>> dr. terry schwab, excepting on behalf of his father, first lieutenant donald k. schwab. first lieutenant donald k. schwab distinguished himself by acts of gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty all serving as the commander of company e, 15th infantry regiment, third infantry division against an armed enemy near france on september 17, 1944. as he let his company across 400 yards of exposed ground, and intense forthof fire sprung without warning from the woods in front of the american force. first lieutenant schwab

extricated his men from the attempted ambush and lead them back to a deaf lady position. desolated position. led them forward into the lethal enemy fire. one halted a second time, first lieutenant schwab moved from man to man to supervise collection of the wounded and organize his company's withdrawal. ade, he rallied his force and successfully worked his way to within 50 yards of the german before ordering his men to hit the dirt. while weapon fire laced around him, he rushed forward alone, firing his carbine at the german foxholes, aiming for the machine gun pistol nests. silhouetted through the mist and rain by enemy flares, he charged a german emplacement, ripped the cover off the firing pit, struck

headerman gunner on the with his rifle but, and dragged him back to the line. his actions so disorganized the resistant that enemy forces withdrew, abandoning their orderable defensive line -- formidable defensive line. hair above and beyond the call of duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the united states army. [applause]

>> ladies and gentlemen, it is very rare where we have the opportunity to reflect on the extraordinary courage and patriotism of such a remarkable collection of men. we are so grateful to them. we are so grateful to their families. it makes us proud and it makes us inspired. before we conclude the program, i would ask all those who have

witnessed this extraordinary day to please rise and give these latest recipients of the medals of honor your warmest applause. [applause] will you give us the benediction? >> let us pray.

almighty god, you have surrounded us with this great crowd of witnesses, encouraged by their good example, a verse appeared and completed a mission that is set before us. of their unflinching courage and honor, dignity and devotion inspire our service, to strengthen our spirits, that we work for a true and lasting peace. this we ask in your holy name, amen. >> thank you so much. this concludes our program but lee's, -- please, enjoy the white house. we are so glad you could come. i bless you and god bless america. -- god bless you and god bless america. [applause]

>> next, a discussion about the future of syria. after that, a hearing about head injuries in sports. and your calls on washington journal. problem is that many of these diseases are actually most powerfule antibiotics right now. tb is an example. gonorrhea is another example. in panama, we have new strains of tb. absolutelyompletely to theent -- resistant most potent antibiotics. the other problem is there is not enough motivation on the part of the pharmaceutical industry to develop new

antibiotics. we have to make this a global effort to work on this issue and establish a great deal of quiet operation -- collaboration. >> the future of health care, sunday night at eight on q&a. that 150,000ed people have died in syria since the start of protests against bashar assad's government. a negotiator with the opposition expressed his opposition -- his frustration. featured james hopper who called on the obama administration to arm the opposition. point twoout one hours -- an hour and 20 minutes. >> freedom does not come free of charge.

we are facing the most brutal regime in syria. we are facing this regime which is armed to the teeth. allies are backing him 100% with weapons, money, even militias and manpower on the ground. while for us, we are fortunate to have our own people who are ready to sacrifice their lives and to sacrifice the lives of their families and to give all what they can to the success of

the revolution. while our allies, it is very clear to all of you, have limitations of support to us -- so, this support has limits. there are suppliy limits on the political front. we cannot say that the mistake lies on the allies only, but also part of the failure was due to us as syrian people. we have been used to this regime for 50 years. we never had democracy in syria. we never had real tries of revolutions before. people went to the street with their own lives to put for their freedom. the regime was not hesitant to

use extreme violence. this made the journey long and painful. now, we are separating -- celebrating the third year of the revolution. the people of syria are continuing the struggle to win back their freedom. it is our duty to look back at the first of the three years and see, where do we make mistakes? what went wrong? how can we improve the situation? pinpoint the problems and say, yes, we have problems, these are the problems, this is what we have to do to solve them. for the first two years of the revolution, we had no political outlook for the revolution itself. on the military side, we had factions, we have people defending their own houses,

their own towns, but we did not have any strategic plan. for our allies, they were dealing with factions, they never dealt with a coalition or with the syrian army as one unit. they help this guy were this guy and so on. this resulted in weakness of the performance of the revolution itself. since six months ago, we sat down and realized, where did we make mistakes? how can we reorganize? we took the steps to correcting things and putting them in order. we started -- many of you saw things as bad things previously, but don't the road, you will see that things will improve.

there were many changes on the political field. many changes in the military side, also. some of it you have seen recently. a new military leadership coming to the front to take their position and carry from the previous military leadership. you saw a decision was made for going to geneva. that was not an easy decision. we have to discuss and fight for it and convince our friends in the coalition to go along with it. we respected the decision of a few of our friends within the coalition to resign temporarily. but then down the road, when they saw that we did the right decision, it is their duty to come back and join us to work

together. we are doing our best to correct our own path. in the same way, to have a better command and control on the merl terry -- military field. we needed to improve the work and performance of the military and take out excuses from our friends who are not supplying specific arms because they say, what guarantee do we have? what control? can you guarantee that these weapons will not go to extremist groups? they need to see us being responsible, our friends. after we are being responsible for ourselves, then we can ask and tell them, this is what we need from you. this is the system we have, this is the control which we have. whether they use it as an excuse or not, we will see in the future. these steps, we need them as.'s

-- as syrians. the second question, when bashar will leave? no one knows. it is our duty to maximize our performance on both fields. he will not leave free of charge. we go to geneva, we sit at the table, ok, goodbye. it is not like this. we need to create enough political pressure, serious political pressure for manpower -- through manpower and through the backers of the regime, russia and iran. his number one ally is iran. second place comes russia.

the second site is military. if he does not feel that there is a real threat, he will not move. you have to create political pressure or enough military pressure or a combination of the both. we can promise to perform to our oh plus capability, be united -- but most capability -- utmost capability, be united. the rest depends on future conditions. regarding a third round for geneva -- in the last session, there was an agenda proposed for discussion which had four items in it. the first was putting an end to

violence and counterterrorism. the second item was about political power transition. and making be transitional governing body. the third was about the state institution between continuity and change. fourth was about the public dialogue and national reconciliation. both parties agreed. there were comments about wording which we worked out. the regime was insisting that they wanted to discuss each item separately. which means we started talking about putting an end to violence and counterterrorism, after we finished completely the subject, they moved to the second item.

transition and the tg b. our argument was that you cannot discuss the first item first by itself. even if you discuss it, you will reach a point where to resolve this, you have to establish the tgb. for them, they consider us terrorists. we consider them to be using state terrorism. we consider the militias terrorist organizations. they consider them to be allies and fighting for their benefit. there is no way to reach a mutual understanding. clearly, in the security council resolution 2118 and in the invitation letter for the geneva

conference, it was stated that the negotiating would start with political transition and the establishment of the tgb. in geneva, if you read the terms, you will find an item talking about violence -- all parties have to cooperate with the tgb to put an end to violence. it has to be a condition achieved before applying any process to put an end to violence. it is not about the fact that we are hungry or we want to replace the regime. it is about practicality and having a successful negotiating strategy and policy. the regime insisted no way to discuss this. we insisted, no we have to discuss this. mr. brahimi made a compromise.

he said, we agree. i propose we discussed both of them etc. we have a session today on subject one, next day on the second subject. for us, we have been positive. we agreed on this compromise. the regime refused. brahimi found himself at a dead end. he said, i cannot call for this, for third session. i will go back to the security council and i will contact you again. yesterday, they were meeting for the past two days with the security council. mr. brahimi submitted his report. his report was very clear. he was very clear in the meetings.

pinpointing that the government delegation is the one refusing to discuss these items and refusing to accept the proposal and also he noted that the opposition delegation has acted positively and productively. they are not serious about the whole issue. he asked for the security council to issue a statement or take action in his support. the british representative prepared a press statement. it calls for support of brahimi and calls on the syrian government to accept this proposal. unfortunately, russia blocked issuing the statement. here we are talking about the press statement.

no action, just words. russia blocks a press statement. so what can you expect of any type of action of this conflict? the question comes now -- where does brahimi want to go? we had a meeting with him yesterday. he was straightforward in saying that he is for the continuity of the process. he has already put much effort for the success and he cannot continue unless the government agrees on discussing the same thing. he feels that iran is the main power player. he decided to go to iran today and that he will come back on the 19th. with the hope that he would play a positive role. there is no answer until the end

of this month. to know if he will be successful or not. >> we have time for one more question. >> [indiscernible] [indiscernible]

[inaudible] >> yes, thank you. your question has two parts. first, we don't represent anyone. clearly, you are wrong. first, when we were in geneva, they were with us, factions -- the main factions. we did not announce this from the start because we knew the regime may resolve into saying that these guys are terrorists. we decided to keep them hidden. we decided to have a committee of leaders of the free syrian army and we have representatives of other political forces within

our delegation, officially, the official delegation. also, the boards and committees who are preparing and managing the negotiations. also, you are wrong because there is continuous communication and continuous combination between the higher military council and the leadership of the coalition itself. if you heard in the last months -- two weeks i think -- there were some new changes, orders issued by the higher military council. they changed their leadership. they made a very promising plan for restructuring the free syrian army, restructuring the command and operations center. now you have leaders in the

syrian army or leaders on the ground. living inside syria. the head of the smc, the head of operations for the military is general bashir. he is fighting daily battles against the regime, who lost his son fighting these battles. he is and ask syrian army general -- an ex-syrian army general. he knows about the operations. he is the first to fight. these guys, we met with them. we saw their plans. we know they are doing things right and correct and we should

support them in order for them to restructure and have organized military operations in syria and not to go back to the way that it was managed, the chaotic way, unorganized way, on uncoordinated way. >> i would like to add one thing about the representativeness of the coalition and delegation. it was raised only by the regime and by russia, in particular. yes, i think we could say -- we cannot talk about representatives without having elections. as a founding member of the coalition, i could say that it came after a series of attempts

to create a body. to fight for the ideals. under the circumstances that we live under, to what extent are we doing that or not? we cannot claim that we represent syria or the ground or all of it. as founding members, we tried very hard. we included the predecessors to the syrian revolution. the new edition to the groups was creating for local councils. they are present in every town and province in syria. some of them are trying to have elections. in a suburb of damascus, they conducted elections under very difficult circumstances, as you

know. the political figures who were forced to leave syria, they were active since the immaculate -- damascus declaration days. that is the largest, widest body you can create from the politically and militarily active groups on the ground. we do not represent everybody on the ground, but we need to improve that representative nature of the coalition. what is important is that for those of you who are active in the revolution to ask for much what extent is the coalition doing a good job? i think this is the point. one or -- when the delegation went to geneva, they were clear about opposing those ideals. people want a way out, they want to end the violence, they want political transition that leaves no room for assad.

those are the people we need. the coalition got international recognition. we need to strengthen that. it will give us some support. there will not be a political solution in syria. like the question of the chemical weapons, it had to be enforced. we have to set the balance militarily on the ground and call for increased support from around the world. a lot of the work you are doing in the country, you must pressure the white house to stand up to its responsibility and enforcing a humanitarian and political resolution. the coalition will continue to improve its performance, but we will never be representative without democratic and free elections. >> a round of applause. [applause] i would like to thank them for coming out and joining us today. there are other members that are here.

the d.c. office is here. you know their faces. you can approach them personally and continue the conversation off-line. we are going to be moving on to our next panel. our next panel of experts, mr. hooper, dr. heideman, mr. tabor. i'm going to start the introductions from my left. this panel -- it is an honor to have them here with us.

from the policy community and the friends of the syrian people. they have been the friends from since the beginning of the revolution. [applause] yes. thank you. i first met dr. heideman in berlin. he was involved in the day after project. he served as the vice president and is a political scientist. he has a particular focus on syria. we also have mr. jim cooper. -- hooper. he is a former u.s. diplomat. he is a former director of the washington office of the international crisis group. he has been extremely engaged on syria and has done work advising

the coalition. at the end of the table is mr. andrew table or -- tabler. he says it like it is. he is a senior fellow at the washington institute, where he focuses on syria. he is the cofounder and editor-in-chief of "syria today." he has prerevolution experience with syria. he has leveraged his contacts with the syrian opposition to offer a unique vision. the reason i like engaging this panel of experts is because sometimes i feel but assyrian americans we have conversations amongst ourselves and it is hard to see it from the outside. this is a well-informed group

and they will share with us how they see it from the inside. we are going to begin with mr. hooper. thank you.