>> a declassified memo from november 2001 reveals that donald rumsfeld met as early as then with centcom commander general tommy franks to review plans for the decapitation of the iraqi government. they discuss ideas of how to start a war. one suggestion is to create a dispute over wmd inspections. >> this is a regime that agreed to international inspections, then kicked out the inspectors. >> 9/11 made it politically possible for the first time to persuade the american people to break a tradition of not launching offensive wars. >> the pressure to find evidence falls heavily on all 15 u.s. intelligence agencies. >> the extremely strong policy wind that was blowing at the time, and that everyone in government corridors felt, made it absolutely clear what was preferred and what was not preferred. >> atta, mohammed atta, leader of the 9/11 hijackings. from prague comes an intelligence report of a photograph allegedly showing mohammed atta meeting with a high-ranking iraqi intelligence officer. the photograph of the supposed meeting is never made publicly available. >> mohammed atta was a s

export the strategy for iraq or afghanistan and at that point of the general petraeus was head of centcom but largely this was the united states vision for afghanistan and general petraeus is put on the ground on the clean operation. so we ended up going into afghanistan and essentially taking the military at the forefront strategy and the civilian, the state department, the civilians of the white house essentially and within the white house the sense of devotee of the domestic political what visors for the president said this is a sensible way to go because it is too difficult for the democratic president to argue with success which is the way that we had to find iraq and was difficult for the democratic president as young as president obama was to basically tell this triumphant military coming out of iraq. but the strategy may not be appropriate for afghanistan and therefore we sort of succumb to increasing direct from afghanistan. >> host: if he's not the first president to be afraid of dealing with the military directly if i remember correctly, clinton had similar problems both of the

and at that point general petraeus was head of centcom, but largely this was the united states vision for afghanistan. and then at some point general petraeus is put on the ground to literally run the coin operation. so we ended up going into afghanistan essentially taking the military as the forefront strategy. that put civilians, the state department at the white house, essentially, i would say on a marginal role. and i think within the white house the sensibility of the domestic political advisers with the president was this is a sensible way to go because it's too difficult for a democratic president to argue with success which was the way we had defined iraq. and it was too difficult for a democratic president as young as president obama was to basically tell this sort of triumphant military coming out of iraq that, you know, your strategy may not be appropriate for afghanistan. and, therefore, we sort of succumbed to embracing iraq for afghanistan. >> host: well, he's not the first president to be afraid of dealing with the military directly. if i remember correctly, clinton had

centcom we talk about these trends in particular the takeaways. the trends are the most important to this report. the bottom-line is we think there are two basic trends that will be the focus of defense strategy and planning toward -- going forward. , and thefic challenge impact on the stability of the region. i can talk about any one of those in great detail. you can see some of the reasoning behind our thoughts in that regard on the right. in the interest of time, i want to move on and talk about the next region and then we will punt to qa for the discussion. basichas four or five trends. the most common is an increase in competition for regional territory sources and freedom of action within the region and into the region. there are alternative features that we think are probably under considered. currently, when you look at pacom, the most common thought is the dominant rise in china that stays on a linear path of boards. we also think that there is some discussion of the different paths for china, in a failing china or a weaker china. a stron

focus, rong centcom asia, counterterrorism, et cetera. the theaters don't mirror one another the way they did when i was growing up in this system, where it was pretty fungible to have one set of plans for one theater be relevant to another. all of that adds to the complexity. then comes word from the wire services, one headline said army seeks to complement air-sea battle. the secretary said the army is moving forward. they talked about this office of strategic land policy in this room in november of last year, to deal with ideas about forcible entry, power for direction, anti-access and aerial denial operations. to cover all that, we have both a nice thick document and a very robust conversation here this morning. leading this is our senior fellow, nate friar. he was a career army officer, spent time at the army war college, spent time at o.s.d., and in theater rations, especially in iraq. he has been a fellow here now for six or seven years. he is joined by a marvelous panel, and he will introduce the panel. i want to ask you all in jo

particularly in the centcom area. the second issue is coordination on the security cooperation. i know there were efforts to overhaul security cooperation writ large. in my estimation these 1206 and 1207 and 1208 authorities that have been now redone e in the global security contingency fund are sort of temporary, makeshift and urgent requirements. but i'm concerned that some of your discussion is implying that we should make these authorities permanent. the foreign assistance act of 1961 gives oversight of security cooperation to secretary of state, and least in iraq and afghanistan i think we lost a lot of that as well as with these 1206 and 1207 authorities. there's no assessment of how are we doing in these countries and how are we coordinating. and finally, i also think living overseas -- i spent ten years in the middle east -- people are now seeing our main tool as one of blunt force. iraq and afghanistan aside, i think those deployments were effective especially with sf engagements. but foreign countries and special democracies especially in the middle east with the arab

centcom is defined by security and peace operations and u.s. pacom by the support actions and humanitarian response. rubbing up this idea on warning. there will be limited warning in this sister beachhead security category per that -- security category. finally, let me just again if the size the point of risk in all six categories that we identified. if you think of forward two slides per eliminate a couple of points and then i will turn it over to my colleagues. the overarching challenge in the risk assessment problem is twofold. first, there is the general prioritization away from consideration of large-scale ground operations now going on inside the pentagon for a variety of reasons. there is war weariness. there is resource challenges, etc. that is competing with this idea that we have become a custom to war a contingency focused. that we have dispensed with a number of capabilities and competencies that are more relatives going forward and that we will have to capture those. the issue projecting forward is a key area. there are fewer deplo