our final speaker today is douglas feith. he is the author of "the new york times" best selling memoir "war and decisions." as undersecretary of defense for policy from july 2001 until august 2005, douglas feith helped devise the u.s. government strategy for the war on terrorism and contributed to policy making for the afghanistan and iraq campaigns. in the reagan administration, he worked as a middle east specialist and served as deputy assistant deputy of defense. before we began, would like to ask you to turn off your phones. the presenters will give short talks and then we will turn to question and answers. thank you. >> let me begin speaking today with a very short story from the first day of demonstrations in cairo. a friend of mine close to the first demonstration on tuesday, the day that is now claim to be the start of the egyptian revolution. there he found an old acquaintance of ours. the man calls himself the liberal democratic activist, very well educated, a member of the egyptian opposition. he finds him there sc

our final speaker today is douglas feith. he is the author of "the new york times" best selling memoir "war and decisions." as undersecretary of defense for policy from july 2001 until august 2005, douglas feith helped devise the u.s. government strategy for the war on terrorism and contributed to policy making for the afghanistan and iraq campaigns. in the reagan administration, he worked as a middle east specialist and served as deputy assistant deputy of defense. before we began, would like to ask you to turn off your phones. the presenters will give short talks and then we will turn to question and answers. thank you. >> let me begin speaking today with a very short story from the first day of demonstrations in cairo. a friend of mine close to the first demonstration on tuesday, the day that is now claim to be the start of the egyptian revolution. there he found an old acquaintance of ours. the man calls himself the liberal democratic activist, very well educated, a member of the egyptian opposition. he finds him there sc

came across a genuinely amazing memo written by rummy to undersecretary of defense for policy douglas feith on april seventh two thousand and three and it reads we need more coercive diplomacy with respect to syria and libya and we need it fast if they mess up iraq it will delay bringing our troops home we also need to solve the pakistan problem and korea doesn't seem to be going well are you coming up with proposals for me to send around thanks now i don't know why he didn't just throw in a request for proposal so all the whole mideast peace process while he was at it i really just love this because i think it truly gives you a look into the mind of donald rumsfeld not only does it sound like it was written by a fourth grader but it also shows an utter disregard for i don't know the complexity of international issues oh that little pakistan problem solve it korea yeah that sucks too. the world according to neo cons black and white good and bad now unfortunately for romney the little pakistan issue was solved korea well that's still bad too and as for libya i think we know that isn't going

our final speaker today is douglas feith. he is the author of "the new york times" best selling memoir "war and decisions." as undersecretary of defense for policy from july 2001 until august 2005, douglas feith helped devise the u.s. government strategy for the war on terrorism and contributed to policy making for the afghanistan and iraq campaigns. in the reagan administration, he worked as a middle east specialist and served as deputy assistant deputy of defense. before we began, would like to ask you to turn off your phones. the presenters will give srt talks and then we will turn to question and answers thank you. >> let me begin speaking today with a very short story from the first day of demonstrations in cairo. a friend of mine close to the first demonstration on tuesday, the day that is now claim to be the start of the egyptian revolution. there he found an old acquaintance of ours. the man calls himself the liberal democratic activist, very well educated, a member of the egyptian opposition. he finds him there screa

i would like to direct this question to douglas feith and whoever else might have some insight into it. i am indira lakshmanan, the diplomatic reporter for lumber news. i want to know what you think about -- for bloomberg news. i want to know what to think about the funding that has been cut in recent years. why did they do this and do you think this has had an effect on disempowering ngos? >> i think that the cutting of funds by the obama administration for democracy promotion was one aspect of what i referred to in my talk as they're turning away or running away from the bush freedom agenda. interestin point, i think, to realize that the general promotional liberal- democratic ideas and institutions has been a part of american national security policy from democratic and republican administrations for decades. president bush made it a particularly, highly-eliminated part of his -- highly- illuminated part of his policy, but it was not a radical departure from american foreign policy what was much more of a radical departure from traditional american foreign policy was what the obama