process that gives some assurance. we need to hold everyone accountable, including congress, but i think it is absolutely the right course of action and pause, stop, figure out what we are doing now, figure out the holes in the program, and then come to solutions to make sure that we do have some a surety. i think that is wise and prudent. next, representative ed royce discusses. that, the future of security in afghanistan and beyond.

tomorrow, republican presidential candidates are scheduled to be in south carolina. they will be questioned by paul ryan and tim scott, part of the him -- forum on expanding opportunity. coverage begins at 10:20 a.m. eastern. book tv has books and authors every weekend on c-span2, and here programs to watch this weekend. saturday at 7:00 eastern, book tv is at the university of wisconsin to discuss the book "the march on washington." >> this is a movement really going to the core of many people's beliefs about what this nation should be. -- it should change a lot of mines, but it also shows people's commitment to any quality. words, a: then, after look at the life and former

political career of vice president dick cheney with the book "cheney: one-on-one." on the right has attracted more vitriol from the left, more intense vitriol from the left, then dick cheney, with the possible exception of the man he served in the white house, george w. bush or richard nixon. mollycer: on sunday, crabapple talks about her journalism, political art, and her latest book "drawing blood." >> i started off writing personal essays. i think i only had five published pieces ever. them. really liked i had this delusional fantasy that since i have written a 2000 word essay that writing 100,000 words would be like running 50 2000 word essays, and that wouldn't be that hard. watch "book tv" all weekend, every weekend on

c-span2, television for serious readers. students around the country are working on c-span's student cam documentary contest, telling us the issues they want presidential candidates to discuss. we are following students as they produce their videos. here is a tweet from indiana. eighth-grade students were excited to hear real ben carson address gun control. and another one from maryland. week, two ems students interviewed former attorney general eric holder for their c-span video project. also, illinois representative john shimkus tweeted, at effingham high school earlier today, i was interviewed by students for their c-span project. there is a grand prize of 500,000 -- of 5000 dollars. winners will be announced in march night. for more information, visit our website. next, house foreign

affairs committee chair california congressman ed royce talking about national security threats. he says iran is the greatest long-term national security threat, and outlined legislation to place new sanctions on iran and north korea. isis, russia,ses and u.s. leadership around the world. this is just over an hour. >> can you all here? some system is always our biggest challenge. >> good morning everybody. we are starting on time for once and i'm pleased to welcome congressman ed royce chairman of the house foreign affairs committee. republican of california. we have an hour to talk about national security, the plans ahead, all of the challenges we

face, all the solutions you have in mind and the president's state of the union next week. i'm not going to take another second, except i would like to welcome mrs. royce. i'm delighted to have her here. over to you. mr. royce: state of the union is coming up here. the seventh state of the union and we have had seven years now of policies that focused on the befriending our enemies and distancing ourselves from our allies, ignoring our allies and the consequences of that, i would just give one example. if we think back to 2005, there was a historic opportunity in iran to are are are are have ar chance at reaching out to the people of that country who had gone to the streets after a stolen election and many of you remember the early broadcasting

you saw, that young woman on the street who was shot by the authorities. and the con see consequences of a society, 2/3 of the people wanted a western style democracy and just had been robbed of an election. and we had the president make his strategic calculus not to do the reagan thing. not to reach out in support of the people. but instead to decide that the engagement would be a long-term engagement with the eye tolla. and -- ayotollah and we saw a situation was made to embrace the muslim brotherhood, the muslim brotherhood that had been funded partially by iran but distance ourselves from egypt,

from the people of egypt. and the consequences of these strategies was to leave us in the middle east in a position, in my opinion, where whether it was the jordanians, the israelis or the gulf states, people no longer trusted the judgment of the administration and that's important because that means people no longer necessarily take our counsel. they begin to take things into their own hands or they begin to adopt a new calculus in terms of who the regional head is going to be based upon the assumption that we have now tilted toward iran. and this reason it takes on a new urgency. in the last few weeks we have seen a series of steps by the iranian regime in which you had violations of the u.n. resolutions with respect to two

missile tests now, in which you see the firing of a rocket near the coast of the uss truman, our carrier. we have seen another american hostage taken hostage. we have discovered recently of attempts to hack into a dam outside of new york city. i remember when we discovered the efforts here by the iranians to attempt to assassinate cafe milano. the ambassador from saudi arabia and now you hear iran openly speak of toppling the government of saudi arabia after already seeing their activities in bahrain and yemen where they did effectively topple the government. the question is, who is watching this? not just our allies all over the world but watching our failure

to respond to these actions. and given that, i think it explains a lot in terms of the position we're in around the world. on the foreign affairs committee that i chair, we are attempting to reach back to the old bipartisan consensus that america had in terms of strong engagement overseas something the a.e.i. supported. we need u.s. leadership. we cannot be in a position where our policy is one of constantly backing down. we have to have a policy of more backbone, not a policy of backing down and that's the crux of the problem today. host: you have a lot on your plate for the committee.

i know you have been talking about what to do about iran specifically. you have been working with your ranking member, mr. engel and you introduced a bill on north korea's missile test. that is a nuclear deal at the time touted by bill clinton as the model how to come to a nuclear agreement and now we have an agreement with the iranians. what are you thinking about what can congress do? mr. royce: during that original framework agreement i remember debating the chief negotiator not only for the north korean agreement but also for the iranian agreement. and i would just make the point that we had an example of what could deter north korea. in 2005 we had a situation where you had banko delta asia, a

discovery by the treasury department that $100 bank notes were being counter fitted. this gave the undersecretary the authority to go forward. he sanctioned that activity. and he gave a choice to the bank of ma crmpomp w and other banks that served as the conduit for the hard currency. they had a choice between remaining in the international banking system or being cut off and they could bank with north korea. they made a decision against banking suicide and all decided they would freeze the accounts for north korea. what were the results? we discovered afterwards that for example, the missile production line that the north

koreans ran, they couldn't get the hard currency they needed to buy the black market gyroscopes. it came to a complete halt. more importantly, not only was the dictator not able to pay his army or his secret police, wasn't able to pay his generals. that is not a good position for a dictator to be in. and as a consequence every meeting after that started with one question on the part of north koreans, when do we get the money and the hard currency. unfortunately treasury was not left in the position of making the key decision on this. unfortunately, that decision was made by the state department and they lifted as part of the negotiation in the hopes that north korea would come back to the table.

the legislation that i have offered which will come up tuesday will take exactly that policy from 2005 and put it back into law. we will put that bill on the president's desk with strong bipartisan support. it passed unanimously out of my committee. and this is the approach that will work because you need consequences. the idea of strategic patience which is how the administration defines its current strategy with north korea means patience while north korea goes forward with test after test until it fully develops its icbm program and its delivery capability and right now they could hit the united states. we don't want them to succeed. put them on the cone of those icbm's and threaten us. host: has the administration ta taken a position on that legislation? mr. royce: i haven't heard.

i'm hoping that the strength of the vote behind it changes their calculus with how to deal with north korea. host: you defined a mechanism that the financial spigot was closed and now opened and now several nuclear tests. we are about to open the financial spigot on implementation day with iran. what do you see the options for the congress to address the violations that you described of the u.n. security council resolutions and the threats that iran is posing in the region? mr. royce: i'm going to try to move legislation that will address those issues, but i would like to revisit the discussion that i had with the secretary of state, myself and elliott engel in which we advance legislation based upon stuart levy's work that would give him a choice compromise on his nuclear program or financial collapse and that legislation

had strong bipartisan support. i go back to the post-world war ii these is that we had in the united states. we put that bill together and we passed it out of the house of representatives with a vote of 400-20 and our request to the administration is that they allow that bill -- this was in a prior congress to come up in the senate. but instead the administration did the calculus and felt that they had to extend an olive branch. our argument was well, at least have this in reserve. if you are negotiating with north korea, let's have something in reserve for which there would be consequences if they do not follow through. allow us to bring the bill up in the senate.

clearly we had more than enough votes for a veto override in the house and 65 senators that had shown an interest in the approach we were taking. the bill was blocked by the administration. as a matter of fact, as i recall that session, no foreign policy initiatives came up in the senate because the senate leader at the time, reid, was concerned that this would be attached to it and would get to conference or it could get to the president's desk. i think this was an absolute blunder. and i think we've got to get back to the issue of whether or not there are going to be consequences, one of the things we were assured of if we went forward with this agreement, it would be enforced and a secondary argument that was made on the floor of the house of representatives is look, there are already u.n. sanctions in place.

we'll enforce those if we see a violation of either the issue of icbm testing. we have had two violations and what happened? the administration began to move forward with some some partial sanctions, informed us in congress and as soon as there was pushback from iran, they pulled it back. also, we were assured that there would be no lifting of sanctions against those who were involved in terrorism. you know the irgc and several banks in iran that have funded the icbm program that the iranians run as well as terror. our point is why aren't we sticking to the letter of the agreement? why do we continue to fall back?

we put legislation out yesterday from the committee to address some of these issues and we will continue to push forward. but it is incumbent upon the commander in this chief in this country to lead when it deals with the national security of this nation. and we haven't seen that leadership. host: i want to come to the question of that leadership and authorization for the use of force. before we leave iran, i want to ask you what your take is on the flair up between saudi arabia and the other gulf states and the iranians over the execution of nimr. mr. royce: here's one of the unfortunately consequences that the administration has tilted towards iran. what that means is that they are less likely to take our counsel. so when we give advice now, we frequently find -- for example, the iranian kuds forces helped orchestrate the takeover in

yemen of the shia militia there. and a decision was made inry had along with other capitals to put together an force and try to push the iranians out. and you will notice that we were not included. egypt, saudi arabia, other countries in the region are increasingly making decisions on their own without our counsel. and i think part of that is they now lack the trust and the judgment of the administration with respect to anything dealing with iran.

and the other consequences of this, by the way, it makes it harder for us to get solutions to other problems when sunni and shia begin to separate because of the consequences, again, of actions where had the administration originally in 2008, i guess it was, 2008, was the iranian green revolution -- had we led then, we might have a different situation right now on the ground. when they feel strongly that an election has been stolen and you don't speak out and you don't increase the passions to 86%, which is what you could have done with radio free europe, radio liberty, if you don't take reagan's view on this that it's our responsibility to lead, also with public diplomacy, which we could have done effectively by

broadcasting into iran in support of those efforts in an effective way, and now we're in this situation, it is very hard to untangle the lost opportunities. hard to get the confidence back in egypt when they've seen the embrace of the muslim brotherhood. this is the challenge we face in this theater. danielle: you just brought up a whole series of things. public diplomacy, which brings also in russia. i don't want to leave the middle east until we talk about the authorization use of military force. i know you support the notion of an authorization. there was a lot of back and forth between the administration, which didn't want to give language to the congress and the result is that we've been operating in what amount to a military -- mr. royce: we're operating under the 2001 and twee -- 2002 authorization. danielle: correct. mr. royce: what i support is the authorization of use of military force that will give our commanders the flexibility they need mountain field.

one of the things we need, though, in all of this is the commander in chief to be a commander in chief. one of the things we need as we move forward on this is a commander in chief willing not to tie his own habbeds and the hands of whoever follows him into office but instead to be dedicated not to a containment policy with respect to this but destroying isis. let me just speak to that issue for a moment because when isis came out of raqqah in syria and began its assault across the -- well, across northern syria and across the border into iraq, there were calls from the pentagon to use u.s. airpower in the same way we had used it in -- back during the first gulf war when kuwait was invaded.

you will recall when kuwait was invaded, the united states took a position that those 42 divisions were going to be obliterated and we did that with 118,000 sorties. 118,000 sorties took out those armored divisions. and the question we had at the time to the white house was, they're moving with toyota pickup trucks, you can see them from the air, why not use that strategy and remove isis before they ever take fallujah or before they ever take mosul, town by town, city by city? this was month after month after month when we held hearings on that and somehow the administration sat in a state of paralysis when isis could have

been destroyed before they were embedded, before they were recruiting on the internet from all over the world, before they were selling the concept that they were indestructible we could have taken them out from the air. let's take to the next stage. then they finally on the yazidi mountain, after they had taken a bank, we had a young captive speak before our congress, before our committee and explain to us what happened to her. she said, all of the men were killed, the girls, women were sold. i was bought by an american. i was a concubine by an american who was recruited by isis a few

years ago on the internet. he explained to me as a yazidi i was an apostate and that's what happens under a just system. if you're not a believer in the isis, you know, strategy -- isis cause, you're an apostate. she said, why won't you arm the yazidi men? why won't you arm the kurdish men and women? by the way, 30% of the kurdish battalions are female. and they are fighting with 40-year-old weapons, all right. they are fighting isis. when you ask the question is, well, baghdad. yeah, the shiia-led government in baghdad does have a problem with us arming the kurds or the yazidis or others in the region. but that's because of the influence of iran that doesn't

want to see anything except shiia militias operating across the region. why should we care about the pressure from iran on baghdad? why shouldn't we -- and i got legislation, bipartisan legislation that i passed out of committee to arm the kurdish forces. you have 180,000 peshmerga, 180,000. you have 40,000 isis fighters. but as the -- as the kurdish soldiers tell us, we don't have artillery. we don't have long-range mortars. we don't have anti-tank weapons. that is why it is so hard for us to stop isis. another question i have. besides arming the christians and the yazidis and the kurds and the sunni tribes who want to take their towns back and live now in d.p. camps.

oh, maybe seven million people now have been displaced within syria and we have no safe zone that this administration has set up to protect them. they would like to go back. they would like to have weaponry and some training from the u.s. to take their villages back. but as long as we're going to defer to shiia militia or to baghdad and iran, how is that going to happen? and as long as we're not going to forward deploy our forward observers in order to call in those air strikes, how are we going to give close order -- you know, close air support to those kurdish units and other units fighting isis? we need a strategy not to contain isis but to destroy isis so that those young men and women, now, watching on the internet suddenly get the message that it's not their

destiny to go join isis and expand the caliphate, that that's a losing cause. that takes a change of calculus on the part of the administration. danielle: now -- are you optimistic now that they've taken back ramadi? mr. royce: i'm somewhat optimistic. the human rights abuses, to put it mildly, that they inflicted upon indigenous village populations have created a huge blowback. so some of that is moving in the right direction. but we could accelerate this if we listened to those in the field who want the authorization. i'd say 75%, 80%, from what i heard from the commanders of the flights that go out come back without getting authorization

out of washington in terms of dropping their ordnance. they got to get approval out of washington and in this kind of situation with those rules of engagement, you know the challenge there. for all of those reasons, i would like to accelerate the rollback of isis because so much depends upon us getting a handle on this enthusiasm of recruitment that right now is such a problem in europe and north africa and now it's becoming a problem here. danielle: for as long as they're perceived to be winning, they're going to be recruiting. i don't think there's any question about that. now, let's change gears a little bit. you've introduced legislation to support military assistance to ukraine. i know the administration has frankly, to me, inexplicably resisted that. this is the challenge we face in ukraine. we're not able to arm the people on the ground to support themselves. it's not -- there's an analogy

to what you were just talking about in the middle east. putin is now in syria. how do we meet this challenge? mr. royce: well, if we go back, danny, one more step, why did it begin? it began with a decision to pull our interceptors out of poland and the czech republic. our secretary of state hillary clinton and this idea of pushing the reset, the idea that the obama administration wanted to send a signal to putin and we had put in an interceptor system. we are expanding the system as a counterweight if iran ever threatened europe or the united states, the concept was to have the interceptor system and a program where we could intercept any missiles coming out of iran before they arced, you know, and fell into european or u.s. territory.

but the russians were pushing back on that, and so in the face of the commitment that had been made by poland and the czech republic, our secretary of state clinton and the president pulled out this system, and i believe that as a consequence of that, putin read that as weakness, a look of resolve on the part of the united states. and saw an opportunity when the situation presented itself in ukraine. now, myself and eliot engel and a delegation of eight, four on each side, went into ukraine and we went all the way east before you get in order to talk to the russian-speaking there. to get their feelings about what we was going on, to take their temperature. and we talked to the civil society, the lawyers groups, the women's groups, the jewish groups, different minority groups, the mayor, the council. the response we got was that,

look, we get a lot of -- they said this. putin is recruiting every skinhead and malcontent he can find in the russian-speaking world and they're bringing them in here with weaponry, but we can handle that because we can tell the -- our accent from their accent. we arrest them. that's not the problem. the problem is the russian tanks. our problem is that we do not have anti-tank weapons to stop their tanks. and our problem is that you won't sell or give us those weapons. so the reason for the legislation, danny, is to give those in ukraine a credible deterrence that says to putin, if you continue with the armor in this region, there will now be an antidote for inserting those tanks into this situation

because they clearly feel they could have handled the situation, the circumstances if it weren't for russian armor and russian troops. so our goal, obviously, we have the sanctions on russia to try to push russia out, but for me i think the problem is, if you show resolve upfront, if like reagan you announce that because the iranians have taken the hostages, when you become president you're going to do something about it, what happened the day he was being sworn in? our hostages at the time were being taken to a canadian plane and they were trying to get them off the tarmac as fast as they could before reagan took that oath of office, right? what's happening today in iran? they took an additional american hostage after the agreement was signed by our secretary of state.

so i think our whole strategy has to look at what's worked in the past, including, by the way, broadcasting. i was in eastern europe, in east germany on an exchange program years ago. i saw the effects of reagan's orchestration of those broadcasts under radio free europe, radio liberty, where we had a different plan. our plan was to reach out and actually change those governments by taking that 2/3 opposition that existed and ratcheting that up to 85%, which is exactly what happened. and in east germany, where i saw this happened, you could see exactly what was happening with the population and you could see that inevitably now because we were sharing our values, the types of values the a.e.i. speaks of, along the role that

we had around the world to explain these political ideas of freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, tolerance, these were the concepts that were being taught and people were listening to this. this is what should be going on now with respect to our broadcast into eastern europe and into russia and what does even the administration says the broadcasting is practically defunct. so the legislation that myself and eliot engel are moving addresses that in two ways. you put a strong c.e.o. in charge of this instead of a seven-board, you know, nine members of the board that can't make a quorum. you let that c.e.o. run it day-to-day and you give that c.e.o. the mission that we once gave radio free europe, radio liberty and you guess us back up countering what putin is doing with his propaganda machine and r.t. television along with what isis is doing.

danielle: so the radio is the surrogate radio and also our direct broadcasting back in the day really were a lifeline of hope. we heard one talk about how they were the -- hearing that was really something that gave them optimism that they had a future. in the 1990's we created radio free asia. to do the same thing. mr. royce: i had a hand in that. danielle: i'm trying to understand what's happened. when i looked at the senate foreign relations, we created the broadcasting board in actually to double down on protecting these radios from, you know, the influence of the go along to get along in diplomacy. what happened? mr. royce: so it's morphed into national public radio for -- [laughter] mr. royce: with a bureaucracy and without the mission that we had at the time -- and let's be honest. our mission was to infuse those societies with the knowledge

that would allow them to move towards greater freedom. and greater support for market economy, right? and a template in a lesson of tolerance of how democratic systems would work. we have moved off of that mission, but there's no reason we can't move back onto it, and the legislation today is not obviously about radios. it's about the internet. it's also about television. it's about the whole pan plea of social media that we can deploy. but to do it we have to feel confident in our message about our goals. we have to be able to talk about freedom. we have to be able to talk about these issues that i'm speaking of -- freedom of religion and so forth -- and give people a vision of a different society than the one that they see clashing around them.

you have to be confident to do that and you have to believe that the right thing to do is to empower the people. i believe the right thing is to be with the 2/3 of the people in iran that went to the streets. i don't think the right thing to do is to increase the leverage of the ayatollah or the irgc in that society which will now receive $100 billion-plus in revenue because we've sort of forgotten that all of those companies were nationalized, including the oil industry, right? it's not going to the iranian people the way it's been set up. it's going through the iranian revolutionary guard corps. what will they do with that additional money? what is the ayatollah going to do? this is not going to be empowering for the people in iran. so i think this strategy has to be reversed. danielle: so we talked a lot about political freedom. we haven't talked about economic freedom. you've come out in favor of the -- of t.p.p., the trans-pacific

partnership. mr. royce: yes. i'll just explain my thinking which i have sat down with the representatives of governments across -- across the pacific rim and in europe and what they share with me is, look, we're either going to have agreements for international trade, which are low tariffs, high standards, or we're going to have agreements if beijing is leading the process of low tariffs, no standards. and we figured out that for us we're much better protected in these negotiations if we can have high standards. so we're willing to give you more -- market access. we're willing to open our markets. after all, your tariffs are pretty low to begin with. ours are pretty high. we'll bring our tariffs down,

and you write agreements with high standards and we'll sign onto that because we would sooner have america driving this train than beijing. this is also what european parliamentarians of either political stripe, you know, across the spectrum, tell us privately. now, we understand protectionist attitudes and so forth in europe, but when you're talking to those who actually understand what's at stake, they encourage us to move forward and to lead because they say, if you don't lead in the united states, then beijing is going to lead and that's not going to have a happy outcome. danielle: so critics of t.p.p. have said -- in fact, critics

even among those who are nominally free traders, critics have said some of the provisions will allow the chinese and state-owned enterprises to slide into t.p.p. with no problem, that some of the intellectual property provisions aren't good. how do you take that? mr. royce: well, the intellectual property provisions are existing. i would like to see them stronger. but on i.p. protections, i.p. protections are in there. you contrast that with what beijing is pushing which has no protections, no protections. this obviously increasing -- don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, danny. that is what i would say here. and remember this is not a situation where if we advocate moving forward trade liberalization in a rules-based system -- i just want people to reflect on what part of the

consequences have been in terms of liberalizing trade around the world. part of that consequence, if you look at economies then, world economy was about $5 trillion. today it's $70 trillion. if you look at child mortality rates then, we cut that rate by 2/3. we have cut that rate by 2/3. i mean, around the globe, the answer is not to put up higher tariffs. we saw what that looked like during the great depression. because that great depression was a worldwide depression, and one of the things that accelerated it was this -- was governments moving forward with ever higher tariffs as we fought tariff wars, and today we're in a situation where we could be so advantaged if we can build on the momentum of higher and

higher standards, because we have our allies in europe and we have our allies in the pacific rim who will agree to go along with us. but if we lose the momentum on this process and instead it's driven in asia by beijing, i think it's going to be a much different future. danielle: i take a little bit of a glim on us and institutions like ours as well. i don't think we talk enough -- we talk a lot about political freedom. we talk about human freedom and religious freedom. we don't talk enough about the transformative role of economic freedom. even in the middle east where we don't see that, it makes such a huge difference in people's lives. i have completely monopolized the microphone and i'd like to open things up for questions. everybody knows our procedures. i'll call on you.

someone will come over to you with a microphone. identify yourself and your affiliation, please, and put your brilliant, brilliant statement in the short of a very short question or i'll cut you off. this gentleman had his hand up first. >> chairman royce, jake from the american hindu foundation. thank you. president obama has invited prime minister for talks leer in the spring. and these talks now are overshadowed with yet another terrorist attack. as chairman of the foreign affairs committee, what would you advise the administration should be the trajectory of these talks to kush religious -- curb religious extremism in the area? mr. royce: i talked to the prime minister of india. this issue of better cooperation, anti-terrorist cooperation between the united states and india, and the attack on mumbai, for example, is an

example of where we picked up certain intelligence but -- and we shared it with the indian government, but collectively we weren't able, even though we knew an attack was coming, we knew the city that was going to be attacked, we weren't able to discern enough information to prevent that loss of life. the secondary problem, of course, is many of the schools, in this case, the campus, that exists to recruit those jihadists have not been closed down. there are 600 schools as well as this l.e.t. campus that exist in pakistan that i have been trying to get closed down in three trips over the years to pakistan. i have pushed, pushed, pushed on this. part of the problem is these are not funded actually inside pakistan. there's gulf state funding that continues to play this role in

pushing an ever more confrontational interpretation of this jihadist ideology. so we need to work worldwide to shut down the funding of that kind of mechanism. third, we need to work on the internet with respect to, you know, we got to work with palo alto as well as in india and in tel aviv with respect to those that are involved in that i.t. community in terms of how you take this down on the internet. so there's a number of different solutions here. we need to do all of this in tandem, and we must understand, you know, as we dismiss isis and these other organizations as the j.v. team, this is not the case. they are growing with their momentum. this is accelerating, and instead this must be along with containing or stopping iran from developing the capabilities

eventually of getting a nuclear weapons program. and i would argue that the way this agreement was handled was just a temporary 10-year, 15 at the most, hiatus on this. i don't think we -- until we have a strategy to empower the people in iran, i think we got a problem if the ayatollah is making all of these decisions and until we close down those deobandi schools and the l.e.t. campuses where the terrorists are recruited, i think we'll have the same problem in terms of the attacks in india. danielle: it's interesting you bring this up. we've taken our eye off the ball in pakistan. we are not talking about al qaeda as well and what they're doing in afghanistan. i didn't touch on that with you so i encourage you all to ask. this lady has a question. >> hi. penny starr with c.n.s. news. so if you could advise the new president in 2016, what would be the first priority in restoring

u.s. leadership around the world? mr. royce: well, i think the first priority is to lay out a strategy in which we're going to lead. and i think reaching out, first, to our democratic allies and then to our other friends around the world in order to lay out what that strategy is going to look like. i think, also, in terms of explaining the rules of the road internationally, ok. the international treaties and agreements, for example, that mean and are interpreted by all of the countries except one means you can't claim a reef at your sovereign territory. you cannot take a marking pen and draw a nine-dash line around the south china sea up against the borders of nine countries and say all of this is our territory.

so i think it's important we work with the international community and with our democratic allies and others to say these are the rules and we're not going to violate the rules. and with respect to terrorism, there's a new strategy, and our strategy is not to contain it, it's to defeat it. and you take it from there. danielle: can i follow-up on your south china sea statement? what more should we be doing? we're doing some freedom of navigation, very limited freedom of navigation operations in the south china sea to push back on the chinese. what more should we be doing? mr. royce: the whole question here is freedom of navigation. so, dani, what we need to do is do that on a routine basis and do that with a pacific fleet.

i don't think you necessarily just want to send one frigate out there. you just want to keep those sea lanes open and make it clear, by the way, working internationally, since everyone else happens to per receive this exactly the same -- perceive this exactly the same way, you make this a worldwide issue that these are the rules of the road. danielle: gentleman back here. >> thank you, chairman royce, and a.e.i. i'm the communications director. this week you had a closed door briefing with ambassador james warlick on a conflict. particularly steps you and other congressional leaders would like to see this administration take to bring peace to the region. could you elaborate on that as much as you can as well as other steps you and other leaders would like to see this administration or future administrations take in regards to protecting and helping our allies in armenia, georgia, who are in constant threat of other forces, such as turkey?

mr. royce: i sent a letter to the president along with my ranking member, eliot engel, and others on the committee that lay out a strategy of, first, putting these range finding -- special equipment that can tell where a gun a fired from. if you have an incoming shell, it can tell which side of the line the shell is coming from. as a direction finding equipment. second, to put observers there and, third, to require all sides to pull up snipers off of the front lines. if these three things are done, the n.g.o. community and those in the pentagon tell us it will lead to a much safer situation because you'll no longer have the trip wires. so we're pushing for all three of those actions.

now while at the same time we're talking to both governments, i've been in baku with a bipartisan delegation. eliot engel and i trying to lower those temperatures. >> thank you for your time. kurdistan tv. in your opinion, how important is it how that the u.s.a. separate the kurds, make logistic -- military capability? thank you. mr. royce: i think it's very important. because first of all, the kurdish forces are doing most of the fighting on the ground. second, the kurdish forces are the best fighters. third, as i said, 30% of the kurdish battalion are female and

those women are fighting up against isis. and you and i both read accounts in the american press about their bravery and action. i think it's morally -- it's not morally responsible for us to allow those women on the front to fight isis with 40-year-old equipment. they need to be given the anti-tank guns, the artillery, the long-range mortars that they have requested in order to match isis. and if they can fight with the same equipment, i have no doubt that they will be victorious, and i think it is a very important point. danielle: do you ever worry that supporting some of these -- this -- these groups on the basis of tribes or sect or ethnicity will push the middle east? mr. royce: we should be focusing on giving them the equipment that will allow these fighters to take their villages back.

that should be the focus. and the munitions, necessary, to take their villages back because if we do not, if we -- as i mentioned the word paralysis, if the administration were in a state of paralysis, think for a minute, dani, we have seven million people displaced in camps that want to go back to their villages. what are the consequences of that? and that is inside syria and iraq. imagine the million and a half in turkey. the three quarters of a million in lebanon or a million now in lebanon. the three quarters of a million in jordan. the million in europe.

i mean, we have a humanitarian nightmare, and we dither because, yes, we're pressured by the baghdad government. yes, they constantly tell us, no, no, if you're going to arm anybody, come through us. but the problem is that until they show a capability of standing up to tehran, to standing up to the iranian regime and actually engaging the sunni tribes and the kurds and everyone in the same way, until we see that action, and i don't dispute that current government is certainly much better than maliki's government, but there is a habit that has -- has been put into place. we have to break that habit, and i would say the way we begin is arming the yazidis and the kurds and the sunni tribes that want to take their villages back. danielle: young man in the back there. >> good morning, mr. chairman. from the wilson center. you began talking about the

administration befriending our enemies. my question is about the administration's attempt to actually support our friends, specifically with the asian rebalance. how would you characterize the progress so far? what more should we be doing with the pacific? and how would you respond to china's critique that this is just a containment strategy? mr. royce: a containment strategy, well, it's not a containment strategy. what it is is an effort to move forward with the rule of law. and i support very much the administration's support for the trans-pacific partnership as well as the atlantic agreement. those are steps in the right direction in terms of enforcing the rule of law, the rules of the road.

it will better protect our i.p. property but it will lead to a cinergy of more economic growth. i think all of that is the step in the direction. danielle: there are two ladies. >> thank you. reporter from voice america. i have a question. we talk about iran and north korea, russia, china. chairman royce, in your view, which country poses a bigger threat to the united states in the coming year? thank you. mr. royce: i think the greatest long-term threat is still iran. it is a threat to the region and 15 years out it's a threat potentially to the united states. and that is why i am -- i am concerned that the perception of our tilt to iran in the region will complicate our efforts to try to constrain iranian behavior.

the secondary problem i think we face long term -- by the way, i think the ayatollah basically has his own caliphate. when he is talking about overturning governments in yemen, in bahrain, in saudi arabia, i think this idea of the shiia crescent stretching to lebanon is a very, very destabilizing reality that we're dealing with and then at the same time we have this jihadist concept of the isis caliphate. so you have two competing ideologically driven interpretations, but both are moving away from any acceptance ideao -- of political pluralisg logically-driven interpretations, but both are acceptance from any

f political mroupleuralism or e idea of freedom of religion for people to practice their own religions. that's not tolerated in any of these quarters. so with that intolerance and comes ed radicalization the danger that either one of hose groups get ever deadlier weapons into their possession. hat's why i would like to see isis decisively destroyed. daniel danielle: go back over that direction, this gentleman audience: thank you. it seems that sanctions elief on iran is day-to-day according to secretary kerry esterday, and once i.e.a. verifies that iran, in fact, met ts commitments, the nuclear deal relieves those sanctions

automatically without input from congress. given your view of your pretty substantial threat, what can congress do in the long term in new era of u.s. sanctions sector? iran's oil mr. royce: well, of course, i don't think it's just my view. initiative the president only got the president of 42 members in the senate, all right, and certainly, a minority of the members of the house of many entatives, including defections from his own party in the house. so i think the question of what we can do depends upon our resolve to first try to enforce the agreement, and i haven't seen any real resolve on the terms of tion in enforcing it. whether or not we intend to keep the commitment both those who voted for

it and those who opposed it, which was regardless of what that s next, we all agree that are inolutions place will prevent iran from testings on rther icbns and further support for terror. now that they're in violation of that, i would say this is the intentions.f their i would put one other thing on he table, the reports that surfaced in the "wall street journal" that iran had agreed to the fer the capablity into hands of hezbollah for targeting of their missiles. do you know there's 100,000 missiles now in the hands of hezbollah? but they're dumb rockets. i watch those things crash into

the city every day. i was in the trauma hospital. down were 600 victims there but those were dumb rockets. they couldn't target the tallest uilding or the airport what iran has said is we will capability to hezbollah, to hamas in gaza, and we will rebuild the tunnels. now, ladies and gentlemen, those re direct violations of the international resolutions and against for sanctions that kind of activity. is the administration going to ayatollah that we are not going to transfer that the hands of

hezbollah. and all of this, we intend to use our committee as we've done in the past to, put legislation floor of the house of representatives, but also to encourage the administration to take action. the administration we would like to have as a partner in halting iran in this kind of conduct. they agree, r not we will go forward with legislation to try to force this issue. danielle: we have a lot of people still waiting. i know you have a hard stop. o we have time for one more question? mr. royce: sure. anielle: this young lady waving her arm. and this is going to be our last bit of everybody. audience: a handful of pentagon officials have been calling for of the f.m.s. recently. they have been saying that partners have been having to buy russia and places like that because the u.s. process is too slow. do you plan to introduce any

anguage that would help speed up the process or would you have any concerns about doing so? mr. royce: no, i don't have any concerns about doing that, because we have been pushing the administration on this. with our do also industrial base, the defense of our industrial base. when our allies need this equipment, it makes very little instead, have them go, to other countries because, frankly, part of keeping our production lines open and part deterrence is having allies and friends able to count upon the united states for weapons of deterrence, and discussions ongoing with the administration on this in order to try to expedite and reverse some of these policies that have gone on, where things have been held year after year. i used to say month after month, so it's now year after year we're pushing hard on that.

danielle: i'll ask everybody to remain seated as the congressman has to head back to his vault on capitol hill. but i know you'll all join me in thanking him for his leadership. applause] >> next, a pentagon briefing with general john kelly, marine corps commander of the u.s. southern command. after that, the challenges facing afghanistan in 2016 and beyond. and then john kasich holding a 10 hall meeting -- town hall meeting in new hampshire. newsmakers, a texas

congressman, chair of the armed services committee, talks about what he hopes to hear from president obama during the state of the union address, iran and other foreign-policy issues. newsmakers, sunday at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> we need to know how many people are coming to us. for example, if they are not going to our website and going through facebook, twitter, reddit or any other venue, we should know that. >> sunday night, washington post barrenve editor marty talks about his work as editor in chief of the boston globe and the movie spotlight. >> i think it was quite faithful to the outline of how the investigation unfolded.

it is a movie, not a decade mentoring -- documentary. you had to document the investigation and introduce a lot of characters and the important themes that emerged. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern on q&a. as president obama prepares for a state of the union address on tuesday, he released this video on twitter. president obama: i'm working on my state of the union address. it is my last one. i keep thinking about the world we have traveled together these past seven years. that is what makes america great -- the capacity to change for the best. our ability to come together as one american family and pull ourselves closer to the america we believe in. it is hard to see sometimes in the day to day noise of washington, but it is who we are. is what i want to focus on in this address. >> coverage starts at 8 p.m.

andern with betty coed congressional reporter james arken looking back at the history and tradition of the president annual message and what to expect. at 9:00, the live coverage of the speech followed by the republican response by nikki haley. plus, your reactions as well as those from members of congress on c-span, c-span radio and c-span.org. we will re-air the coverage and the republican response starting at 11 p.m. eastern, 8 p.m. pacific. after theon c-span2 speech, you will hear from members of congress with their reaction to the president's address. >> next, u.s. marine corps general john kelly, commander of u.s. southern command, speaking with reporters at the pentagon. he talked about islamic

extremism and the transfer of guantanamo bay prisoner detainees. this is his final briefing before he retires. he served as commander since november 2012. this is 45 minutes. i'm very happy to be here. many friends over the years. as you might know, i'm about to go over the side for the last time. i retire at the end of the month. it is next thursday. i will tell you it was very unique. it is a remarkable organization. very different mission. it is all about broadening and deepening partnerships down there to say the least. i would say the partners we have in latin america and the caribbean like the united states want to be associated with the united states. there is a few down there who didn't get the memo about democracy and human rights and that kind of thing but some of

that is even turning around. they really do like and associate with us. they very much like, and are very proud of this, that southern command doesn't point the finger but work with them. we deliver an awful lot of good advice, education, and assistance. the other thing we do a lot of as an inneragency partner is c n confiscate drugs. we have taken nearly 109 metric tons of cocaine after it left latin america. our number one partner with this and a country we have a special relationship with, remarkable people and remarkable military, is columbia. they themselves took a couple

hundred metrics ups tons of cocaine before it left their country. they errat eradicated hundreds of cocaine fields and labs that are destroyed. other partners are the people from panamma and the peruvians. the corruption it brings and the violence it brings has devastated some of our really good partners like honduras and el salvador. there is good news throughout most of the region. as i said, i get ready to hang it up -- when i left the pentagon i was getting options and tired of the war spending so

much time in it in the early 2000s. i thought southern command would be a place that would allow me to unleash other energies and talents. it has allowed me to do that. you may or may not know this and it may not be an issue but i read that guantanamo bay, directly for the president of the united states and secretary of defense, i do not do policy whether it opens or closes, i do the detention ops. my mandate from the president through the secretary of defense is to make sure we are in accordance with all laws and regulations with the detainees and make sure they are treated well, humanely and taken care of medically wise. we do that and do it supurbly.

i will end there and open it up. >> a few questions. one, on gitmo. later this month we are told that we can expect a large number of the detainees will likely be transferred out. more than a dozen. i am wondering if the recent releases which have been in some chunks lately grieve credence to the argument that the military has been dragging its feet over previous years and whether this amounts to a sudden new effort that could have actually happened earlier. just a second question, you mentioned some of the interdiction you have been doing with little u.s. military.

there was additional talk about drones being used. have you seen any increase in the amount of other help for the drug war? and is that still an unmet need? >> well starting off with the drug question. again the partnership issue can't be overstated down there. particularly when we don't have u.s. military assets in that i count the united states coast guard. we have some guarders. we have partners like canada that provide a ship. the dutch will frequently provide a ship. these are not war ships. they tend to be coast guard ships. the french occasionally and the uk. a hundred metric tons wouldn't have happened had it not been for our partners. i don't count columbia in this because they do so much before the product leaves their

country. i can see, the joint inner agency task force in key west is probably the best tactical fusion center in the world. i think the cia and others would say the same thing. it brings the entire pow of the u.s. government to get up through drugs as they flow up through latin america and the caribbean. it is a long way from washington and i think you would agree the further you get away from washington the better things work. people actually talk to each other, people socialize with each other, they work together. there is no rice bowls. when i say partners cia, dea, homeland security, fda, it is phenomen phenomenal. to a dea agent and fbi agent

working with partner countries whether it is lima or honduras and shoulder to shoulder to men and women of those country's drug equivalent. that is what much of our human intelligence comes from. sometimes, not unusual to know plus or minus an hour or two, when a ton of cocaine is leaving a given port and head north i might know the guy's first name and phone number. that is the human intelligence. most of them we pick them up with p-3 aircraft flying down there sometimes often times homeland security and i cannot say enough good things about my number one partner and that is homeland and jeh johnson. he can see it move. what i cannot do is interdict it. it is very simple. all i need is a helicopter.

once we locate the movement of one, two or five tons they know what is coming and throw the electronics over the side and wait to be picked up. we take the driver of the boat and he goes into our legal -- typically into the federal leak legal justice system and that completes the cycle of human intelligence. i don't get much isr but i don't need much more. drones would be nice. but we have not seen any increase. certainly no drones. a lot of countries down there want to acquire drones and we encourage them to do so but they don't need the high end drones or armed drones. just reconnaissance drones. they buy that from somewhere other than the united states because it is hard to deal with the united states in terms of purchasing things for a lot of different reasons.

they tend to try and default to israel or yeah russia or maybe china. so i don't know if that answers the questions on the drug side. on the guantanamo bay side, i can speak personally the last three years, because that is how long i have been there, 38 months, the resident memory of guantanamo bay is the detainee staff and they can talk with a lot of authority back to about 2006 and then less so before that. the fact that there was reporting about this building, secretary of defense, people in uniform, people in detention offices, any way shape or form slowing down to try to impede the release of the detainees from my perspective is

non-sense. it is an insult frankly to serving military officers or civil servant in this building to be accused of whether we can agree or disagree with any of the policy we would in any way impede the progress. the president wants to close it i have a role, not in closing it, but detention ops. my only role in transfer is give me your name, country, time frame and i will get that person to that country. that is my role. we facilitate the movement of foreign delegations that want to come down. we never, ever, ever do anything but facilitate the movement when they want to come to guantanamo bay. we typically the process is a delegation wants to come, or even if they don't want to, when

there is a country interested in a transfer they are provided a detailed summary of the medical condition of the individual. they do come to guantanamo bay sometimes with questions because they were given an advance medical copy and always when they come down and they can talk to the detainee for any length of time they want, typically the conversation goes about 30 minutes, and it goes something like do you want to leave guantanamo bay and the answer is yes and that is about the extent of it. then the foreign delegation will typically talk to my doctors. they will talk sometimes to the guard personal and just ask how did this guy behave and whatever. then they leave and we eventually typically get word the country will take them and

that is where i take over and execute the transfer. there was some reporting about medical records. we have never had a foreign delegation ask for the full medical record. they always, always, satisfied with the summary we give them. in one case i recently read, and this wasn't the reporter's fault, the individual in question his medical record is at least 15,000 pages all of which has to be redacted by every intelligence agency in the united states and that would take two years. i thought it was a better idea to transfer the guy than hold them two years unnecessarily. we have never been asked and they never com plained about the foreign delegation access.

i welcome the press and foreign delegations to come down frequently. >> there was a report in the wall street journal about a hell fire missile that was delivered to cuba. it has been -- it was sent as a nato exercise in 2014 and somehow it wound its way through europe and made its way into cuba. i was going to ask you if you know where that missile is right now? >> no i don't. since you bring up cuba, we look forward to, you know, increasing our relationship with cuba, but for right now, and certainly for the last what? 50 years? we had zero relation with cuba with the exception of guantanamo bay.

one of the things provided by the state department is we do a lot of conferences and that is how we do a lot of engagements. some of it is, very seldom is it about drug and addiction, which it on the high seas it is not there. but disaster or humanitarian relief. we invited members of the cuban military to come to that through the state department. baby steps. when i was in haiti, there is a fair number of cuban doctors sprinkled around, a lot of cuban doctors that do this engagement, some in port of prince, and we offered them the opportunity to come board -- aboard and see what we do. they took us up on it.

we had cuban doctors from the port of prince area come on board and invited by docs on shore. but i have zero involvement with cuba right now. >> your son was killed in afghanistan in 2010. you served time in iraq. can we get your assessment of how the wars in afghanistan and iraq have been prosecuted? >> i can talk iraq. i did three tours there. i am a military man professional and i understand how these things can be done.

when i was in iraq, anbar province, there was remarkable improvement in security. we are proud of the two iraqi divisions we trained, organized and equipped ended up being the best iraqi divisions and they could operate on their own. but we always had advisors with them. i would say to keep sufficient numbers of intel people to provide the advisors to critique the commanders and nco's after they are out on operation. not to command but critique and suggest and whisper in their ear

we know how to do this. when they move one of those divisions down, when the 14th collapsed, we had advisors with them. it was the 8th division and they did a suburb job. the mentalship advising is what makes those things. the equipment is important but it doesn't come close to having people that are with them and less and less involvement until you come to a steady way. >> are you saying it was a mistake to pull out of iraq? >> i am saying there were other ways to do it with much smaller numbers than we had there at the height of the war. tom? >> along the lines, you talk about the apache attack helicopters in iraq with the iraqi forces and having u.s.

advisors accompanying iraqi forces. would it make sense to have those advisors going forward? >> we have a whole new war over there. i should add lord austin was there toward the end, a remarkable man named jim jeffries was there, he was a former vietnam war army. they had unbelievable influence on the prime minister and his team there at the time and obviously on the military people. there was a lot of learning to be done and advising to be done by those two gentlemen and their team to iraqi civilian leadership as well as -- it was like if you tried to teach a young person how to drive a bike and once you take off the training wheels, when i left iraq the training wheels were coming off.

butt if you are a parent teaching a kid to run a two wheel bike you are running behind him ready to grab the seat if they start to go over and over time they learn how to drive the bike. that is one way to look at what we could have done. >> what about today? >> we have a new war on our hands. i would say if we want the iraqis to get good enough to fight this fight i believe we have to reinforce them in terms of not only the equipment but as well as advisory capability and that kind of thing. there is only one way to advise. >> i have a question. in combat, the marines were against opening all combat jobs to women but were overruled by the defense secretary. they were slower and prone to

injuries. talk about the way ahead on this. how can they put this into affect and what concerns you in the way they had with this? >> i would just offer that i believe given the mission the united states armed forces to fight the nation's wars i believe every decision we make whether it is a personal decision, new airplane or whatever, i think every decision has to go through one filter and that is does it make it more lethal on the battlefield.

if the answer is shouldn't hurt i would not suggest doing it because it might hurt. the way i think we should do this is simply do it. my greatest fear, and we see this happen a lot over the 45 years i have been in the armed forces, is right now they are saying we will not change any standards. there will be great pressure, whether it is 12 months from now, four years from now, because the question asked is whether we let women into the other roles and why are they not staying in the other roles? why are they not advancing as infantry people? why are they not becoming seniors? the answer i think will be if we don't change the standards it

will be very difficult to have any real numbers coming into the infantry, rangers or seals but that is their business. we will have small numbers anyway and the only study i know on this is the study the marine core contracted with the university of pittsburgh, i think, and the other aspect is because of the nature of infantry training and combat there is a higher percentage of women in this scientific study that get hurt and some hurt forever. so i think it would be the pressure not for the generals here now but the common admirals to lower standards because that is the only way it will work in the way that i hear some people, particularly agenda-driven people in washington, the way they want it to work. >> thank you.

general kelly, last year when you were here you talked about the islamic state and how there are about a hundred islamic state fighters going to syria from the caribbean and venezuela. can you give us an update on the status of those at the airports

terms of checking the comings and goings of people. we do the best we can to help them. i am more concerned -- it seems like the islamic extremist and terrorist have shifted a lot of the message and that is whether

than coming to syria stay at home and do san bernardino or boston or fort hood. my concern as the commander is they can even just a few of these, you know, nuts, can cause an awful lot of trouble down in the caribbean because they don't have an fbi, they don't have law enforcement like do. and many of those countries have very, very small millitaries, if they have militaries at all. they welcome the help from the united states. oh, the expense of guantanamo bay. it depends on how you cut the cost. guantanamo bay is a functioning base and has been for years. when they come up with the cost estimate or cost per detainee and all of that we were never asked here. someone else came up with the number. but i know if you look at, my

gitmo budget is plus or minus a million dollars. but that is an approximate. the facility up and running if you keep counting the cost of the facility, which i guess you should, it is an expensive place, i support the commissions and they have a budget, too. but as a nation you make a decision what you will spend your money on. if to detain a detainee at guantanamo bay cost more than saying take that person to the united states if that is the policy decision so be it. i don't have an opinion on whether it is too expensive or not. i just know that, you know, the money i am given i spend

frugally and as i said they are very well taken care of. yes? >> thank you, general. i wanted to get your opinion something on guantanamo bay related and something that has been in the news. what did you think of the swap for beau bergdahl and the five senior commanders at guantanamo bay? >> policy decision. it was an unusual transfer and when i got the call, these are very administrative things. my staff gets a piece of paper from the joint staff saying acquire c-17 and move 23 to a certain country. in this case i got a call directly from a senior official in the building. it was get these guys ready to go and having worked up here before this transfer issue was

brought up initially and my involvement in it -- this was a couple years ago. has to be four years ago, say, and the transfer wasn't done obviously at that point. but i know when they called and gave me the five names and i said is this the bergdahl crowd and they said yes, same crowd. i followed orders. my question was am i getting the paperwork? and he said you will but it will be after. it it was a dicy transfer because there was a lot of press there because there was a commission period. lots of press down there. when the press were waiting for their airplane and the families of the 9/11 crowd and all of us were down there we were doing the transfer and it never got caught. anyone down there at the time i

am sure was probably, you know, should have been paying more attention. but that is a policy decision to transfer them. i know it caused a lot of angst in a lot of areas. but here again i don't try to slow down transfers. i facilitate transfers. i did by the way get the follow-up paperwork and when the airplane took off we deposited them and they are still there. >> were you concerned it was illegal since congress had not been notified? >> no, i am not involved in that process. i would never assume that anyone in this building for sure would break the law. the up and up was more in terms of is the paperwork ready? am i going to see? jennifer, we work on procedures and sop's and that kind of thing. i didn't assume anyone was doing

something illegal. >> maria for radio columbia. the president will be celebrating 15 years of leader in columbia. i would like to know your expectations for the future? and the president from venezuela said the opposition is planning an international intervention and the united states is leading it and he mentioned you. >> it is crazy what leaks. how did he find that out? remarkable story in the last 15-18 years, columbia. a lot of people in washington and other places if they know about it at all think the united states gave massive amounts of assistance and all of that. but the columbians did it all themselves. we provided intelligence, advice and back to the question about advising and how long to do it

but it takes a long time. there were never boots on the ground. human rights training was huge. how do we change our military to be better than it and it was very good at the time. they raised money through a war tax and frankly the elite of that country -- are you from columbia? your country was standing at the edge of a cliff looking down into hell. and your people decided to change that. and it is not perfect like we are not perfect but decided to change that. the congress and other people in wash washington i think four or five cents from the dollar came from the united states but the effort came from you. you are that close to ending this war. my feeling is the process of ending this war, and the first time i talked to president santos and the ministry of defense and the military men

down there three years ago now, my first trip, my recollection was to columbia, i said if you think the previous 50 years have been hard the next 15 years will be more complicated. you are trying to do something that is not done often. you are ending an internal conflict. once you get the treaty you have to figure what to do with the young fighters that have been kidnapped, not recruited, from the villages. young kids at 12, 13, and 14 years old. what do you with them after they have been fighters and that is all they know? you need to train them. downsize the military and gi bill thing. you need to train them. i use the term the gi bill for the fork because if you don't all they will do is stay in the drug business because they are

up to here in drugs. so, it is going to be hard. i hope my country, i have been vocal about this, maybe too vocal, but i think people understand on the hill, that is where i have pitched this more than anywhere else, we have to stand and continue with columbia for another ten years. it gets smaller and smaller and smaller. we still have, and again it isn't a big money thing, it is more involvement in the process. i think with all due respect, and i am not out of line to suggest this, but the peace divdened is not going to be immediate. it will be there -- dividend -- and the idea once the peace treaty is over and the lambs lie down with the lions is not going to happen. i spend about 40 seconds a day

contemplating the situation in venezuela and that is in prayer for the people. any people at this time deserve better than what many people in venezuela have. it is democracy. we just saw a great election. that democracy is getting stronger but i can tell you there is no plan of any kind that i know of to do anything but leave the venezuela problem to the venezuela people. >> thank you. happy new year. >> going back to guantanamo bay, do you believe that some of the detainees were released in the past and they joined the siege, and right now we have isil and isis. do you think they are inspiring the young people because of their regional and there is no,

what you call, freely running those countries. oration oather oultherer orationoratio >> i suppose it depends on your agenda. a certain percentage of them have returned to the fight. so be it. i don't have any specific numbers. but some return to the fight. as far as gitmo, did you ask about them instigating isil? honest men and women can disagree on everything.

the role is joined to things that happened in other places. i would say i am proud of what they do down there. sometimes i am the only person making that point and sometimes i wish other people would make that point. the security in afghanistan and what this says about where we stand. >> i don't believe we can allow islamic extremist, which is a small percentage of people that follow that great religion, i don't think we can afford to let

them have a safe haven. we know how to do these things. some might be out of the box in terms of policymakers. but if you take the point of not letting them have save havens you have to do political action to prevent that. this is hard. this is really hard. we know how to do it. but it generally translates to more expensive and longer term than what maybe the nation hopes for. yes, ma'am? >> i believe that you are the most senior gold star father in uniform. i wanted to ask do you believe gold star families are

supported? is there anything you would like to see the nation do or continue to do for them and following your retirement what is your planned involvement in that community? >> well, i think one of the things about loosing any child, and you cannot imagine until it happens, and i hope to god it never does for you or anyone, and it doesn't matter how they die, to lose a child is -- i cannot imagine anything worse than that. i used to think when i would go to my trips up to walter reed or go to the funerals with the secretary of defense that i could somehow imagine what it would be like. or when i would send young people back from iraq that died under my command somehow you write those letters to try to sympathize. i lost a father, i lost a

father, so you think it is something like that. but it is nothing like that. and so as a person that has lost a child in combat and the strong one in all of this is my wife, karen, and my two kids. but when you lose one in combat, in my opinion, there is a pride that goes with it that he didn't have to be there doing what he was doing, he wanted to be there, he volunteered, generally speaking there is no encouragement in our society to serve the nation, but many, many people do in uniform in the military as well as police officers and cia and fbi. i think they are special people but they are doing what they wanted to do. and they were with who they wanted to be with when they lost their lives. but i can tell you it is the most -- caught me by surprise

the level of emotional impact and every day it continues. gold star families are special to say the least. they don't have for much. i get occasionally letters from gold star families asking was it worth it? and i go back with it doesn't matter. that is not your question to ask. that young person thought it was worth it and that is the only opinion that counts. they don't ask for anything as i say. i think the one thing they would ask is that the cause for which their son or daughter fell can be characterized to a successful end as opposed to this is getting too costly and too much of a pain in the ass and walk away from it. that is when they start thinking

about it might not have been worth it. >> following up on the narrative, you know, seeing what is going on right now does that give you pangs of frustration and anger for your wife, family and kids? i wanted to ask about gitmo. is there a general amount of time when a foreign government acknowledges they will accept a detainee and when they are actually transferretransferred? what is the general time frame? >> it is pretty quick. i cannot put a number on it. when i first got to the job there were not as many foreign delegations. they seem to be common now. i had no idea what these countries depict these guys. zero idea. none of my business. when they come, i think they are going through the motion.

i think they decided if there is a deal and they come to the western countries. we went to gitmo, met with the guy and he seemed honest and he would be willing to be a good boy. it is pretty quick. i think they come in and get the check. as they say, they always talk to at least the docs and to my senior guys to find out about behavior and all of that. the vast majority of them are very compliant.

they are all bad boys. some were more effective in being bad boys than others. i don't think we can quibble on 15, 12 or 8 years in detention is enough to pay for whatever they did. they are bad guys. they were senior guys. i was happy to see their year of restriction was extended and the administration fought hard for that in the receiving countries. i read the same stories and you are right about whether on the phone and doing their thing and i don't know about that. but these are senior guys.

they were just senior guys and kind of not very difficult to deal with. there is a few down there i would like to punt because there are a few. but the vast majority are working with us. i took the job it was 166 and i think it is reported one went to kuwait today, two yesterday, day before one to ghana. you know there is more coming this month. if they go back to the fight we will probably kill them. that is a good thing. i want to end with that. i should end with that. ...

i will probably not talked to another press corps again. it is a mission the president has given them. they do it honorably, decently. until that facility is closed, those men will be taken care of in exactly the way i've been told. thank you very much. i appreciate it. a discussion about the challenges facing afghanistan in 2016 and beyond. kasichhio governor john holding a town hall meeting in new hampshire. live at 7 a.m., your calls and comments on washington journal.

today, seven republican presidential candidates are in columbia, south carolina. questioning by paul ryan and tim scott. our live coverage begins at 10:20 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> all campaign long, c-span takes you on the road to the white house. unfiltered access to the candidates at town hall meetings, news conferences, rallies and speeches. we are taking your comments on twitter, facebook and phone. as always, every campaign event we cover is available on our website at c-span.org. as president obama prepares for his state of the union address on tuesday, he released this video on twitter. president obama: i'm working in my state of the union address. it is my last one.

i keep thinking about the world we have traveled together these past seven years. that is what makes america great -- our capacity to change for the better. we come together as one american family and puts us closer to the america we believe in. it is hard to see sometimes with the noise of washington but it is who we are and it is what i want to focus on in this state of the union address. >> c-span's coverage starts at 8 p.m. eastern with a historian and reporter looking back at the history and tradition of the annual message and what to expect in this year's address. live coverage of the president's speech followed by the republican response by nikki haley. plus, your reaction by phone, facebook and e-mail as well as those by congress on c-span, c-span radio and c-span.org. we will re-air the state of the

union coverage and the republican response at 11 p.m. eastern, 8 p.m. pacific. live on c-span2, we will hear from embers of congress in statuary hall with their reaction to the president's address. on monday, the brookings institution hosted a discussion on the future of afghanistan. panelists focused on the impact of the war and efforts to improve stability in the country. the panel included doctors without borders executive director. this is one hour and 35 minutes. >> good morning, everyone. happy new year. i'm ikmike. my colleagues are also here. we want to join you and welcome our co-panelists for this

discussion today. it is on stability and human security in afghanistan as we begin a new year. an important year in afghanistan. we will bring a number of different perspectives to this conversation today. we are going to begin with opening comments from each of the panelists. there will be different angles and approaches, i'm sure. we will look forward to your comments and questions in the second half of the 90 minutes. previously, we will have discussed the broad state of afghanistan today. its overall political and military prognosis and trajectory. we will talk about the afghan people and their well-being, human security. and how the conflict as well as everything else going on there is affecting them. that will be the second main theme. overlapping theme will

be the very important role of nongovernmental organizations. we are honored today to have anne vaughn and jason cohen. anne is policy and advocacy director at mercy corps. she has worked in this capacity now for some time. she is a former peace corps volunteer in nicaragua. she worked on capitol hill. fors a longtime advocate those in difficult circumstances around the world. mercy corps is famous for this. one of the topics i know she will address is the overall state of the afghan people and specifically a lot of the concerns about refugees and displaced persons. jason coen is the communications director for doctors without borders and you know they do

incredibly important and courageous work around the world and was the victim of a terrible tragedy. the most famous and worst single tragedy of the entire fall of 2015 in afghanistan. certainly in terms of a tragedy that we all would have liked to see avoided and that was caused by mistakes made by the u.s. military and afghan security forces and we'll discuss that issue as well. vanda and i are very honored to have our colleague with us here. he is an active duty marine corps officer with considerable experience in the broader middle east conflict found in previous assignment area -- assignments. we are pleased to have him in brookings. he draws on this great repository in his mind on various issues that get to the heart of what happened. the basic question of how to