speaker, we mourn with ashley, brooke, and carol. the loss of specialist cote. let us celebrate the patriotism, the dedication to country, and sacrifice on behalf of our security. we are forever indebted to the men and women of our armed services, soldiers like michael cote who put themselves in harm's way so we may have freedom and peace. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: mr. deal of georgia. mr. defazio of oregon. for what purpose does the gentlelady of texas rise? >> mr. speaker, i'd like to address the house for five minutes and speak out of order. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. you have five minutes. ms. jackson lee: mr. speaker in the rush of the debate earlier, it's not -- the earlier one-minute is not able to capture the somberness of the moment. as our colleagues have finished their work and have in fact recognized the need of this nation and think it is important to summarize how important it is to keep our minds focused as we return back in the new year. we know that this country is a resilient country. people are tough. and they've

on the army side, we are ashley making progress moving away from 1 to 1, not as rapidly. we expected to take a couple more years to get to the point where they are at 2 to 1. we're still being able to gradually improve, although extremely concerned about the continued pressures, stress, and strain that our ground forces have gone through. we are paying a lot of attention to that. general casey sent a note to the secretary yesterday saying and reemphasize in what he had said before that this can be managed, certainly there are challenges associated with that, but he is comfortable that he can lead his army through this at this enormously important time. >> thank you. >> thank you, senator udall. senator collins. >> secretary gates, i am going to explore with you an issue that senator graham raced. it is an issue that you touched on in your testimony. i think it is the fundamental question, and that is why afghanistan? in your statement you list six primary objectives from the strategy, one of which is preventing al qaeda from regaining sanctuary in afghanistan. yet we know

it is ashley hard to catch these guys for interviews because they move out so quickly. when a cargo plane turns around, they put wounded troops on there, often with a nurse or some sort of in-flight medical care to keep them safe and healthy as they fly home, and off they go. to germany or the u.s.. >> you also spent time at a ford operation. they handed you ought to the army. then you went to a port operating base. where was that? >> logar province one of the agricultural districts. traditionally, they grow much of the food that people in kabul eat. it is connected kabul pyra 50- mile road. no, is a paved road brit is probably not the u.s. standards but you can make the trip and two hours. a bunch of farmers and shepherds and goatherds, trying to make a living in some unforgiving terrain. >> what is the military have a base there? bubblers most afghans are farmers. one of the keys to winning hearts and minds and bringing people into the coalition called and building support for the afghan government on every day afghans is to talk to these farmers in a language that

ride bone ashley we have the pies because the don't have to do anything to let 2 million people become uninsured. congress has not signed the act into law but for her providers they descended into lauper could you change the system such that they have to make the decision between it and it will often said but people but first you have to make it so they have to choose a site. >> we have been covering the massachusetts health plan on cj are dog barked for most of this year so we know quite a lot about how the laws really working there, and i think our conclusion is that massachusetts may be a model but it is also the canary in the coal mine. there are a lot of things that are going on up there that are not really well-known because the media has chosen not to talk about them and of course politicians who are using massachusetts as the moral without the public plan i should add, it don't really want to talk about it in the press tends to follow wit, the politicians and advocacy groups. so what we have been there, and this is something i think people ought to know about, is affordability

>> i would love it if we could -- i would like to see some of the data that we ashley to collect. >>. >> we have a slide that shows our log files or a sample of what we collect in the log files. i don't think that a consumer would engage with in that that would be meaningful because it is a very technical expression of a users interaction with us on the site, so what we do in our interest-based advertising and the behavioral targeting system that we use is to take those visits and categorize them based on the types of interaction. so the user visits sports, they will have a score that indicates they visit sports. the actual log files themselves would probably not be useful for consumer to engage with. it is a series of -- it is actually quite difficult to explain in plain english what is in a log file. >> ok, but the customer would have access to it if they wish to? >> we did not ads make it available because there are no tools that actually generate log files and a way that would be easily as decibels for consumers. what we give consumers is ready access to our privacy policy, educa

can this ashley change attitudes of students about math and science -- can it actually change attitudesh and science? >> we think so, because we will be a will to use the power of the muppets to really promote simple lessons for early map. for instance, shakes, triangles and rectangles and numbers, measurements, these sorts of things. the next season of sesame street which is in production for next year will be focusing on the scientific method of assumption an experimental, etc. we will be a will to play that out and focused the nation on science and math. we will be launching a program called "map is everywhere." -- "math is everywhere." it was surprising even to us, president obama talked about us as one of the leaders in this, and we had "the new york times," sally ride, all these incredible scientists who have done amazing things in the world. the only picture leading the science effort for the the united states of america was elmo. we take that with pride. >> one of the criticisms of people who are entering adulthood now is that they have an outsized sense of entitlement. some say

>> i am ashley surprised by how little the limitations compared to the advantages of having the coalition. everyone is a little stronger together, and in the eyes of the afghans, we are more credible than as a single country. the fact that we are a coalition, i think that is key. each other country brings a different strengths and weaknesses. sun havomvee have caveats that d to be adjusted. i ask everyone to look at a pop -- at their policies, and in some cases their forces cannot move out of a geographical area. if there partnered with an afghan army battalion, then there is hesitation to let that afghan army battalion moved. that takes away from the afghan army leadership, the ability to match forces for operations. that is one of the things that we ask people to work with. in other cases, limitations on not operations or things like that. what we are doing is asking each of our partners to move more toward full counterinsurgencies, and we do have progress in that, and then to look at all ca veats. some have limitations in mobility, vehicles, things like that. the degree to which we can

it seems that most senior afghan officials, ashley most afghan officials, senior or not, just want to get rich, just want to gather power for themselves and they do not care about afghanistan as a state, and certainly don't care about the constituents. you can kill taliban all day. you're going to end up creating more by creating martyrs. you cannot win this war by the definition of war that we have settled on. not until there is an afghan government that takes governance seriously, and that is just not happening. >> your shot a lot of c-span video for us. what was the most interesting thing you saw? >> getting blown up and shot at. we were ambushed baraki barak district, back in mid october. we're on the way back from a visit to a local mosque appeared there was a 20-minute firefight with no american casualties. a truck was destroyed but it protected the occupants. it was an interesting experience because i had been shot at before. and throughout those experiences, and i had come to really believe in american technology. i'm actually sad that i feel this way. i do not want to be the

. >> i am ashley, i do his trips to the region and i also work on communication issues, as well as our new mobile products that we are introducing with the mobile banking, mobile payment to the police, telemedicine and our estimates programs in afghanistan and pakistan. >> and this is -- we found that telecommunications technology is a quite simple one. has a tremendous diet in cutting down corruption. if we get police to get paid through hell of mobile facilities, the newly discovered they were getting paid 30% more than their paychecks. you can imagine what the other 30% was going. desertions dropped. so this is a central issue. "the new york times" and its innovative section of a magazine, this lastly, 100 good ideas of the year, listed this as one of them. it's one of the great innovations we've done, and petraeus and mcchrystal picked up on it. >> good evening. my name is derek hogan. i focus on governance and coordination, particularly in the area of governance. >> i think we should just move, let them finish. >> go ahead. >> and i will let you finish so the audience can ask some

ashley, i would like both you and secretary clinton to answer this. there a danger that our current strategy has provoked greater militancy and has therefore made it harder for us to isolate members of al qaeda? -- actually, i like both you and secretary clinton into this. >> we know we are not an occupying force. obviously, our actions need to support our intent with respect to that, which is very clear, but the afghans that we engage with a much more concerned with what we do with our forces as opposed to how many they are. mcchrystal has shifted the focus to secure them. population security for them. that is what they need more than anything else right now. while i recognize that, particularly because of history, we have not seen that extensively, nor have we seen an extensive generation of additional militants, although that is a concern, and we are looking to get as many of them off the battlefield in this new strategy as possible as well by reconciliation, reintegration, etc. but that has got to happen through better security. >> senator, i woul

how did ashley make that happen when you need one to have the other? >> sure. a lot of it is going to be leaning on people and asking, leaning on people and asking for their help. in particular, people that you know for a long time in saying we've got a fabulous house. i would love it if you open it up for an hour and a half. i will get the people there. you know, we will do some wine and cheese, whatever. at having someone alone donate their space. i mean, that's huge, rydquist especially if it is somewhat respected in the community or other donors know. so it's true that they are tied together, but the interest is, if someone is running for office, especially if they're running for a house seat or a senate seat, if they don't have any name id, they shouldn't be running for that seat. that's the first thing. they may have 5% name id or 10%, but they got there for a reason, right? so whoever knows them whoever trusts him, respected or is talking to other people, even if it's a small, small, small group of people, utilize those people. if it's someone who has ac