and general dunford, welcome. i also know that your wife has played a very big role in your success. and so we welcome ellen and your niece. i am the daughter-in-law of a former major general in the marine corps reserve, and just know that so many people hold the marine corps in the highest, highest regard. so we thank you for doing that. and you've got some big shoes to fill from commandant amos who has certainly led the marine corps, i mean, in a very good leadership. i did want to talk a little bit more about the afghan national security force. as we wind down, as you wind down your tenure as head of isif, and where you have seen the withdrawing of 20,000 troops in an environment with an unsigned bilateral security agreement and an election riddled by fraud that you've spoken about. tell me how prepared the afghan national security force is to take over, especially in light of what we have seen the incapability of what's taken place in iraq. >> senator, thanks for that question. i think rather than just give yo

i think that's obviously a huge compliment to you, general dunford. probably your predecessor, we could have said the same for him, because he also had that huge experience which we didn't want to lose. nonetheless, you came and provided amazing capability and confidence and your successor will as well in afghanistan. we have that confidence in general campbell. general amos has been a fabulous comandante. his successor who i'm looking at right now will add another extraordinary chapter in marine history. what you're raising, senator, is a fascinating issue. i don't have an easy answer to it, other than so far we've seen a succession of amazing commanders in afghanistan. i won't say we've lucked out because i think the system has produced those. it's not a matter of luck. it's a matter of real intense effort to have a system which produces great leaders, and we've done that. it is sort of ironic, however, to be looking at a general who has done an amazing job, and you and i have seen that first hand in afghanistan. but on the other hand, i got at leas

chairman and general dunford thank you for your service. you have a lot to be proud of in the work you have done together with american military, our coalition partners to enhance the capacity of ansf. i have a hearing recently in the foreign relations subcommittee that i chair about afghan civil life post-2014 and your predecessor general alan said something that kind of made us all sit back in our chairs. after talking about continuing security challenges general alan said corruption is a bigger existential -- existential threat to afghan society than security challenges are and he wasn't minimizing security challenges. he was elevating corruption charges. we were all struck by that but when i've watched the play about the elections in afghanistan the taliban threatened him from a security standpoint as you pointed out the nsf did a superb job in blocking the taliban from being able to disrupt the elections. but the challenge with the elections were allegations of corruption. the corruption threat proved to be more real work to be more im

under general dunford's leadership a drawdown of u.s. forces in the shift to a train advise-and-assist mission is being carried out with considerable effectiveness. general dunford has demonstrated remarkable skills as both a military leader and a diplomat in his interactions with the afghan leadership which have been essential to keeping the transition in afghanistan on track. .. >> thank you mr. chairman. thank you for the great job you have done during the consequential timeframe with our afghan partners who are making important gains against the taliban and and progress in building the capacity of the afghan security forces. despite this i am so concerned about the future of afghanistan's recent agreement to perform a complete audit and i hope that works out. you and i have talked about this before and the afghan people are going to have to believe that the results of this thing has been so important so hopefully we can make that happen. i remain very troubled to drawdown of forces based on arbitrary timeline and facts on the ground

general dunford has done a great job. a serious thing we are dealing with over there. the recent presidential elections have been marred by allegations of widespread voter fraud. let me find the right one, the province here -- anyway, they went from 17,000 votes that were cast in the first election and it jumped to 170,000 in the runoff. keeping in mind that ghani's force is greater in the rural areas, during the last election -- this is unprecedented. everyone up here has gone through elections. we don't remember a time where you have a larger percentage of turnout in a rural area than an urban area. yet it was 3-1. you know that is wrong. you have voter fraud and i am concerned about the perception of the people in afghanistan if this isn't cleared out. we are going to be pushing hard to get an audit. i am sure you agree with that. i am also troubled by the plan to draw down forces based on an arbitrary timeline instead of the best advice of military commanders. the president tried the same policy in iraq and i feel we are hopefully not doomed to make the same estate

he said that these people were too dangerous, as did general dunford. by the way, general dunford who is a commander in afghanistan was not even notified in advance that this was going to take place. so you have all of these things that are going on right now, you have the law that was broken, and i think that my feeling has always been as we're getting down midway into the president's second term, looking at -- he is going to have for a legacy, one of these desired legacies would be to close gitmo. he has talked about that for a long period of time. i think the american people now have caught on because there is a poll, just on june 13 by gallup, 66% of the americans do oppose the closing of gitmo. so this has changed now. why is it important? there is no place else anywhere in the world that we can put these enemy combatants. see, these guys are not criminals, they are enemy combatants, they are terrorists. when the president came up with the original idea of putting them into our prison system, we had to go and make sure everyone was aware that terro

monica dunford from the university of chicago.rom the university of michigan. >> so there's a lot of americans here. >> there's a lot of americans here. in a recent report, they said that 52% of all particle physicists, of all u.s. particle physicists are here working on things. there's a lot. >> you feel any pressure? >> absolutely. >> really? how hard have you been working? >> well, i haven't been to the grocery store in five weeks. so i think i have a jar of mustard and a stick of butter in my refrigerator right now. >> feel like you're part of something historic? >> absolutely, yeah. >> it's like opening a whole new window that you never saw before. and you open the window, and you get a whole new vista of things that might happen that you didn't have access to before. so from a scientist's point of view, it's the biggest thing to happen in particle physics in, say, 20 or 30 years. >> yeah. >> what's the average person gonna get out of this? >> what the--the best thing is, we don't know. >> some scientists believe the experime

to appear to be diminishing the importance of dealing with it, and i know that my successor, joe dunford, has spent a great deal of time working between afghanistan and pakistan, in an attempt to deal with this. part of the shelling was a reality, some of the shelling was not. there were reports of thousands of rockets and artillery rounds coming across the border. it was creating a real panic in kabul. and at one point, i got one of my helicopters and the minister defense, minister of -- one of the leading members of parliament we got in the bird and flew to kuhnar and met with border forces and then flew over the villages that had been so badly shelled according to reporting, and found that there was no shelling at all. there was no effect of shelling at all in these villages. no shell craters, no dead animals that we had been reported on and so on. but that didn't mean there wasn't shelling. we had to understand the problem and that was my point ultimately back to kabul, back to the security forces, and back to the legislature. the parliament. was to make sure we clearly understood th

. >> general dunford, did you or any other senior military leader personally recommend the policy of17 no matter what? >> no, senator. >> no military -- no ranking military officer that you know recommended a hard date for everybody out of afghanistan, is that right? >> none that i know of, senator, and i think we still plan to have, as you know, some presence after 2017, but no one recommended zero. >> did anybody recommend that we have a conditions-based decision about what kind of residual force we should leave behind? >> senator, i think you appreciate that every military leader would want to have the conditions on the ground and the assumptions be revalidated as a transition takes place. >> isn't it true that right now the way that the counterterrorism capability of the afghans are today, that we cannot abandon that. if you had to make the decision today with the lack of counterterrorism capability the afghans have, we would have to leave that kind of force behind for at least the counterterrorism mission. >> there's no doubt that the afghan forces today would not be capable of

and i know that my successor, joe dunford, has spent a great deal of time working between afghanistan and pakistan in an attempt to deal with this. part of the shelling was a reality and some of the shelling was not. there were reports of thousands of rockets and artillery rounds coming across the border. it was creating a real panic, and at one point i got one of my helicopters, and the ministry of defense, minister of defense, minister of interior, the national -- the director general of nds and one of the leading members of the articlement, we got in the bird, and we flew to kunar where we met with the border troops, border forces. and then we flew over the villages that had been so badly shelled according to reporting. and sound that there was -- found that there was no shelling at all. there was no effect of shelling at all in these villages, no shell craters, no dead animals that we had been reported on and so on. but that didn't mean there wasn't shelling. what we had to do was to understand the problem, and that was my point, ultimately, back to kabul, back to the security for