secretary flournoy. >> if i may i'm going to let ambassador edelman go first. >> mr. chairman, senator reed, thank you for giving my colleague, secretary flournoy, and me, an opportunity to come before you to talk about the work of the national defense panel to review the quadrennial defense review. the two of us have prepared statement that we submitted and hope it will be printed for the record. >> without objection, both in the record. >> will i just make some general introductory comments and turn the floor over to michele. when we began our work as a panel in august of 2013, one of our co-chairmen, general john abizaid, said as we started our deliberations, the country was running a risk. and all of us consented to that judgment at the time. as you pointed out in your opening statement, mr. chairman, that was before president putin had invaded and annexed crimea and destabilized eastern ukraine. before the collapse of the iraqi security forces and seizure of mosul and anbar province by isil and its approach to baghdad. so as we went through our deliberations, i t

and secretary flournoy i wanted to ask you about afghanistan. i know that last june you were quoted in the "new york times" about the administration's timeline for withdrawal from afghanistan. and one of the things you said was if it was a timeline with a strong statement that said hey, this is our plan but no plan survives contact with reality. and of course we're going to adjust based on conditions on the ground then no problem in reference to their withdrawal plan. are the afghans on the path we planned for? are they not? is the insurgency as we expected or is it worse? all the things have to be factored in. have what i'm hearing out of the white house is this is hell or high water this is what we're going to do. i'm hoping you have a different sense of this now and i wanted to get your thoughts on afghanistan because many of us i think who have had the opportunity to visit afghanistan and then this weekend we had obviously the opportunity to sit down with president ghani and hear his perspective to really understand their plan right now as i

first ever special rep to muslim communities now with the council on foreign relations, michelle flournoy was an under secretary of defense and cofounder of the center for new american security. danielle pletka with the american inter price institute and david ignatious is columnist for the "washington post." i just want to go back to this summit on terrorism that we just had. i wonder, how is it that we wind up in an argument about what do you call these people while they're cutting people's heads off and burning people alive. yet we seem to have dogged down in this argument over, how many angels dance on the head of a needle. michelle, do we have a strategy? >> i think we do have a strategy but there are parts of it that have been under developed and under resourced i actually think it's very important that the summit was convened to focus on the ideology. this is not only about isis forces in iraq and syria about their power to inspire others. trying to put together a strategy that deals with the ideological component of this i think is really important. >> i also think it's important

secretary flournoy. >> if i may i'm going to let ambassador edelman go first. >> mr. chairman, senator reed, thank you for giving my colleague, secretary flournoy, and me, an opportunity to come before you to talk about the work of the national defense panel to review the quadrennial defense review. the two of us have prepared statement that we submitted and hope it will be printed for the record. >> without objection, both in the record. >> will i just make some general introductory comments and turn the floor over to michele. when we began our work as a panel in august of 2013, one of our co-chairmen, general john abizaid, said as we started our clib budget reconciliations that he believed the -- as we started our clib budget reconciliations, the country -- deliberations, the country was running risk. and all of us consented to that judgment at the time. as you pointed out in your opening statement, mr. chairman, that was before president putin had invaded and annexed crimea and destabilized eastern ukraine. before the collapse of the iraqi security forces and seizu

. >> michele flournoy, who is not the secretary of defense, we consider her almost the secretary of defense, made some comments about whether or not she believed qatar had been involved in funding isis funding terrorists in the region, specifically isis. she said she had no evidence and saw no evidence that qatar was , but there was a broad perception that was the case. i'm interested -- you have been asked this many times but, how do you respond to the question -- is qatar funding the radical islamic movement in the region? >> qatar is the member of the alliance against the terrorism in the region. do you think that it we are a member of the alliance, we are going to fund them? everybody in this room, i believe, knows how this terrorist group is getting their funds. there is oil being sold, wheat being sold to the regime. this is the way they are funding. i think for a long time, we are used as a scapegoat for some reason. we did not have the answer for this reason but no is your answer. we do not fund isis or any other terrorist group. this is our policy, our strategy. >> if you were runn

among the proponents, michelle flournoy whose name had been floated for defense secretary and formerato supreme allied commander admiral james -- [inaudible] quote: only if the kremlin knows that the risks and costs of further military action are high will it seek to find an acceptable political solution. the west has the capacity to stop russia. is question is whether it has the will. three former secretaries of state delivered a similar message last week on capitol hill. >> we do have to help them in terms of military assistance so that they can defend themselves. people do look at how we react when one country invades another and takes a piece of territory. that is breaking the international system and therefore, i do think that it's important to take a strong stand there. >> reporter: former soviet leader mikhail gosh chof warned the west could be turning a cold war into a quote, hot one. >> i think that is a testament to the bad decisions that mr. putin is making on behalf of his country. >> reporter: russia's foreign minister responded from beijing. >> spution. >> translator: t

flournoy is on acquisition reform. we can't afford the cost overruns, are canceled and delayed programs. it harms our credibility and it will be one of the highest priorities of this committee to try and address that issue. it has been tried many times in the past. so i'm not confident of the degree of success. i just have one additional request. why did you use secretary gates fiscal year 2012 budget levels as a baseline for your recommendations? . >>> mr. chairman, as i mentioned in the 2010 panel, we spoke to secretary gates about what he believed the department needed he believed he needed 1.5% to 2% in growth to do is that. i think the 2010 panel believed that was a minimum and that it might be a higher number but when we met as a panel and tried to wrestle with this, and we had a smaller panel this time, we concluded that recuring to secretary gates top line made sense because it was really the last time the department had been trying to define it's needs on the basis of something approaching a strategy as oppose

the ukraine, steven feiffer someone most of us know, former under secretary of defense michelle flournois, supreme allied commander admiral james stravis and former deputy commander of the u.s. command general charles wald. they all served under both republican and democrat administrations. they released a nonpartisan report calling on president obama to provide ukraine with lethal weaponry -- this is what we're talking about in this bill -- and encourage other nato countries to do the same, and particularly those that possess and use former soviet equipment and weaponry to do the same. and finally on january 25 when president obama stated at a news conference in new delhi india that the aggression by the rebel separatists in eastern ukraine had russian backing russian equipment, russian financing russian training and russian troops finally even the president agrees to that. so this is not something that's debatable. it's not something that might be happening. it is something that is happening. and as you see the horrible things that are going on over there, you can see the reason that it