urdistan tv. simple question. the cia director confirmed he was in kirkuk. they were used by the militia in iraq. it is very clear. they were using u.s. weapons to attack kurdistan, peshmerga, u.s. allies, and strategy is not clear. >> i agree with you. u.s. military has whitewashed the roles of shia militia inside iraq. these are militias -- they are under an umbrella called the popular mobilization forces. its operations leader is an individual who is listed as a specially designated global terrorist by the u.s. government. in his designation, he is listed as an advisor. the popular mobilization forces

today is -- reports directly to he prime minister of iraq. it is institutionalized as an official arm of the iraqi military, but again, only reports to the prime minister. the u.s. military, state department has whitewashed this issue. their position has been that they are part of the official government. ne of these organizations is listed as a foreign terrorist organization. all of the key groups in the popular mobilization forces, all of the largest militias, the most influential, powerful that have been at the forefront of the iraqi offenses in every major city in iraq are all hostile to the u.s. several of their leaders are listed as global terrorists. some of them has openly stated,

if the supreme leader orders me to overthrow the iraqi government, i will do that. they have made threats against the united states, said they would target the united states, if ordered to do so by khomeini. as you said, solo money has even been identified as an advisor to the iraqi prime minister. you have a problem inside of iraq. open the doorss for iranian influences to flood in. when i was embedded in iraq and was among senior iraqi military officers who by all accounts were loyal to the iraqi government, they predicted a u.s. withdrawal would allow this to happen. there needs to be clarity from the u.s. government in order to have a deal with this problem. what has been established inside of iraq is basically analogous

iraq's irgc. they are going to usurp military power. they have already done that essentially. it is a very big problem, and one, i'm not very confident in seeing this problem resolved any time shortly unless there is a major change in understanding. you have to understand -- i realize there's no connection between the two, but we have to understand what is actually going on and look at it reasonably and say this is what is happening in order to develop policy and strategy to counter it, but when you have u.s. officials and u.s. generals is not a problem inside iraq, that is what u.s. policymakers are getting, and therefore, you have this problem. i'm going to say one more thing

-- look at the problem has been a has created with a population of 4 million in lebanon? now you have a rack with a 30-something million people. this is what is in store for the middle east. >> as moderator, i have to ask -- is there anyone from the state department but the iraqi embassy in the crowd who wants to stand up and take that? not at this time. we have a question in the back of the room. >> thanks for this. i wanted to ask you all in light of these documents and what you have studied over the years, how would you compare al qaeda plus leadership -- al qaeda plus leadership -- al qaeda's 's relationship with the irgc?

>> that is a difficult comparison because they are completely different relationships. the trick is pakistan is not exporting their own revolution throughout the region whereas iran is, and al qaeda's big problem with iran as they do not spreadi'ism to throughout the region. they want their own version of islam to spread. there are big problems there. within pakistan -- but again, that does not preclude them from cooperating in some ways. with pakistan, the problem comes back to the role of the american state. we have seen a lot of files where what do you do when you have a pakistani spy? someone who is clearly working for some part of pakistani intel, can we kill them all right?

you can see them having that kind of granular level struggle. the book is coming out which i'm going to review. i think it's for the good. i have not read the whole thing yet, but it strikes me as pretty important. in pakistan, you have wheels within wheels, whereas part of the intelligence service helps the u.s. against jihad is an part of it has not, and the part that has not is not fully understood, and that is what we are trying to figure out -- what is the level of their collusion with al qaeda specifically. you can show they are colluding directly with groups that ally with al qaeda, but the question is about their direct relationship. that is what we are trying to figure out. of the things we have seen in pakistan is pakistani leaders have targeted al qaeda .eaders

if it was intentional or accidental, i cannot tell you. .here is certainly attention that was a problem. that was contentious with the pakistani state and establishment in general, but at the same time, this is the good taliban versus bad taliban never did where what pakistan tried to .o was say we have good taliban groups that fight in kashmir, and then there's the bad taliban. so you have this dynamic going , and it's that the good

telegram supports the bad taliban. this is in the bin laden files. when the pakistani government wanted to negotiate a truce, who did they reach out to? to the goodut television. they try and facilitate and truce, so that is the dynamic that we see. what they do not understand is that these groups, the good taliban shelters the bad taliban. they provide money and weapons and everything they need to survive, and that is the dynamic that we see publicly, and i think it is part of the dynamic inside the document as well. to how doesback osama bin laden live in pakistan

without them knowing. this checkpoints to go from age to b to c all throughout the .ity >> was there anything so far in the document files that shows ? e recent release >> that is the information where they are trying to negotiate a truce. >> right, but i mean not just a truce. i mean real cooperation. >> this is what we are working on desperately to figure out from these files. one quick point -- there is a very interesting file i should have brought up that we just finished translating, which is al qaeda's assessment of the u.s. strategy. didaeda believes pakistan not want to jihadi problem to go away entirely, because that is the international family would have to focus on other things,

so it is very sophisticated .eading that file is very interesting for a lot of reasons. >> we have to have one more question. i had not asked anyone on this side of the room. the gentleman in the back of the room who i cannot see because of the building structure. >> i'm from the cato institute. my question is about if these communications have consequences. the usual take was that there were a lot of messages coming from al qaeda central, but he kept doing what he was doing. do you see a different take when you look at these materials coming out in 2011? >> can i just do a one-to? can you ask your question as well? we're getting you a microphone. just a second. the microphone traveled to that side of the room. it's a lightning round of two

questions to finish. >> one of the more amazing things that come out of this is seems to me is the amount of communication that al qaeda central must have been managing. i just wonder if you've got any sense from these documents how this was done, and you would think there would be enough indications of how this was going on that that would have given us opportunities to intercept it. on the al qaeda and iraq point, i think the internal files from al qaeda -- yes, i think there were tensions fraught with difficulties, but part of the whole messaging that they were trying to dress down only oneonstantly was window in their relationship. a numerous other times, they were praising him and basically saw him as their guy and iraq.

overall, he was still there guy -- their guy. al qaeda's affiliation was issuing directives to the heirs of zarqawi. we are seeing directives that still go out to the islamic state of iraq. there were talking about the minutiae of the granular details. one of these planners talked officehe administrative of messaging -- mujahedin affairs. to take down all the personal biographical information on these guys, sort them, figure out who is who, what they can do, basically issuing administrative orders to the islamic state of iraq, and on the question of how stuff was transported, some of it was courier -- we know that, thumb drives, that sort of thing, but what you are looking at our

files coming into al qaeda and different times with different personalities. man at the time of his death probably communicated in different ways to people over time, so he probably got communications coming in at different times in different ways. he was not always necessarily courier all the time, although a portion of it was. >> did you have anything to add? >> it's funny you mention the majority in office. that letter from the man who is now the head of al qaeda specifically says they need to keep a register of all of their new recruits and that they need to identify their special skills, talents they have, basically like an hr department. just to fast forward down to the islamic state, i have found these documents that the islamic state issued to their new recruits, basically like an intake form, right? an application. who is your mom? who is your dad?

were particular skills do you have? ? ve you ever been arrested for terrorism charges? you see them very much applying this particular piece of administrative advice. >> one more point, and that just shows it was not just a group with some terrorist cells here and there and if you kill this leader, the whole thing falls apart. they still survive the drone campaign from 2007 through 2015. that is a small, cellular turn through. we see this time and time again, directing between

branches, affiliates, and they are passing down lessons learned, and being passed back up to the top. this is what successful organizations do. if they did it as well as some of the finest corporations out there, that certainly remains to be seen. >> so, closing thoughts from each of you? my lightning round question is what have you seen in the files that answers the question -- what keeps drawing followers to al qaeda? >> i have not seen a lot of the wheniting stuff yet, but you look at the messaging they are telling others to disseminate his they do believe in a conspiratorial view of the world. they believe there is a grand alliance between america and the zionists to conspire against muslims everywhere and basically

everything that happens or false name in the world is a product of this conspiratorial anti-islamic viewpoint, but that's part of the reason why we this,een very strong on to be very careful in distinction between the vast majority of muslims who have nothing to do with this and are not part of these groups and the fact that ultimately, they are on the front lines in afghanistan or molly -- malo. -- or mali. erase thato distinction. they want to say that they represent all of islam and all muslims, which of course is false, but that is a key theme in their message, and it is on us to be careful in our rhetoric to sort of not give in to that false narrative. >> regarding the messaging, what i would take away is their timeline. at least if you take them at their word, the timeline seems to be eternity. they are fighting forever, right?

i was in iraq last year when the start of the mosul operation happened in october, and at that point in time, when i was speaking to both u.s. and iraqi officials, they were hopeful, optimistic that they could take most noble for obama left office , which would have been in january, so three months. instead, it was a nine-month long slog. there was a senior general on the american side who was helping the coalition described as the worst fighting he had seen in 35 years, comparable to the worst battles of world war ii. i think one of the things we are against is that the timeline is forever, and our timeline is a political one, where our leaders are of course under enormous pressure to show results, and ,nfortunately, in that effort we repeatedly underestimate them, and we repeatedly see them as smaller than they are. >> we tell ourselves the story

we want to hear that the >> that's right. >> as opposed to the reality in front of us. >> icy two other things there. i see that commitment to the fight. they are planning for the long importantthat is very to them, and the religious justification for what they are doing, they do try to put themselves as the vanguard, not just the fighting vanguard, but they are the true believers. they are very concerned about killing muslims unnecessarily, for instance. this was part of the schism between islamic state and al qaeda. zarqawi was definitely there guy -- their guy. but they are very clear that they won't to project themselves fighters,ighteous

religious fighters. it's not just a war against the west, but it's a religious war that they are putting forward, and that is something i think that is appealing to the segment of the muslim world that is willing to support them. note, i want to thank you all for the discussion, and if there are any folks in the intel world who are watching this and you have more documents you would be willing to release, we are all for it. on that note, thank you very much. [applause] [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017]

>> c-span's road to the white house 2020 kicks off tonight with democratic presidential candidate representative john delaney at the kennedy clinton dinner and hollis new hampshire. he talks about how democrats get supporters to the polls. here's a portion of what you will see tonight. [applause] became therump president of this amazing country because of two things. one, democrats did not turn out. two, for some reason, we stopped talking to people about what they care about. i think the first part is going to take care of itself. the energy that you are showing, the enthusiasm that this party is showing is extraordinary, but we have to remember we have to talk to people about what they care about, not what we care

about. we as democrats have so many issues we care about, and i believe in the fullness of time, we will be proven right on just about every one of them, but that does not mean it moves people's hearts and minds. what moves people's hearts and minds is their job, their pay, and the opportunity for their kids. every time we not talking about that and every time we're talking about how bad the republicans are, it is a missed opportunity for us. that's how we take this country back in my opinion. >> part of a speech by 2020 democratic presidential candidate john delaney at the candidate dinner in new hampshire, who is joined by ohio congressman tim ryan. see it on road to the white house 2020 at 8:00 eastern here on c-span. >> thanksgiving day on c-span. here are some of the highlights. at 11:30 am eastern, the liberty medal ceremony honoring senator

john mccain at the national constitution center in philadelphia. at 1:00 p.m., former secretary of state john kerry receiving a lifetime achievement award at the edward him kennedy institute, and a 2:45 p.m., new york times columnist david brooks and ronald white discuss character and the presidency. c-span two the southern festival of books. then the former heavyweight champion of the world, muhammad ali. at three: 10, authors discuss the middle class with politics and a 4:50 p.m., eric erickson --his book before you wake life lessons from a father to his children. at 11:00 am on lectures and history, native americans and trade in 19th-century california, then at 2:55 p.m. eastern from the national archives, a look at the first motion picture units world war

ii films. thanksgiving day on the c-span network. >> next on c-span, we hear from the qatari deputy prime minister and foreign minister about the economic boycott against qatar from saudi arabia, the united arab emirates, egypt, and bahrain. his remarks are an hour. welcome to the center of international interest. we have a very special guest today. he's a very young man who already has a very impressive career and has already been in his position for more than a year.