that is a mistake. at the time i said that rather publicly that i thought we should come up with a system to pay for these. but the majority majority of ths did not want to do that on both sides of the aisle. they still do not want to do it on both sides of the aisle. i think it is same mistake. the fact is, when you have soldiers in the field, you have to support them. most members want to do what is necessary to get the funds out for soldiers and were putting their lives on the line for us and the issue of paying for it is put aside. i do not ever remember anybody saying it will be paid for by iraqi oil. our newspapers are filled this morning with -- host: our newspapers are filled with the vice-presidential picks. i wonder how important it is for his appeal that he picks -- guest: i think it is important

who picks -- pick somebody who could be president. we have to have a strong vice- presidential candidate, somebody everybody can look at and say this person has the talent and ability to beat the president of the u.s. there are lots of talented people in our party. we have so many good choices. i would have trouble making it if i were him. you have folks like rob portman, marco rubio, condoleezza rice, now the general petraeus, chris christie -- talent pool is very, very broad and deep and i think it is so good that everybodwhoee picks will be good. host: the next call is a democrat. caller: morning. every time i hear the

republicans talk, they talk about spending money for their children. yet, i do not hear them talk about saving the environment for our children. they will have money but they will be dead. the epa must be in control. the water is polluted. the air is polluted. save the money for your children? you did say that -- bush did say that he would pay for the war. guest: i do not remember that and i do not think that is said. also, republicans are concerned about the environment. we all live in this world together. we have different views as to how to do it. are colleagues --

are all pretty strongly committed to that issue and i am happy to put my environmental record against anybody's. >> -- host: you are opposed to the debate commission asking that the two candidates for presidency specifically address their plans about how to deal with the debt and deficit. have you received a response? guest: not that i am aware of. i do think it is important that at least one of these debates be very focused on the issue of the deficit, debt, and at what the policies are at the end of tto e issue. our two biggest threats as a nation are our terrorist group and wmd's. it is something you have to be really aggressive about pursuing. the second biggest threat to our nation is this fiscal bankruptcy

situation we are headed towards. it is not the fiscal cliff. that is an artificial event. the fiscal bankruptcy is not artificial. it is real. we are running up deficits at a rate that we cannot possibly afford. we are averaging one trillion dollar deficit every year. we have been running a 1.3 trillion dollar deficit since 2008. on top of that, we are looking at doubling the debt in the last quarter years. we will triple it within the next six years. these numbers are just plain unsustainable. if we allow it to go forward at this present rate, that will undermine the future of our children. prosperity in this country will be reduced dramatically. standard of living will be reduced dramatically. it does not have to occur. that is the point. there have been legitimate efforts here. some symbols, the super committee, the gang of six.

the number of groups that have been trying to do something are fairly said the victim. i just think we have to take another run at it and try again. we need leadership. the leadership in our culture comes from the president. it is important that the debate talks about how the next president will address the fiscal debt situation and do it in specifics because generalities will not work any more. >> and -- host: next question comes from twitter -- guest: that is a really good question. the fact is, the federal reserve is keeping rates down and if they do another q e, which has been alluded to, that will keep rates down. i think it is a mistake. i think we should allow rates to

start to adjust your to reflect the fact that first off, we have pumped a huge amount of cash into the economy and how we get it out without inflation is a serious issue. is not a serious issue this year or next year, because the economy is slow so, but as it starts to recover, you get real problems. i just do think that this artificially low interest rate environment is perverting the marketplace. i would be more of the school that says another round of quantitative easing is not right. the caller is correct. if the interest rates adjust, the cost of borrowing to the government will go up dramatically in our deficit will be significantly aggravated. we would rather not have that happen, but the simple fact is, it would be an honest statement of our present situation. it might get congress to act

more aggressively on the fundamental underlying problem which is driving this, which is we have a larger government and we can afford. host: in addition to the fix the debt campaign, judd gregg has become an international adviser for goldman sachs. three terms in the senate. serve as governor of new hampshire from 1989 until 1983. next call for him is from washington. cameron is a republican. you are on. caller: good morning, c-span. hello, susan. good morning, senator. i would like to comment on what you just said. then i have a comment about tax reform. i do agree with you, senator, that the free market rate that the fed -- by then controlling the interest rates and not a free-market, it has allowed us to get into a lot of debt with credit cards and is making it harder to get out of where we're

at because the fed controls it. it should never be artificially controlled by strings from above. the comment i wanted to make about tax reform is that i , lieve we should consider after the negotiation, to get rid of all corporate income tax. when the lobbyists come to d.c. -- they come there for tax breaks. if you eliminate corporate tax rates, even is personal reach even a personal tax rates have to go higher, a lobbyist vampires do not end up in d.c. we do not send contractors to iraq to make $1,500 per day. thank you, c-span. guest: first off, i think you need to understand the purpose of the said. it is to maintain the integrity of the currency. i think that is the purpose. interest rates are a way to do

that. the biggest threat to currency is inflation. so that is their primary prompt -- responsibility, to address inflation and maintain the integrity of the currency. also given a another charge to push forward and implement. that was given to them 20 years ago. that is important here not as important as maintaining the integrity of the currency. the issue of corporate tax is a really good issue. there are no western cultures that have these zero corporate tax rate. no industrialize cultures. there are some that have very low corporate tax rates, like ireland has a 12% corporate tax rate. i happen to think we would make huge strides in our competitiveness in the nation if we could get the tax rate down into the 20's. we did that with some symbols -- simpson bowles.

behink a 25% tax rate would good. for corporations, it makes a lot of sense. the argument is legitimate from a purely theoretical standpoint in that corporate tax earnings are taxed twice. they are taxed at the corporate level at 35% or whatever the company pays, and then when they are distributed as dividends, they are taxed again for the individual. if an individual who runs a small business creates a subchapter corporation, they are only taxed once. there are some arguments academically for not having a corporate rate. you are taxing the same income twice.

it should only be taxed at the individual level. that is probably not politically practical to do, but i believe reducing rates is practical and should be done to get more economic activity. host: we are on the topic, here is -- host: is there that amount beyond the reach of tax collectors? guest: i am not aware of that number. there is a significant amount of money, nowhere near that number, t-- most of our multinational corporations hold that offshore because they earn it offshore. the problem with our tax system is let us say you earn a dollar in france or germany or japan. if you bring the dollar back to the u.s. and try to invest in american expansion, you have to

pay 35 cent tax on that. for every dollar, you pay 35 cents to bring it back to the u.s. so, no ceo will bring it back. they keep it in japan or france or germany and they purchase something in germany or expand their businesses where they are not having to pay 35% premium. it is a very foolish tax rate. we're the only industrial country that has this type of tax law. all other industrial countries have a territorial system where if you are a german company and you earn a dollar in the u.s., you can take the dollar back to germany and not have to pay 35 cent tax. you pay a very small tax. you pay the american tax in the u.s., you may pay nothing in germany to bring it back. we should move to that sort of tax system so we encourage people to bring money back here. businesses, specifically. rather than encourage them to

stay overseas and buy companies overseas, which is the way our taxes work now. host: 7 more minutes. chat is an independent. go ahead. caller: he does not recall the old thing for the war and is an adviser for goldman? he is pretty bridge. in any event, i am curious as to the senator's comments on the fact that didn't the president propose a legislation that would have a dead end deficit commission legislatively? didn't the republicans oppose that effort? is that what caused the president to put together the presidential commission because the congress and republicans

refuse to do it legislatively? he says we need presidential leadership, but this whole commission thing is just a congressional dodge of the issue so they can keep a political. one last thing -- it is a classic thing that republicans do. they run up the debt and then they cry for help. i think we have all seen this before. i would be curious to know why simpson-bowles was not done when they had the chance. guest: well, the facts are so incorrect that they are not worth trying to correct. not only did i not vote against the bill when it went into the senate, i was the co-author of the bill. it was a statutory commission that later became simpson- bowles.

it failed because of a couple people did not vote for it. simpson-bowles came about because kent conrad went to the president and said he would not support a specific piece of legislation that was important to the white house unless they came forward with the commission and the president decided the commission should be informed. the failure of simpson-bowles was not that the condition did not come to a conclusion, it was that the president decided not to except the conclusion and decided to walk away from the commission. that was followed by a statutory commission, which was called the super committee, which came out of last august's debacle. they had the same authority and the same portfolio to act as the original conrad-gregg bill.

it had a stronger authority to act than the simpson-bowles does it was statutory and had the super committee acted to produce a package from a would have been basically a parliamentary situation where the proposal that came out of the super committee would go through the congress, had to be voted on, could not be amended, and could pass with 51 votes. it was a very formative the amount of authority -- very poor minute amount of a party that that group had. the super committee could not reduce and -- reach an agreement. that is because of lack of presidential participation. he was not even in the country during the time. they did make progress in the sense that they put together pretty good ideas and they reach consensus on initiatives that were really good. what we will try to do with simpson-bowles plus is take the

good ideas out of the super committee, the gang of six, the biden working group, and in the basic bill and repackage it, put it in a plan while communicating very aggressively with members of the congress so they know what is going on. and then hopefully have this as a resource for the congress to foron or use if they want. they do not have to. it will be a resource available to them. it is a chance to get a bipartisan initiative going because you cannot solve this problem in a partisan way. our fiscal problems are so deep, so severe, and affect so many people, that the decisions will have to be made fairly significant and they will also affect a lot of people. the american political system -- the american people do not trust action on the programs like

medicare, social security, medicaid, tax reform, unless they think they are fair. serna is by definition in our culture requires bipartisanship. fairness requires bipartisanship. we will accomplish the goal of getting our fiscal house in order. it will be a resource for congress to use in the lame duck section. >> host: i was looking on this back-and-forth about the cost of the war and are iraqi oil paying for it. let me just use this as a close out for that discussion. this is from factcheck.org and on this issue they quote don rumsfeld --

guest: that is not the war. host: march 2003 -- host: the conclusion is just as you suggested. it really was a discussion about reconstruction rather than paying the war cost. guest: there is a big difference. host: let me ask you as we conclude how you see the sequestration debate playing out in congress. guest: this fiscal cliff issue will be the mother of all lame duck sessions. the tax increases and the debt ceiling come due january 1. congress will have to take some action. my hope is that what they will do is set up a procedure where

they will direct the committee's jurisdiction to take responsible action in all of these different areas and report back by a specific time with a package that will address the fiscal cliff and the long-term debt. if the committee still to act, then there will be a trigger mechanism that brings into play specific proposals that would accomplish that independent of legislative action. that would be the best course. the other courses are that they get wrapped around their own wheels and cannot get anything agreed to and we have the fiscal cliffs executed on. that would be a disaster. it would be a disaster for national and international confidence. it could be a very bad situation. at present the new congress would immediately go the -- i presume the new congress would immediately go back and try to fix the damage. they just kick the can down the road and do not decide to do anything other than postpone the decision days here and tell the

new congress comes in to place. i think that is a missed opportunity. i think there is a huge opportunity in december to set up a procedure to get something really self sustainable done. that is why we will pull together simpson-bowles plus. host: thank you for being here. former senator judd gregg and his effort to fix the debt. we appreciate your time. in our final segment, as we continue our focus on economic issues, are the neighborhoods changing and are they changing based on economics? we will talk with facebook.com/cspan and -- we will talk with richard fry and michael wallace.

>> this weekend, -- >> we are selling george washington's personal coffee. we will start the bidding, ladies and gentlemen, at $1,300,000. 1,300,000, 1,400,000, 1,500,000, 1,700,000 -- >> sunday at 7:00 p.m., from american artifacts, the option of george washington's acts of congress along with the constitution, a draft of the bill of rights. the 1789 book include his handwritten notes. also, more from "the contenders." >> as it has been said, in the

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>> "washington journal" continues. host: our next segment comes out of newspaper studies. income segregation rising rapidly changing cities. the stories came from research from the pew research center. richard fry the senior economist there and he is here to tell us about the numbers behind the stories. michael wallace is at the table, with the national league of cities, where he is a program director for community development. it will be interesting for him to talk about the challenges that cities are facing from a policy standpoint as neighborhoods begin to shift. thank you for being here. let us start with you, richard fry. how did you put these numbers together? guest: the intent was -national- there has been a rise in income inequality among america's

households. the basic idea was to sort of see how this is playing out in each of our neighborhoods. the study involved looking census data back to 1980 and looking at the 65,000 census tracks. the key assumption one needs to make is what is a low-income household? what is middle income? what is the upper income? the nation as a whole, we basically used to cut off of $34,000 and below for lower income. middle income was $34,000 to about $104,000. upper income was about $104,000 and above. once you sort of make some assumptions about who is lower, middle, upper, then the steady basically falls out from there. we can ask -- in a track, what is the composition of the households in that census tract or neighborhood?

you can look at it various ways, but a simple way that was helpful is to simply ask -- let us look at tracks that are majority low-income or upper- income and what we found was among the nation's lower income households, the number of them that are concentrated is up. from about 23% of low-income households to 28%. what about the upper income households? again, $104,000 and above. back in 1980, about 9% of upper- income households were in majority upper income tax. largely living among themselves. 30 years later, that had doubled to about 18%. so, it is not very steep, but

there is a tendency for lower- income households to be increasingly concentrated in low-income neighborhoods and increasingly, the affluent are increasingly living in majority affluent neighborhoods. host: you're dividing our phone lines unusually. we are also going to ask you questions -- in your own city, are you seeing evidence of the committee changing? our people more likely to live in economically segregated neighborhoods? if that is happening in your committee, is there an effect? is a positive or negative? we would like to hear your thoughts about this possibly exchanging -- changing fabric of the community. there are regional differences. where are the regions where this is likely to happen? guest: at the 30 largest metro

areas. before that, the boundaries of what it was to be low income and other income, they vary. washington, d.c. is a pretty affluent area. to the upper income in washington, we used a higher cut off as opposed to columbus, all highohio. what we found was in terms of the growth in economic segregation, a large portion in the southwest experienced quite a large increase over the 30 years in affluent neighborhoods and lower income in majority lower income neighborhoods. as opposed to that, the areas of the southeast, and lannan, orlando, they did not experience as much change in their income

segregation patterns. similarly, the northeast was not quite as much change. particularly dramatic growth seem to be in the southwest. host: we are have a reaction from a viewer -- host: how much of this is aspiration on the part of families moving up? guest: i think there clearly is 8 cents -- i agree with the caller. yes, the housing where you live is influenced by what you can afford. however, increasingly, the housing market is influenced by policies enacted by communities in terms of zoning, etc. yes, there is a market for housing. it is influenced by income. but, policies can have an impact on that. host: stern to michael wallace

from the national league of cities. if neighborhoods are less diversify economically, what policy issues can this spring? guest: it is a major challenge for cities. one of the things the study shows is that prior to the economic downturn, cities have invested billions in economic development. their goal was to try to create services to build up the middle class. what has happened since the downturn is cities have largely struggled to maintain those investments. instead of foreclosure and house is falling apart and going derelict, for the neighborhood -- that neighborhood declined. to prevent that is different than trying to foster additional investment in your city. when you do this work, it takes a lot of stakeholders and partners.

traditionally, they partner with state level and private sector folks because community development is a massive undertaking. what we're seeing now because of the deficit debate is a severe cutback at the federal level to provide funding for these community development programs. that has left cities in a lurch because they do not have the revenues themselves to fund these massive undertakings. whether it is infrastructure or housing or that sort of thing. in order to be intentional about creating mixed income neighborhoods, there was pat -- there will have to be a discussion about how the different levels of government want a partner. host: but get some calls in here. charlotte, north carolina. charles is on the line. good morning. caller: good morning. i have a couple of questions and comments. if you make $34,000 or under in

many places in rural america, you are doing very, very well. the other comment would be i think we are not talking about income, we are talking about culture. certain people do certain things that cause them not to be successful. the way they dress, the way the act, the way they speak. whether they have children. that sort of thing. i know that in my community, there are many, many people who spend a lot of money trying not to expose their children to the cultural ravages of people that have not spbeen successful. it is a cultural thing. if you are on assistance or have not done the right thing, how do

we inspire those people to do better, respond? host: thank you. guest: intentionally grading these mixed income communities is aspiration of. the idea is that if we concentrate poverty, you are breaking the cycle. when your neighbors are out keeping their property, there is pressure for you to do so. i think the cultural issues are a question to be considered, but you know, i think this is more about the loss of the middle class and when you are losing middle-class based on lower incomes for people, that is not really a cultural. that is financial. host: let us put these numbers on the screen. these are the line numbers. this is more a lower income houses living in low-income tracks from 1980 until 2010.

23% to 28% . more upper-income live in upper-income neighborhoods. how much as the downturn and the loss of jobs responsible? guest: in this study, this study cannot address that. the reason is, the most recent data available at the census tract level, the neighborhood level, is sort of a five-year average that went from 2006 until 2010. it is centered on 2008. it is not picking up yet the effect of the great recession. probably about another couple of years before we have that since the strike level data. this -- census level track data. this was already apparent in the 1980's, but it has been a gradual increase in economic segregation that we are observing. host: here is the next set of

statistics. the share of lower income households residing in lower- income tracks in the 10 largest areas. new york is first. 41%. philadelphia, 30% houston and dallas, 37% ellicott 34%. miami, 32%. d.c., -- atlanta, 26%. what is the difference between the major northeastern cities with party established neighborhoods versus high-growth cities in the metropolitan area? guest: on these 10, remember that what it takes to be low income is changing across the city. what is surprising is once you sort of make this metropolitan adjustment, the percentage of households that are low income is typically ride around 30%. it is interesting that there really are these metropolitan specific patterns and an area

like atlanta and is very surprising. it has grown very quickly, particularly since they hosted the olympics in 1996. they are a metroplex that has a lot of growth. they see a lot of internal and international migration. yet, their concentration of the poor in poor neighborhoods actually fell from 1980 until -- as opposed to what we see here in new york. we see much more established communities without the amount of population change and growth that atlanta had and yet, it observes the highest level of concentrated low-income. host: good another factor be in migration of wealthy young professionals into poor neighborhoods? guest: yes. i think there is probably some of both. the study did not explore sort

of why this is going on. but, i agree. i pointed out the low scale migration, but in deed, as well, particularly if you talk about the southwest, affluent retirees from the old snowbelt go down and gentrify areas like phoenix or austin. i agree that part of what is happening here is both low scale in migration as well as college- educated in migration. host: -- host: next call is rick from florida. good morning. caller: good morning, c-span. wonderful topic. the world needs to have more of this. i am the richest poor man that he will ever know.

i am just blessed with a whole situation that i am in. i am probably the luckiest guy that you will ever know. as far as the people, it is hard to break into a rich neighborhood. i just wonder how we will break out of this. how do we take the middle-class and said it into a situation where they're comfortable again? the middle class is just disappearing. you either have money or you don't. where do we go? host: thank you. i want to mix in this tweet -- host: in fact, is that the story

or is it the demise of the middle class center with mixed neighborhoods that we are talking about? guest: the study shows a vast majority of neighborhoods are are still mixed income. we are seeing some separation now that we think is because of the changes in income. what will happen to change it -- one thing is critical is the leadership at the local level. no law or federal system can compensate for strong local leaders. for any sort of development to happen, you have to have a partnership with the community. that being said, congress made it a little more difficult by cutting funding for programs like the community development block grant and others which

exist to improve neighborhoods that are in decline in order to give families a chance to find employment and join the middle class. i think our fear is that in this debate to solve the deficit, local level concerns about community development are not really rising to the surface and we may get lost in the shuffle. as a result, cities will not have very many tools to stop this trend. host: cities are looking for community development, but what has happened over the past 20 years is the closure of a lot of plants use to feed people's solid jobs. how can that kind of work be replaced by the programs you are talking about?

guest: it is a holistic situation. one program alone will not save cities. a couple of good examples where cities are doing well is new orleans. they take advantage of the workforce investment at dollars for employment. they look at transportation situations to make sure folks in neighborhoods in decline can get to their jobs or to their work force training. wichita, kan. has training for their airplane industry. that is great. they help folks get their ged's and then put them through that manufacturing course and it helps keep the plant in the city. it also trains folks who may not have been initially interested in getting an education in those sorts of areas. host: this set of numbers is the flip side of this.

beshear upper-income households rate -- residing in upper income brackets. host: for many of the big cities hovering around 15%, what is happening in houston and dallas that have them so much higher? guest: i cannot speak to the exact particulars, but again, partly what is going on is it is reflecting the population dynamics. if you are familiar with dallas, it is an area where -- would think that back in 1980, they would have had a large hispanic population. relative to many other parts of texas, that was not the case. dallas is in some ways one of our new image -- immigration cities along with atlanta or charlotte.

dallas experienced a large influx of mexican immigration. houston, again, large-scale international migration. it was not so much mexicans, it was more central americans, hurricane mitch refugees. these texas communities, as well as miami, one factor that is coming into play is the international migration flows that they have experience. host: next call is from. in rhode island. good morning. caller: good morning. i find this conversation rather interesting because it really does not seem to reflect very much in reality. i am 53. the rich have always relatively lived among the rich. middle-class neighborhoods were always distinctly middle class. the poor always live in poor neighborhoods. what i think the reality is and i find it interesting -- it

should not be interesting because pew does that seem to be curious about the real issues of poverty. when you have policies, for example, bill clinton had rahm emanuel impose nafta illegally. they supported the con -- the supported open borders. poor people cannot afford to rent an apartment. it in rhode island, we have had to many development. they created this is really expensive -- a well-connected person got a contract and build this community. you have a lot of arts the people from the college's living there and you have mostly

illegal aliens in subsidized housing. ok? this has nothing to do with housing the poor. this has everything to do with just playing games. it is not living in reality. if you outsource the main ability of people to lift themselves out of poverty and join the middle class, you'll have middle-class growth. he will destroy the middle class. [unintelligible] host: all right. thank you. i will turn to michael wallace. guest: folks in the neighborhood -- especially if you are living in low-income, you grow on patient for change. -- impatient for change. i think change takes a long time, but it can be frustrating. i will say that it is difficult to see how someone can lift themselves out of poverty without actually having a place to live.

he sort of have to meet the immediate needs first before you can get into things like to have training and assistance. as far as public housing for immigrants, it has been illegal for illegal immigrants to receive public housing benefits. that is probably not happening. host: she talked about that created community, which was to create an incentive for those people receiving assistance living next to middle or upper income falls. can you point to robust examples -- guest: we someone in ventura, california. there is a very artsy committee that is geared towards artists and students, but is also attached to low-income units and homeless units. it is right there in the

building. it is right downtown in ventura. it has been very successful. one reason is because it is a lot easier to attract students into what you might call market for housing around a higher degree of very low income folks then it would be in traditional households. host: this is a question from twitter -- host: i wanted to ask if you would validate her assertion. there are all kinds of cities with major foreclosure issues. some of them are detroit, cleveland. then, the epicenter is las vegas and arizona. are we seeing these -- our cities responding? guest: it has been a huge challenge. it is -- people will say this is the second wave of foreclosures coming. i would say it has been continuous, especially for

michigan and nevada. they got the double hit when the economy went down. that has been a significant challenge. i think they have struggled with it the best they can. there are some federal programs that have helped, but nowhere near the amount to meet the needs. host: this next charge for early talks about the change happening mostly in the southwest. it looks -- this next chart really talks about the change happening in the southwest. 1980 until 2010 and how much that percentage has changed. the southwest has had the highest rate of change. why is that? guest: i understand -- i keep focusing on atlanta. one of the very distinct characteristics is it is one metro area where the concentration of low income

residents in low-income neighborhoods actually fell over the past 30 years. i am not an end at -- i am not an expert on the area, but my understanding is that atlanta, like chicago and the older metro areas, there was a concentrated effort to remove the public housing projects that were erected in the 1960's. i am not sure when that occurred. that was a conscious effort. that probably has led to -- has it is the one metro area where the poor in poor neighborhoods is significantly diminished. in terms of the change over 30 years, the southwestern metros and texas metros are the ones

that have really experienced a lot of change both in lower and lower income neighborhoods and the affluent in affluent neighborhoods. host: residential income segregation in the u.s.. overall neighborhoods are showing signs of changing. we are seeing less black, white segregation in cities and increasing segregation by income. that is what we are talking about. a tweet -- guest: it is a major . of. you cannot really sustain development unless it -- it is a major point. you can really sustain development unless there are jobs. if you allow in a rut in decline to continue to decline, if you have common concerns about crime and these people will not be paying any sort of taxes.

local governments have falling revenues and they cannot provide as many services as they used to, but they are doing their best just to prevent further decline. host: next is louisiana. lee roy, you are on the air. caller: how are you doing? my question is about the baby boomers. i like to know how are the baby boomers doing economically? do they really know why? host: is there an age demographic that would overlay the results? guest: this study did not look at age. i am pretty sure in census tract data come age is not available. at least at the neighborhood level, i am not quite sure how one would do that.

pugh has done generational studies and -- pew has done generational studies. the baby boomers are hitting 65. the leader boomers are barely into their 50's. i would say from that body of research that i have worked on on age differences, as far as the seniors go, those over 65 have been less impacted by the great recession and in some ways, relative to three decades ago, america's seniors -- they do have the highest poverty rate, but they are less poor than they once were. that is not really 65 -- that is not really today's baby boomers. one of the major concerns is them coming into retirement and what has happened to the value of their houses and how well

prepared they are for retirement. that is an open question. host: we have been asking people about their neighborhoods -- guest: if a developer's motivation is to make a profit, they will not put a lot of thoughts behind how to create low-income units. however, there are ways to make sure that they are set aside. if you are going to do revitalization, it will become more expensive. to live there, the idea is to make sure that there is a plan in place to benefit the people currently residing -- host: it seems as though it is a good thing for cities to rehash

industrial areas that are no longer functional. we have seen that in d.c. over in the area along the river. guest: the other thing is it is people are buying their first household coming out of college. those folks do not want to live in the suburbs. they're returning back to the city. or returning back to the central city area. it is interesting that federal policies have been geared toward revitalizing downtown because of the flight to the suburbs. now, we are seeing foreclosures in the suburbs and programs geared towards the center city. the suburbs are starting to feel it a little bit and they are thinking, there is not a whole lot of federal help. they used to have such a great tax base, but now they have the same problems the inner city has. host: the best policy in migration happens is to make

sure that the resulting neighborhood is next? guest: yes. it is in the interest of folks to set aside a certain percentage of properties that basically serve as the incubator for folks to get to the middle class. host: california. sally is on the line. go ahead. caller: aye, there. -- hi, there. i am upper-middle-class, college-educated. i have an entrepreneurial background. i have bounced down to low income, partially because i have been in the court system for three years, fighting a hedge funder. i started an internet company in

my home. that whole journey has been beyond the latter. i have learned about harsh reality of the regulators. that is an aside. i do some work for a contractor that is doing a lot of flips of low income housing going into the areas that were typically 4 the poor. they're putting money into these units and fixing them up. what he is talking about -- i am familiar with that. you are granting development permits where they have a percentage of the unit that are directed towards the lower income and all, my gosh. it is competitive to get on that list. you have to be in the area for a

number of years and get on the list for a number of years before you can even get considered to be getting into these units. when i look at the top, it says economic segregation increasing. from my personal situation and what i am observing, and i am in an area of the country with pretty high income, the south central coast, economic segregation is increasing. it seems that many people are having to house together or having to come together with family members or friends just to make it. host: we are running out of time, but thank you. she is the kind of person that will show up in the next set of numbers that you have . people that were in a different income class and are staying in place, but are in a different part of

the study because of the 2008 recession. guest: yes. the great recession involved the housing market so much that we will see that in a couple of years. we will see whether it is impacting the metros. host: wonderful tweets -- host: we are just about out of time. i will take a call from pennsylvania. john is on the line. go ahead. caller: i wanted to ask about rural housing. i also wanted to make a comment that central banks rob the poor because there is no money created to cover the interest. for a long time, the wealthy become extremely more wealthy because interest is sucking the

base rase out of the people./ along with the industrialization of the americas. they are shipping our jobs overseas and we are now working in a 19 to 70 wage level -- 1970 wage level. it will continue to force more and more poverty. host: thank you. on twitter -- yes. as we close out, what are the implications of this? guest: we are still getting -- if remains to be seen how we will solve the foreclosure prices. congress has to figure out what to do with fannie mae and freddie mac. host: and there is the 8% unemployment level, which we are

keeper minded -- we are reminded of. guest: the federal deficit is important. you know, what is happening now with the debate in congress is they will read to the intergovernmental partnership. looks like there's going to be less of a partnership, less support at the local level. the challenge for local and community leaders is to do more with less or be creative. this is a time for local leaders to share across the country with each other what is working and what are the best way to do it and how to do it cheaply. host: pew has a lot more detail about this. you can find it on their web site at -- guest: www.pewresearch.org.

the only thing we did not get into was the changing nature of racial segregation in america. this is doable. to see how the ir income patterns vary across neighborhoods. host: we are becoming more economically segregated but more racially integrated. guest: the black-white line has diminished since the 1970's. host: thanks for being here. we have loved having our viewers with us. that's it for this friday program. we will be back tomorrow morning at 7:00 a.m. eastern. we will see you then. [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> ♪ ♪ >> some live events going on right now. the atlantic council is hosting a discussion on in the's economy, just getting underway. you can see live on c-span 2. later, an update on the mars rover curiosity. nasa has a briefing at 1:00 p.m. eastern. you can see that live on c-span. tonight at 8:00 eastern, a pair of programs looking at voter id laws and the right to vote. here's a brief look at one of those programs. >> a lot of focus groups. i care about focus groups

because it's a great way of getting under what people are thinking. one of the questions i love to ask people is something that relates to their lives and personal way. let us take these three candidates, let's suppose they were in the fifth grade, what do you think they would have been sike aspirator' -- like a fifth grade students? put up the next picture, please. there was nerd, respected, all- american, loner, etc.. i said, who do you think newt gingrich would be? they said, pushed the button, know it all. romney, they said, rich, privileged.

obama, they said star athlete or the teacher's pet. you say, these are just cute, but they tell you a lot about where people are coming from. i asked the question a couple weeks ago and i said to them, about a dozen people, i said, let's suppose you could go to the ball game with either barack obama or mitt romney, nine of the 12 raised their hand and said they wanted to go with obama, because he would be fun, easy, he would know about baseball and we could talk back and forth. three people raised their hand and said mitt romney, because he's got the limousine, he will buy the beer and provide the hot dogs and soda. >> posted a bill programs tonight, focusing on voter id laws and the right to vote, starting at 8:00 eastern on c- span.

>> c-span, created by america's cable companies in 1979, brought to you as a public service by your television provider. >> now look back at the iraq war with three former u.s. ambassadors to iraq from the bush and obama administrations as well as the first undersecretary of defense for intelligence. this aspen security forum discussion is moderated by associated press counter- terrorism correspondent kimberly dozer, who was wounded in a car bomb attack in iraq in 2006. is is one hour and 20 minutes. >> needless to say, the long iraq war has ended. an enormous cost in terms of lives and treasure. to take a look back at the war, we have assembled a super panel

to reflect back on it and to consider the implications of the iraq war for american foreign policy and national security going forward. i cannot think of a better moderator than the one we have selected, kim dozier, an associated press correspondent who covered intelligence and special operations. she tracks the war on violent extremism. to cover national security for cbs news in washington from 2007 through 2010. in a 14-career overseas, she covered the middle east and europe for cbs news as well as the washington post, the san francisco chronicle, and the bbc. she was wounded in a car bombing in iraq in 2006. her memoir recounts her attack and her recovery and she has graciously donated the proceeds to charities like fisher house. join me in welcoming this panel

and banking kim for moderating. but -- thanking kim. [applause] >> thank you. i appreciate so many people have come back before the panel in the middle of the afternoon. there's a great group of people, three of home or last-minute additions. some had to drop out with last- minute engagements. i will introduce the panel in chronological order of involvement. dr. stephen cambone at the end, from the 2001 through 2006 in the department of defense. he was twice nominated during that time by president bush and confirmed by the senate,

including the first undersecretary of defense for intelligence. second, ambassador john negroponte, ambassador to honduras, mexico, the philippines, the un, andy was the first ambassador to iraq. if he was the first director of national intelligence under president bush. thank you for second appearance. ambassador christopher hill, he was ambassador to iraq from 2009 through 2010 and earlier served as the ambassador to korea, macedonia, and special envoy to kosovo. he's at the university of denver school of international studies. we have ambassador james jeffrey, he was ambassador to iraq still about three weeks ago. 2010 until then. he has had multiple stores serving as senior adviser in iraq from the 2005 through 2006

and came back again from 2004 through 2005. now that i have that established, i would like to set out the purpose of this panel as a chance to look back at some tough questions, get some things on the record that you might not have heard before in our conversations over the past couple days i have heard some things i had not heard before. it is also a chance to look ahead and ask how postwar iraq is playing a role from serving as a possible al qaeda safe haven that never existed before to setting a more positive example as a working democracy in a sea of conflicted areas. i will kick off with about 15 minutes we will talk about the history, how we get into the war. i want to start with a bullet points, things that we pretty much all agree we got wrong.

the intelligence, which was cited as one of the major reasons for invading. bringing in so few troops, which resulted in a great deal of unrest directly after the invasion. a postwar plan, which seemed to change every few months. the d back the vacation program and the dismantling of the iraqi army, which produced a ready- made batch of trained officers who knew how to build bombs and had nothing else to do with their time since they cannot get jobs except go out and attack u.s. troops. -- debathification. and analysis that and uncertainty have started, why that was ignored for so long back in washington? tough questions. dr. stephen cambone, we were talking about the intelligence. was curveball the main reason we

got into iraq? tell us what you think in retrospect on how we acted on that? but i'm not sure everybody knows what curveball may have been. he was a source came out of iraq, he had been debriefed sometime prior to the outbreak of the war. he claimed to have firsthand knowledge of some wm the programs in iraq -- wmd programs. there are other people in the audience who may be more knowledgeable about the specific details of his debriefing. a short answer unto your question is i don't think it was the decision or the intelligence turned on curveball, who subsequently and was found to be a fabricator and use information w subsequently

proven to be false. i don't think it turned on that. i think it turned primarily on the preponderant of the evidence. it turned on the circumstances in which we found ourselves at the time, the extent to which proliferation was an ongoing concern, the behavior of sadaam hussein's regime at the time, it is forgotten there was an active military operation in northern and southern iraq, where there were constant provocations, no- fly zones -- of the the no-fly zones as a result of the first iraq war. sadaam hussein did use weapons of mass destruction against his own people. so there was reason to believe there were weapons of mass destruction in that country. i think curveball turns out to lead everybody to believe what

we thought we knew was probably right. >> a mistake? >> was a mistake to draw that conclusion? that's difficult to say. the conclusion was mistaken. to draw the conclusion might not have been a mistake. in the end, you only know what you know at the time and you have to fill in the rest. was it reasonable to draw that judgment at the time? based on the judgments they did drop, yes, it probably was. in retrospect, it was. . >> i have heard from special operations team that came in ahead of the invasion, they thought they were dropping onto a nuclear weapons site. they found a village situation, air ducts that were not really paradox. it looked like a facility from the air.

was this a campaign by sadaam hussein that was meant to scare the regional countries that went wrong? >> i don't know. charlie, who did the second look at the program inside iraq, i think charlie drew the conclusion that it could've been a real program had intended to be a real program. he had the means of doing it, but they were not there. as a point of fact, some of you may remember the iraq service group. i was instrumental in having that group put together, in the belief that we would find in that country weapons of mass destruction, scientists engaging in those programs and the like. we took it quite seriously. we sent people across in full gear expecting to engage in chemical or biological weapons attacks. this was not the kind of trump

up notion that there were capabilities. there was a belief that there was. the conduct ourselves accordingly. >> you were part of some of the discussions in the run-up to the war. care to share any of those with us? >> i would like to take a wider aperture. i don't think it was just about intelligence. that was part of the issue, the interpretation of the intelligence, the fact that if we had censors really turned up in the wake of 9/11, looking to a lot of different things. it was how to interpret the things you were listening to. i think the decision was based on a broader concept of we have this guy sadaam hussein in this critical country. he had a reputation for murdering people on maen masse.

i went up to a town where he had used gas against the kurdish people. there's a real compelling reason you would want to go after this guy. also, in the wake of 9/11, the mood was we cannot let people like that stay out there. so the real issue, i think, ultimately, i saw that it cost us 1.8 trillion. you can ask the question, from that perspective, was it the right thing to do? but when you are there and you look at some of these operations that sadaam hussein had, you have a sense that we are doing the right thing and maybe some things went awry, but it was kind of the right thing to do. this current mood in our country when we look at these kinds of things now and we say, what possessed us to do this, we have to be careful out it. we have to think about what the mood was at the time. he was -- sadaam hussein was a

person who, in the mood after 9/11, was someone we wanted to take off the board. >> it also took our attention away from afghanistan, is still hot war, and took a number of troops and resources from it. >> i understand that argument. i think the people involved in those decisions can talk about that. whether iraq is always going to be called the iraq war as opposed to the republic of iraq will depend on the future, what happens in iraq, how our policy goes forth with iraq. right now we have a very dicey situation there. sunni arab states want to restore rule and there are the iranians who want to keep it as the only shia and redstate. this is the issue. we jumped into it, so i think we have a responsibility to stay

engaged. i think it's up to the diplomats. >> let's get back to we decided to invade. the number of troops, the plan, does the u.s. does not understand how to occupy a place? is it a knowledge we have lost? >> first, on the question of curveball and intelligence failures, it was -- it turned out to be a notorious enough mistakes to cause the revamping of the intelligence community. so i don't think anybody questions that it was a series of mistakes. on the question of, you take the invasion as a given and you have the issue of whether there were enough forces. this is fairly characteristic of the way we get involved in some of these conflicts.

two of us are veterans of the vietnam conflict in one form or another. then we made a huge error of judgment in terms of how long it. would it i remember a sector adviser in vietnam before we sent combat troops, he was answering a question from my deputy ambassador there, how many troops would you need to clean up your problem? he said one battalion could clean this place up in about three weeks. nine years and two korean divisions later in that same province gives you a sense of how sometimes we subject ourselves to wish all thinking. i think that is exactly what happened in iraq. there may have been some errors in the way we handled de- industri -- de- bathification and so forth.

the way that we did reconstruction, i recommended to washington that we reprogram several billion dollars for building the iraqi police and military forces. one last thing, and i see this pattern from vietnam through to iraq and afghanistan, in each of those cases we never early enough guy committed to the idea of building local capacity. t it always. oo late. as a result, i think it cost us casualty's and lives and prolonged the time, the day when we would be able to exit our own forces. >> i don't disagree with the ambassador. but on the issue of how many troops were committed and when they were committed, there is a part of the story that is either

not well-known or not well- commented on, which is the plan did call for another division to come in through turkey through the north and to come down towards baghdad. that division did not come in until much later. had it come earlier, the 173rd would not have been moved from italy and a buffer between the sunnis.nd the zun odierno would not have come in with the rest of the force. the political situation as a result could have been profoundly different, because we would not have had them conducting the operations they would have conducted prior to make in the aftermath in 2003, and thereby change the political attitudes and circumstances at the time. >> what drove that decision? >> we fail to get the approval of the turks to move the forces

through. that was a diplomatic issue, not dod. we cannot get there, for whatever reason the turks did not want to. it is important strategic shortcoming that happened prior to the outbreak of hostilities. as we go through and think about lessons, it is important that all the parts be aligned and understand you are taking risks if you go forward without having done it properly. >> the general had called for a far more troops than just one extra division. but that is fair enough. but the combat operations and then the aftermath were two different sets of circumstances. you want to focus on whether there was a plan for reconstruction and all the rest. there was. where was the miscalculation? it was the troops coming into

the north, what the political circumstances were going to be and how long it will take to remove sadaam hussein from the picture and what the reaction would be from local populations. they did not mesh in the end. but that does not mean there was not a plan or people intending to do it. let's talk out free action plans on the ground. you find out things, like the iraqi people are not reacting as we expected, the infrastructure is not what we expected to find from the satellite images from the air. the three ambassadors here today sent reports back to d.c. from time to time, especially ambassador negreponte. what was the response when you told folks at the pentagon we are seeing and insurgency, we are seeing signs that this is running away from us?

[laughter] >> i was working for john. very early, we saw that the army were faced with a considerable amount of violence and we did not even have control of the famous road between the airport and the embassy in the green zone. and we were not focused on what we later came to focus on and frankly what we focused on earlier in vietnam, which is protecting the population. the answer was to stand up the iraqi army. i will not get into the details that led to john deciding quickly that civilians had to be shifted from long range projects into now funding the police and other programs,

development assistance to get people back to work and such, because we realized we had a tremendous problem. we were passing that information on to washington. the solution was to stand up the iraqi army and they will be able to take over the job. the problem was the iraqi army was not easy to stand up. it took a number of years and a lot of fighting to do that. >> in the meantime the insurgency established itself. >> yes. >> it's important to understand insurgency was not a matter of the iraqi army unhappiest or the decommissioning of the army. it was a sunni insurgency because debathification on the ground was considered against sunnis, that it would become shia majority rule.

the institutions that kept sunni rule in place, we went after. hence the sunni insurgency. >> i would've taken it one step further. the focus of what we were doing, which was not only to take down sadaam hussein but to leave the country in the hands of its population, which is 80% non- sunni, meant that these guys would be out of power come out of the position they have had since the ottoman period. so it was likely they would react violently. >> this is an agonizing discussion. let me try to put it into about three sentences. instead of a successful invasion with a quick result and installing a new iraqi government painlessly, we found that instead we had to go to 01-

year occupation, billions and billions of dollars in building up their police and armed forces, a secular war, and several elections. but finally i think we are at where ideally we would have liked to have been in the spring or summer of 2003. and so, by way of illustration of how things can take eight or nine years longer than you think they might when you plan them. >> which is the common u.s. military wisdom is counterinsurgency takes about a decade. the painful part is some of the steps that we missed along the way. i still have to ask, at the time i spoke with generals and i have spoken with cia officers whose careers suffered because they stood up and said there is

an insurgency building. i have to ask, what was happening when some of these reports came back to the pentagon? >> they were taken with a great deal of seriousness. i don't know about people's careers was still up and said they suffered because of having said so. there was -- as i recall the circumstances we had the time, this is march through september of 2003. there was a good deal of uncertainty as to how all this would shake itself out. i was there in june of 2003. i was there with a congressional delegation and chuck was with me as well as senator warner, senator levin, senator collins, a number of others. the circumstances at the time did not lend themselves to the conclusion we were headed rapidly in that direction. so you get to the fall and there

are reports now coming back about insurgency. then the question becomes, what was the implication of there being an insurgency? as you just went through it john's description, this move from being one kind of thing to another thing and it morphed over time it. so there was opposition in the population, that's true. there was a center of gravity that was the insurgency in the fall of 2003 is a little harder. by the time you get to about the turn of the year in 2004 it is becoming clearer. by the time you move into the 2004 timeframe, that is where we are. so these things don't turn around on a dime. and the conversion of the force, and i remember this vividly, starts in august of 2003 when the secretary said, why are people still inside armored vehicles?

why are they not on the ground patrolling the streets and taking care of the violence? with that began the evolution of the military side of the reaction to 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. 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 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 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 >> we do have some live

programming to tell you about. join us for an update on the mars rover curiosity. nasa has a briefing for 1:00 p.m. this afternoon. tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern, a look at polling numbers. here's a brief look. >> the question that president reagan used so effectively in 1980 was, are you better off than you were four years ago? people say that is what we should be asking now and i disagree. did you expect things to be better after president obama? did you expect things to be different? that place on the disappointment and concern that americans feel.

if this is ncaa , he would be right on the bubble whether he gets in. 47% is a precarious position. as you know, this is not an election you hear about in texas or california or new york. this is in iowa, north carolina, virginia, ohio. these are the 10 states where president obama's job approval numbers are under water. here's the key. not just where he is in terms of job approval. it is where he is in terms of the intensity of the approval. more disapprove than approved of the job he is doing.

that drives turned out against him. it is the direction of the approval rating. president obama was much worse off four years ago that he is now. he has a little bit of momentum even though his numbers are a little bit negative. >> we will show you the entire event tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span. >> i did not envy the drowsy harmony of the republican party. they tonight differences. we brigid them. they are uniform. we are united. [cheers] the charge >> is this year and not just between two different

personnel is or between two political parties. they are between two different fundamentally different ways of governing. their government of pessimism and fear or hours of hope, confidence, and growth. [cheers] >> c-span has aired every minute of every party convention since 1984. this year, watch the conventions live on c-span. >> in lucknow that the situation in afghanistan and pakistan. steve kroft moderates the next panel. adviser to thea's region. you'll hear about plans for for u.s. withdrawal from afghanistan. this panel will is just under an

hour 20 minutes. >> durg 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 bee 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 very distinguished group here today. on my left is ambassador eklil hakimi who is the ambassador to the united states from afghanistan. next thim 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 teleconferee 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 age. 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

defitely 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,ut over the last decade they have been through four elections. they have been flawedlections. 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,ow 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 isbeing redefined. is going from one or the international community has been

in the lead and of the critical domains to one in which the afans 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 tre 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

ace. 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 milesway from that. i think our job here is to without meddling to ensure it is able to remain stable, cohesive,nd 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 situaon 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. io 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 looksike. 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. inhe united stat, 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 tansition 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 let one american here that sounds like a reasonable price to pay. what you think it has been woh 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 neging 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 st 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 theribe on the other si 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. 3000nnocent 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 ahanistan 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 te 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 fficult time er 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 is. 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 tough 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 t 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 ide 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 iortant 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 ultite 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 inhe 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 es 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. at that decision. they say what is going on inside the pakistani government, inside the courts? they clearly see -- >> if i may interject, i do not think there is any question of hatred, pakistanis right now are in a place where we are looking to a democratic transition, a democratic transition. our -- we have recently lost the prime minister to the actions in pakistan. we are working according to a constitutional norms. now when you talk about -- let

me say very clearly, the doctor had no idea he was looking for osama bin laden. understand that underground, he was contracting with the for an agency without any police permission there. he was contracting with militant groups that are be heading our soldiers. he was contrasting with many people on the ground, and he had no clue that he was engaged in this historic fight to search for osama bin laden. i also want to point out that if you remember president obama's first speech, he clearly mentioned pakistan's cooperation in the circumstances leading up to osama bin laden's eventual killing. i think there is no question --

it really pains me to hear that pakistan is being put in a category of a country that is harboring or is looking to preserve osama bin laden, to sanctuary osama bin laden. all other high-value targets were found with pakistan's cooperation. that is not the side of a country that is looking to help osama bin laden. we were all excited when he was found. then it was discovered that it was with our -- it certainly was with our assistant at some level. the unfortunate incident represented a strike into pakistan, which we certainly would have cooperated with. we would go after him. we do not need to devalue is the

doctor. i do not need to say what should be done with him. he is facing the court. he can appeal his sentence. that is really a choice he has got to make. but to tell us that we cannot send to court a doctor who has put into jeopardy thousands of our children who are now facing a loss of critical polio vaccines, by category what the doctor has done is he has lost a great deal of -- he has put our people in danger. he has endangered people's lives. we are not a country that is

looking to be -- this is one of the charges that the think is against him, it is not about who he assisted in the united states to find a bomb -- osama bin laden. we have been assisting in the united states to find obama -- to find osama bin laden. harboring people who would act against the united states, that pakistan has been -- $70 billion spent in 12 years. >> i think general eikenberry -- ambassador eikenberry, i am sorry. >> another good thing about leaving government service is you get your first name back. karl is good.

a quick three points. point number one, the u.s. popularity favorability ratings in pakistan are about 7% right now, even lower than the u.s. population favorability ratings for congress, so that is very, very low. it is not entirely due to pakistan, obviously, that those ratings are like that. it's a good point is, with the united states, we are simply, over the last 10 years, not clear what pakistan's interests are. i'm not sure that the pakistanis are unified on this. on the one hand, if you are pakistan and you are part of the national-security apparatus, looking at the potential for a very weak afghanistan, then staying aligned with the afghan taliban makes good sense. it is a good hedge because afghanistan, if it were to collapse, it is going to once again be the playground of great

games. so there is an argument that they want to hedge. on the other hand, you could have the idea that pakistan -- that afghanistan will succeed brilliantly and be aligned with the united states. there calculus' remains very opaque to us. the third point, i think what ambassador rehman said about the civilian transition, it is critical. for the united states in our long-term allegiance to pakistan, stepping back, we always will come to the conclusion that pakistan needs to get a strong civilian, accountable government that controls its military. the nature of the relationship with pakistan has been one in which the urgent has always prompt -- has always trumped what we know to be important.

most recently it was the war on terror. so compromises deal directly with the pakistani military, to do with the pakistan isi, of course that makes sense. as doug talked about, with the consequences of 911. but i'm never -- i am not sure that that strategy will make us better off 20 years from now. >> i have one more question. the united states has been very critical, and the press has been critical, of pakistan, particularly for giving sanctuary. i am guessing all of you have been to that border region, as i have been. it is a very, very difficult place to defend, a place politically where the pakistani 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? and they have sent troops in there a number of different times and sustained very heavy casualties. isuess what i'm saying -- pakistan -- has pakistan to then been unfairly attacked for the border issue? >> the way we look at this is that sovereignty has privileges but comes with responsibilities. that is true on both sides of that border. you cannot control the border, or as far as i can tell, any other border, from one side alone. that has to be an effort on both sides of the border. we have been quite deliberate

with our support to do so on its side of the border. we believe it is pakistan's responsibility to do so on its side of the border. even if, with the hedging approach which may be outdated now -- even if you could make the case that it is in pakistan plus interest or was at one time to support the afghan taliban by permitting sanctuary and so forth -- i would argue that today, the pakistani taliban present such a significant threat to the state of pakistan itself that whatever that hedging strategy might have been some time ago no longer makes any sense because there is no way, in our view, to discriminate effectively between the afghan taliban and the pakistani taliban. so it may be a hedging approach, but it is a hedging approach

that is out of date. >> ambassador, what do you think? >> this is something we have been arguing for quite some time, from the safe haven on the other side of the line. our opposition forces received financial support. they receive equipment and training. initially, nobody wanted to admit this. now everybody agrees, our partners initially did not want to a knowledge, but everybody is pointing the finger that that is the area we should deal with. you cannot ignore that. >> it is being channeled through the isi, the intelligence agencies? >> the chairman mentioned in the last days in office that -- we

have been receiving promises from our pakistani friends that they will do something and we're hopeful that there are some practical steps toward that. it is not that difficult to say they're not welcome to use pakistani soil against afghanistan. and to do something practical to stop that. which is not happening. there are a lot of things that are expected to be under promised and over the level. >> excuse me. they i just add a voice to what ambassador hakimi is saying? we would be very happy to

assist, but we have not seen any serious interdiction on the border. for instance, if i may say, we have our question of sanctuary or -- we are also not clear what u.s. policy over the last few years, where it is going. we are asked to assist in the reconciliation that is going on , and we are assisting at every level. but at the heart of this -- and you mentioned this -- but the heart of this function here is that 49 nations with their $400 billion have not been able to accomplish x goals in

afghanistan, and somehow pakistan should manage that with 150,000 troops committed to the border. and we have the american military here, we get some level because we are very clear, as everybody says, pakistan is maxed out on the border. for instance, with border operations, we have given extensive anti-terrorist operations. we displaced hundreds of thousands of rare species in our country, hosting them, -- of refugees in our country, hosting them. we are now only able to -- at the heart of this argument is a broad assumption that pakistan's capacity is limited.

our commitment to fighting terrorism is open-ended. are ministries, as well as the government. we cannot walk away from it. we are in the trenches, on the frontlines, and i will give you an example. over the last eight months when we had incurred constant firing , critical masses of people that come in, we had called on nato forces at least 52 times. we need hammer and anvil if they are going to operate on that border, and manage to interdict those that we need to interdict. we should not be giving this constant message that pakistan

will do everything on its side of the border. we do not say that it is active sanctuary because we still have a capacity problem. we would assume at least that amount of strategic empathy be given to pakistan. the public messaging is constantly assuming that pakistan should pick up where everybody else leaves off. that is why we need a partnership and focus on goals that are concrete and deliverable. that is why we need our ministry's active and complimenting each other, it would be a good idea if they operated in the south.

if our communication towers are shut off, it is a good idea if the other side does that. i am sure that all of this can be achieved. we have nearly 1000 troops on our side of the border, but there is one-tenth of that on the other side. here is a quick sheet of what is the priority. we have over 250 in the area. afghanis are sitting there, and we are unable to take them on. >> ambassador, we want to turn this over to the audience for questions. i have a couple more questions i want to raise. >> i have to reply to her. there is no comparison of the

pakistani taliban, relatively recent small presence in pakistan. to the decades-long experience and relationship between elements of the pakistani government and the afghan taliban. so to compare these is a i think unfair. >> steve, if i could also interject. you led off with held difficult the terrain is. ambassador, you and steve and doug and i have probably all been up there. it is like telling a bunch of young captains or majors that are going to fight up there, welcome to these outposts on the moon and now defend this. it is extraordinarily difficult terrain. the second point is, let's take the headquarters, about 1

kilometer away from the main activity, 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, unambiguous, would be to say we are not good to go in and fight because it would be a very tough fight. but we've could call in the taliban leadership and tell them there are several choices to make. you can stop fighting and begin peace negotiations. you cannot fight from our soil. you can put down your weapons and we can integrate you into pakistan. number 3, you could go into afghanistan and continue to fight, but not from our soil. >> we are very happy to do that, and i welcome that.

the position of the pakistan government today, we do not welcome or sanctuary foreign fighters on our soil. that is very clear. there is no question right now of hedging bets. we are not hedging on anyone, we are very careful now. even with high-level visits, we make sure that the prime minister meets with everybody. we make sure that we are engaged with the afghan government. the government is in constant conversation with us now in terms of how to move forward. i would like to point to looking forward from a security position, the needs to be less of a stigma.

now let's assume we can always bring everyone to the table. i'm not sure that we can. we have a high stake, a model which is inclusive. bringing it into the future as a modern, emerging economy, we are bringing that in. there is no bad thing on the taliban. -- there is no betting on the taliban. they challenge us as well as they challenge everyone else. there are certain areas which, as you say, are not easy to govern. they could not be governed by many before us before pakistan became pakistan. it has to be incremental.

we cannot be responsible for all people on our own while others hang back. it is a question of priorities being developed on all sides. it is time to do so. now that there is the will on both sides to begin a new role towards building equity for peace in both regions. we're making great strides in terms of opening our trade and other conversations with india. so this is a new pakistan. >> i want to ask, what are the realistic chances of some sort of meaningful negotiations between the taliban and whoever -- afghanistan, the united states, pakistan, some

combination of those -- to bring about some sort of a political resolution or a ceasefire, some sort of outcome that might end this for the afghan people? what do you think? we will start with you. >> the peace process has two tiers. one is integration, one is reconciliation. on the integration front, we have achieved a lot. reintegration, resigned to bring the foot soldiers within the system, with that in mind that they renounce violence, cut ties with al qaeda, they accept afghan institutions. they're welcome to reintegrate.

12,000 already have joined this program, and there -- they are enjoying the facilities we have provided. for reconciliation, there are lots of talks, lots of discussions. but this is a process. achieving something overnight is not going to happen. we have opened different channels of communications with them. most recently in kyoto, at a university, the taliban for the first time in one group was engaging with the high peace council from our government. it was not in negotiation, but at least an exchange of views and everybody made their points clear. we think that with the support

of, again, are pakistani friends, they are supporting the afghan-led peace process, which we appreciate. we are willing to see some practical steps that they have something at stake and they can play a crucial role. so it is something that is going on. this is one of the top priorities in our government's program, to succeed that. within taliban also, there are moderator's that want to join. there are some that insist on the military operations. there are all signs to make us believe that we have initiated that will bring us for full results. >> i am interested in what you think of this, but first answer

for me the question, why would the taliban want to enter into negotiations at a time when the united states is scaling back, withdrawing its troops, and by the end of 2014 we will be down to no combat troops? why wouldn't they want to take a chance and see how good the afghan army is before they start thinking about some kind of day -- >> they in may want to take it -- they may want to take a chance. president obama has made clear that the door is open to a negotiated political process that could lead to the afghan taliban, especially the leadership of the taliban itself, leave open for them a door back into the political process in afghanistan is it is not free. they have to make -- meet three conditions. they have to break ties with al

qaeda, stop the insurgency and the fighting. and they have to come back inside the framework of the afghan constitution. there is a framework to this notice -- this notion of reconciliation. why would they think about doing this? first of all, their movement is being hammered every day and night by not only 100,000 nato- led troops, but now 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 pressure on the movement so that the door that president obama has opened to the political process looks attractive. another reason -- increasingly, as we transition from are being in the lead to the afghan forces being in the lead, the taliban area of counter occupation, the taliban narrative of jihad against the west, begins to erode because now increasingly

they're fighting afghan forces, fellow afghans, not american forces. finally, we believe that by way of our partnership with afghanistan, that ambassador hakimi outlined -- and eight other countries -- sent signals to the taliban that they cannot wait us out. living in some sort of safe haven, although probably a second class citizen in pakistan -- if they won their forces to be hammered every day and every night -- if they want their forces to be hammered every day and every night, the door will remain open. >> talking about progress that has been made, if you go to the big urban areas of afghanistan, things have transformed since 2001. a lot of young people have a very different world view. i think for the thailand to

believe that they -- for the taliban to believe that they could -- it is a stretch. does that mean as we go forward with transition there will not be problems with insecurity and bad governance in the urban areas? no no, it does not. but i'm talking about the taliban. three points going forward, the importance of the taliban and what can be achieved -- number one, to agree with what doug had laid out -- that is that important, if we get this transition right, then the taliban's narrative is evaporating every day as the afghans move to the lead. number two, it makes the point, drives home the point that we have really got to get this and during, the longer term presence, right. because the longer term presence we have after the 2014 assistance, counterterrorism,

what does that add up to? reassurance to the afghans, giving them political conference for dialogue. also the right incentives to taliban that we are not leaving, perhaps the right incentives to pakistan. and the third and final point, we talk about the political settlement and we sometimes overstate this as a question of taliban versus all the rest, taliban versus the rest of the afghan body politic. my own view is that afghanistan, going back to the 1970's, the afghan body politic needs reconciliation among itself. i increasingly look at the taliban dialogue as perhaps a subset of a larger dialogue that has to take place. let's be clear -- the taliban, when in the advanced in the middle 1990's to take control of a lot of parts of afghanistan in their initial fighting, they were welcome liberators.

liberation from some very vicious war lords that had opened the door to taliban. taliban has great misrule themselves, but some of those warlords led the drive to formal and informal power today. >> one last question, and we've got to go to the questions from the floor. there are people that believe this whole situation could fall back into civil war, that after the united states leaves and the stability it has provided there in terms of security, that you run the risk of these warlords and tribal groups that have been at each other's throats in some cases for centuries are going to reemerge and people are going to leave the taliban and everything is going back the way it was. is that a real concern?

>> first of all, if i may -- >> and try to keep it short. >> in afghanistan before the soviet invasion, we lived with each other peacefully. afghanistan before invasion, if you see the history, we had a constitution, a modern society, a rule of law, a proper justice system, and afghanistan active member of international community. this perception that afghanistan, with in afghanistan there are tribes fighting with each other, i think that is not right. when the soviet invasion happened, from that point on until the civil war and so on for the last 30 years or so, fighting impose that on us. before that we were a peaceful society, living side by side for years.

from now on also, it is something that we, the afghan people, do not want to go back to those dark days. we're looking for a bright future. one point i want to make about production -- most recently we had a successful international conference were more than 70 countries came and pledged to support afghanistan for the next 40 years, for $16 billion. then we read about accountability, that we do certain things and our international partners will do certain things. most recently, two or three days ago, our president already issued a decree with very ambitious measures to fight corruption drastically, and the

judicial system, ministries, all others, to the point that we should give that satisfaction to our partners and our own people. >> to the former u.s. military people, do you think that is a realistic scenario? civil war? >> several points i would make. the first is i agree that the afghans are tired of war and they have many adults in their lifetime who have seen the tragedy of civil war, the taliban occupation. secondly, there are no neighbors of afghanistan that are pulling at any of the domestic groups, ethnic groups of afghanistan. but with the surprising sense of nationalism, underlying it. third, in 2006, i went to the

town of bordet's or the international headquarters was located. we visit a general about what he was most proud of, and he said i am most proud of the staff officers in the room, and the operations officer, the intelligence officer. and we were fighting each other 10 years ago. steve asked the question, what do you worry about the most? he said that i worry that you americans will leave us in time. before we got the equipment to them, before the barracks were built, and i was wrong. i will go back to what i am most proud of -- we are not ready yet to work together. we do not have the level of trust and confidence. we need you here for a long trapunto of time to achieve that. my view is -- for a longer

period of time to achieve that. i think the afghans do want us to have a much smaller footprint in our country than we do today. >> given the level of development with the afghan political structure, civil war might be a risk. if we did not have a delivery transition process over the next 30 months, and if we did not even beyond that transition process plan today for a sustained u.s.-supported role, alongside the nato alliance, and today some 50 other countries who have said essentially we are not going to replay 1989 -- so 2014 is not the 25-year break from 1989 and we are just going to repeat the tragic history when the russians left. >> we want to take some questions from the floor. we have people with microphones. let's start in the middle.

>> good afternoon. a question for general eikenberry. if i understood you correctly, you questions the trading of -- the drug trade in afghanistan. my question is, is it feasible to consolidate the gains that we have made with such blood and treasure without giving with the narcotics trade which fuels the insurgency, promotes corruption of public officials and institutions, undermines public confidence, and generally challenges the rule of law? >> thanks for raising that point. i certainly did not mean to communicate that the war against drugs in afghanistan is not vital for afghanistan's success and stability, and an important national interest of our own. i was talking about the loose definition of a military doctor. but the approach is that the dea

has had a region has had must be continued. they must absolutely be continued. afghanistan produces 99% of the world's poppy. every $10 of corruption that exists with -- seven of them are going to the pole of afghanistan, the government of afghanistan. three of those are going to the taliban. this is a very serious problem that, because of the existence of the drug trafficking and its perversion of the economy and politics, i do not know how you can eventually stabilize afghanistan unless you can continue those efforts. >> over here. >> mark chance of the naval war college.

i have questions from what we're learning in afghanistan. we chose a strategy of a heavy footprint, hundreds of thousands of troops, a nation-building strategy. looking back at it, wouldn't it have been wiser if we have used instead of the heavy footprint strategy, a letter footprints strategy? >> the two lessons that i carry around in my notebook, which are overwhelming to me, having been somewhat involved with afghanistan since 2004, its first the overwhelming importance of understanding the situation on the ground. i am still dissatisfied with the level of our understanding of where the rubber meets the road in a counter insurgency approach.

we do not understand the languages, the culture. we do not understand the history. if you are an american diplomat or soldier, we view afghanistan one year at a time. the odds of that same soldier or diplomat going back to the same area in afghanistan is slim to zero. the overriding lesson to me is that we had better understand what we are getting into and what it will take to be successful to be effective there. the second thing is a point that most of something that john mentioned. as soon as we begin one of these campaigns, we have to begin to invest immediately in these indigenous security forces. because the level of tolerance for our presence and the kind of numbers we have had recently will only go down over time. so the smart investment would have been in the years from 2001

to 2006, for example, would have been a much more heady and concerted focused effort on afghan security forces, not just the kind of focus we have seen the last couple of years. >> steve, i would say the approach that we tried in iraq and afghanistan and used there, which only historians, 25 years from now, will be able to fairly evaluate -- it has not been resource intensive. i have heard some people describe it as trying to achieve revolutionary aims through colonial means. even the colonial ways and means that we have adopted were not sufficient at all, putting back to chernow writing in "washington: a life."

he said in a frustration letter he wrote to the continental congress, "i spent six months getting the troops ready and six months thinking about how to demobilize and." we could go on with a long list. the second would be that we had better meet, before we plunge, deep into iraq or afghanistan, have a more frank debate about ways and means. do we need to go back and dust owellhe weinberger and pa doctrine again? i am not sure. let me ask people in this audience -- we have an all- volunteer force which is absolutely magnificent. they performed brilliantly. it is not a conscript army. if we had a conscript army good

enough to do a job, raise your hand if you think we would have invaded iraq. raise your and if you think that 10 years after intervening in afghanistan and iraq, we would have had troops there directly emplconnected to the american people. if the answer to that is no -- and maybe there are some changes that do go up, but the majority will stay down -- there might be something wrong with the republic. we have been heavily engaged with war volunteer force is not politically owned by the american people. >> over here. >> thank you. two enemies make with this question. general lute, will unilateral

actions, drone strikes, continue? and what will -- what actions will they take if the drone strikes continue? >> our cooperation with pakistan against al qaeda leaders today in the border region continues. obviously i'm not going to talk about specifics, but the reason they continue is that the united states and pakistan have a common interest here. as ambassador rehman outlined clearly, we have had no more clear allied fighter than pakistan. the levels of cooperation across different programs also continue. i will let sherry speak for herself. >> thank you. very quickly, i think that in

pakistan the view now is very clear and ambiguous -- and unambiguous -- not because we do not want to hurt al qaeda, but because, number one, the drone strikes now, we all acknowledge that the core of al qaeda has been eliminated. also, they now radicalize most of the population of where the strikes happen. i do not want to get into the specifics, but they add to the level of recruits of the fighting, what we are fighting against. the drones, the robotic -- it

opens up all kinds of questions of what any other country does. our position is that this is a problem. no wonder that there is this you across the united states. i am not saying that this is because they have not assisted in the war against terror. the point is now they have diminishing returns. that is a very clear point. before we speak on interco strikes, there will be no compromise on that. >> i am sorry, that is all we have time for. i want to thank our panelists and the ambassador for joining us today. she knew she was going to get some heat, and she knew she wanted to come in and take it

anyway and have the opportunity to present her government's views. thank you very much for coming. [applause] >> we have some live programming to tell you about. join us later today for the update on the mars rover curiosity. nasa has a briefing scheduled for 1:00 p.m., about 15 minutes from now. you can see it live on c-span. later on c-span2, we will continue speeches from the national press club. we will feature billie jean king today. an hour later, q&a. the guest is nick gillespie, the executive editor of reason.com. that will be on c-span2.

sunday, look at our interview with andrew nagorski. >> i had no idea about the people who are essentially my predecessors as correspondent for diplomats in berlin. i had not spent a lot of time thinking about what it would have been like to be a correspondent in the 20's and 30's. how would you have operated. what would you have noticed or not noticed, much less how would you have acted. >> sunday at 8:00 on c-span's q&a. >> starting shortly, we will go live to the jet propulsion laboratory in pasadena. until then, your phone calls on today's "washington journal," looking at your personal economic situation. host: from kabul, afghanistan, a

man in an army uniform shot and killed service members in southern afghanistan. the u.s. military command said. the shooter joined the insurgency after the attack. the shooting happened in the district of the helmand province. a front-page story from "the wall street journal," "better off seen, -- better off? the theme framing in the election." you go back to ronald reagan's famous moment in 1980 in the debate where he asks this

question of voters. we will play that clip for historical context. let's watch. video clip: next tuesday all of you will go to the polls and make a decision. i think when you make that decision, it might be well that you ask yourself -- "are you better off than you were four years ago?" is the easier for you to buy things in the stores than four years ago? is there more or less unemployment than there was in the country? for years ago? is america as respected throughout the world as it was. do you feel that our security is as safe, that we are as strong as we were four years ago? if you answer all those questions, yes, then i think your choice is very obvious as to who you vote for. if you do not agree, if you do not think that this course that we have been on for the last

four years is what you like to see us follow for the next four, then i could suggest another choice that you have. >> on the phone with us, damien plata. ronald reagan framed this as a very personal question to individual voters. is that what people are focusing on and processing this year? >> i think so. this is a gut check question and we are at a gut check point in the economic recovery. a lot of folks are maybe back to where they started? for years ago. maybe that have been doing a good job and have been able to tighten their belts and get back on firmer footing. but there has not been much progress beyond that. i think there has been a lot of frustration both with democrats and republicans on the pace of

the economic recovery. a lot of folks are wondering where are we, could we be doing better, or should we be be -- was the financial crisis worse than it was? in our conversations with voters, we heard a lot of people saying on the one hand i am better off. obviously i still have my job or the job market is falling in a little bit. we had to make some tough choices. we are not going out to eat as much, buying the new car would want to buy. i think there is an uneven cents about where americans are right now. host: monday run through four of the graphs that accompanied your story. as we look at them from a historical perspective -- you look at gdp with inflation adjustment, and the black box is president obama compared to his predecessors going back to president carter.

his was the lowest growth over the term, 5.2%. per-capita income excluding benefits, - 8%. net worth, in increase of 10.6%. household real-estate is the lowest at 12% as opposed to when he took office. when people look at those numbers, though, what is the context of a place this presidency is and his responsibility for these numbers? guest: a lot of voters from both parties recognize the kind of blunt trauma that the first year and a half to two years that the country went through -- the financial crisis really pushed the stock market down heavily. we were down below 7000 in the early part of 2009. now we're up above 13,000. the housing crisis obviously

fell off sharply. disposable income. obviously when you have high unemployment, that takes a big toll on that as well. folks realize that the first two years things were really hard, it is really hard for businesses and americans to regain their footing. what has complicated that is that the recovery has been slow. we have had little spurts of strong three or six-month periods, but we have then been met with headwinds. the economy recovery has been painful for americans. the question i think a lot of voters will have is, is it a recovery that we have endured, the kind of thing that we could build on and improve in the next few years, or is it time to change course and try something different? host: how much culpability turns

to congress? guest: that is a huge question, and i think the white house is counting on voters kind of pinning some of the blame on congress. they are making the case, as president obama is on its campaign trail every day, saying that congress is meeting to get its act together and he is doing the best he can. the question is, does the buck stops with him? will americans buy into this idea that congress has been slow getting things going? that will be the key to getting things going. there is not that much time left, so voters will be making up their minds very soon. host: damien has been over the

country asking are you better off than four years ago? guest: thanks again. we want to get to your phone calls and show you our facebook content and hear what is on your mind. are you better off today? if so, where are you giving the credit for that? will that affect your vote? how will that affect what you do in november if not? from arkansas, democrat, you are on the air. caller: thank you for taking my call. host: good morning. caller: yes, i am better off today than i was four years ago. thanks to obamacare, i have been able to start my own small business and was able to go into self employment, and i feel much better about my economic future, thanks to obamacare. and yes, i will be voting for the president in november. host: you very much.

next up is a call from michigan. bahrain, a republican. you are on. caller: no, i am not better off. food prices are going up, gasoline prices are going up. everything keeps on going up. i have one thing, being republican, reagan was not an excellent president because mortgages were at 18%. the only people who did well during that time or people who had stocks and investments. but mortgage rates were 18% to 20% under ronald reagan. why people keep talking about that man when he was wonder -- about being wonderful when he was not the best economic person around. host: loraine, have you decided who you will vote for in november? caller: right now i'm not

decided about anything. i do not know what to think. host: some headlines with conflicting views. let me go to the top of "the washington post." a front-page story about economic indicators. "economic news may be too late for obama." a different take in arizona. their front page the story today, "latest indexes may 8 obama." how does this affect you and your household? are you better off today than four years ago? don, and -- don, an independent, you are on the air. caller: what you might want to do is show a graphic of paulson's face in september of 2008, while two years ago, telling the congress that the world was about to collapse. and those that are memory challenged, think of that time.

the uncertainty, how it ruled the day. how do and gloom ruled the day. and obama, even though he is no day at the beach, has done a reasonable job changing that around. that was four years ago. so i think we're better off. i think i'm better off than we are in general. host: citizen of the world on twitter asks -- are we losing it hundred thousand jobs a month? are we still in iraq? is zero months -- is osama bin laden still in pakistan? and obama traveled the world? the caller is leo. democrat, you are on the air. caller: i am not worse off, but because of -- i am retired, but we do have rentals, and some of my renters are not quite doing so well, so that hurts me. one thing i wanted to ask is,

you put the state with the person's first name, but could we possibly give the age of the caller calling in? it would really makes it much more interesting. the other thing i would like to see if you could possibly do would be to get more shows on what is happening with these red states that are forcing the people out of voting by their requiring all this id and everything else. if i had to give my id back in day, i'm pretty sure i would have a lot of trouble. host: thanks very much. we have done some programs already on the voter

identification statutes, and we will again before election day. tim at lake aspen, a twitter response to the earlier tweet -- as unemployment risen? as food stamp usage increased? are there more on disability? how in the >> now we go live to nasa engineers for a briefing on the rover curiosity. >> this week, we have had a tremendous success in landing on mars and the beginning of the exploration of a new world. we're going to hear from a senior software engineer who will give us a preview of what's coming up in the next few days for the rover. first, we're going to hear from the descent and landing team. they have been poring over the data and have some new details for us. first, i want to introduce the

lead, adam, and his deputy, miguel san martin. >> thank you, veronica. we have a talented panel here for you today. miguel and i wanted to be the ones to introduce them to you. leading off the rotation, the operations lead for descent and landing. from the johnson space flight center, the guided entry that got us to the spot on mars, gavin. to his left come from the jet propulsion laboratory, responsible for parachute descent, devin kipp.

also from jet propulsion in charge of powered flight, kind of important, steve. besides them, looking much better than steve, from the langley research center, trajectory specialist jody davis. last but not least, the senior software engineer and my cichy.l idlol ben this team up on the stage represents the tip of the iceberg of a very talented set of people that work together to make this day possible and have a rover on the surface. the rest of the team is here representing the rest of the

iceberg in some measure because it is a big iceberg. i would personally like to take this moment to give them a round of applause. [applause] now, to the briefing. gentlemen. >> we had a great day on mars on sunday. and is going to set up what we know. i will start with how we got there and what conditions were like when we got, where we were, and what the atmosphere was like. we had an incredibly clean ride. we traveled 350 million miles on the way to mars and we miss our entry target by only about 1 mile. a pretty impressive ride. over one week out, we made a prediction no. were curiosity

would be at the entry point and gave that to curiosity. we were 1.2 5 million miles from mars at the time and we were only off by 800 feet. a curiosity had a very good idea where she was. that is something that gavin and his guys took advantage of. if you bring up my first atmosphere figure, if you would, you would see that the atmosphere was pretty much as we expected. switch to the atmospheric figure. i do not think we have had a weather report since before we landed, but this was the weather on the day we did land. it looked very similar to the days you saw before, clear skies, some water ice clouds, clear, cold day just like we thought we would say. very few dust evens but they will pick up in season, but far

from the crater. we got there before dusk could get their which contributed to was having a good day. in general, performance was as expected. people will go through that in some detail, but we only know that because edl communications was so good. everything will hear today is based on data we receive that night from all of our different sources. we had edl communications from all three orders including the mars orbiter and the mars express. tones were heard, so both nasa and theywer were listening. there were some information transmitting firmer so we got all the information expected to see. there's one more source that

will help us do an edl reconstruction and that is the information on curiosity and waiting to be sent back, in total 100 megabytes, only 60 iphone pictures, but it will help us understand. we are only working on what may got back that night which is only about 1 mb. we received 67 heartbeat towns and informational towns. that told us everything was going well -- heartbeat and informational tones. it was completely unexpected and we lost signal five minutes after entry, within seconds of our prediction. things went pretty much as expected for tones. mro not more data than we expected.

we had a coverage for 19 minutes. we locked up eight minutes before entry. we had landing + six minutes. we had a possible blackout for about 43 seconds. the way we design the communications, we were prepared for a blackout of 75 seconds, so that worked out well. we had stayed in their to tell us what was going on. we sent the data to a telescope is going on during the blackout. to minutes 19 seconds after entry, 20 seconds later than we expected, but well within predictions. withght now, we're working the subset of data and we will have data coming back to tell us exactly what went on.

we will be able to look at the trajectory and learn anything we can about the system we may want to push forward. we have data that shows the actual event timing. i think we got it all sorted out on when the actual event occurs. we'll talk about some of the major events. this is how this panel is laid out coming entry to landing. first, we will start with gavin and talk about the entry guidance. >> thank you, allen. we entered the atmosphere at 24 times the speed of sound. we flew parallel to the ground. we flew down to just under mach

2. it was just about the duration we were expected. if he were a human riding on board, it would be a rough ride. fortunately, curiosity is made up some pretty sturdy stuff and handled it just fine. in context of how this did it with previous missions, if we could go to the graphic? what we're looking at here is a photography map of the crater. you can see just north of the cliff. we had the two viking landers in the 1970's that landed on a different part of mars. you can see it's a very large area. the birth time we landed on mars -- first time we landed, we knew very little.

it was several decades before we returned. it came in late like a spinning cannonball. over the years with opportunity and phoenix, we could reduce the landing. even better due to the hard work of the interplanetary navigation seem to further penpoint in the atmosphere. would the curiosity did is that we build improvements to make that even better. the way we fly our entry, as adam has mentioned, is the six segments and we trim the vehicle.we glide slightly in the

direction we are leaning. when you are going mach 20 that is more than enough. let me just explain the star. about 1.5 to center miles downrange and i want to explain why we were not right in the middle. we're still happy with where we landed. the 1.5 miles came down to how we flew. imagine my hand is the heat shield. now as we are leaning, we turn that direction very slowly. we're looking at the target. will we flypast it, short of it? we think we're going to fly past it, then you need to even it out and lift down.

while i am doing that, and also tried to hold it to the side. i still want to go back to the target so we have reversals. during the curiosity entry, what was interesting is that we had a third bank reversal, right at the end of rent control, where we control the distance response. we had it for a few seconds, but during that time, we did not have a lot of time before we said we were done with a range control and we were aiming. at the end of range control, we had 1 mile of air already. that is some of the set up that we are seeing. we are looking at the computer simulation and over the next weeks and months we will be looking at that to see what happened at the tail end. when we got down to -- i would

be remiss if i did not mention where this came from. i'm from johnson space center. we have done guided entry there since the 1960 proxy. it's very important coming back. you land a crew and the payload down and get them there as quickly as the can. when it started over 10 years ago, we were trying to improve the lifts and it seemed like the right thing to do. it works really well. the predictions we have seen a look very close to what we were expecting. we have not done anything yet. they did a great job helping as characterize how we fly.

at the end of the entry phase, we were approaching the target and we then did a rotation because we want to get rid of that before the deploy. now we go to devin kipp to talk about that. >> what i'm going to show everyone is a brief sampling about what we now about how this art work performed on the way down. we only have some cursory ideas about how it performed. until we get a detailed, accurate construction, we can only infer. this is an incredibly important piece of data to get because we do not have a lot of experience flying parachutes in a martian atmosphere. we have done it six times before, now 7. we have only done it on our think you times. when you have only done something 10 times or so, there's a lot of extra data on

time 11 so it's exciting to see that in a flight test. let's bring up the first image. everyone has seen this. as of about 3:00 a.m. monday morning, this was the most beautiful picture had ever seen in my life. you can tell a lot about how the parachute performed by looking at this picture. it has it's perfectly inflated shape. you can see the dark area which is the dense that lets air escape. -- which is the vent. do not see any apparent damage. there are no visible holes or tearing. victor was taken well into the parachute descent, probably 40 or 50 seconds after parachute deployment. we see a perfectly functioning parachute that looks exactly like we thought. that's great news. more than that, we can get some information by looking at the event times.

about 239 seconds after entry compared to 241-263 seconds, so we were in the sweet spot where we thought we would be. perhaps a little later in the center which is consistent with having less drag than we expected during the entry phase. we can conclude the parachute opened in the conditions we thought it would and we had tested it to open so the pressure regime and loading during the inflation event was good. the second event time we can look at is when the heat shield deployed. it deploys based on a sense of velocity. you very quickly to decelerate from mach 1.7 subsonic to mach .7. that took 20 seconds for the parachute to slow you down that

much compared to the pre-data between 16-26 seconds. this is right in the sweet spot of what we predicted which shows us the supersonic draft of the parachute which was very nominal and it has performed beautifully. the third time you can look at is when the actual separation happened and that was 95 seconds after he shield separation. we have a large dispersion on what we expected anywhere between 60-150 seconds where we could have been descending slowly. this is mostly due to not knowing what altitude precisely the parachute would deploy and out and also not knowing the subsonic drag the person was going to provide. the fact we are in the middle of that time when this suggests not only that the parachute performed perfectly but that the deploy altitude was fairly nominal and what we expected.

these are all implications. we do not know them for sure. based on the limited data we have, this is what we can infer. the second thing i want to discuss with you is what we call list mode. it is the behavior of the capsule underneath the parachute. at the capsule is suspended below the parachute, it will not be perfectly still. it will wobble. that is the risk. there are some dynamics that we want to keep a very slight. he did not want the capsule going all over the place for a variety of reasons. the separation event is designed to have fairly benign motion. when you separate the heat shield cleanly, you do not want the capsule dancing all over the place. the other thing is we have these radar beams trying to measure altitude and velocity of the spacecraft in relative to the ground.

they may be looking for a faraway and measuring some terrain feature that we really do not care about. if you could bring up the movie, this is the thumbnail version of the movie and you can see it dancing around. this is good evidence of risk mode as the camera field of view changes. what we know from the real time data and from this image is that risk mode was very benign and consistent with what we expected. during the mars exploration rover entries, we were surprised a little bit. we saw some risk mode behavior that was a little higher than we expected. we could are really explain the physics that went into that.

we had to figure out how to model less better and better understand the physics of risk mode. the observed risk mode aligned very well with our pre-date as of this gives us confidence. one interesting thing you will see in the video is that the ground is spanning which is consistent with the capsule rotating underneath the parachute at between one and two degrees per second. during the 92nd -- 90-second dissent, we do 1 degree per second. not a lot of exciting things happening because everything was right down the pipe of what we expected, but that is how we wanted it. one other thing i want to point out, if you can bring up the third image, this is nice because it is verification of an

edl requirement. we have countless of them. this is almost three seconds after he chield's separation. the heat shield is about 15 -- heat shield separation. until it is 15 meters away, we are nervous about the radar because it is possible that more than one radar beam can see the heat shield during those first meters of motion. then they can get a close out the to that will be rejected. we want to get the heat shield 50 meters away as quick as possible. the requirement was 50 meters in 5 seconds and this shows us we got 50 meters in 3 seconds, so that is one verification that we can check. we met our requirements. with that, i will let steve talk about powered descent.

>> i want to talk about what happens during power dissent. we are on the back shell of the rover and the dissent stages are in the backside. we get about 1 mile of altitude and we dropped and free-fall for one second and then we'll buy the engines and divert to the side so we do not run into the parachute that is still coming down behind us. it is vertical flight all the way to the ground. i want to bring up the rest of the video devin started. this is 3.80 frames per second. we're starting out here with some risk mode dynamics, the back-and-forth and then you can see it it really still right here. the dissent engines have started here and we are now under powered flight. the first thing that happens is we divert to the side so you can see the ground moving.

its 120 degrees off vertical to avoid the back shell. then it starts to straighten out again. it will basically snapped to straight vertical. we go through the rest of power dissent and you can see the plumes affecting the ground and then you will see the wheel brought into place as we lower mobility. then the camera goes pretty dark as began writing to the other. -- we begin getting into the dirt. from the data we have received, we flew this right down the middle. it's absolutely incredible to have worked on a plan for so many years and just see everything happen exactly according to plan. onwe're watching this landing night, it was like all of these contingency plans that we had made leading up to edl,

about losing communication here or there, we do not know where it lands, these are all just being waves lifted off our shoulders as we were able to watch all the data come in -- weights lifted off our shoulders because everything went according to plan. as you can see, when we hit the ground, the next thing that happens is the flyaway maneuver. we were extremely lucky, but it was a planned event. if you go to the next image, we were lucky enough -- can you go one more? sorry. there. if you look in the left image, we believe we have caught what is the descent stage impact on the martian surface. this photo was taken about 40 seconds after touchdown. the predicted time of flight is

about 20 seconds or so it would have already impacted by the time this image was taken. the evidence that we have that this was something that we caused was the fact that it was the same image from the same camera taken 45 minutes later and the artifacts is not there anymore. we do know that the art back to israel because it appears in multiple pictures from the rear of the rover. -- we do know that the image is real. that is where the dissent should have flown away. when it hits the ground, it's going about 100 miles per hour and we expected it to kick up quite a bit of dust. we selected the rear camera to be the first image in the timing of the pictures, both front and rear, were timed so that we could catch any kind of cloud like this.

the fact that the descent stage flew directly after the rover was an amazing coincidence so we were able to catch the impact. you also saw in the video, as we retouching down we began kicking up dust. if you can go to the image before? i want to show you something that i personally find so incredibly moving. you're looking off the left side. i have the model year. you can see the camera, and a shot from the navcam looking down that way off of the left side of the rover. you can see two divets in the ground. we blasted those with our rocket engines so that makes me happy. as you might expect, landing on mars is a very dirty event. forre basically off roading

the next two years so we expected some debris to get on things. if you take your suv out and use it off-road coming expected to get dirty. we want to start off day one with a little bit of dirt. you never liked having the brand news anchors that are nice and shiny. you can see -- you never liked having the brand new s neakers. again, you can see this as more evidence that we did have the lift off with rockets, so that's pretty cool. with that, i will turn it over to jody running yesterday predicted vs. actual trajectory. >> thanks, steve. i will talk about two things. first, we will go through a google mars' animation. and actually has our latest project -- latest predicted

trajectory prior to landing. then we will go through after landing and i will use the simulation and what we got from curiosity at touchdown to determine where we thought we landed and how that actually compared to where we really landed. if i could have the video? this is google mars and this is real simulation data. we're going to the first bank reversal, second and third, and this is only half the angle of the bank reversal. it goes over four times real time. we actually used to google mars to analyze the trajectory to see this in 3d space instead of just numbers on white paper. this is taking us through the entry balance mass jettison and we will pitch over and look at the landing site. we will actually see a few pans. now, this trajectory is what we

assumed is the nominal trajectory that would based off of the latest and greatest navigation that we got prior to landing. this takes a glance over the crater. the parachute deploys. this is a configuration that we were at. parachute deployed happened about 10:15, mars time pacific. here is the heat shield separation, 20 seconds after. 18 seconds after that, we had radar lock up. that happened about 1.5 kilometer higher than what we expected. that's a good thing. 77 seconds after that, we had actual separation. it was as expected and things were looking nominal. here, we've pan down from the

rover and it's all as the expected. i want to point out that the american flag sitting under the rover, shout out to google mars. they put our landing location in google mars' already. that was pretty neat. so that was kind of neat. so this is out things were looking and we would compare after injury, after touching down. if we can move to the next figure, now this is after landing. we want to know, where is the rover? an estimate of where we think is so that folks can find this using high rise from mro will have a good idea. we did touchdown information, and we take that information and account for our known errors such as navigation errors, and we come up with the best estimate. that is the green diamond.

this was actually shown right after landing. this was our prediction, latest and greatest that we had immediately after. some of you may have already seen the speed of this kind of sets up the next figure that i have. here, we have the landing target, that same light blue .... like gavin said, the landing target, we missed it by about a mile and a half. it is actually of the graphic there to the left. the green diamond is where we thought we landed right afterwards, and that is the estimate we gave to the localization folks to try to find the rover. we thought it would be within a, a terror of that. the red x is where we actually landed. so our estimation of where we actually landed was only 200 meters apart, well within that 1

kilometer green circle. so we were very happy about that. now, shifting gears, if you look to the right, you'll see the entry masses. or we thought this would land, they are within the dark blue ellipse. if you look, where we expected those to land, there are six blue circle's. they actually show the same trends that have been shown from the ctx which was shown a couple days ago with the actual landing location of those balance masses. that is the overlay figure that you see. you can see those locations are well within the error ellipse

that is drawn. those actually impacted what was expected. that is kind of to give you a flavor of what is to come. this is based off of minimal data that we have so far. state noon. this is a huge effort, and it is going to be exciting when we get the rest of the data back to really be able to tell what happened during edl. with that, i pass it off to ben. >> as jody just talked about, all of the hardware that we jettisoned as we successfully landed on mars last sunday, i will talk about what we will do next on the surface which is to jettison edl software can now move onto our surface software. it is the software that runs on board curiosity, and it controls all the outboard a function of the rover. the software is responsible for the autonomous functions during

cruise. this software is also what we have been using to do the characterization face up until now. if you think about it, what is hard about this -- think about my phone. my phone has a processor that is 10 times as fast as the processor that is on curiosity, and that is -- it has 16 times as much storage as curiosity has been all my phone has to do is follow twitter feeds. [laughter] the challenging part about this is that my phone would not survive the journey to mars, so we have to build computers that are robust enough to survive the harsh interplanetary space, and are certain limitations we have including the size of the flight software image that we have. that forces us to update the flight software to add new capabilities. when we launched back in

november, we included four major applications in the software. we had the launch/cruise application. we had our edl application. the first version. the first version of the surface flight software. and we had a for the petition which was the capability for us to update the software while we work in route to mars. unlike the hardware, which once we launch is gone, the software, we can radiate those bits to mars and have them catch up to rover. this software up late -- update capability has been exercised already. we used it in the first week of june to update the edl software. to go from the four applications in the launch/cruse software, we get to our final version of the edl software.

this is edl v2.0. we exercise this software update capability. ha we added v1.1 of the surface software. but we cannot put all of these service software into the flight software image we had in the first week of june, because there was not enough space for it. we have a limitation on the size of the flight software image. what we did was we unloaded in cruise the r10 version of the softer, but we did not actually install it. that gives us not just the basic service capabilities but also as in the ability for us to use the sampling system on the rover. those are our two new apps

coming in the r10. and we will be updating to the r10 flights offer. first of all, sampling systems. right now, we have the capability to check out the health of the systems, but we do not have the ability to make the full use of all this great software that we ship with us to mars. we want to use the robotic arms phillippe use the drill's to use the whole sampling change. to in just those samples and to sam. all this exciting stuff that you'll see this mission to over the next few months and years on mars. that comes from the capabilities that are in this r10 software. curiosity is a martian mega- rover. it was born to drive. the r10 software includes smarts to efficiently drive the

rover. it has the autonomous driving abilities. the ability for the rover to drive using onboard images to detect hazards and to drive safely across the surface of mars, and this will be what we use when we set out on our first drive here on mars. r10, and like r9 -- r9 was for edl. r10 is optimized for surface. it has a lot of great stuff that the science team and the surface team wants. that is why we're willing to spend some time doing the install. where we are right now is that we just completed our sol4 activities. that was to prepare for the installation of the flights offer. everything was good. week got the go to proceed forward with his four-day installation process of installing the sol software on

the rover. it takes a long for us to do the full install, because we want to do it safely and do it step by step and a take our time. on sol 5, we will do a toe dip. we will move into the r10 software but not installed it fully, just to check it out. we will look at the data from the rover to make sure the software is functioning normally. everything looks good, on sol 6, we will commit to r10. once we have the software and everything is working well on the prime computer with the r10 virus software, we will do the same thing except on our back up computer. on sol 7, we will do another note toe dip. on sol 8, we will do a full comment. we will be ready to go with r10. >> thank you.

we're going to begin with questions here in the auditorium. then we will go to the phone lines. we will start on the very front. give us your name and affiliation. >> hello. joe from npr. two questions. one is, when you talk about capturing the ground with the radar. were you capturing a wide swath of mars the was the radar able to differentiate between a bumpy place and a smooth place? this is the question is, if you were to run this mission again today, would you make that ellipse smaller or are you at the limits of what this system can actually do? >> i can take the first part. the radar is fixed to the descent stage. it is at the mercy of worth the risk mode chooses to point it in

terms of what ground is going to be back -- going to be measuring. it does not do discrimination. if we have a wild risk noda in the radar measures the top of mount sharp, which cannot actually do, but hypothetically, it would be measuring the altitude relative to that point. one of the reasons we picked the landing ellipse we did was that we knew they all tested across the entire landing ellipse did not vary that much, and no matter what terrain feature the radar was pointed at, the altitude measure relative to that terrain feature would be close enough that we've instilled separate from the back shell at the right point. and around the moment of backed shell's the operation, the radar is surly looking within about a kilometer of the ultimate landing site. our criteria is we want the altitude of the ground to a very no more than about 100 meters within a kilometre range from the touch down at location. >> for the second question, can

we get the ellipse size smaller next time? it depends on where your landing. if it is a higher elevations in, we may need more ellipse to make sure we can hand hour -- and our heavy rover higher. but it probably would shave a couple miles off of it. we have to look at the data and see if we are correct with measurements. but i am confident that we can continue to do at least as good as curiosity and better in the future. >> big parts of ellipse tend to be the atmosphere and aerodynamics. what we learned from the construction over the next few months will help us look at that. >> ok, one more question. then we will go to the phone line. >> thank you. craig with aerospace america.

i guess maybe for steve or devin, was the altitude accordion capability playing a role here or was everything so tight that did it just did not matter? >> the accordion that we had allocated was 100 meters, so we allow for our estimate of were the ground was to be wrong by up to 100 meters. from the data we have gotten so far, it was wrong by 3 meters. so we overachieved in that area as well. it was right down the middle. >> ok. the second question, since edl has been achieved, i guess to the whole edl team, a show fans may be on how many people are going to be looking for another job -- serious question. [laughter] really.

thank you. >> i didn't think we have started to think about that yet. we're still relishing the success. >> and a lot of us will be involved in the reconstruction as well. but we're thinking about future projects and what we're going to be working on, definitely. >> ok, thank you. >> we're going to go to the phone line next. julia with canadian broadcasting. >> hello, this is julia with cbc. i have a couple of questions about the naming process. how did you decide to call the curiosity landing site gale? >> i think that is a question you'll have to ask the surface team. john grotzinger is certainly willing to talk about that at length. >> is the basic idea that there are old rocks on mars, and there

are some of the oldest rocks in the world in yellowknife. was there more to it than that? >> unfortunately, you are just talking to the delivery guy is here. >> yeah, we're just movers. [laughter] >> maybe you can tell me if it is normal practice to name the landing sites after cities in the world? [laughter] >> i think the naming convention was done by the science team. i am looking for a member but i do not see one. oh, wait, i do see one. let me see if she is prepared to answer the question. let us get her a microphone. >> perfect, thank you. >> i do not fully know what is behind the name, but i can make one correction which it is a quadrangle name. i think you heard in previous press conferences that the whole ellipse was divided up into

these quadrangles of that are about a mile by a mile in size and each one of those was mapped by a team member. and we got ready right before landing with geological easing again names that related to things like ancient geology, things on earth that tie in to our theme of science. yellowknife is this one. but i cannot answer all the questions that you asked. but i wanted to set that straight. it is the name of the quadrangle that we landed in. >> are all the other quadrangles named also? >> they will be. we're getting those lined up. >> but it is the quadrangle that the curiosity landed in? >> yes. >> ok, do you know if it is normal practice to name these things or is this unique to this project? >> what is unique to this project was the dividing up of the ellipse into quadrangles and mapping ahead of time. that was driven by the wonderful

orbital data sets that we had. we wanted to get ready by doing this mapping so that we could more quickly do strategic planning a where to send the rover and understand where we landed. >> did you speak about the similarities between the rocks and surface on mars compared to what is here in yellowknife? >> not yet. >> is the basis between digging the name yellowknife and the age of the rocks? >> they are on the order of 2.7 billion years old. so we went to mars to get at the ancient geology, because that is where we think there might be evidence for past environments similar to on earth. so it is connected in that way. simply ancient rocks that might preserve evidence of past environment favorable for life. >> one more question. what did you want in yellowknife

have been consulted before this or is this purely based on geological similarities? >> not that i know of, but i was not totally plugged into the naming and how it was done. >> if you like to call our newsroom, we would like to put you on the phone with the person who came up with the name. we are going to take a couple board -- more questions in the room. then we will go back to the phone lines. >> hello. john, bbc news. did mars express see all the way down to the ground? i know people in europe or thinking they may miss the actual landing. >> to my knowledge, they did not get to the ground. this is per my predict. >> disick and one, has anybody sort of study -- the second one, has anybody sort of study the debris field to consider what broke apart and what happened?

>> we have another imaging opportunity coming up six days after landing where we're going to take another image of the lander and the debris field that will have better resolution and will be a cleaner image. we might be able to see more detail. there's not a lot of detail in our current image because it was taken as such a weak in goal. we're waiting for the better image. >> ok, next. >> hello. this is for ben. as someone who is perhaps not as cell phone and technologically attuned as others, i was hoping you could go over what the capabilities were relative to a cell phone, and two, if you could walk us through how you can do that, how you can have so much credibility on mars based

on software that is less than what you have in a cell phone. >> yes, the rover as a radiation hardened processor. it actually has two of them. two redundant elements. the processor runs at 133 mhz, so if you think about your phone having a one did their herds processor and your processor having 2.5, the processing power in our rover is much less. but we do have full computers in the rover. we have a prime and redundant back up. they have onboard/storage. i talked about the storage of my phone. 64 gigabytes. the rover has 34. since we're designing this custom software, we're able to optimize for the particular application. when we were writing the edl softer, we knew the limitations of our software and we were able

to focus it to make edl successful. when you have 18 that is a world-class, talented software team -- when you have a team like this, they will find a way to make it work. it is the ultimate reason about how we were able to do it, we have a lot of very talented software engineers. when they're given a challenge, they need it, and they were able to get it to work on the slower processor. the reason why we wait for the r10 flight software is because now we can have a version that is optimized for the surface. weekend focus on the surface as part of it the mission. we do not have to think about some of the additional overhead that loads down the system. by going to r10, we are freeing up some of our processor implications.

>> and processing does not change it all. even though you're going to need more, it will be doing a lot more things now on the surface. >> the core processor speed does not change. we are running a lot less staff. that is how we gain back some of that margin. >> [inaudible] >> yes, the processor is much faster. >> next, the phone line. a call from reuters. >> thank you. my first question is following up on the first question about honing in this landing target even more. the system is being touted back baa's -- i think the phrase was, a workhorse for the future. i was wondering if this will

make the cut for future missions, including supplies or some of these other farther off things that have been talked about. if you can talk more about what you said about being able to tweak that by a few miles, what exactly would that entail? what's one of the important things that curiosity demonstrates is an incredible tool for the future missions to take advantage of. i think it depends on the mission that we look at using in the future. are we looking to land that target near a base or a sample we want to bring back? there are a few things that we have already imagined, and i think we will come up with some other ideas after we look at the data to see how we can make it better. >> it is safe to say that we're already looking at it. >> thank you.

by the question, i think i saw a jpl blog post that rob manning won the bingo game of where it was going to land. curious if there's anything more than accolades with that guess? >> we had multiple bingo games among different groups of people. the biggest one was a giant poster, about 10 feet long, that was printed out. rob was the closest. he was one of what we call our grumlins who operated our readiness testing, so we believe he may have rigged the system somehow. [laughter] >> abbottabad in the room. >> i just wanted a little more information if any of you have it about the already iconic photograph of the parachutes

descending with the rover below it. this picture had to be programmed far in advance -- is that right? >> yeah, that is right. we provided the first timing that we wanted this parachute picture to be taken way back in april. targeted for about six minutes after injury. the goal was to make sure that we focus on and if things do not go well. we wanted to see if we saw an inflated parachute or not an inflated parachute to see if there was a damage or not. so the goal was to do it long enough to make sure the parachute was inflated but not too late that it already hit the ground. >> [inaudible] >> it is certainly very difficult. it was a little bit more uncertain this time than it was for phoenix. it is on the high-rise camera,

mro. and it was coming overhead. we had to be roughly 5.5 kilometers to 6 kilometers of the landing target to make sure we were in the picture. guided entry help with that a lot. the picture is also a confirmation of the precision with which we landed. >> just. stats on that photograph. it is about one second or so before mle priming. an altitude of about 3,000 meters. and descending probably about 80 meters per second at this point. >> clearly, i love this picture. pre-landing day, we guessed we had about a chance of actually getting this picture. just based on the fact that the field of view of the high-rise camera does not cover the entire landing ellipse, so it was

about. >> one more in the room. then we will go to the phone lines. >> when does the installation of the software upgrade begin on earth time? with that pete tomorrow? it is supposed to go four days. >> it goes through sol 8. it starts later today. it goes through sol 8. >> in a more consumer-friendly, can you explain what you think were the factors in their being a 1.5 mile deviation from your ideal landing spot? >> i mean, it was all ideal, right? it was inside the ellipse. we're still looking at the data. we had an event pretty late that

lost as a little bit. we do not have time to correct for that before restarting -- before we started aligning it for the center of the ellipse. we were since -- sensitive to the head wind and tailwind. we wanted to construct what the winds were during the day we landed. >> you thought it might have been a tailwind in this case. >> that was suggested. >> we have a phone call. >> you kind of already touched on some of this, but i hate to drag you back there. but if you are an astrobiology to on this mission, you probably would be a little concerned about the kick up of material off mars and scattering on top of the rover. is there anything that could be

done with laundered tethers or less powerful engines, anything like that that would fit into a new design of a sky crane, particularly if we are going to use the device in the future? >> certainly one way that you could help mitigate doing this is actually using a launder -- longer tether. we analyzed this very heavily during development of curiosity, and we tried to keep -- strike the balance between keeping the m short enough to be manageable and reducing the amount of debris that we would kick up. all along, we consulted with the instruments and the cognizant engineers on the rover top deck to make sure that they were in the loop about knowing that debris could be up there