their ron's

principal regional ally, and so on, would you lay your credit card down? would you do it again? >> i am sorry. who pays the credit card? my view is it was worth it to the iraqis. a point of view of the united states that is a different questions. >> do you think it is worth it? >> i think i will keep that up. i am not interested in sharing my opinion on whether it was worth it. i think steve points to some of

the opportunities ahead. if this country starts producing 6 million 7 million barrels of oil a day and it has a more western orientation than they used to have, before it was this big friend at the time from the outside powers was russia if i remember correctly. where will i did you? in that sense, a lot might not have been otherwise. before the invasion we were administering that the oil and food program. that was our relationship. >> church hill was asked that question. would you live your life over again knowing what you know now. he said if i did not, it would not have the my life. you do not get a chance to know the outcome before you start.

when you say knowing what you know now, would you do now what you did then -- it begins to sob -- it begins to sound like a country song. you cannot. yes, i would accept that as a question. given what we knew at the time and what we thought we knew at the time, the circumstances under which the decisions were taken, i think they are justifiable and defensible, they will turn out to have been one of the great strategic decisions of the 21st century. if we follow through, it will be a strategic victory for the united states, not just for the people of iraq. >> having spent three years they're trying to push it in the right direction, we should be very careful about going into a country and deciding we are

going to get rid of one political system and introduce a new one. i do not think we had a good idea of what the new one was. we were inventing that as we went along. we kept trying. then we tried something different. it did work out. steve is right. as i said, it is very contingent. it may not in the end work out. we have a very little despite the efforts we continue to put into it, we have very little control compared to all of the other actors there whether it will work out. i would say this is a cautionary lesson about that, even if it works out well. if it does not work out well, you know the answer to the question. >> you are asking the cosmic question. below that as to how to do these kinds of things, if you find yourself again in these situations, i think we may be relearned a number of questions of history.

patience, be careful -- look before you leap. nation-building is not easy to do. for me the biggest lesson in that category really is, right from the beginning you have to work on building up local capacity. i remember in vietnam, the general wanted us to do all the fighting. he avoided the question for four years. by then we had sacked the political will of the american people and enthusiast -- enthusiasm for the enterprise. think about it when you start talking about these ventures. >> one of the great ironies of the way the war unfolded, speaking from the perspective of listening to defense and the arguments he and doug and others made.

the desire was to rely more on local capacity. to build up the force sooner. not to engage an occupation. some of you heard the secretary's speech about the bone. you break your bones and the putting in a splint and does not heal and all the rest. he was desirous not so much trying to do this on the cheap, which is frequently the criticism. he was looking to do it in a way that would have aligned such that the amount of time the united states remained deeply engaged was foreshortened by the speed in which local capacity could be brought up. that is fair to say that training that was supposed to have taken place, the electric grid being stood back up, the water being restored. many of those things went badly. there is no question about that.

to the point, had we if -- had we thought about those things, the answer is yes. did they go well, the answer is no. is there culpability to be found for the reasons it did not go well, probably. we can die in their and separate why some of these things did not work. -- dive and there and figure out why things did not work. >> you just thought it would be easier. >> not easier. it was not that it was easy. i do not think anybody thought it would be easy. everybody thought it would be hard. must remember the secretary had a memo where he went through all the things that would go wrong. it was not a case of thinking it would be easy. is just in the doing of it, it did not get done in the way that people had intended for it to be done, which goes then to the point which, things do not

usually go according to plan. >> i did have some follow-ups, but i want to get a couple of questions from the audience. >> lesson learned for the future to be applied before we consider invading luxembourg, red team, push back. there is a formula of at least 10 issues that could be applied before you make the decision to go or not go. they are pretty much the obvious ones. i wonder whether they had been applied, water over the dam and iraq. at least for the future, considered 10 of these things which is a one size fits all matrix. good manners apply to the neighbors, that would be the turks. and whether they would allow us to bring the armored division

and. it time, blood, money, preserving the institutions, a political vacuum, you s domestic political reaction, and, finally, the regional partnership if we get into a country. it just seems those might be the elementary things. i wonder whether or not there is any institutional read team push back that can be applied to future activities. a way to avoid what we have had in iraq. >> the ceo -- the cia identified how it looked at the process with the osama bin laden great to interrogate what intelligence they had before they decided to go with that. was there a similar process that the dod -- did you take away a lesson learned? >> that list of things was

reviewed and thought about. you know, it is usually said there was no plan for after the combat operation. my sense is, it is not that there was not a plan, i am not sure the plans consolidated in a way that they might have that first. second, i think the list i made mention to just a moment ago had that and about 27 other things of issues one needs to think about an undertaking those things. should there be some institutional basis for doing it? yes. exercises were done. rehearsals were gone through. people thought about these things. war starts its own dynamic. once that dynamic begins, it is all about managing it. that falls to the three gentlemen here with the

ambassadors on the ground in the country and the head of the military operation in the country. they have to manage the dynamic once it is let loose. >> i want to get one more question from the audience. let's see. rounddo the lightning thing. >> i will be very brief. ambassador held. my name is bob myers. i have a question as to whether those powers that decided to invade a rock band -- iraq new that 80% of sunni and shiites mary their cousins. you create a lot of antagonists. >> that is an interesting question. one from over here. >> i am very interested in dr. hill's comments about learning

and how you take experience and whether we could have done more of it here, i will use the small example. the leadership of the army going into this had spent years in the former yugoslavia to what amounted to occupation operations. there are relevant lessons there. others had just spent years. he got fired for suggesting it would take a much more significant force to do it. i use that small example to ask why and how at the top level can we look more accurately at the recent past and carry these lessons forward before going in these types of directions? >> had we thought about the

sunni family structure? >> i cannot say -- may be others can comment on whether we knew at intermarriage and first cousins, at the end of the gulf war, it is often understood in the united states we did not march on baghdad because the coalition would have broken up. we always understood that the reason the coalition would have broken up is that our allies would not accept the idea of us going into still another country. it is one thing to liberate kuwait and march into iraq. it might have been worthwhile to have another look at why the south says -- saudis did not want us to overthrow a sunni regime. if we had thought about why they would not want us to do that, it would become a shiite regime.

they would not believe us if we said it will be a coalition. everybody will live together. that is what was going on. it is wanting to kick this guy out of kuwait. it is another thing to flip iraq to being a shiite country. that is something we should have given more thought to. now that we have been attacked and 9/11 we will finish it. that was a serious failure of concept on our part. >> if i could answer this and to some degree get back to the question posed here. the most important thing i think despite all the things i have said that we've heard is steve cambone sang this will be a game changer. the question i got was that the decision in the bush administration was largely, if we succeed in a rock band creating a democratic

government, this will be a game changer. we have to do this. history has not had its final decision. it is quite possible, and it really would be an important step. it is quite possible it will not after a tremendous cost. had we gone to the american people and said, do you feel lucky today? let's roll the dice. this may involve a decade and tying up our diplomatic bandwidth. this may involve $1 trillion. maybe it will work and maybe it will not. what do you think? that is what this other stuff would have produced. this was not like going into kuwait in 1991. that required a lot of effort but the outcome was clear to see. there was nothing to, -- there was nothing clear to see about this outcome. we have dealt more less with all of it. i would just leave it with, if

you decide this will be a game changer, then you basically have to roll the dice. the question is, how do you bring the american people and on it? >> and yet we still have the divide their and the al qaeda presence that kicked off the civil war once before. >> but you have a government functioning. you have in its own way -- i remember being there in 2004 and all the parties being around the table. this was a collection of people if they were on the street would have been picked up and put into detention. there were all sitting there talking to one another. they knew about one another and what they were doing. do we give them the kind of support and how that will take to get there. that leaves me to respond about additional forces. the approach that was and the secretary's mind. a short period of time in which

the united states is the occupying power, by a period of three to four he years during which the united states is the occupying powers, which of those would one want to choose? one of the things one wants to think about is you are finding your campaign -- how do you want to manage the outcome? from the point of view of the department, a three or four year occupation was not the choice one wanted to plan against. we ended up over a longer period of time in combat operations that we wanted is true. as a strategic planning factor, do you want to plan for a four year occupation or do you want to plan the thing in a way you can minimize the time of occupation, speed up periods of time in which the local people are able to take over the

functions necessary to run the country, and then move into the kind of position we talked about earlier, which is support and security and as other types of things. that is the interesting question to take away from our experience. >> any final thoughts? >> tbd. i do not think we can make the historical judgment at this point. our views will be influenced by the developments over the next decade or so. >> i want to thank you for taking part in this panel. you answered some tough questions. [applause] we have all lost friends in iraq. i think one of the important things is to take the emotion out of the debate and answer the questions seriously. i appreciate you doing that today. thank you.

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> the next session of the aspen security forum looked at the war in afghanistan and its effect on pakistan. both participated as well as president obama's adviser for the region. it is moderated by steve croft. >> during the course of the last session we took a look back and look forward at the iraq award. we will do likewise with regard to afghanistan and pakistan as well. i cannot think of anyone better to lead the discussion then steve kroft. steve kroft has been a

correspondent for 60 minutes for a 23 years. 60 minutes we all know is the most watched news program on television. his story on insider trading in congress drove the recent passage of the stock act. he is the only 60 minutes correspondent to when two peabody awards in the same year bringing his total number of television's most prestigious award to five. one was for a story on the vulnerabilities of infrastructure to computer hackers, at a story of importance to us. and the other was the enormous amounts of money spent prolonging the lives of dying americans. please join me in welcoming steve kroft in this panel. [applause] >> thank you very much.

we are following iraq with afghanistan. we have a very distinguished group here today. on my left is ambassador eklil hakimi who is the ambassador to the united states from afghanistan. next to him is doug lute who is an assistant in the area of afghanistan and pakistan. next to him is karl eikenberry, former assistant best -- former ambassador to afghanistan. and we have on teleconference ambassador sherry rehman who was unable to make it today because of a prior commitment. she was kind enough and wanted to be here badly enough to agree

to talk to us here. you can see her sitting back there. her in the television monitors around the rim. i want to begin this with a ". a recent article by dexter falcons in the new yorker published earlier this month. he writes after 11 years, nearly 2000 americans killed, 16,000 americans wounded, nearly $400 billion spent, nearly 12,000 afghan civilians dead since 2007, the war in afghanistan has come down to this. the united states is leading the, mission not accomplished. they have been abandoned or

downgraded because they have not worked for there was no longer enough time to achieve them. do you agree with that assessment? >> with due respect, i do not agree. our people do not want to go to those dark days of civil war and also to dark days of taliban who ruled the country. now we have a strong military. we have a strong police force. we have a vibrant civil society. we have a very active media, with a liberty that you cannot find within that region. it can only grow for the last 10 years. remarkable.

more importantly, our own people are frustrated with board. they do not want to go back. if you look at that within a region context, more countries within the region wanted that to happen. afghanistan as history has taught us, it is located in the heart. if a heart is not functioning and not pumping the blood within a system, the whole body is not working. no country within the region as far as i know, iran and afghanistan were to slip back to the civil war. the one afghanistan to be invigorated within the region. also, we have strategic

partnership agreements with our key allies, the united states of america, with the united kingdom, with france, italy, germany, australia, india, and a lot others are coming into the pipeline. that will give assurance for in during partnerships for the years to come. >> i would say baxter has a run on two accounts. the mission has not yet been fully accomplished, the mission against al qaeda, the core mission to eventually defeat al qaeda -- as we have heard it is within sight. it is not yet accomplished. nobody is saying mission accomplished. we are saying that is within sight. the other point where he is wrong as we are not leaving. one of the major outcomes of the chicago summit two months ago is

that while we are on a path to transition to lead to afghan responsibility by the end of 2014, even beyond 2014 we imagines with afghan invitation there will be a sustained u.s. military presence, diplomatic presence, intelligence and present -- intelligence presence. the mission is not yet accomplished but it is within sight and we are not leaving. >> i was telling steve i know i definitely left government and military service when i am comfortable sitting on stage with 60 minutes. three points. first of all, what do we know about the mission and what we have accomplished? think back to 9/11, al qaeda is not in afghanistan in any kind of numbers. al qaeda has been weakened over the last decade and was dealt a

heavy blow last year that was from a base in afghanistan. in terms of governance, afghanistan is fragile, but over the last decade they have been through four elections. they have been flawed elections. from an afghan perspective, look back in 1992 and 1993. how did power decided at that point? it was a group of war lords firing rockets into the city. tens of thousands dying. massacres that followed. from an afghan perspective, how the politics look right now? fragile, but better than many years. the third point about successes in the economic social-service dumbing, transformational in terms of education. in 2001 there were 1 million afghans going to school. now there are 4 7 million. 40% of them are women. health care services has been transformed.

will these gains all hold? will there be reversals? what we also do not know and historians will have to tell us -- maybe the panel will talk about this -- was the end ways and means we adopted for the campaign in afghanistan, where they sound? the third would be just to agree with what doug had said. the mission is not over. the mission is being redefined. is going from one or the international community has been in the lead and of the critical domains to one in which the afghans are in the lead. we are going from a position of lead to a position of support. is a change of mission, not an end of mission. >> i want to hear what ambassador raymond has to say about this. what is the position from afghanistan? crux i certainly share the hope

and vision that you have articulated. afghanistan is looking to a future where were finally comes to an end and clearly wants to be in the region. pakistan is committed to maintaining the peace, security, and civility. we look forward to a time where there is a measure of sustainability and afghanistan. we hope to support all efforts in that endeavor. very quickly, i would like to say that most important in all of this is that afghanistan belongs to afghanistan time, which is an effort we all have to bring capacity and resources to. i say all because there is the united states with its big footprint. we are next door.

to every difficult time and talents, we have supported afghanistan. i stress the position by saying, one of the primary concerns of women all over the world -- s p not just for pakistan -- is the status and position of women in the future where we hope there is not a vacuum in areas where local forces are not strong enough's or cohesive enough to bring it to gather the level of defense needed to maintain the gains. we are obviously going to do our best to ensure that not just our

border areas, but there is a security vacuum there often, those become -- they do not maintain sanctuaries for terrorists. we have sanctuaries on both sides, which is struggling for pakistan. really i think we lost the peace. we may have won the war, but we lost the peace. we have to be in a position where if we think we have won the war, we have to worry about protecting a piece that will show the way forward to a secure, stable, and economically viable afghanistan that can meet its own needs. we may be a few miles away from

that. i think our job here is to without meddling to ensure it is able to remain stable, cohesive, and in the days to come. pakistan is engaged. we will continue the intensification of the dialogue at all levels. and we really hope the level of interdiction at the international border between afghanistan and pakistan goes up. we are beginning to see a little bit of blow back from redeployment in afghanistan. i do hope a great deal of what

we look towards in the future is going to go beyond the planning stages. execution of policy is crucial. maintaining the gains made by nato, isaf, and afghanistan should not be wasted. that should be our main goal right now. to preserve security and stability for all components of the population. >> i have a question for general eikenberry. i want to go back to the figures mentioned here. i can see that we killed osama bin laden. i will can see that the deterioration -- i will can see that the deterioration of that organization al qaeda in afghanistan has been severely damaged. but we are talking huge numbers

here. we are talking to thousand americans killed, 16 million americans wounded. $400 billion. and we are leaving a situation where the talent and still has a very robust defense -- taliban still has a robust defense. they have sanctuaries on the borders. i am sure the ambassador would agree, there is still a great deal of corruption. i do not think anyone believes that the taliban will be defeated or the government of pakistan is going to be a functioning western style government. i guess what i am saying is, just cutting our losses right now because it is proven to be too difficult to do all of the

things we had talked about doing -- too expensive than life and blood to continue this for an indefinite period. is that the reason for these decisions and this current policy? >> look at the gains we have made. i will not repeat those. this audience is sophisticated enough to know what the baseline looks like. i think going for the transition strategy that has been outlined in sanctioned by the united nations is a sound way ahead. there are challenges with pakistan right now. pakistan is not on the side so to speak, this transition becomes much more problematic in terms of treasure and more lives. there are challenges with the afghan national security forces with their sustainability and their capabilities. there are challenges on the economic domain that as for the

level of international aid starts to decline over the next few years, it will have a shock effect on the afghan economy. there are problems with the afghan governments. there are problems with accountability of the government. to say that at this point we need to continue to double down on our efforts, i think we are added. in the united states, look at our own economic problems. something that really struck me coming home from overseas is the extent of our economic problems. we have infrastructure problems and education problems. i do not think the united states can afford to continue to invest in campaigns like iraq in afghanistan like we have over the past decade. the transition has a reasonable possibility of success. we reached a point here in terms of our own means that are

available. i think frankly in terms of the afghans it is time for the transition to take place. i am reading right now washington life. i came across as he talked about dealing with the french, washington saying if we're going to win our liberty, our army has to be the one to win the battles. we needed the french, but it is hours to win. we have reached a point where we have done a lot. there is a good foundation. we will continue to do more. is over to the afghans at this point. >> if you ask americans in the wake of 9/11 what price would you be willing to pay to buy a decade without -- remember the days? i have my personal memories.

everybody has their personal memories what happened in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. who would have thought 10 years without another repeat with al qaeda. who would have paid 10 years ago for the dismantlement and destruction that we see, ardsley but they have acknowledged over the past day and a half. not only have we been safe in terms of treasure and lives and so forth, but it has not been -- in has not gone without value. we really have gotten after al qaeda. they are on the edge of defeat. frankly, as a 10-year investment, at least one american here that sounds like a reasonable price to pay. what you think it has been worth the investment?

>> any individual life -- there is probably somebody in this audience who has lost a loved one. for that individual and family, it will never be worth it. the question had to do with america as a nation. americans bought 10 years of security from al qaeda and has -- and we have bought ourselves and side of defeating the movement. the core of the movement in pakistan and the border region. to me, never negating the individual losses that got us there and the first place, it seems that is a national price worth paying. >> go-ahead. what do you agree also it was worth it? >> i agree. the way that doug framed it.

if historians look back over the last 10 years and a rock and afghanistan, will they conclude that we needed to spend as much treasure as we did, as many lives. it is hardwood you are in the midst of a campaign and at war to try to think through all the uncertainties and come up with the optimal strategy. however, having said that, i do think the united states must conduct a good review of the wars we have fought. just several brief points about this. the starting point of our counterinsurgency strategy, a good first principle stated, we are there to protect the populations. we accept that. what does that mean? to protect against insurgents? yes. against drug cartels? i am not sure. against the tribe on the other

side of the hill versus the try we are aligned with for the past five years? these are the questions that we develop a doctrine. without questioning the doctor and we start to accept that as a strategy. there is one other point that i think needs to be examined in the wars that we fought. we had a contract in the united states over the years between unspoken contract between the civilian leadership and the military leadership of our country. over the past decade, our military has started to get in more and more areas that go far from the huntington model of the military's there to manage violence. we give them autonomy and oversight in that domain. my concern over the past decade in the wars we have fought, our military has gone into anti- corruption and on a goes. as that starts to erode from the

most specific definition of what a professional officer does, manager violence, i think accountability begins to suffer in the military ranks as well. >> to remind the american public, why you have engaged in afghanistan in the first place. that was because the u.s. security receives threats from that part of the world. terrorist groups use that against the u.s. 3000 innocent americans lost their lives. because of that. all this blood invested there. also, when afghans played --

when afghans paid the price, 1 million afghans died and 1.5 disabled. and we defeated the soviet union. at that time also afghanistan abandon the. again 10 years of that, we were really engaged. i think we should be honest to say that the security of afghanistan, how it links the security in the region and also security in the u.s. >> you made reference earlier -- >> can i come in? >> i have a special question for you. you made a statement that without the cooperation of pakistan this was going to be extremely difficult to do.

there was a time when the united states and pakistan war allies. that seems to have ended. friends and allies. that seems to have ended. i think three out of the four people in pakistan right now consider the united states an enemy of pakistan. millions of people are asking the question, is pakistan friend or foe? what is the answer to that? >> very quickly, i think the united states and pakistan have been through an extraordinarily difficult time over the past seven months. it was suspended because we had 24 soldiers killed at the border

by nato and isaf forces. doors were unlocked when an apology clean up both sides to prevent it from spiraling down. yes, you have talked about this. i think it still is very strong really. a strong commitment on both sides. i can speak for pakistan that we see very little value and not rebuilding our ties with the united states and afghanistan. we are intensifying our engagement with all of our neighbors on both sides. the united states has been an ally and friend it through many phases of our history and relationship. i sympathize with the ambassador who says afghanistan was abandoned. there is a problem. pakistan is -- we were in

chicago at the summit. we were there for giving our support to the project. to say we do not want a repeat of the 1990's. we do not want another security vacuum again. we do not want to afghanistan to slide into civil war. we have a high stake in their security. in 12 years when you say, it has been defeated with pakistan and constant marches against and cooperation in the field. we have captured and brought to justice or have handed over to the americans over 250 high- value targets.

we now are looking at a degraded core. we hope to be able to deceive them -- the feed to them with american cooperation but without impossible demands. everybody is in citing losses. we empathize and sympathize. where is the sympathy for pakistan on having lost 42,000 lives in the last 12 years since we committed ourselves to the war? this is not a grievance narrative i want to bring to this. we want to engage in a constructive and very concrete conversation. we can take both of our games for them prepare for a time when the american presence obviously has gone down. as we are told, there will be an american presence in

afghanistan. but we hope once again that the capacity and capability of the forces and their policing mechanisms remain of the quality and caliber that can take on what we hear. we hear about in search and violence. this adds to pakistan's anxiety. it really is important for us to cooperate. we do look to the united states to not make what i call an irresponsible exit. i hope that is the way we will look at it in the future. >> let me just come in and undermine -- underlined what she just said about a common interest and our two countries. that is the ultimate achievement of this core goal, to defeat al qaeda.

as she rightly said, there have been more al qaeda leaders and operatives captured and killed and pakistan on than anywhere else in the world. the other core common interests that she highlights is the stability in afghanistan. there is no stability in afghanistan that does not involve pakistan on. there is no stability of pakistan on the design of afghanistan. we have a common interest to get this right on both sides. >> secretary of defense panetta indicated he sees no reason -- he sees no reason to end the drone strikes across the border. there was a pakistan a doctor in prison right now. sentenced to 33 years for treason for assisting americans in the search for osama bin

laden. what does that say about our relationship with pakistan where it would seem they have more loyalties to osama bin laden than they do to the united states? you are talking about an international fugitive wanted all over the world and somebody goes to jail and prison for treason for trying to turn him in? >> steve, i defer to the ambassador on that. in a word i call it outrages. >> can you explain that decision? this is one of the problems with the relationship right now. americans look at that decision. they say, what is going on inside the pakistan government? what is going on inside the courts? they clearly seem to hate us.

>> if i may interject here. i do not think there is any question of hate here. pakistan is are in a place where we are looking for our first democratic transition. our institutions have found -- our records are looking with. we have lost a prime minister to the actions of the supreme court in pakistan. we are working according to our constitutional law. let me just say very clearly. he had no idea he was looking for a summit and leighton. do understand for pakistan, and the ground, he was contracting with a foreign intelligence agency without anybody's position. he was contracting with groups who are be heading our soldiers.

he was contracting with many people on the ground. he had no clue he was engaged in this historic fight against -- a search for a sum of been laden. i would also like to point out that -- osama bin laden. i would also like to point out, if you heard president obama's speech, he recognized pakistan's cooperation leading up to the eventual killing and search. i think there is no question. it really pains me to hear pakistan is being put in a category of a country that is harboring or is looking to preserve osama bin laden's sanctuary. all other high-value targets were found with pakistan's

cooperation. that is not the profile of a country that is looking to hide osama bin laden. we were all excited when he was found. when it was discovered it was without our participation, it was with our assistance at some level. that incident and did straining factions because it was a strike into pakistan we would have certainly cooperated. we would have said share the intelligence with us and we will go after him. i cannot really say what can or should be done with him. he is facing the courts. he has access to justice. he will appeal his sentence if he made. that is really a choice he has to make. to tell us we cannot put -- send

it to court a doctor who has put into jeopardy children who are now facing critical vaccines -- what he has done is he has done a great deal of our workers on the ground, put them in danger. our primary vaccinators. he has endangered people's lives. we are not a country looking to be -- this is one of the charges i think holds up against the doctor. it is not about who in some -- who assisted the united states to find osama bin laden. we have been assisting the united states. i have to say with a disrespect, it is quite outrageous to say pakistan has been -- i have to say with due

respect it is outrageous to say pakistan after all the sacrifices -- >> i think general has something to say. >> another good thing about leaving service is to get your first name back. three quick points. not to disagree with our pakistan ambassador. . no. 1. the u.s. popularity favorability from pakistan is 7% right now. that is even lower than u.s. population favorability ratings for our congress. that is very low. it is not entirely due to pakistan. those ratings are like that.

the second point is, i think for the united states we are simply over the past 10 years are not clear what pakistan's interests are. i am not sure pakistan is clear or unified on this. on the one hand if you are pakistan and you are part of the national security apparatus and looking at the potential for a week afghanistan, then staying aligned with the afghan taliban makes good sense. if afghanistan were to collapse, they will once again become the playground of great games. there is an argument they would want to hedge. on the other hand you can have a view that the pakistanis think afghanistan will succeed brilliantly. you may want to heads with the taliban as well. there can oculus remains opaque to us. the third point, -- their

calculus remains opaque. the transition, this first successful civilian transition, that is critical. stepping back we always will come to the conclusion that pakistan needs to get a strong civilian government that controls its military. the nature of the relationship has been one in which the urgent has always trumped the long term strategic importance. the urgent is most recently the war on terror. compromises' deal directly with the military. it deals with the isi. of course that makes sense for the united states of america with the consequences of 9/11. i am not sure that is a strategy which 20 years from now will make is any better off. >> i have one more question.

the united states has been very critical and the press has been critical of pakistan. particularly for giving sanctuary on the border. you have all i am guessing have been to that border region as i have been. it is a very difficult place to defend it. a place politically where the pakistan government has almost no power and very little influence. is it fair to blame the government of pakistan for making that area available when in fact they do not control it? they have sent troops in there a number of different times and sustained a very heavy casualties.

i guess what i am saying, has pakistan been unfairly attacked for the border issue? >> you know, the way we look at this is sovereignty has privileges. that comes with responsibilities. that is true on both sides of the border. you cannot control the border from one side alone. we have been quite deliver it with the afghan government to do so on its side of the border. pakistan has a sovereign responsibility on its side of the border. even if you could make the case that is in the interest of pakistan or was at one time to support the afghan taliban by way of permitting them sanctuary and so forth, i don't see that

today the posturing -- the pakistani taliban presents such a significant threat to pakistan itself that whatever that hedging strategy might have been some time ago, it no longer makes any sense. there's no way in our view to discriminate effectively between the afghan taliban in the border region and the tallis' -- palestinian taliban itself. it may be hedging approach but is out of date. >> this is something we have been arguing for quite some time. from the safe haven on the other side of the line, or opposition forces receive financial support, equipment, and training.

initially, nobody wanted to admit this. now everyone admits, our partners, everyone is pointing the finger that that is the area we should deal with. you cannot ignore that. >> the chairman clearly mentioned in his last days in office that the haqqani network -- we have been receiving promises from our pakistani friends that they will do something and we are hopeful that there are some practical steps toward that and is not the difficult to say that's

taliban is not welcome to use pakistani soil. there are a lot of promises but it is better to be under promised an over delivered. >> may i just add voice to what the ambassador is saying. pakistan has clearly and unequivocally said that we will -- we would be very happy to assist the armed forces but we have not seen any serious -- we are not clear about what the u.s. policy of the last few years, where it is going.

if we are to assist in the restoration of the peace talks that are going on, and we are assisting at every level, but at the heart of this assumption is that 49 nations have not been able to accomplish the goals and afghanistan and somehow pakistan should somehow accomplish that with its 150,000 troops committed to the border. they are very clear that pakistan is maxed out on these national borders of afghanistan

and there have been extensive anti-terrorist operations. we displaced hundreds of thousands of refugees in our own country shifting them out of a huge range of areas and what did we get? we are in effect at the heart of the whole argument is the assumption that pakistan has limitless capacity. the united states and others can walk away but we cannot walk away from it. we will have to stay here in the trenches and on the front line. i will give you an example. over the last eight months, we have constant firing and

attacks and these are critical masses of people that come men, not just people going across the border and coming back. we have informed u.s. and nato forces at least 52 times on the longitude and latitude on where the terrorists have gone. we should not be getting this constant message that pakistan has to do everything on its side of the border. we assume it is a capacity problem but we would assume at least that amount of [unintelligible] be given to pakistan.

you see the public messaging which is constantly assuming that pakistan should mop up where everybody else lives of. we cannot do this alone. that is what we need a partnership and we need to focus on goals that are concrete and deliverable. that is what we need our ministries to act in concert with each other. if we are operating in the south, it would be a good idea if they are operating in the south. one of the ways to triangulate terraces through their conversations and i am sure that all this can be achieved. we have nearly 1000 border check posts on our side of the border but we are seeing about one-

tenth of that on the nato access side. here's a question on what is a priority. we have had over 250 barona tax -- drone attacks and we are unable to take them on or smoke them out. >> we want to turn this over to the audience for questions and i have a couple more questions i want to raise. >> i have to reply to the ambassador. there is no comparison of the pakistani taliban relatively recent, small in scale presence inside afghanistan and in particular, these too remote provinces, it to the debt -- decade long experience and relationship between elements of the pakistani government and the afghan taliban. to compare these is simply unfair.

>> you lead with how difficult the terrain is and the ambassador -- it is like telling a bunch of young captains or majors that are going to fight up there, welcome to the outpost on the moon. it is extraordinarily difficult terrain. we understand that, but my second point is that, let's take the haqqani headquarters. about a kilometer away from the main activity is the headquarters of the ninth infantry division of the pakistani army. pakistan has suffered great losses in the war on terror. i do not dispute that. do credit needs to be given, but i have to say from my perspective, a very good start for pakistan would be say we are

not going to go in and fight because it would be very tough fight. we call the afghan taliban leadership and tell them you have several choices to make right now. you can stop fighting and begin peace negotiations, you cannot fight from our soil. you can put down your weapons and we will see if we can integrate into pakistan, or number three, you can go into afghanistan and continue to fight, but not from our soil. >> we are very happy to do that. that is certainly the provision of the pakistan government today. the challenge lies in our state as much as the challenge lives in afghanistan. there is no question right now of hedging bets. we are not betting on anyone right now.

the entire focus is not one group. we make sure the prime minister meets with everybody. we are in constant conversation on how to move forward. i would like to point the group from moving from a security transition to talks of peace. we are getting mixed signals. [unintelligible] this assumes that we can always bring everybody to the table and that we have a high stake in [unintelligible] and that brings afghanistan into the future as a modern, developing, emerging democracy. yes, we have a stake in that and we are very clear that that is

the model we would like to invest in. there is no betting on the taliban. the challenge us as much as they challenge of afghanistan. they must do so according -- according to the constitution of pakistan. there are certain areas that are not easy to govern. it has to be incremental. we cannot be asked to bomb people on our own mall others hang back. i think it is a question of priorities being developed on both sides. this would be a constructive time to do so. now that there is a will on both sides, that includes india as

well as pakistan. we are making great strides in opening trade. this is the new pakistan. . >> what are the realistic chances of some sort of meaningful negotiations between the taliban and whoever, afghanistan, pakistan, the united states, whoever, to bring about some sort of political resolution or a cease-fire, some sort of outcome that might end of this for the afghan people. what do you think? >> the peace process has two tears.

one is reconciliation and one is reintegration. on the reintegration front, we have achieved a lot. a reintegration designed to bring the foot soldier's within the system. with that in mind, those that renounce violence, cut ties with al qaeda, they are more than welcome to reintegrate. there are more than 4000 taliban foot soldiers already in joining the program and they enjoy the facilities we are providing. on the reconciliation front, however, there are a lot of talks and discussions, but this is a process. if you try to achieve something overnight, it is not going to happen. we have opened a different

channel of communications with them. most recently that a university, the taliban was represented in one room engaging with a peace council from our government. it was not a negotiation, but an exchange of views. everybody made their point clear. we think that with the support of all or pakistani friends, that have been saying they are supporting the peace process, which we appreciate. we are seeing some practical steps that have something at stake in nagin play a crucial role. it is something that is going on. this is one of the top

priorities in our government', and within the taliban also, there are moderator's that we want to join. they still insist on military operations. there are signs that make us believe that we can get results in the end. >> and to the question why the taliban would want to enter into negotiations at a time when the united states is scaling back and withdrawing its troops, and by the end of 2014 we will be down to no combat troops. why would they not want to take a chance and see how good the afghan army is before they start thinking about --

>> they may want to take a chance. what president obama has made clear is that the door is open to another possibility. that is a negotiated political process that could leave for the afghan taliban leadership that is not subdued to the pressure of the military campaign. leave open to them of door back into the political process in afghanistan. they have to meet three conditions. have to break ties with al qaeda cost of the insurgency, stop the fighting, and when they come back to afghanistan that have to do so inside the framework of the afghan constitution. so there are conditions to this notion of reconciliation. what they think about doing this? they are being hammered by troops and approaching 350,000

afghan forces. they are under extreme military pressure. this is one of the design features of the military campaign, to put sufficient military pressure on the movement so that the door that president obama has opened, the political process, is effective. as we transition from being in the lead to the afghan forces being in the league, the taliban narrative of counter occupation is the taliban narrative against -- of jihad against the west begins to erode. finally, we believe that by way of our partnership with afghanistan, and not only with the u.s. but eight other countries in the nato alliance, send signals to the taliban that they cannot wait us out. if they like the current situation, living in some sort

of safe haven, although probably as second-class citizens in pakistan, if they want to continue another decade of this, then the door will remain open until they see otherwise. >> talking about the progress that has been made, in the big urban areas of afghanistan, things have transformed since 2001. a lot of young people there have a different world view. for the taliban to believe that they could claim all of that back again, that is a stretch. does that mean that as we go forward with transitions, there will be problems with security and bad governments in those areas? going forward with talks in the taliban, there are three points.

very importantly, if we get this transition right, then the taliban narrative is evaporating everyday as the afghans move to the lead. number two, it does make the point that we have really got to get this in during or longer term presence right. that longer-term presence that we have after 2014, security systems may be counter- terrorism, it adds up to reassurance to the afghans and also the right incentives to the taliban that we are not leaving. the final point is, we talk about a political settlement. sometimes we overstate this as a question of taliban versus all the rest of the afghan body

politic. my own view is that afghanistan writ large, going back to travel times in the mid-1970's, the afghan body politick means -- needs recommend -- reconciliation among themselves. it is a subset of a larger dialogue that has to take place. let's be clear. the taliban in the mid 19--- 1990's to take control over a lot of parts of afghanistan, they were welcomed as liberators from some very vicious war lords whose deprivation had opened the door to the taliban. some of the war lords occupied positions of formal and informal power in afghanistan today. problem goes far beyond the taliban.

>> sunday bully the whole situation could fall back into civil war, that after the united states leaves and the stability that has provided there in terms of security, that you run the risk of these tribal groups that have been at each other's throats in some cases for centuries are going to re-emerge and people will leave the taliban and everything will just go back to the way it was. is that a real concern? >> in afghanistan before the soviet invasion, we live with each other peacefully. before the invasion, we had a constitution, a model society, rule law, a justice system, and

this perception that afghanistan had tribes fighting with each other, that is not right. when the soviet invasion happen, from that point on until the civil war and so on, for the last 30 years or so, we had fighting imposed on us. before that were left side by side for years. something that we believe is that we do not want to go back to those dark days. we are looking for the bright future. one point i want to make about corruption, most recently we had a very successful conference in tokyo and more than 17 countries

came. that pledged to support afghanistan for the next 40 years. we agreed about mutual accountability, that we do certain things while our international partners will do certain things. three days ago our president already issued a decree with 23 very ambitious measures to fight corruption drastically across the line. [unintelligible] >> the thing that is a realistic scenario? >> several points i would make.

i agree that the afghans are tired of war and have many adults in their lifetime that have seen the tragedy of civil war and taliban occupation. secondly, there are no neighbors of afghanistan that are pulling at any of the domestic groups of afghanistan. there is a fractious set of ethnic groups. third, in 2006 i went to town where the first afghan national army headquarters was located. we visited the major general in command. he said he was most proud of the staff monitors in the room.

we were all fighting each other about 10 years ago. steve asked what he was most worried about. he said i were you americans will leave before it is time. i thought he was saying before we had gotten all the equipment to them and the barracks were built. i was wrong. he set out will go back to what i am most proud of. we are not ready yet to work together. we don't have a level of trust and confidence. we need you here for a longer time for us to achieve that. my view is you do not need 100,000 u.s. troops to achieve that. you can be clever. i think they do want us to have a smaller footprint in their country than we do today. >> given the level of development of the afghan political structure, civil war might be a risk if we did not have a deliver it transition process.

and beyond the transition process, if we did not plan today for a sustained u.s. supportive role alongside the nato alliance, and from 50 other countries, they have said essentially we will not replace 999. it is not a 25-year break from 1989 and we will just repeat the tragic history when the russians left. >> willing to take some questions from the floor. we have people with microphones. let's start here in the middle. >> general, if i am understood correctly, you least questioned the utility of engaging the narcotics traffickers or the drug trade in afghanistan. my question is, is it really feasible to consolidate the gains we had made with such a treasure without dealing with

the narcotics trade which fuels the insurgency, corruption of public officials and institutions, undermines public confidence and generally challenges the rule of law? >> i did not mean to communicate that the war against drugs in afghanistan is not a model for afghanistan's success and stability. i was talking about the loose definition of a military doctrine. but the approach is in countries like colombia and afghanistan, they must be continued, absolutely. afghanistan produces 9% of the world's poppy. we think for every $10 worth of corruption that exist with those poppy dollars in side of afghanistan, seven of them are going to the police and the

government of afghanistan. three of those are going to the taliban. so this is a very serious problem. because of the existence of the drug trafficking and its politics, i don't know how you can eventually stabilize afghanistan unless you continue those efforts. >> i have a question regarding lessons learned for afghanistan. we chose a strategy, the heavy footprint with over 100,000 troops and nation building strategy. looking back, would not have been wiser had we diminished the role of heavy black prince, using small footprint strategy and not of the nation-building? we look like we over promised and under delivered.

the lessons i carry around in my notebook which are overwhelming for me, having been someone involved in afghanistan since 2004, is the overwhelming importance of understanding the situation on the ground. i am still not satisfied with the level of our understanding where the rubber meets the road in a counterinsurgency approach. we do not adequately understand the language or the culture. many times we do not understand the history. if you are an american soldier, the odds of going back to the same area in afghanistan is almost zero. when you enter a campaign like this, the overriding lesson for me is that we better understand what we are getting into and

what it will take to be successful and effective. as soon as we begin one of these campaigns, we have to begin to invest immediately in the indigenous security forces. the level tolerant for our present and the numbers we've had recently will only go down over time. the smart investment would have been in the years from 2001- 2006, for example. it would have been a heavier and more focused effort on afghan security forces. the would say that's approach we have tried in iraq and afghanistan, which only historians 25 years from now

will be able to fairly evaluate, hasn't been resource intensive? i have heard some people described as trying to achieve revolutionary aims through colonial means. we need to think about that. even the colonial ways and means we have adopted were not suspicious. -- were not sufficient. talking about experiences with raising the troops. he said in frustration in a letter to the continental congress, i spent six months in getting the troops ready and six months thinking about how to demobilize them. we could go on with a very long list. the second is that we had better need, before we plunged deep

into iraq or against them, we should have more frank debate about ends, ways and means. do we need to go back and dustoff the weinberger doctrine again? we have an all volunteer force, which is absolutely magnificent. they have performed brilliantly. if we had a conscript army good enough to do the job, raise your hand if you'd think we would have invaded iraq and 10 years after the invention in afghanistan, we would have had 100,000 troops there? if the answer to that is no,

there might be something wrong with the republic if of the last 10 years we have been heavily engaged in war with volunteer forces that are not publicly owned by the american people. >> thank you. i am going to make enemies with this question. general, will unilateral u.s. counter terrorist actions known as the drone strikes continue, and what actions will pakistan take if they do continue? >> our cooperation with pakistan against al qaeda leaders today in the border region continues. obviously no one in this conference has talked about the

specifics. the reason they continue is that the u.s. and pakistan have a common interest. we have had no more active partner in the fight against al qaeda than the pakistanis. that common interest continues today and those levels of cooperation across the program also continue. i will let sherry speak for herself. >> very quickly, i think that in pakistan, the view now is very clear and ambiguous. not because we do not want to hurt al qaeda but because the drone strikes seem to be diminishing.

also, [unintelligible] i do not want to get into the specifics of what collateral damage might happen. what they do now is add to the troops that we are fighting against. it opens up all kinds of questions of moral hazard when another country does this. our position is that this is a problem, so no wonder we have this view of the united states.

i am not saying that not assisted in the war against terror, but the point is that now have diminishing returns. there will be no compromise on the drone strikes. >> thank you. that is all we have time for. i want to thank you for joining us today. we want her to have the opportunity to present her government's views. thank you very much for coming. [applause] >> next, nasa holds a briefing on the latest from mars rover curiosity. from the aspen security forum,

discussions about the war in iraq and the future of afghanistan and pakistan. tomorrow on "washington journal," law professor peter edelman talks about the debate over president obama's move to give states more flexibility dealing with federal welfare rules. the co-chairman of the fixed the debt campaign discusses the goals of the group did richard fried from the pew research center and michael wallace talk about a study that shows upper and lower income americans more likely to live in economically segregated neighborhoods than they were 30 years ago. "washington journal," live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> i do not in the the drowsy harmony of the republican party. they squelched debate, we welcome it.

they deny differences, we reach them. they are uniform, we are united. >> the choice is this year are not just between two different personalities or between two political parties. they are between two different visions of the future, finally different ways of governing. their governments up pessimism, or hours of hope, confidence, and growth. >> c-span has aired every minute of every major party conventions since 1984. this year, watch the national conventions live on c-span starting monday, august 27. >> c-span, created by america's cable companies in 1979,

brought to you as a public service by your television provider. >> today nasa held this briefing to give an update on the mars rover curiosity. they've released the first 360 degrees color images. curiosity landed on mars monday morning as a on a two-year mission to look for signs of microbial life. from the jet propulsion laboratory in pasadena, california, this is 50 minutes. >> welcome to pasadena, california. the rover has just completed its day three activities and has sent us back postcards of another picture perfect day on mars. here to tell us about all that an update on all the activities we have michael watkins, mission manager from the jet propulsion

laboratory create the principal investigator for the massacre caracara on curiosity from san diego, don sumner from the university of california in davis, the team chief from jpl, and doug allison, visualization producer at jpl. we will begin with michael watkins. >> we had another fantastic day on mars. curiosity continues to behave flawlessly and executed all the planned activities successfully after a period is a good time to point out that the teen operating curiosity is also

performing flawlessly and completing all planned activities is well-preparedsol 3 activities consist of a couple of things. we are about to upgrade our ver.ware on the rollove we needed new flight software load that is optimized for the service garrett kern we want to switch to a new flight software that is optimized for surface operations. we will do that starting, the day after tomorrow. we have to do a little prep work for that activity. refit of some files to get ready to for the software transition garrett kern the other thing was to check out

some more of our instruments. we checked out the instruments and that all past successfully and are all in great shape as far as we know. that is a great sign. no anomaly showed up in any of the tests. we took a lot of imagery around us free we took a panorama in the navcams arawn the rover and took a close-up of the decade we took the first panorama in color that mike will talk about and started to get the first bits of that down. let me start by showing you some of those images.

this is the deck hand. we will be doing in here and you can see that is the rad instrument. you can see a few of these large pebbles on the surface. it may be up to about a centimeter in size and was pushed onto the rover. posed no problem for operations. we do move around the differential pit but it can easily go over these are not hit them at all. we do not see any operational constraints but if it is a little unusual that is there. when the team analyzed the landing they did not think it would kick up some of this large. maybe these are lighter material than they expected.

that have nothing to do now so they need a problem to go start working on, so this is something for them to do. the instruments do not seem to be covered by this. we think all of it is in pretty good shape. let's go to the next slide. you can see the bands and that there -- the antenna there and you can see the rim of the crater off in the distance there. we also acquired some color shots of this area and mike will talk about those. >> here i am again. i am wearing a different hat this time. i am principal investigator of the mast camera.

we got a 360-degree panoramic into the sequence from yesterday and we got our thumbnails back. a cold frames are now stored inside the camera and we do have to get those images out of the camera and stored into the member -- into the memory of rover in order to bring them back home. the sol we are now planning is the last one until after the software activity goes through. i am showing you thumbnails. remember when i showed you that thumbnail of the heat shield, and then i faded into the full resolution. that is the kind of difference is expected see between what i will show you now and when we

get the full resolution frames back. this is the full panorama. it is the color as it was transmitted except right now up. it was pretty dark to begin with. you can see the impact site of the rocket plumes across the base of mount sharp. you see the shadow of some of the hardware on the rover itself .reat this gives you a better view of the images we did get. haze shows up greenwell in the color. you can see calliope player there. then we will two-minute in to look at the area that was discussed the last time i was here.

we talked about bedrock and peaking of material. i think we can back out from this and just love you the full they began. you can see the blooms are toned.ght this is a very low resolution image big144 x 144 pixels. it took about an hour and six minutes to make the mosaic. >> we have these big local images and might get a nice job describing them. we are looking forward to the full resolution images.

we can also see the main reason we chose gale as a landing site. if i could have the first light. this is the navcam mosaic. in the upper right you can actually see the main target area where we want to go and why it was chosen. in the background at the top you see these beautiful layered rocks and those layers are what is it recording history in gale crater. the main reason weast chose it is to study those rocks. -- the main reason we chose it to you can see the distance from where we are. it is very exciting to think but it ising theire, quite a ways away. we also want to be able to take

the science that we can do where we landed and integrate that into the mission as well. i have been coordinating with some others 8 massing every you can see the lending unit .utlined in raed we have divided the area up into squares of one of one of. we had volunteers map each quad. mapping the boundaries between those textures. if we do that for geology on earth to mark where the types of rocks are outlined. curiosity and landed in quad 51. it happens to be one that i mapped.

i am sure that was intentional by the navigation team. the science team now has individual labs and we have started integrating them to get the broader picture. also investigating the rocks and craters and patterns are around where curiosity is now. to find --his macro this map to find a path from where related to the main target at the root base of mount sharp, which is south of where we landed. we will drive on the northwest side of the dunes but on the way we will have a lot of interesting geology to look at. the team will be a balancing observations and scientific investigations on our drive but still get to the base of mount sharp. this is what 51 where curiosity

landed and you can tell by looking at this image that we have several different textures of rocks and services in this. the team is focused on the key observations and make that will tell us about the landing site. we will go from those and choose a path to the base of mount sharp, doing the best science that we can along the way. also keeping our eyes on that beautiful layered rock at the base of mount sharp. >> you are hearing about these great results and images coming back in what they mean. i am not here to talk about those but about what we are doing all day in our mission operations to enable getting those results back. my team is the one that does the command sequencing.

it is a challenging issue to actually do the operations. we have a very highly resource constrained vehicle. the amount of power we are getting is basically a little bit more than you need to power a 100-watt light bulb you might have inner hallway at home. we also have to deal with the data volume and make sure we can fit the data we get into our next available opportunity to get data it down through our order real-life. in addition to have to make sure that we can actually achieve what we want within the time that is available to the rover, because it can only do things so quickly and get that ink. in time for that downl

we can only communicate a few times per day and we have to fit those things then. in addition we have to try to manage all the different types of activities with the members of the science and engineering teams. so that we do not point the mast to take images in one direction at the same time we wanted to take engineering photos. our solution to dealing with the challenges of effectively writing a software program every day that has to run the first time when we send it up to the vehicle it will operate on, to tell rover what is going to do over the next day. that involves a combined team of engineers and scientists who are working together over the course of 15 hours. if i can get the graphic, this

is just a brief summary of our process. all of this that is going on is pretty much when the broker is asleep . >> that is why we call it the overnight timeline. we are doing all our work when the broker is not doing much activity -- windwhen the rover s not doing much activity. the data volume will vary from sol to sol. our engineering and science teams are assessing and making

sure it is healthy over the course of a few hours and looking at the result so we can decide what we want to do and what the next steps are for the sol that will follow. that point we end up in a meeting where we address those items and bring the key issues to the fore. that involves about 20 folks at that point. in parallel with all of that, and engineering teams are looking at the activities that need to be constructed into a coherent plan for the next sol. we make sure we are not violating any of the hundreds of constraints. we review that with scientists and engineers and maybe about 40 people and we will be ruthlessly sticking to this time line. after having that plan, we turn

it into command sequences. up to 1000 commands will be executed to govern exactly what the rover is going to do over the next marchand today. then we approve that and uplink it. we have that one time to tell the role for what we wanted to do and get that up there, and then it operates on its own until it can communicate back in the afternoon the results of what has happened. that is the basic cycle that keeps over 100 people busy over that time line and really running a sprint every day to make sure we can beat that mark and keep the vehicle productive

and gathering science. i will turn it over to doug. >> a week ago i sat here and was a tradition you to the system, the module specifically made descent andy's landing. i came back to give an update on how that went and how many people watching and other things we can still do now that we are on the ground. jennifer reported to you yesterday the touchdown time of 10:17. the navigation team gave us a trajectory three weeks ahead of touchdown.

we were 0.6, a second down on the solar system. we are very pleased with that. i want to thank steve collins, one of the control engineers who was in the darkroom during landing. he was gesticulating through the windows to tell us he had a slight tweak and we got it in before the big traffic arrived at about 9:00 in the evening. between saturday and monday we had 973,000 visits to our website. we gave people the amazing experience of riding on board with the spacecraft.

there was an event where hundreds of people were watching from canberra. the oregon museum of science and arts, the museum of arts and sciences in georgia we are going to be replacing the trajectory with a reconstruction at some point in the future. once the team has had a chance. could turn into a reconstructed trajectory and i will let you know when you can actually see the actual series of events. we are about one away from the

actual landing site. i do not know how interesting that this. we will put the new directory and once we have it. there are still things to confined. there are still interesting things. we have people sending us a favorite things. we can cut to the live feed. one of my favorites was this one. it is the doughnut shop. right behind the vehicle carries before separation. you do not need to duck. one guy had a triple wide desktop machine watching all of this landing. i will skip through pitca few of the things you have a look at. -- can have a look at. all six pieces.

the impact site was somewhere around here. touchdown was a little bit off. the actual landing site is not far from here. we can zoom out and show us it did show you how far we were. the real landing point was just about here. we were not too far off. we will bring it up to date when we have that proper location. off it goes.rre there is even more. we pointed in the right direction -- point it in the right direction.

i will fast-forward. the standup takes about a minute. there it is. you can see the two beautiful cameras in there. this does not live in isolation. if we lead -- leave the model, it can see the solar system to the present moment of time. this is where things are right now. you can see curiosity in the landing site right here. your question a few days ago. q confine the tables right here. if the fast-forward through time, you can see as it rotates underneath, you can see the orbits overhead. another one right there. o.ery two hours or sel when you get the sunrise, we can

go into the landing site. we can see the sunrise in the east. all these things are people -- things people can do at home. i will throw it back to run a cup. -- to veronica. >> we will go to questions on the phone line after i start here in the middle. >> two real quick questions. the colors that you are showing us in this, are they natural? >> they are not white balance. we were concerned when we set the exposures to be able to make sure there was something -- if there was something clinton, we did not saturate the detector.

the images were pretty under exposed for a normal photographer. i just write them up. that is what the filter gives you when you look at mars. >> for doug, since he assimilated the flying 3/6 since since you simulated the flying -- >> we have one question up here in the front. then we will go to one on the phone line. then i will come back. >> can you compare what you have got what -- with what you will have. can he give us a sense of how much bigger, in terms of scale, these other images are.

>> the data volume will be 64 times larger. the resolution will be eight times better. these are extremely reduced versions of what we will be getting. in a sense, we originally proposed zoom lenses. i am giving you a slow-motion zoom. eventually, we will use the 100 million needham him -- 100 million meter plans -- 100 millimeter lens. we have not filled in the top and you saw there were gaps in the bottom. those were not in the plan right now. this is the first. we hope we will get many others. we hope at some point they will

be guided by science and not by just taking a random picture. this one had to be planned. this was planned in november of last year. what you see is what i thought. it is completely independent of where of the vehicle is pointing. or anything else. it is a random shot. take a picture, you land, you tribe bought, and you take a picture. it probably does not include everything you want. we hope it goes out of the characterization and activity phase and we can part -- start putting in. >> most of the activity we have executed in this characterization face, we are actually up loaded to the vehicle a couple of months ago. that is partly because we want

to check them out very carefully. make sure they were 100% guaranteed to work. we wanted to check them all out. we had to pre build them before we could know what we were looking at. in addition, and the talk about - we wanted to reduce the workload. want more things rebuilt. these are the activities. we can do more optimal targeting coming up here sort the. >> i can at that in ti think wee a question from the audience that we do have some mosaics

that we were able to move a little bit. they were planned to be moved. we have a place holder position. as we get into the phase we can do that, after the software update, which is critically important to us, as well as running the vehicle, then we will move them around. we hope issued one of those with 100. we have not taken any 100 millimeter cameras in there yet. there are none that were pleased -- pre loaded to the vehicle. >> we are going next to the phone line. go ahead. >> thank you for taking my question. i think it's probably for either mike or don. there are certain features that you are better able to see what the caller as opposed to >> or white.

-- as opposed to black or white. notice that came through with the color shots? >> color and brightness on mars are very closely correlated. i don't see anything personally in the color that i didn't see in the race village. but i am trained. and what to look for. i think the importance of this mosaic at this point is that it can show everybody -- everybody can see the difference is. the discolorations that you see around the rocket plume areas and the color and brightnesses of the rock in mount sharp in the for field, those are real differences. we don't know what the differences are, but they are real differences. the color can discriminate something in the order of a thousand different colors, but only about 60 different grade skills. -- gray scales.

>> for the engineering team come it was easier to see the dust in the color image then in the black and white. >> irish television. these briefings to place just as the news broadcast in europe. could you be specific as to when you think, in perth days, when you think the panel will be available and when you think we might be mount shark in full -- mount sharp in full in birthdays? how higher those cliffs? >> i don't think i can address

all of them. i don't think we will see more than a couple dozen of the full resolution images from this panorama until after the software upload. we're putting commands to -- the idea is that you take pictures with your camera and there in your camera. what do you do with them? you physically take out the card and put that in your computer. i can do that with my camera. [laughter] i have to ask the rover to go get them. and we have only put in a request to do that, something like 24 images, to pull them out of the card. and today is the last the we have to be up linking commands like that. now we get some more back. we are also limited by a band with. the images will be to megabits

2 4 billion bits -- 2 megabits to 4 megabits. that will run into the gigabit and i am not expecting to see many of those come back for quite a while. we don't have the band with, like the seller cable. so there is that issue. -- like dsl or cable. so there is that issue. high above the crater wall, there are two problems. the no. crater wall is actually lower than the -- the northern crater wall is actually lower than the peak of the opposite wall. we're below the height of that wall. but it is only about 2 kilometers higher than where we are right now. >> ok, we will go to the phone next. go ahead. >> question for michael watkins

or anyone else who might answer -- several of the photos that have come down, i see little pixilated versions of the rover. the captions said that they will be used with smart phones. is there an app in the works by jpl and when are you going to release it to? will you attempt to make these open, like google and so forth, so people can add the data? >> i can take that one.

i am not sure the specific timeline for the ar tags. you are probably best putting in a question to my bpo for that. but online, there is already an on-line experience. the be a martian app already in progress. >> in the room, we will go to

the middle. >> reuters. the color panoramic images that you are showing this morning, when were these taken? >> these were taken at 11:00 p.m. last night here. >> what hope checks were run at the same time on the same day -- you said you checked in number of instruments? and what instruments have been checked and are there a number of instruments you should have not checked and have deemed them so far ok and operable and functional? >> everything i listed, the online rce check out, the mazcam and 360 pans. so they have all been checked out. but there are different levels of checking them out. if i turn the circuitry on and

let electricity flow through it, is it basically working? there are some mechanical check- ups. can i move things around inside sam mechanically? that hasn't been done yet. the calibration and the full performance of the science instruments has not been convicted yet. we're starting off slowly here -- has not been tested yet. we're starting off slowly here. we're getting images from mike scammers -- from mike's cameras. there are still loads of instruments to be looked at. >> we have one more caller on the line and then we will come back to the room. we will go to ian o'neil from discovery news. >> i was just wondering about

the debris on the back of curiosity. why wasn't it anticipated that debris that size would be on top of the rover? are there any insurance, vulnerable to it? will there be a follow-up study? -- are there any instruments that are vulnerable to it? will there be a follow-up study? >> it was not predicted could the propulsion folks tried to figure out how much pressure would be on the martian surface. they took a guess at the range of particle sizes. the accumulated that and figured it would not kick things this big. this means that these materials are lighter than expected or the exhaust was stronger than

expected or it it was all closer to the ground than expected. we don't think they have any impact on us right now. there were some potential things that could have landed on the rad instrument detector, for example. there were results is today and it is fine. we don't see anything like that on the deck. some of our other instruments could have been impacted by one of these, but we have not seen any evidence of that yet. in terms of mechanically obstructing any of the things on the rover, there is no problem with that at all. >> on the other question, held last? we won't know. >> this is mark kaufman with "the washington post" and "the national geographic." you say there are about a thousand commands or so what to curiosity.

have there been any anomalies? is this something that is just reading it in a near perfect way? >> i will say that coming in this early set, with some of the things already on board, the command being actually uploaded is a little bit below that. it is representative of really the combination of the things we are uploading and some of the things we have on board. we anticipate we will have something of that order when we are fully in the nominal process, when we don't have any of this pre-built stuff. but we are not having any

trouble getting things on board. we have had some small shakedown issues related to getting in the habit, but we have not had any issues getting our commands on board. >> in the diagram, you showed that both odyssey and mro are being used in terms of transmission. how about the european satellite? is that something that can and will be used to? >> we do have plans, i'm not sure exactly which sol to work with max, but it has not been used to date. >> over here on the aisle. >> the planetary society. for mike, what kind of data rings are you receiving from the rover and when will you be able to ramp up to the two megabits per second? >> we have been up to a few hundred k data rates so far. we started out very low and ramped those up slowly as each of them proves successful. probably, in a week or so, we

will continue to increase those data rates and -- the specific question was adaptive data rate. they can dynamically adjust the data rate. so the link is very strong, opted to megabits per second. as you continue to progress through the data rates, we will probably get to that within a week or two. we are being a little bit cautious here because of flight transition. mike was talking about the backlog of data.

it is important to check out the telecom system fully and get more of the data cleared out of the camera buffers. we're trying to get the data rates up as fast as we can. >> my impression from the images is that this is a much more colorful place then we have ever landed before. is that correct impression? can you speak to what that means scientifically? >> that is my impression as well. but i spent almost no time looking at the navcam. i saw this thing when i came in very early this morning. some of the coloration we are seeing here has to do with the sand dune. you see the dune fields is dark and this camera, it will look sort of bluish. so there is darks and, red dust, and a substrate raw which is tan or light tone of some type. those are the basic elements we have known for mars from telescopic observations. you know, from the 1950's and

1960's and all the way through our recent transmissions. it can also be a factor texture, as we found in the murder sites -- in the mir sites. certainly, nothing you could see optically different. the way sand and dust is trapped by a surface will also change their color. i cannot say if they are more color for more diverse than the others just on the basis of the photography. i would expect we will see lots of patterns from that. >> if i could add something to that -- we have been looking at the high-rise and mapping. when you start looking in detail, there are a lot of variations in the texture. one of the things we will be working on is mapping these images that we see, in particular the monty descent images, onto the high rise once to really try to see what that diversity is.

we are very excited that there are a lot of things to look at. as mike said, we don't know that they are the same or different compositions. but they certainly have different textures and we're hoping the color can help as a guide us to some variations as well. >> "florida today" and "usa today." i'm hoping you can tell us what you will be doing within the next 24 hours. it sounds like you'll start the software upgrade. i was wondering how long that takes and whether you think you can do anything else during that upgrade or if that is just

what you have planned. >> on cell 5, those after transition were devoted after that flight software activity and not to science. the reason is that we have two computers. when you think about opening your own software, it is down for a little bit. there are some backup copies and delivered into one and loaded on to another and very 5 -- and verify each of those steps. then there is a part where you're stuck between the old software and the new part. we don't want to start new complex activities in the middle of that. so week -- so we will be back to science activities after sol 9. >> i certainly hope he does better than i have done on my machines. [laughter] >> ok, we will go appear. quickly. we have five more minutes. >> just to clarify what an earth day cell 5 is.

>> it starts on saturday. >> ok, in the front of the room. again, we have about five minutes left to get a couple of questions in. >> bbc. in your quads, you should a son the navcam panorama where you want to head to. can you show us which squad that is? >> it is not in any of the quad we have mapped.

actually, it is. it is about 120, 121, 134, 135. so down towards the bottom is the area that i was pointing to in the navcam. >> the second part of my question is has there been any conversation in the science team about using the -- or has there been too much contamination? >> there has been a lot of discussion and eagerness to know what the composition of the rocks are end user laser. [laughter] -- and to use our laser. [laughter] >> in mapping this area with the orbital imagery that to have available, does it look like what you expect it to? a few rocks, wide deposit, whatever? >> >> almost none of the rocks we can see in the foreground are visible from the orbiter

images. so this area we identified as being smooth and we sort of have a number of units. this is one that, in compiling the map, it is difficult to interpret what it was. so the images have given us our first sense of what this terrain is like. and we are now discussing what it means in the broader context, ways that it might have formed, how we can -- what observations we can make to understand how it formed. >> any more questions here in the room? all right. that will be it for today. i want to remind everyone that we will be back tomorrow at

10:00 a.m. pacific time. we will have a longer format press conference at that time. we will have our daily updates. we will also have the anti- descent-lending -- the entry/descent/landing team in. broadcasters, please stand by for the replay of images. >> and to let you know some of our prime-time programming, a look at foreign policy from a recent gathering at the aspen institute. >> you can watch that briefing live here on c-span and on our website. >> tonight on c-span, from the aspen security forum, discussion about the war in iraq and confusion between afghanistan and pakistan.

>> this weekend on book tv's afterwards. >> two guys in their dorm room cracked the code and it all falls into place and we end up with facebook. you do not see them all laying on the side of the road, not having achieved success. >> in unattended consequences, former bain capital partner edward looks at the economy and explains how lower tax rates leads to investment and economic growth. saturday night, at 10:00 eastern, book tv, on c-span to. -- c-span 2. this discussion is moderated by kimberly dozier. it is an hour and 20 minutes.

this discussion is moderated by kimberly dozier. it is an hour and 20 minutes. >> needless to say, the long war in iraq has ended at an enormous cost of lives and treasure. we're looking back at the iraq war. we have assembled a superb panel to look back and consider the implications of the iraq war. i cannot think of a better moderator than kimberly dozier. she is an associated press reporter for intelligence and counterterrorism. she covered national security for pbs news in washington from 2007-2010. in her 14 years overseas, she covered -- at least in europe

-- the bbc. she was wounded in a famous car bombing in iraq in 2006. her memoir recounts her attack and recovery. she was very gracious to donate proceeds to a charity. please welcome me in welcoming her. [applause] >> thank you. i appreciate that many people have come back to sit down for the panel in the middle of the afternoon. we have a great group of people here. three of them were last minute additions. the ambassadors have all had to drop out of last minute engagements. i will introduce the panel in

chronological order. we have stephen cambone at the far end. he was twice nominated by president bush. he was the first undersecretary of defense for intelligence. second, we have john negroponte. he was the first ambassador to iraq. he was the first director of intelligence under president bush. third, we have christpher hill. he was ambassador to iraq from 2009-2010. he is now at a university for the school of studies. we also have james jeffrey. he served 2010-2010. now that i have everyone established, i want to give the panel a chance to look back and get some things on their records that you may not have

heard before in the conversations over last couple of days. it is a chance to look ahead and ask how post-war iraq is playing a role from serving as a possible al qaeda is safe haven to set a more positive examples as a working democracy in a sea of conflicted areas. i will kick off with 15 minutes talking about the history and how we got into the war. the intelligence was cited as one of the reasons for invading. bringing in so few troops. the dismantling of the iraqi army who knew how to build bombs and had nothing to do but attacked u.s. troops. also, why was the insurgency ignored for so long in washington? tough questions.

we were talking about intelligence. what was the main reason we got into iraq? tell us what you think in retrospect in our how we reacted? >> he was a source coming out of iraq who had been debriefed some time prior to the outbreak of the war. he claims he had firsthand knowledge of some programs in iraq. there is a great discussion about his the briefing. there are other people in the audience who are probably knowledgeable about the specific details of his debrief. a short answer to your question, i do not think it was the decision or the intelligence turned on him. he was found to be a fabricator and his information was upset

and a proven to be false. i do not think he turned on that. i think it turned primarily on that evidence. it turned on the circumstances in which we found ourselves in at the time. proliferation was an ongoing concern. behavior of assad's regime at the time was forgotten. their military operations in both northern and southern iraq. there were constant provocations in that no fly zone. since that war and amid

aftermath, that is the first thing hussein did. there was evidence that led one to believe that it was reasonable to propose up there were weapons of mass destruction in that country. i think he turned to be the eyes on that led everyone to

conclude what we thought we knew to be probably right. >> a mistake to draw that conclusion? >> that is a more difficult thing to say. the conclusion was mistaken. to draw the conclusion was not a mistake. in that end -- again, there are enough people who understand this -- you only know what to know at the time and then you have to fill in their rest. at the time, the judgment that they did drop it probably was.

was it accurate? no. >> i knew several teams that came ahead of that invasion force. they dropped into the site. they thought their dropping in on to a nuclear-weapons site. they found a sort of facility -- it looked like a facility from the air. was it meant to scare the regional countries? >> i do not know. charlie did a second look at the program inside iraq. he drew the conclusion that it could have been a real program had the intended it to be a real program. they were not there. some of you remember the iraq server group. i did believe that we would find weapons of destruction. we took it quite seriously. we sent people across in full mock gear expecting to engage. this was not the kind of a trumped up notion that there were capabilities. there was the belief that there was.

we conducted ourselves accordingly. >> you were part of some of the discussions in the war. care to share any of those with us? >> i would like to take a wider aperture of it. i think it was part of the issue and the interpretation of the intelligence. we had censers turned up in the wake of 9/11. we listened to a lot of different things. the question was how to interpret the things you're listening to. i think it was a decision based on a broader concept. in this critical country, he had a reputation for murdering people en masse. anyone has been to iraq could see that. i went to a place where he used the gas. this is a real compelling reason why been you want to go

after this guy. also in the wake of 9/11, if you cannot let people like that stay out there. the real issue i think ultimately -- i think you can ask a question from that perspective, was it the right thing to do? when you are there and you look at some of these heinous operations that saddam hussein had, you have a sense that we're doing the right thing. maybe some things went awry, but it was the right thing to do. the current mood in our country when we look at these kinds of things now, my god, what possessed us to do this?

you have to be careful about pessimism. you have to remember what the mood was at that time. saddam hussein was a person who i think arguably was a man you had to take off the board. >> he also took our attention away from afghanistan. he also took a number of troops and resources from us. >> i can understand that argument. people involved in that discussion can talk about that. what happens in iraq and our policies going forth -- right now, we have a dicey situation. sunni arab states want to reinstate sunni rule. this is really the issue. we jumped into it. we have a responsibility to stay engaged.

the do nothing that involves people to be negotiating with shiks. it is up to diplomats to do that. >> we decided to invade. the number of troops we chose -- the plan -- does the u.s. just not know how to occupy a place? >> it turned truned out to be a notorious enough state to cause a revamping a reform of our intelligence. you take the intelligence given and then have the issue of whether we have enough forces. two of us are veterans of the vietnam, but in one form or another.

we made a huge misjudgment in terms of how long it would take. i remember he was answering one question from a deputy ambassador there. how many troops do you need to clean up? he said one batillion could clean up the place in three weeks. we sometimes subject ourselves to wishful thinking. i think that is exactly what happened in iraq. there may have been some errors. when i got there in june 2004, it was clear to me that the term reconstruction and we had $17 billion fund was a misnomer.

it was all for water, irrigation, electricity, and what have you. i had to recommend to washington that we recommend billions of dollars for rebuilding the iraqi police and military forces. i see this pattern from vietnam through to iraq and afghanistan. we never early enough got committed to the idea of building local capacity.

it always came too late. as a result, it costs us casualty's and lives. it prolonged the time the day we would be able to exit. >> i do not disagree with you at all, but on the issue of how many troops were committed and when, there is a part of the story that is not well-known. the plan did call for another division to come in through turkey from the north and to come down to baghdad. that division did not come in until much later. had it come in earlier, the 173rd would not have suffered. he would have come in with the rest of the force. it is my belief that the political situation as a result would have been profoundly different. we would not have been -- in the aftermath in 2003, things

wouldn't change in the circumstances. we failed to get approval of the turks to move the forces through. we could not get there. for whatever reason, the turks were not cooperating. that happened prior to the upper possibility. as we go through and think about lessons, it is important that all of the parts be aligned and understand risks. >> he called for more troops than just one division.

>> that is fair enough. the aftermath and that were two different circumstances. you want to poke on the plan. where was a miscalculation? it was on the troops coming in from the north. how long it would take to take saddam out of the picture. right? in the end, they did that mesh. but does that mean there wasn't a plan. >> looks talk about reaction times on the ground. if find out things on the ground. the iraqis are not reacting as what we expected. you all, especially three of you sent reports back to d.c. several times, what was your response when it will people in the pentagon, we are seeing an

insurgency? we are seeing signs but they are running? >> we fairly early saw that we were faced with a lot of violence and we did not have control of the famous airport and the embassy in the green zone. we were not focused on what we later came to focus on, which was protecting the population. the answer was to stand up there iraqi army. funding the police and armed

forces in direct programs. we were passing that information on to washington. the solution was to stand up the iraqi army and they will be able to use to cover the job. the problem is that the iraqi army was not able to stand up. >> in the meantime, the insurgency established itself. >> it was a sunni insurgency. why was it a sunni insurgency? it was sort of we were accepting the notion of democracy with shiia rule. the institution was to keep

sunni in place -- we went after. >> i agree with him. i will take it one step further. we're very focused on what we're doing in there. we took out some and we wanted to leave the country into the hands of its population. 80% was non-sunni. these guys would be out of power. it was likely they would react violently. >> this is a a sort of an agonizing discussion. let me try to put it into three sentences. instead of the successful invasion with the correct result and installing painlessly a new iraqi government, we found -- they said we had to go through a one-year occupation, billions of dollars in building up their police and armed forces, a secular war, and

several elections. wherey, i think we're at we would like to have been in the spring or summer of 2003. it is an illustration of how things can take years longer than when you plan it. >> counterinsurgency takes about a decade. the painful part in some of the steps that we missed along the way. i still have to ask -- at the time, i talked to generals and officers whose careers suffered because they stood up and said

before it was acceptable to say, there is an insurgency building. i have to ask, what was happening was some of these reports that can back to the pentagon? cracks in their taken with a great deal of seriousness. i do not know about which people said their careers suffered because they said so. as i recall, the circumstances at the time were march- september of 2003, there was a good deal of uncertainty as to how all this would shake itself out. i was there with a delegation. chuck was there as well. the circumstances at the time did not lend themselves. you get to the hull. the question then becomes, what was the implication of it being an insurgency. you just went through john's description. there was a center of gravity that was the insurgency in the

fall of 2003. by the time you get to the turn of the year in 2004, it is becoming clearer. by the time to move into the 2004 time frame, that is where we are. these things do not turn around on a dime. the conversion of the force -- and i remember that vividly the starts in august of 2003. the secretary said, why are people still inside their armored vehicles? why are they not in the ground patrolling the streets and taking care of the violence? with that began the evolution of the military side of the action of what was taking place. it was a vivid conversation. >> he was saying we needed a counterinsurgency on the ground? >> by the august of 2003. it is clear this thing was

turning in a direction that was not anticipated or planned for in the detail that it was by the time it got to 2004. >> let's go to the next pivot. the next big pivot was 2006. you have an underground fight -- al qaeda trying to trigger

sunni and shiite disputes. the two were fighting over government. we were trying to arbitrate that very well. none of the bombing of the shiite shrine. the decision of general casey at the time to have troops on base and let the iraqi try to handle the unrest -- i remember what happened over the next month. the shiite death squads started going out and seeking revenge. literally 100 bodies per day

started showing up in the streets. this was really horrific stuff. is that something we should have prevented? anyone can jump in. >> i would say yes. >> how so? >> we did have a lot of troops there. we were well over 150,000 troops. that is not too far down for more we were. did the troops have been permission to go out and secure the population. during my time there and working in washington in iraq in 2005 through 2006 and late 2007 until the surgeon's fee ended, i did not see that clear mission to protect the population. >> yet there was argument being made by general casey at the

time by the iraqis that i spoke to, get out of our state. get off of our streets. that was driving their decision making. at what point does having u.s. patrol on the street trigger more violence? what do you think about that argument? >> i was back in washington at the time. i recall not so much what the marching orders of our military was as much as the despair or the sense of despair that was felt in washington from the president and on down in terms of this violence. the whole project, the whole

effort was going down the drain. that is when he commissioned a small group of people led by his security adviser to come up to come up and spend several months -- some people in this rumor involved in parts of that effort -- to think about what we could do next to try to salvage the situation. that is when the idea of a surge was conjured up. even then i do not think it had much support. the analysts, many of the analysts were extremely pessimistic. they felt there was hardly anything we could do about the situation. >> i would like to say, i agree with a gem -- we should have and could have done more on the street.

i would also say that it was a political issue that we did not understand. the american public was privy to a lot of statements that these were just like not see dead-anders in bavaria. this was a sectarian problem. we were slow to catch on to that. we were slow to try to forge a government that involve everybody, that involves all of the entities. that said, i think the shia were in a mood for revenge against the sunnis. i think it is a difficult undertaking to ask americans to do that. i was in iraq when the u.s. military pulled out the cities and towns when they pulled out on june 30.

i remember -- for the iraqi people. then he continued in said with h all great people, it would come with costs. as he completed his speech came to understand what he was talking about, which is everyone wants to see returned iraqi sovereignty, but everyone knew that the report -- iraqi army he was getting the population ready for those problems. understanding that have to endure that if they are going to regain sovereignty. i remember thinking this issue of sovereignty is a huge for iraqis.

theact that we try this one year occupation that john suggests, probably as we look back and we are looking at somehow in the wrong way of thinking of the place. >> there to insurgencies and never quite different. is anyone of al qaeda coming in on top of it -- the sunni one. some of it was supported at various times by iran but much of it was basically bubbling up from below. whenever you go in a country, regardless of how good your motives or how important and necessary, you will generate very violent reactions. that will be stronger if you are out on the street growing wate bottles that people. this is the history of iraq,

turkey, and any other country. he saw that this was a way to build up his own political capital because that had resonance among the population. >> let's talk about the search. prior to the serbs, there was the year of concentrated intelligence led special operations actions against al qaeda and a lot of actors got taken off the stage and then the surge came in. do you think it worked, or was it the special operations actions before that? what do you think turn things around? >> no military operations were

received without their having been some amount of preparation going forward. the work that was done by general casey and others during that year was significant. the arab awakening was terribly important. that had been underway for some time. those folks only figured out that this al qaeda tng was not working for them and that they would be better off coming to terms, at least with the u.s. military, the remains of reconciliation. the strike you are talking about certainly did have a way of setting the conditions on which the surge forces fail in 2006 and 2007. my view is that they gave the final push to allow the things

that the exhaustion that had begun to overtake the parties, and allow them to back up and renvene and come to terms with one another in the face of what was a significant strategic and political decision by the president to say we are going to do the search. he was the principal supporter, there is no question about it. and he drove that. in my view, that was a courageous but essential strategic decision that played itself out. he took that decision and push it forward. >> use salt the end of the surge and saw the benefits oit didn't work when your there? >> it clearly worked, but i would be careful how you define surge.

you have to this aggregated. we have to be careful that when we are in some messy situation we say we need a surge like it is something that will fix every problem. it does not, and in the case of iraq, and i am pleased to talk about general casey's role before this was known as the surge, there was a lot of work with the indy -- withi the sunni community. money was used as a weapon of war. if they don't stop shooting at us, i willot give this money. these were initiatives done by 22-year-old americans. one has to be careful about

talking about these cosmic issues about surge when what we are finding is our well-trained troops were learning lessons on the ground and how to apply them. finally, leakey said i have had enough of tse shia groups in basrama. liki when in their -- maliki was then over his head. he was in trouble,ut good thing we were there. he took a tough decision and created all kinds of problems, so mucso that he had trouble putting together a coalition because he participated in a key way in the search.

-- in the surge. there is a lot more going on and i would be careful about using it as a solution for other problems in other countries. >> it seems to me that it is the surge plus the fact that you do have an iraqi government that is starting to evolve into a credible political entity, both through building up its security forces and having gone through a process of a couple of elections and the prime minister hints of demonstrating that he has a quite impressive political durability. >> let me jump in. we have been a little bit unfair

on that issue andt is a subject i discussed with president bush several times when i was deputy secretary of state. ideally, in vietnam, afghanistan, in iraq, we would like to have a residual force in the country. kind of obvious things you could do that are forced multipliers for the local forces. that is what we wanted it iraq. mr. maliki said no, he did not want a single u.s. troops left behind. george bush had a different view. do i run a risk of democrats winning the next election and just deciding we are going to withdraw from iraq immediately. what he decided, he chose what think he considered to be the lesser of two evils. the status of forces agreement

that provided for complete thdrawal but by day that was far enough along so that at least the the withdrawal would be orderly. it is not right to suggest it is this administration that did not succeed in arranging for residual force to stay behind. george bush is the man who agreed to that. let's be honest. >> but we did plan to have up to 5000 troops on the ground continued to work with iraqi forces keeping iraq stable. your they are trying to negotiate. >> parof the deal was weould withdraw our troops and in the context of 2008, it was a big issue. the iraqis wanted to see their sovereignty manifest in the streets and in the basements.

what changed between 2008 and 2011, first of all, the iraqis could see we were wrong to live up to our commitments. after we pulled out of the 2010, one tweak the obama administration made on the 2008 agreement was to end a combat mission, because by and large all the fighting was being done by the iraqis. they could s we were on a path to pull essentially all of our combat troops out. then the question was, it is not such a big thing if we still have some american troops left. they were engaged in many military and intelligence operations and activities and it was of interest to them to keep some kind of american security presence because of the residual prep from al qaeda.

maliki was interested in this as was the obama administration. i would need all the other political parties to support me. between the time we laid out the plan in detail. what they disagree on was giving the americans legal immunity which is the key ingredient. we cannot put troops overseas witht those kind of legal

amenities. they said we are happy to give e the troops did we could not swear that, so at the end of the day we decided we would go more traditional approach as we had done in saudi arabia and other countries, without forces on the ground but rather a large security assistance office and a large diplomatic and intelligence sharing to do most of the training and counter- terrorism operations. that is how that rolled out. >> it has been posited that the obama administration planned this, that they sabotaged it. >> i talked to president obama twice and vice-president biden innumerable times and they very much wanted to have a residual force, a presence of american troops during training, counter-

terrorism and other such activities. the reason is they could see that this was a success. this was something that unexpectedly came out of the blue and was something that made america and their administration and the last administration look good. >> i had the same conversation with vice president biden and president obama. they did want to make it a success. >> so the war is over, let's get to some of the aftermath questions. starting with al qaeda. the most recent u.s. intelligence estimates that have, at the al qaeda presence around the saw -- around one of the largest ranches -- branches, large and dangerous. over the weekend al qaeda talk

about reviving the organization to full strength in iraq. we have seen a rash of calculated, coordinated, sophisticated bombings. have you produce something that is going to be with us for some time? >> al qaeda was huge back in 2005-2007. subsequently it dropped and dropped to a patte that was manifest when i arrived in august 2010. there was a world series a -- of attacks around the country right after i aived. since that time, ty are under continuing pressure from our special operations and intelligence and iraqi forces who are quite good in counter- terrorism. the tax dropped further, but still, about once a month he would get a series of attks throughout the country.

people thought they solis bike back in 2012. we looked at carefully and it was not much of a spike. nothing very surprising compared to 2010, alone 2008 or 2006, but it is something you have to watch. the political brand of al qaeda has literally 0 support in the polling in iraq. for criminal activities that have a base in the only place where the operate a limited impunity. apart from that they have a skilled capability of infiltrating suicide bombers and explosives throughout the country and the will continue to have that. the political impact of that right now is not very high. once before it was able to expand.

>> they are not holding territory. we are not seeing fallujah goal under al qaeda command. it is a different situation. it does reflect what is going on in the region. probably some countries that were more helpful in terms of combating flows probably have other priorities right now. to some extent it is one of those externalities' of the arab spring or whatever we are calling in. it is pretty clear that with america ne, or the perception that somehow the with our troops gone, there is a sense among some people, including the extreme radical sunni, that somehow the country is once again up for grabs.

>> when you look back that and think the invasion was about making it the u.s. state for, yet you have a large al qda presence that could present a transnational brett. we'll get to the next question about the positive and negative. >> i think chris gave you a fairly reasonable answer as to why those things occur. they were not eradicated in the intervening time. there were people who survived. others have infiltrated back then. is it possible now for recruits to be drawn from that population to other places? yes. so is there a continuing underlying turmoil in the region? yes. it really points to the need

for the united states to make plainer its intention with respect to the security of the region, its determination to stay a critical member of sustaining security in the region, to do it visibly, but not in a way that is going to result in the reactions that one gets when one overplays the hand. the lesson learned is one of those. the administration has done a number of those kinds of things. the talk about the deployment of patriot missiles, reorganization of the fifth fleet. a number of those things have taken place as they have been trying to send the message that while there is not a large u.s. military psence inside iraq, at the u. has not lost interest in the region and wl continue to play a leading role

in the security of that part of the world. let's let me bri it back to the final question that we talked about earlier, before we open it up to the floor. we lost 4500 american troops. a new study says we lost 17 other actors. what did we learn? who wants to start? they were much more talkative earlier today. >> first of all, we learned th we can succeed. iraq is a success today. it was a very difficult success. it is very precarious. ery morning, the first thing i'd do is click on the iraq news to see if i have to modify

wh i say because it is still precarious. you have interference by the sunni arab states and a great deal of activity in the north, but not just there. sitting on top of an embassy of 16,000 people and $6 billion, it is a success, but a very limited success. these things are very hard. they have a huge, typically negative impact on the population. some of what we see in libya and syria has to be a reaction to the negative reaction of the american people at various tim to what we are doing or not doing in iraq. this has come up on almost

every panel, the idea whether it is counter-terrorism or drones, and the long run and has to be the political and economic and nation-building and all that. we put he amounts of money into that. we had to double down on the budget at different times. it is very hard to do long-term nation-building and reconciliation of bitterly opposed political forces. if that is the exit strategy for american troops, we will have a lot of trouble. i will leave it that. >> in invading iraq, we took on the toughest problem areas in the region. after all, it is where the persian world needs the arab world, wary theshia world meets the sunni world.

i cannot think of a tougher place. don't just do it on adrenaline. do your homework. i feel that we should have done an awful lot more homework. when you look at a dictator, the first question should not be how do we get rid of him. the first question should be how did he get there? once you pick your york -- once you figure out how a person like saddam got there, that helps you figure out how to get rid of them. iran had to be red by some combination of those three communities. that has to be held it works. i don't think we really understood where the line redo the fault lines of that society really work did dictatorship and

democracy was something we understood. we were right to rectify tt. but the sunni-shia fault line has been there for about a thousand years. it was a very hard thing. i agree with jim that is going in the right direction. i would put myself on the glass half full side. i hope president bush will -- will take a lot of grief for the restf history about the great -- invasion of iraq, but he did have the guts to take on the problem. i hope it can stay with it. i hope the obama administration will stay with it. we do have the world's largest embassy. we have peruvian guards there still.

are there.rdner's it is a very unusual situation. at this point, i think we have to stay engaged on it. >> i agree with everything and has been said, particularly with the idea of staying involved. we neeto encourage our other arab friends to be supportive of iraq. i know we have been doing that, but it is really critical. it is one of the most critical diplomatic elements in the whole situation. when we when then, iraq was really isolatedrom its arab neighborhood. that has started to get better. as we watch the situation politically going forward in

providing we stand ball, we can influence their internal politics, not to the same degree as if you had 100,000 troops there, but through a over interest levels of support, we can still influence political moderation inside iraq. the key thing to watch, apart from the evolution of their electoral process and political parties and so forth, is whher there are forces and their police can become truly national institutions. that is the real metric. can they become national institutions, or is the army going to become some kind of shia militia, which is what we want to avoid at all costs. >> let me give you what i think is actually a bright light in this. i think the decision to invade

iraq will historically proved to be one of the great historic decisions of the first half of the 21st century, if not the greatest. it will prove to be the greatest if we see this through. it will be one of the greatest strategic victories in the united states because if we can take and make it a success in iraq, if we take what considered to be some of the aftershocks that you s floating through the region, whether in libya or egypt or not in syria, and after syria, lebanon and in jordan. after that, saudi arabia. this place is in motion in a way that it has not been for a century. we have an opportunity to shape that and it comes directly as a result of having invaded iraq. the decision was taken and now the opportunity in front of us

is enormous to see it through all the way to the end. i think history will prove that it was a success. >> a provocative way to on it to questions from the audience. front and center. i was giving you the challenge to get the microphone there. >> until last ask this question, steve was a friend and colleague. if each of you would be willing to answer this question. if saddam and his sons were still in power, how would that have affected us through the last decade and the arab world?

>> counterfactual history -- i think my answer comes from what i said a moment ago. i think we would have seen the place still locked in a stasis that would have been relieved coli by the natural passing of the various dictators in the region. what has happened is there has been enormous acceleration of change as a result. i think we would have seen the place still locked down and it would not have been good for us. that was not a good situation for the united states. >> it is too big a question to answer in detail, -- one thing

we have not focused on a lot. for most of the iraqi people, that would have been a far worse scenario, despite us going in and allows the infrastructure and all of the problems. they did not get much electricity or any other services before then. >> i wish we had the iraqi ambassador here. >> we would have had a civil war in 2012. i think the kurds would have been out of there by now. it really started with the no- flzone. it did not start in 2003. it started a decade before. some people argue it already has 1 foot out the door. it said on hussain was left in

charge it would have had two the out the door. i think that is the one big difference. i think it would not have put up with them much longer. i think there would have been a bloody civil war. >> i think everything has been said. >> another question. >> for the purposes of provocation, i sharpen the question and ask in a way i think only so far doctor cambone has answered. i will say said dom hussein was a bad guy and the government is better for iraqis and american interest. with the full benefit of hindsight, if you walk in and

somebody offered to sell you the change for closer to $2 billion than $1 billion and the strains on the u.s. military forces, the destruction of their ron's principal regional ally, and so on, would you lay your credit card down? would you do it again? >> i am sorry. who pays the credit card? my view is it was worth it to the iraqis. a point of view of the united states that is a different questions. >> do you think it is worth it? >> i think i will keep that up. i am not interested in sharing my opinion on whether it was

worth it. i think steve points to some of the opportunities ahead. if this country starts producing 6 million 7 million barrels of oil a day and it has a more western orientation than they used to have, before it was this big friend at the time from the outside powers was russia if i remember correctly. where will i did you? in that sense, a lot might not have been otherwise. before the invasion we were administering that the oil and food program. that was our relationship. >> church hill was asked that

question. would you live your life over again knowing what you know now. he said if i did not, it would not have the my life. you do not get a chance to know the outcome before you start. when you say knowing what you know now, would you do now what you did then -- it begins to sob -- it begins to sound like a country song. you cannot. yes, i would accept that as a question. given what we knew at the time and what we thought we knew at the tim the circumstances under which the decisions were taken, i think they are justifiable and defensible, they will turn out to have been one of the great strategic decisions of the 21st century. if we follow through, it will be a strategic victory for the united states, not just for the people of iraq.

>> having spent three years they're trying to push it in the right direction, we should be very careful about going into a country and deciding we are going to get rid of one politica system and introduce a new one. i do not think we had a good idea of what the new one was. we were inventing that as we went along. we kept trying. then we tried something different. it did work out. steve is right. as i said, it is very contingent. it may not in the end work out. we have a very little despite the efforts we continue to put into it, we have very little control compared to all of the other actors there whether it will work out. i would say this is a cautionary lesson about that, even if it works out well. if it does not work out well, you know the answer to the question. >> you are asking the cosmic

question. below that as to how to do these kinds of things, if you find yourself again in these situations, i think we may be relearned a number of questions of history. patience, be careful -- look before you leap. nation-building is not easy to do. for me the biggest lesson in that category really is, right from the beginning you have to work on building up local capacity. i remember in vietnam, the general wanted us to do all the fighting. he avoided the question for four years. by then we had sacked the political will of the american people and enthusiast -- enthusiasm for the enterprise. think about it when you start

talking about these ventures. >> one of the great ironies of the way the war unfolded, speaking from the perspective of listening to defense and the arguments he and doug and others made. the desire was to rely more on local capacity. to build up the force sooner. not to engage an occupation. some of you heard the secretary's speech about the bone. you break your bones and the putting in a splint and does not heal and all the rest. he was desirous not so much trying to do this on the cheap, which is frequently the criticism. he was looking to do it in a way that would have aligned such that the amount of time the united states remained deeply engaged was foreshortened by the speed in which local capacity could be brought up. that is fair to say that

training that was supposed to have taken place, the electric grid being stood back up, the water being restored. many of those things went badly. there is no question about that. to the point, had we if -- had we thought about those things, the answer is yes. did they go well, the answer is no. is there culpability to be found for the reasons it did not go well, probably. we can die in their and separate why some of these things did not work. -- dive and there and figure out why things did not work. >> you just thought it would be easier. >> not easier. it was not that it was easy. i do not think anybody thought it would be easy. everybody thought it would be hard. must remember e secretary had a memo where he went through all the things that would go wrong.

it was not a case othinking it would be easy. is just in the doing of it, it did not get done in the way that people had intended for it to be done, which goes then to the point which, things do not usually go according to plan. >> i did have some follow-ups, but i want to get a couple of questions from the audience. >> lesson learned for the future to be applied before we consider invading luxembourg, red team, push back. there is a formula of at least 10 issues that could be applied before youake the decision to go or not go. they are pretty much the obvious ones. i wonder whether they had been applied, water over the dam and iraq.

at least for the future, considered 10 of these things which is a one size fits all matrix. good manners apply to the neighbors, that would be the turks. and whether they would allow us to bring the armored division and. it time, blood, money, preserving the institutions, a political vacuum, you s domestic political reaction, and, finally, the regional partrship if we get into a country. it just seems those might be the elementary things. i wonder whether or not there is any institutional read team push back that can be applied to future activities. a way to avoid what we have had in iraq. >> the ceo -- the cia identified how it looked at the process with the osama bin laden great to interrogate what intelligence they had before

they decided to go with that. wa there a similar process that the dod -- d you take away a lesson learned? >> that list of things was reviewed and thought about. you know, it is usually said there was nplan for after the combat operaon. my sense is, it is not that there was not a plan, am not sure the plans consolidated in a way that they might have that first. second, i think the list i made mention to just a moment ago had that and about 27 other things of issues one needs to think about an undertaking those things. should there be some institutional basis for doing it? yes. exercises were done. rehearsals were gone through. people thought about these things.

war starts its own dynamic. once that dynamic begins, it is all about managing it. that falls to the three gentlemen hereith the ambassadors on the ground in the country and the head of the military operation in the country. they have to manage the dynamic once it is let loose. >> i want to get one more question from the audience. let's see. rounddo the lightning thing. >> i will be very brief. ambassador held. my name is bob myers. i have a question as to whether those powers that decided to nvade a rock band -- iraq new that 80% of sunni and shiites

mary their cousins. you create a lot of antagonists. >>hat is an interesting question. one from over here. >> i am very interested in dr. hill's comments about learning and how you take expernce and whether we could have done more of it here, i will use the small example. the leadership of the army going into this had spent years in the former yugoslavia to what amounted to occupation operations. there are relevant lessons there. others had just spent years. he got fired for suggesting it would take a much more significant force to do it. i use th small example to ask why d how at the top level can we look more accurately at e

recent past and carry these lessons forward beforeoing in these types of directions? >> had we thought about the sunni family structure? >> i cannot say -- may be others can comment on whether we knew at intermarriage and first cousins, at the end of the gulf war, it is often understood in the united states we did not march on baghdad because the coalition would have broken up. we always understood that the reason the coalition would have broken up is that our allies would not accept the idea of us going into still another country. it is one thing to liberate kuwait andarch into iraq. it might have been worthwhile to have another look at why the south says -- saudis did not

want us to overthrow a sunni regime. if we had thought about why they would not want us to do that, it would become a shiite regime. they would not believe us if we said it will be a coalition. everybody wl live together. that is what was going on. it is wanting to kick this guy out of kuwait. it is another thing to flip iraq to being a shiite country. that is something we should have given me thought to. now that we have been attacked and 9/11 we will finish it. th was a serious failure of concept on our part. >> if i could answer this and to some degree get back to the question posed here. the most important thing i think despite all the things i have said that we've heard is steve cambone sang this will be

a game changer. the question i got was that the decision in the bush administration was larly, if we succeed in a rock band creating a democratic government, this will be a game changer. we have to do this. history has not had its final decision. it is quite possible, and it really would be an important step. it is quite possible it will not after a tremendous cost. had we gone to the american people and said, do you feel lucky today? let's roll the dice. this may involve a decade and tying up our diplomatic bandwidth. this may involve $1 trillion. maybe it will work and maybe it will not. what do you think? that is what this other stuff would have produced. this was n like going into kuwait in 1991. that required a lot of effort

but the outcome was clear to see. there was nothing to, -- there was nothing clear to see about this outcome. we have dealt more less with all of it. i would just leave it with, if you decide this will be a game changer, then you basically have to roll the dice. the question is, how do you bring the american people and on it? >> a yet we still have the divide their and the al qaeda presence that kicked off the civil war once before. >> but you have a government functioning. you have in its own way -- i remember being there in 2004 and all the parti being around the table. this was a collection of people if they were on the street would have been picked up and put into tention. there were all sitting there talking to one another. they knew about one another and what they were doing. do we givehem the kind of support and how that will take to get there. that leaves me to respond about additional forces.

the approach that was and the secretary's mind. a short period of time in which the united states is the occupying power, by a period of three to four he years during which the united states is the occupying powers, which of those would one want to choose? one of the things one wants to think about is you are finding your campaign -- how do you want to manage the outcome? from the point of view of the department, a three or four year occupation was not the choice one wanted to plan against. we ended up over a longer period of time in combat operations that we wanted is true. as a strategic planning factor,

do you want to plan for a four year occupation or do you want to plan the thing in a way you can minimize the time of occupation, speed up periods of time in which the local people are able to take over the functions necessary to run the country, and then move into the kind of position we talked about earlier, which is suort and security and as other types of things. at is the interesti question to take away from our experience. >> any final thoughts? >> tbd. i do not think we can make the historical judgment at this point. our views will be influenced by the developments over the next decade or so. >> i want to thank you for taking part in this panel. you answered some tough questions. [applause] we have all lost friends in iraq. i think one of the important

things is to take the emotion out of the debatand answer host: caller[captioning performy national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> and the next session of the aspen security forum looked at the war on afghan at -- in afghanistan and its effect on pakistan. afghanistan and pakistan's ambassadors to the u.s. participate, as well as president obama's advisor for the region. steve croft. >> during the course of the last session we took a look back and lookwe will do likewise with red

to afghanistan and pakistan as well. i cannot think of anyone better to lead the discussion then steve kroft. steve kroft has been a correspondent for 60 minutes for a 23 years. 60 minutes we all know is the most watched news program on television. his story on insider trading in congress drove the recent passage of the stock act. he is the only 60 minutes correspondent to when two peabody awards in the same year bringing his total number of television's most prestigious award to five. one was for a story on the vulnerabilities of infrastructure to computer hackers, at a story of importance to us. and the other was the enormous amounts of money spent prolonging the lives of dying americans.

please join me in welcoming steve kroft in this panel. [applause] >> thank you very much. we are following iraq with afghanistan. we have a very distinguished group here today. on my left is ambassador eklil hakimi who is the ambassador to the united states from afghanistan. next to him is doug lute who is an assistant in the area of afghanistan and pakistan. next to him is karl eikenberry, former assistant best -- former ambassador to afghanistan. and we have on teleconference ambassador sherry rehman who was

unable to make it today because of a prior commitment. she was kind enough and wanted to be here badly enough to agree to talk to us here. you can see her sitting back there. her in the television monitors around the rim. i want to begin this with a ". a recent article by dexter falcons in the new yorker published earlier this month. he writes after 11 years, nearly 2000 americans killed, 16,000 americans wounded, nearly $400 billion spent, nearly 12,000 afghan civilians dead since 2007, the war in afghanistan has come down to this.

the united states is leading the, mission not accomplished. they have been abandoned or downgraded because they have not worked for there was no longer enough time to achieve them. do you agree with that assessment? >> with due respect, i do not agree. our people do not want to go to those dark days of civil war and also to dark days of taliban who ruled the country. now we have a strong military. we have a strong police force. we have a vibrant civil society.

we have a very active media, with a liberty that you cannot find within that region. it can only grow for the last 10 years. remarkable. more importantly, our own people are frustrated with board. they do not want to go back. if you look at that within a region context, more countries within the region wanted that to happen. afghanistan as history has taught us, it is located in the heart. if a heart is not functioning and not pumping the blood within a system, the whole body is not working. no country within the region as far as i know, iran and

afghanistan were to slip back to the civil war. the one afghanistan to be invigorated within the region. also, we have strategic partnership agreements with our key allies, the united states of america, with the united kingdom, with france, italy, germany, australia, india, and a lot others are coming into the pipeline. that will give assurance for in during partnerships for the years to come. >> i would say baxter has a run on two accounts. the mission has not yet been fully accomplished, the mission against al qaeda, the core mission to eventually defeat al qaeda -- as we have heard it is within sight.

it is not yet accomplished. nobody is saying mission accomplished. we are saying that is within sight. the other point where he is wrong as we are not leaving. one of the major outcomes of the chicago summit two months ago is that while we are on a path to transition to lead to afghan responsibility by the end of 2014, even beyond 2014 we imagines with afghan invitation there will be a sustained u.s. military presence, diplomatic presence, intelligence and present -- intelligence presence. the mission is not yet accomplished but it is within sight and we are not leaving. >> i was telling steve i know i definitely left government and military service when i am comfortable sitting on stage with 60 minutes. three points. first of all, what do we know

about the mission and what we have accomplished? think back to 9/11, al qaeda is not in afghanistan in any kind of numbers. al qaeda has been weakened over the last decade and was dealt a heavy blow last year that was from a base in afghanistan. in terms of governance, afghanistan is fragile, but over the last decade they have been through four elections. they have been flawed elections. from an afghan perspective, look back in 1992 and 1993. how did power decided at that point? it was a group of war lords firing rockets into the city. tens of thousands dying. massacres that followed. from an afghan perspective, how the politics look right now? fragile, but better than many years. the third point about successes in the economic social-service