ken ballen of leading pollster in the muslim world to look at the sensitive political questions it is tricky but we had a good partner on the ground that helped us how to make this say scientific poll to explain some of those then wrote a book terrorist in love that is and is an account of the g. hardy and why they join certain groups and what he learned in the process of writing that book. ken ballen served on the staff and now a national defense university and has one negative written a chapter on the strategic defeat of both chitin and what we should do about a. it is a popular view in washington d.c. how they say attacking been gauzy is proof but we will do without question with his remarks. finally sameer lalwani a ph.d. candidate and has say an interesting chapter on counter insurgency operations that is quite effective but arguably the pakistan need military did better than we have in afghanistan that we will start with hassan abbas. >> first and foremost, figure eight work done by the new america foundation is a great contribution and source for research everywhere and not jus

to the right of ken ballen is colonel tomlin. who served on admiral mullen's staff. he has written, i think, an absolutely fascinating chapter essentially on the strategic defeat of al-qaeda and what that means and what the united states should do about it going forward in afghanistan. of course, this is not necessarily a popular view among certain circles in washington, d.c., for instance, who want to say somehow the attack in benghazi is proof of an al-qaeda resurgence. i think colonel lynch will deal with that in his remarks. and finally, samir is a ph.d. candidate at mit, and he has a very interesting chapter in the book about pakistan counterinsurgency operations which have actually been, i think, quite effective. we've had our own problems with counterinsurgency in afghanistan. arguably, the pakistani military did a better job than we've done in most of afghanistan. so with that, i'll turn it over. we'll just go down the row the this way. we'll start with hasan abbas. >> thank you very much, peter, first and foremost. i want to congratulate you on the work and