first was lewis loeven. lewis loeven works hours and hours to do this. thank you so much. but the other is because she's committed to make it happen and it's her focus that always to learn from everything that happens, ann koninberg at dem, thank you so much, ann, for everything you do. you had to have a pass to get on the ship. i've asked captain pringle, to get off the ship, i wonder if you can secure the hatch until they fill out their participant form. if you could do that, i would appreciate that. fleet week, we are a neutral convener of the process to improve the relation ships between this global force for good and the local civilian officials. and one of our goals is next time you put up your slide with all those logos on it, general, you are going to have the san francisco fleet week logo on it, too. i look at what we accomplished in 2010, we had a meeting to understand dsca, in 2011 we had the table top exercise, we debriefed that, we had a great speaker then we had an education seminar. this time, this year we had a functional exercise in august which was terrif

i have to tell you, lewis loeven is the person that put all this together. he's worked months for this so i want to thank you publicly, lewis, for this. >> thank you. while the panelists are coming up i'd just like to tell you when general myat and i went down to brief secretary schultz a couple months ago, he invited admiral roughhead and secretary perry into the briefing we had a discussion about the whole program at fleet week. we talked about all the public events that went on but we also talked a lot and concentrated a lot on the senior leadership program and what the rest of disaster preparedness was about. in that conversation we started talking about the internationals a special agent of fleet week. secretary perry actually suggested that we extend invitations to people from around the world that they might benefit from the discussions that we're having. admiral roughhead suggested that his friends from chile had an experience down in their part of the world with an earthquake and thought it would be a good idea for us to hear about the operations th

so i want to again thank general myett, thank lewis loeven, thank all the partners. not only are we doing it here and not only are we receiving this, but we're also sending our teams to places like camp pepblgds done and changing information with top brass so they can get information as well. it's a two-way street, it's always been so. i know we have a lot of events this week where i'm going to ask the public to take public transit to honor our commitment to the city just as we are doing here on the uss macon. the fleet week celebration of our city of course will celebrate the blue angels and the parade of ships but i think the public will appreciate even more how ready we are and the practice we are doing. thank you very much. again, i salute the men and women in uniform that are here to help us, that are here to practice what we preach and again also to all the different agencies that are working together with us. thank you very much for being here, happy fleet week. . >> when people ask me about our mayor, i tell them, he gets it. you can see that from his remarks

my name is lewis loeven and i'm the executive director of the san francisco fleet week association and what a great fleet week we're going to have for 2012. thank you. this is the second time we've had the uss macon islands and i want to thank captain pringle and his entire crew. what a great ship and what a great crew. they turned this swear hanger deck around all right night and turned it into a conference room and it looks absolutely beautiful. thank you, captain, and your entire crew. i'm going to make this short because we're already running a little bit behind schedule, but san francisco fleet week for the third year is organized with i object credible participation from city, civilian agencies from all around the region and all of us our fabulous united states military, the coast guard has been fabulous in providing assets to protect everybody out on the bay. it is one heck of a logistics program to get this whole program started and here we are the culmination of nearly a year of planning. we've had exercises, we've had lots of meetings down in san francisco up at the marines m

my name is lewis loeven and i'm the executive director of the san francisco fleet week association andt a great fleet week we're going to have for 2012. thank you. this is the second time we've had the uss macon islands and i want to thank captain pringle and his entire crew. what a great ship and what a great crew. they turned this swear hanger deck around all right night and turned it

i'd like to thank the san francisco fleet week association, lewis loeven, specifically, major general myat, always a mentor, former secretary of state schultz and mrs. schultz, mrs. perry, honored to be in your presence. the uss makin island, chief of the fairest city in the world, san francisco, and he esteemed professionals. this is nice, i'm going to move south of here and take you to afghanistan. as you know we have marines, soldiers, sailors in afghanistan currently, but i'm going to bring you to when i was there during 2010 and 2011 after the president decided to surge the forces. first marine decision, first marine expeditionary force forward entered southwest afghanistan during 2009. we arrived in 2010 so it was a bit more stable. and we went straight to helman and nimruz province. very complex dynamic environment that we were operating in but before i begin it talk to you about the operational picture, i just want to give you a snapshot of afghanistan. when we got there i want to set the frame here so you understand what we're dealing with. afghanistan ranged 180th out of 1 8