to kurdistan because no one wants to be seen as giving an inch of land of kurdistan or giving up thekurdish fight also for the arab partners because of these big issues paul leal and pushmataha and kirk who is the valuable partner. someone made reference to this. the problem is there is growing animosity towards them and it doesn't matter what party look at, it can be sunni or shia. i don't think there's one party that exists in iraq today that doesn't have members that feel the kurds have overstepped in their ambitions and it's something you hear talk about a lot below the surface and i think the kurds are starting to become acutely aware that this will be the big challenge who are their partners in the next government and i guess i will stop there. thanks. -- before the jury much. those were wonderful presentations. i'm going to open the floor to questions in just a moment but it struck me there were two things that interested at least me that we didn't talk about very much. the first is our timeline. the united states -- united states withdraw. some of my colleagues and i had the

to kurdistan because no one wants to be seen as giving an inch of land of kurdistan or giving up the kurdish fight also for the arab partners because of these big issues paul leal and pushmataha and kirk who is the valuable partner. someone made reference to this. the problem is there is growing animosity towards them and it doesn't matter what party look at, it can be sunni or shia. i don't think there's one party that exists in iraq today that doesn't have members that feel the kurds have overstepped in their ambitions and it's something you hear talk about a lot below the surface and i think the kurds are starting to become acutely aware that this will be the big challenge who are their partners in the next government and i guess i will stop there. thanks. -- before the jury much. those were wonderful presentations. i'm going to open the floor to questions in just a moment but it struck me there were two things that interested at least me that we didn't talk about very much. the first is our timeline. the united states -- united states withdraw. some of my colleagues and i had the

i was in fourth of the five stans in order, if i can remember them, uzbekistan first, then kurdistan, then tajikistan, and then kazakhstan. we had also planned to go to turkmenistan but through a logistical communications failure, we did not get the final clearance to land there until we were on the runway taking off. so we were locked in. that's a minor story. the purpose of this as we alluded to the last time i was down here was to visit all the countries in the region, all the neighbors with the exception of iran, i now talked face to face with the leadership. in the case of kurdistan which doesn't have a common border with afghanistan, but very important transit center, which will be -- which we will renew the arrangements on in the next few weeks. and i wanted to launch that process. we are very grateful to them for that support and i had a very emotional meeting with the troops. 35,000 americans go through the training transit center every month and we just dropped in on the room where they were talking to their families on skype and playing fooz ball and chatted with some of th