we're pleased to have lydia muniz. we appreciate you coming before our committee again. the honorable gregory starr assistant secretary of the diplomatic bureau. we appreciate your participation here today. mr. blanc. the honorable donald hays senior inspector at the office of inspector general. and mr. michael gulino. welcome all. witnesses are to be sworn before they testify, so if you will please rise and raise your right hands. do you solemnly swear and affirm that the testimony you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? thank you. please be seated. let the record reflect that all witnesses answered in the affirmative. we appreciate if you would limit your testimony to five minutes. your entire written record will be made part of the record. with that, we would like to begin with mr. courts. you're recognized for five minutes. >> good morning, mr. chairman. this testimony is based on a gao report dealing with a subject that we issued in may of this year. this work is part of a series of gao engagements to review the state's ef

opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the future of mission afghanistan with my colleagues lydia muniz and greg starr. please allow me to begin once again by thanking the members of the committee for your continued support for our mission. i would like to particularly honor the dedication of thousands of american military personnel, diplomats, and assistance professionals who have served and continue to serve in afghanistan. we began our mission in late 2001 to ensure that the country would never be used by al qaeda or extremists as a haven to launch attacks against the united states. since 2001, our goal has been to foster the development of an afghanistan that is sovereign, unified, democratic, and self-sufficient. in short, the development of afghanistan as -- we cannot achieve this without smart diplomacy. afghanistan is undeniably a dangerous place. when we ask our people to go into harm's way, we do so because their work is vital to our national security and we are all of us obligated to provide them with the resources they need to do their job safely and well. we will continue t

. -- lydia moon is -- lydia muniz: let me finish. >> they cannot add them to the list of they are not even in the meeting. that is the point of a meeting. we have been never more than a decade. i have gone past my time. i want to allow the others to offer their perspectives. mr. court. mr. court: i would ignore knowledge that kabul is a challenging environment. there is no way we can delete all risk. that is why adequate cost-containment and risk assessment is so important. the impact is so much greater when problems are encountered. i think if the state had followed its own policies earlier, for example as part of the 2009 contract, it may have eliminated more risk. it may not eliminated all, but it would have better managed. if they had done that earlier, it would've at least given them time to litigate. when they did a risk assessment and cost-containment strategy, they did identify a number of risks, some of which did indeed, come to pass. what was potential problems sequencing the contracts. the other was with the afghan ministry website. there were a number of things that the st