guest: the caller made some important points. clearly in the first years in iraq, the u.s. military often was laundering in and causing people to join the resistance -- was blundering yen. one thing that mcchrystal is tremendously aware of, if you read this report, the military learned the lessons of iraq. general david petraeus, general picked -- general mcchrystal, they are totally focused on trying to create a totally different pattern of behavior, even at the risk of taking more casualties. mcchrystal talked about this over and over again, and i solid turnaround in iraq. mcchrystal emphasizes that if it is a choice between risking collateral damage if a u.s. unit is going after the taliban, if

you are afraid that you are going to kill more civilians than taliban can you do not do it. that may cause more u.s. casualties, but his strategy is to protect the population and convince the population there is reason for the u.s. being there. greater focus on getting aid into areas that are hard-hit, so people in afghan villages won't feel they have to join the taliban for jobs. you also have to consider that in poll after poll in gap, the afghans don't like the taliban, so it is not that they are turning to the taliban in large part because the group is popular or the different segments of that group, they learned what it was like to live under taliban rule, which was much hasher version of islam than most afghans were used to, so it is not that they want the taliban.

it is simply that their government is not delivering services and that they don't see the u.s. presence as delivering anything good. mccrystal is trying to shift the way the u.s. military operates so they are supporting villages, not alienating them. this is a huge task. but i think he's very, very aware of the issues that the caller raised. host: if you're interested in reading more of the works in the regular column by trudy rubin, you can log on the website. it's philly.com/true dirubin. eric is joining us from indiana. good morning. caller: good morning. i read an article called "us or them in afghanistan" by a lady named ann jones. and she's been in afghanistan helping with women's causes there since the beginning. and she writes about, you know -- supposedly there is an army of afghanis that's 90,000 strong. i guess a bunch of marines and

nato forces moved in to someplace and started to fight against either the taliban or the warlords who controlled that area. she said they moved in with only 600 afghanis, and she said the main question we've got to ask is where is this army of 90,000? guest: yes. the army of 90,000 -- have i been cut off? host: no, you're here. guest: ok. the army of 90,000, a large chunk of it, is this the process of being trained. this is an essentially part of the problem. i went and watched training of the afghan army when i was last in afghanistan in may. and many of these young men are ill literal. they are just -- illiterate.

they are just learning to use these weapons. they are just learning to fight in a formation. their officer corps is just being trained up. this is indeed a huge part of the problem. right now the u.s. is training another 30,000 afghans, but there is talk about trying to train an afghan army of 250,000. it's a huge country. there are afghan troops protecting cities. so it's absolutely true. there aren't enough troops in helmond, afghan troops. this is a primary objective of the u.s. presence. when you're training up troops from scratch, you need to have some assistance when you put them into a fighting situation. you can't just send them in green, because then they're not going to be able to function, especially in a difficult situation fighting against guerrillas in the country side,

taliban. that is one of the primary objectives of staying longer and sending in more troops to train the afghans to fighting capacity so they can do the job. host: tom is joining us from jacksonville, north carolina. good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call. i've been listening to the discussion this morning. i've served both in iraq and afghanistan. missions of supporting and training the locals to stand up and fight. first, on the whole iran piece, i don't see how the administration figures that the sanctions will be able to deter what the iranians are doing. i think from their perspective what they keep saying from us actually is counterproductive because it encourages them to continue their secret weapons. they're willing to fight for it. our position says we don't like it, but we're not going to fight for it. the reason the option is so bad because it's not to the strength

it needs to be. i don't think the administration currently wants to pursue a greater stronger military, thus having more problems. host: thank you. guest: there's a lot of reason in what the caller said, but, again, i think it comes down to bottom line, you have to decide where the united states's priorities are. where the greatest security threats are now. the military is not up for fighting a third war. further more, fighting in iran, it's not sending the soldiers in. we're not going to invade iran. what is being talked about here is military strikes that have a very small possibility of ending a nuclear program that is still several years from producing weapons. and in which iran may never use them. so the priority has to be in securing a country, pakistan, that has nuclear weapons and terrorists within it.

we can't invade pakistan, but we are working with their military. we are using predator strikes against al qaeda. and we are trying to secure the backyard of pakistan where if the taliban takes over, you will have al qaeda moving in there too and it will rebound on pakistan. and so, we're looking at the priority. on area where there are nuclear weapons already, many of them, and terrorists. and i didn't even mention the terrorists inside pakistan would like to provoke a nuclear war between nuclear india and nuclear pakistan and they've tried very hard to do that by terrorists outrages inside india. so here is where the real problem is. south asia. iran is a problem, but nobody expects that they are going to put a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile and fire it towards the united states any time soon, if ever.

the threat that they went is more in the region. they don't have the weapons and they don't have weaponization yet. you have to stick with priorities. host: trudy rubin, what worries you the most? guest: in the region, or overall in the world as far as security interests? host: let's limit it to afghanistan, iran, pakistan in the middle east. guest: pakistan worries me the most. it has a large arsenal, a weak civilian government. it has a military that is working with the united states, but is ambivalent. lately the pakistani military has taken more action against the jihaddists, the terrorists inside its country, because they were really starting to threaten the survival of the pakistani government. nay were physically moving towards the capital. this was last april when i was there. before that the military was very reluctant, ambivalent about

taking them on. right now the military is taking them on more strongly, but that country is still threatened by jihad dees and the pakistani military is very ambivalent about doing anything to take on the leaders of the afghan taliban who hang out inside pakistan, because it isn't sure -- the pakistani military isn't sure the unite is going to stick around in afghanistan and if the united states is going to leave, then pakistan is going to wet on a taliban government which they think they can control in kabul, afghanistan. i think they're wrong. i don't think they can control it. they couldn't control it when a taliban was in charge before and let osama bin laden have his bases inside of afghanistan. to me the biggest threat is in pakistan and also in afghanistan. i think that's where we have to focus. i think we have to try to contain and sanction iran if it

goes forward on this process. i think in the long term, iran's government is going to change because of internal domestic pressures. this is not the ideal approach to iran, but i think that a military approach would do more harm than good and might leave us with $200 a barrel oil. host: that is the headline this morning in the los angeles sunday times. the nuclear disclosure is widening the internal political rift within the country. guest: yes. inside iran. remember that, that there is a really strong opposition which is not strong millitarily. the regime has all the guns. but there is tremendous and growing popular revullings for the way the current leadership, especially president ahmadinejad, is handling the country. there are allegations of torture

and rape in prison, which actually have been going on for a long time, but now with the recent growth in the opposition, are coming into the public consciousness in iran. today in "the new york times," there's a horrific story by one of the opposition demonstrator who escaped from iran, who was raped in prison. that has to play itself out. were the united states of israeli to do missile strikes on iran, the whole population would unite against an external aggression, or if not the whole population, then much of it. much of the population, which is now becoming ambivalent about their leadership, would feel that it has to support it leaders if they were attacked. so that's another consideration. how does one help the opposition inside iran? so with everything there is to consider, i think that the military focus has to be on south asia and the diplomatic and economic focus on iran. host: our guest, trudy rubin,

foreign affairs columnist for the "philadelphia inquirer." the "philadelphia inquirer." her piece today isis titled "oba [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> tomorrow, steven cochrane, managing director of moody's economy talked about his companies report on housing prices. former secretary william cohen looks at the obama administration's options in washington. author william ouchi talks about his new books, and the latest on treatment and research of alzheimer's.

"washington journal," live at 7:00 eastern on c-span. >> up next, remarks from u.s. central commander david petraeus. then we will show you a house hearing on renewing the employment nondiscrimination act. after that q&a with senate historian richard baker. >> an event now with u.s. central commander general david petraeus. he talks about the situation in afghanistan. it was part of an event hosted by the marine corps university here in washington. it is about 90 minutes. >> good afternoon. since the fourth of september, i have been the president of marine corps university.

it is our pleasure to be with you here today. before we get to our last panel and our keynote speaker, i would like to take an opportunity to thank all the people that made this event possible. the foundation provides the university a wide range of support for educational purposes for events like this, for academic chairs, for student trips, and we would not be able to do what we do without them, so i would ask you to join me at around of applause for the foundation. [applause] i would also like to acknowledge those at the university who worked very hard to make this event happened. [applause]

the university is committed to engage in a joint international dialogue to address problems we are likely to face in the 21st century. we regularly host conferences, and most recently hosted an event this spring addressing issues in afghanistan. we hope to do another one is following spring. for those of you who have not participated in those activities, we would ask you to visit our website and possibly join us in the future. now let me get right to the panel. i remind everybody that the topic for today is leadership. during the past eight years, soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines have fought side by side in afghanistan and iraq, sharing the same hardships and achieving the same accomplishments.

we are truly a joint force. it makes sense that we spend some time talking to each other about leadership and all types of war. we have to give equal and comparable time to the people aspect of war fighting. we know the leadership capabilities could not be developed or enhanced or could not get better. all of us would say we are certainly better leaders from what we have learned from others that we were in the past. the history of nations shows that leaders vary widely in talent. our panel today will be able to talk about how we are able to interact in afghanistan to find

the best iraqi leaders to lead those units. improvement in the quality of the iraqi leadership was a critical factor in the transition of so many security responsibilities to the iraqis during forces in the iraqi government. our panel today will be moderated by lieutenant general trainor, a man who i am not going to read the introduction of. general trainor is a marine who joined the marine corps after world war two. he served in korea in combat. he ended up making the rank of three-star and retiring. he has been an educator and a successful writer. general protest is the commander of syncom, and we all know he

was the commander of multinational forces in iraq from february 2017 when he a coup -- to when he assumed command of central command. i appreciate you taking the time. >> thanks for being here and for that mercifully brief introduction. i have had this calendar -- this conference on the calendar for a number of months, and it think it is a topic that is very timely and very important. good, very timely. and very important. and i applaud bob, what you and your team have done in pulling it together. i feel privilege to be on this panel. it's great to be a panel of one with my marine on any flank here. congratulations as well, bob,

you've just taken over the command of the intellectual center of the universe there, the marine corps university. and i commend you for that and commend the marine corps for that with a very straight face having seen you in action and knowing what you've done over the years. and i can assure the audience that is a very, very good selection. and we're delighted to see you where you are. it's also wonderful to see so many familiar faces, so many important members of what's come to be known as counter insurgency nation here today. but looking at a lot of those who were out in this audience and knowing that i've power pointed many of you within an inch of your intellectual lives on most occasion, i said the most productive is a conversation facilitated by a great marine leader and a great historian that's of course general trainor.

well that was my thinking, but then being a u.s. army officer the idea of power point prompted me to reconsider. it's genetic. what i thought i would do is set the scene with four or five slides that provides contends with the challenges that our leaders are facing in the overall area of responsibility p. then have our conversation and q&a with a full deck of slides as required. finally, up front as well, my apologies to those who showed up be all afghanistan all the time and to hear me divulge details as we were reminded that conference focus is leadership in counter insurgency. i know you've had great sessions on that already today. and with respect that should be

the focus of the questions this afternoon. i can assure you it will be the focus of my answers. [laughter] we were doing counter insurgency at the time. i was privileged to work under general galvin. and werle engaged in el salvador, peru and a variety of other places. i remember watching him with the press today and he was done. and i was a special assistant. so you know he'd -- they would ask afterwards, well, what do did you think? well, gosh, seemed super. you got all your points across. but it struck me that you didn't answer any of their questions. >> he said, they didn't ask any of mine. so a couple of slides. again just to set the stage here if i could. next slide. this is central command now. now some of you will remember central command and will

remember a world prior to one october last year where there was one less je graphic combatant commander and where central command still had the horn of africa. at the start of the fiscal year there are now six geographic commands to go along with the four other co bat tant commands that have specified functions central command is therefore the smallest of the je graphic combat and commands. but regretably it seems to have the lion's share of the problems. now just focusing a little more just to remind you where we are. the other states in the north and down through of course yemen and the other southern part of the arabian peninsula.

and everything in between. all told, 20 countries. we have ambassadors in 18 of them. and you can see the various challenges that exist there. it's a region i don't need to tell this audience of haves and have-nots. the richest per capita country in the world and also among the poorest countries in the world. extraordinarily blessed in oil and natural gas but often poor in fresh water. some countries again with spectacular construction activities ongoing and others that have very substantial services inadequate governments and a host of other challenges to confront. and therefore are in my cases fertkl ground in planting the seeds of extremism. these the challenges are out there. you know about them, a couple of other trance national

terrorists and we have iran which continue to arm, train hunt. shiah extremists elements to a modess degree in afghanistan. there's the piracy issue. be happy to talk about that. touch wood, but we've actually made a bit of progress against that with its own defense as the more ships. the challenge there being a failed state. we still do support operations that are conducted with after caon or there the navel component commanners. obviously, we still have the operations in iraq. need less to say the -- there

are are others. i'm sorry go to the next slide beyond this. flip threw this quickly, please. feel that -- there we go. back up one, please. this shows the elements in central command. it shows in a snapshot what we are trying to do across the a.o.r. in terms of in the stands to replace the traditional great game, the competition for power and influence among the powers of the world with a broad partnership against extremeism, and trafficic that comes out of afghanistan. obviously, a major effort supporting pakistan where we've seen heartening developments. in particular against those elements seen by the pakistanis as threatening their writ of

government and their very existence. but also of course, some of the operations and the tribal areas that have resulted in the death of some of the key leaders among them. afghanistan, needless to say, i now you've spent a good time on it. and we have a bunch of back-up slides and so', if you want to get into it that. it's continued effort in the nuclear arena which many would assess it to deliver it with their missile efforts. happy to show you the statistics in iraq where there continues to be very substantial progress. still down to 220 attacks per day fer range even with with

the iraqi sometime fray. although we've seen horrific -- i think it's called black wednesday. by and large significant damage done still in al-qaeda and still shiah extreme is present. the reconstruction and all the bridges just about have been rebuilt that were bone off by the extremists. higher oil ex-morts in their higher oil ex-morts in their history back in august. -- exports in their history back in august. so quite a bit of progress

there albeit many, many challenges. sunni shiah. they prepare for the 2010 elections. you name it, plenty of challenge there is. no shortage of issues that have to be resolved. we continue to support the lebanese armed forces. heartening development tpwhr the elections. not so heart nk yet in the form of sa heed ha rary. we're going to go the first big bright star exercise this year than we've done in a number of years, i think probably since 2002 or so. if you were to characterize all the overall effort, i think

would you say that it is mildly positive that the developments all the way from the fata over into arke lebanon egypt, the golf of -- gulf states, they counter terrorism there. and it's something we will highlight in a moment. with the exception of yemen. and that's where al-qaeda and the arabian peninsula have established their territory. they're located down there in the arabian peninsula in some of the southern tribal areas. again, that is a concern. and i do trap into i mentioned at the piracy effort here, and finally this very substantial series of partnerships we have undertaken with countries along the western

side of the gulf there. many of them motivated because of concern over iraq's rhetoric and iran's rhetoric and actions. interestingly, iran has been the best recruiter for central command when it comes to a variety of these activities. an example, there are eight patriot missile batteries up on the west side of the gulf, to each in four countries, were some time ago there were none of those. a lot of other activities as you would imagine in the ballistic missile defense arena, early warning and air defense. countries are varies substantially embracing bilateral arrangements that we can then turn into a multilateral effects. a lot of maritime activity as well. if you can go and just show who is out there doing all this. i want to talk briefly about

this. this was an inside out of the strategic assessment. this is not related to afghanistan. this is something i have been briefing for about eight months. about eight months. during the 2006, 2007 time frame. the thing about it is it requires more than your special university forces. counter insuri general approach. that does not mean that we have to be the one providing the forces or all the resources or anything else. it does mean that many different governmental agencies civil partnerships and again a come prea hence i approach to these problems is the answer. i would hold out frankly as an

example what the king has done because they have had sigh per b program. yes their d -- yes, their secretary of their interior has been great. but by and large given where they were four and a half, five years okay. the headquarters is blown up when the complex was sletnd and thousands of western workers were leaving. the response they had was quite similar to the anaconda slide that i have in reserve. to remind you what a solo government approach looked like. and so we'd be theep discuss that furtherer as well. further as well.

>> now just a reminder, of course, as well of the come mow ponents that are out there. obviously, we've gotten the typical army, navy, and stars, they plit their time although they're about 70, to 80% left. i've been the four star command in a rock. and afghanistan we showed if u.s. forces in aufing that he -- in eafl. >> in addition to that, the two store in pakistan two star, one, one, star, a flag officers and're operations are out there because of the enormous security. we try to build a network of

networks. help to some degree by the concerns of the activities of iran. so that's sort of again -- thing sets the stabling. before we start the conversation since it's about leadership, we auls off used to use this because this was a metaphor for what tfers what we're trying to do in iraq. the task or the missions and what you're trying to do is get the cattle but boy it's tough and it's raining side wies. this might be an i.e.d. we're riding for glory. a handful of us are outriders. we're all trying to get it going. the point was walls this slide

to make the, to illustrate the idea that leaders and counter insurgency with a slight degree of discomfort or chaos of course, and again, the mells poe tame yum standard, involved nonstandard tasks that we spend . i know you've heard other speakers during the course of today. we'll leave that up because i think it's a great reminder of if challenges that he face. and it was a farly uncomfort nl endover. wand that i will bing with my wing mand. begin the conversation and we will go ahead and have the question and maintenance. >> i'm going to go out there and start the vision -- i moith

go with you. before i make my preliminary services. we went into afghanistan to go after the alaska. and we went to iraq and i.q.u. give us fits an you loob it to the fact that the al-qaeda is down of somalia. my question is, you know, things move all the time. so my question is how would you define him today and how would you describe his estate of health. as i ex-ed the moment. i think diminished where it was. it is certainly diminished from when we lost the search in

sellerly fwevpb. again, again, i think that if you look at what's been done to al-qaeda in the toy that. now i'm non, treatmentists. there's been a di my knew shan of their activities. that doesn't mean -- i think in the united states it was reported to there not alerts in other countries and various locations in that area as well. it doesn't mean there's a linking from akack east and the a-- over to al-qaeda. we have power point slides, of course. that can build and it build every and every little link that can trap these. and the folks that are in that bat dsu --

we can show that pretty well. showing it and being able to target or disrupt or ultimately defeat some of those elements is another case. and often, again that require as bit more than just kinetic activity. it also requires in the case of iraq where you ru do clear, hold and build certain areas that were sanctuaries in that case for al-qaeda, iraq or our sunni. i think that has been an assessment that has been shared by the c.i.a. they gave a major report in novet last year that had a similar asissment. and i think the community's assessment is the same as well. >> ok. let me remind you all of the

rules of engagement. raise your hand if you want to be recognized. wait for the mic, so that everybody can hear you. identify yourself and your ifill yation. and ask a question, but only one question, no follow up questions. and make it succinct. if you're going to make a statement, please do not make it a fidel castro, two-hour speech. stick to what you want to say. and say it precisely, if you go on too long, i'll cut you off. >> this is why we had a marine, by the way. [laughter] >> now the other thing i want to mention is stay on topic, the topic of the conference has been leadership in counter insur surgency, iraq and

beyond. general petraeus is not going to dress any mechanic dation about it. with that we'll get it underway. so who's the first -- in the back. that's you. stand up. state your name, affiliation once you get the microphone. and i would ask the attendants for the microphones to be on their toes if they're even in here. >> there is a microphone -- oh, that's not it. oh, you can talk loud. >> we're flexible and adaptable. so just -- so just speak up.

>> [inaudible] i'd like to ask you when the obama administration, when they did their review, did you and the military provide the leadership, if you have the strategy these are the resources you're going to need to fully implement. as you know the general says if you want to have a fully resource coin strategy in afghanistan you need hundreds of thousands of troops? >> first of all, they don't know how to be our troops. and there's a whole variety of ways you can come at those. and those who quote the good old fm-324, and we'll be doing book signings after the session here. .

-- it also drew as i can show in a moment after this, first let me just show you a reminder, this is where the insurgency is. these hot spots right here. we did similar density plots and we focused on where the insurgency was and as folks like tom rex and linda robinson, if she's in here,

remember, the first security stations that we established to live with the people, which was one of the big ideas, secure the people that you can only do by living with them, the first j.s.s.'s went into dora and and they were the hottest of the hot spots in baghdad at that time. in fact, were we to leahy on this where it is that our forces have been going, i can do that in a moment if you like, we can show, you know, how the focus has been on these areas, helmand province and khandahar, of course, is the original well spring of the taliban. and you can see some emergence of provinces in herat and a handful of places around the command east as well. so, again, it's where you've got to focus. again, when we have the -- did the strategy at that time, if you can show the process, the strategy process slide, this is a good training device here for -- got a new team, we did

summer rotation with the team, and there they go, see? now, this is what happened. i mean, this was the ridel report and of course the president announced the strategy on the 27th of march and there were a documents that fed into that, in addition to the group that assembled to help craft the report, as i mentioned i was one of those, master holbrook and then a whole team from the interagency and joint staff and a whole host of folks, many of whom i think are actually in this room. but they can also draw on the so-called luge report done at the end of last year and then in the study that was overseen by h.r. there was a component of the strategic assessment that also covered afghanistan and pakistan and fed into that was announced and i think that you will recall at the time that we suspected that there would be some form of assessment that would take place some time in

the fall, and this may be a bit earlier perhaps than we expected to do that, but, you know, had it some events like an election which is so &@@@@@ @ b@ @ )g#@ so again, there is an assessment that is now coming as well. general mcchrystal submitted that right here. i think the resource options peace will be in in a few days as well. before that, we also had a similar military planning conference. ambassador holbrooke and i chaired that here in washington. general mcchrystal was there as well. they have now produced a

military campaign plan. that was one of the achievements of the month of july. that tactical directive that general mcchrystal refined was hugely imported. -- hugely important. strategic setbacks because of the numbers of civilians that are killed in them, in fact, the number of civilians killed has been dramatically reduced by the very rigorous implementation of that directive which governs, provides guidance on the use of close air support and other indirect fires and so on. he's also published a counter insurgency guidance that is, again, superb. you know, something similar, frankly, to what we did in iraq and we can give you copies of that at the door if you want them. there's still some in a couple of rucksacks back there, and believe it or not, we were so

antagonizing the public on how we drove in afghanistan that just the act of driving down the streets in some of the areas over there -- so this is what general mcchrystal talked about when he highlighted the need to change the culture, in fact, of how we operate so there's one that does not thrust the friendlies, the neutrals, into the arms of the taliban by the actions that we take. he did his review and the initial assessments come in, of course, and laid out his assessment of the situation and the military implementation plan required in their view to achieve the objectives laid out in the late march strategy and, of course, now what's coming in is as i mentioned here fairly shortly will be the resource piece of that. if i can just show where we put our forces as well because then it gets constructive having shown you the density plots earlier what it is that we're doing and these are all forces -- the very first batch of which were by the bush

administration and then the latter 21,000 or so by president obama. and, of course, overall taking us somewhere around 31,000, 30,000 to about 68,000 here when this is said and done and the additional enablers that were recently sent over there will take us up to that number with boots on the ground. and the first element that went in, a brigade in the loghar area right there, and if you go back you'll see that was one of the hot spots that we had to contend with and we desperately needed helicopters so the aviation brigade went in and with the marine brigade more than doubled the number of helicopters on the ground in afghanistan and some of the enables that were using the authorities of a combatant commander that had shifted and was in the process of shifting from iraq to afghanistan will take that even a little bit higher. the marine expedition and brigade, it's got everything

else that you would want, it's over 10,000 strong, that went into helmand, and it has been working with the u.k. task force helmand there and as you know there's been a number of operations there pretty highly reported on and there's been tactical gains there, and also some of them operating in that district of herat province. and next element, the striker combat team, the effective forces over in iraq as you will recall, in fact, it's so effective that we sought to keep two of them there at all times and generally we were successful in doing that and that element has gone into khandahar and areas around it and working very closely in that case with test force khandahar from canada, and then this is going to be very interesting to watch right here. this is a significant endeavor but putting in a brigade of -- it's going to be an advise and assist brigade, similar to the concept that we've developed for iraq and just starting to

implement there. but it's a fourth brigade of the division, augustmente augmenteds to enable them to do this advise and assist mission and overleahy generally probably in about platoon-sized elements on the army and police elements in regional command south. that will substantially increase and deal with the deficit in advisors that had existed across the regional command south that will give a c cohehence and to issues that sometimes plagued some of those elements and it will be very important to watch that. and of course, you have a number of efforts that we've undertaken that have been designed to help achieve greater unity of effort and that's another theme of general mcchrystal but you will recall that we headed the isaf, and not long after i took

over in central command you had to do that, there's a number of other issues that we have done. we took the headquarters in afghanistan and looked at it and compared the headquarters we had developed in iraq over time, a headquarters that was truly optimized over time for the conduct of counter insurgency operations and it really was not much of a comparison. and one of the major elements here, although there's many other smaller elements as well, one of the major elements is the creation of the so-called intermediate joint headquarters. this is the headquarters that general rodriguez will command and the cole of it is a nato headquarters and it's augmented substantially by the different nato nations. and that lays down the host of enablers that have been sent in and then others that are still on the way and that we still need, frankly, to see the effect that they'll achieve over time, even as there's this, i think,

quite healthy discussion that is ongoing with a considerable degree of intensity, i might add. and i know that there's several meetings, for example, multi-hour meetings planned for over the next two weeks and quite a significant commitment of time by our most senior leadership to this during that time. next question, please? >> right here. >> thank you very much, general. it's john terre from al-jazeera television, we met outside. >> great attempt at an ambush out there. i've been through a few of those before. >> i was the least risky of all of them, i'm sure. >> you might say that, i couldn't possibly. [. laughter] >> it was from the house of cards might recall, the bbc

program some years ago. >> absolutely. could you very kindly speak to the process of thinking through a change in strategy in afghanistan from the counter insurgency measures that we're taking now to the protecting of the afghan people to one that is more slanted towards a more high-tech approach and also brings in afghanistan. i can't imagine who might ask you for your thoughts on that, but if they were to ask you, what was the thinking, the strategy, that one would have to go through to get there? >> i mean, that's another great attempt at an ambush, but with respect, you know, to be truthful, that is something that gets into the very predecisional nature of what it is that we're doing right now. obviously, i endorsed, the chairman endorsed, and those have not been leaked i don't think general mcchrystal's assessment and description, but to be candid that's not

something that i feel that we could share here today. my apologies. >> next question, yes, ma'am? that's you. shape up. [laughter] >> we've been seeing all day how to shift the focus so it's the training and the leadership and everything is oriented to be effective, but when you bring up the slide for the region there's other issues at play that aren't necessarily on the front page every day but require attention. how does this wholesale shift in the army and the marine corps and the military affect the other issues and our ability to make headway on those problems? >> we see them as very related. we tend to see whatever the threat or challenge is, we tend to see enormous connections throughout the entire area of responsibility. and we even obviously work

across combatant command boundaries, to give you an example, we run secure teleconferences that may be co-hosted by myself and maybe general lewd or someone in the white house or john brennan, but they will consist of the entire arena that is out there and, again, that is just one example and we sort of see layers of layers of different tasks out there and all the way from security assistance but they all tend to reinforce one another. so the regional security architecture which may include, you know, substantial activities to develop centers of excellence, for example, with the united arab emirates, gulf air war center, and for what it's worth they're f-16's that are the most potent air force, and what they have done and the way that pulls together other countries and everyone is

engaged, again, that keeps everyone in that. i think that we have developed leaders as well who are capable of full spectrum operations and we opened up the appature. in fact, if you can bring up the slide and then be ready to bring up the engine of change slide, i can also talk about the process that we went through in the army in particular to try to come to grips with this, and the other services did something that was very similar as well. but there was a huge idea, you know, we had the big ideas and a lot of you have seen me brief again the counterinsurgency big ideas about securing and fostering initiatives and support reconciliation and all the rest of that, but we've also had the really, really big idea -- and that was the idea that all operations are some mix of offense, defense, and

underlined, stability and support operations. and, frankly, that was a pretty substantial idea, and we had not fully embraced that at all when we went into iraq, in fact, the truth is that when we asked for some of those stability and support enablers and some of the other elements that were presumably able to help with certain tasks when the brigade commanders and i turned to each other and say the good news that we have this, and we did not have them readily available nor did we probably have the kind of mindstheaset that we were able o develop over time. if you can back up and go to the engine of change slide, please. but this f.m.o.3 was the big idea and from that cascaded all the others, counterinsurgency being just one campaign or type

of operation along a spectrum of conflict typically. but what we had to do is first get that big idea, put it in doctrine and there's a whole series of manuals done during that time, including the manual on leadership, by the way, which had the adaptive leaders that we were talking about and then you have to educate all your leaders and we did that through every school and center in the entire u.s. army and we completely overhauled these. there's one point i remember the field artillery school called up and said, hey, sir, i thought you'd like to know that we closed down the officer advance course two weeks ago and i said, great, thanks for telling me. good to hear it. did you do it because you realized you needed to maybe some of those changes that the captains and we all were talking about, those guys that had been in iraq? and he said, yep, and he said, in fact we brought the captains in and had them help redesign

the course. they know more than the instructors did about what they needed to focus on. i remember telling the chief of the staff of the army about that afterwards and i said, sir, so you don't hear it somewhere else, we chosed down the advanced course and he said, well, that's great. there's a couple good things there. one is they did it, and the second is they didn't ask permission so this is good initiative and the third is they didn't ask for any money or people. now, so you've got to change, we've changed everything, the combat training centers and the collective training from the clash of the titans out in the central corner of the training center to complex counterinsurgency, and the afghan players move up into the mountains of the desert and the dozen villages or more, look like iraqi villages on the floor of the desert where it used to be pristine