. >> madlyn, kerry's visit to poland, follows for missile defense. when he was in poland he said the u.s. commitment to build the epa site in 2013 is iron clad. does that mean that the obama speech in prague 2009 in which he said it was an agreement with iran over its nuclear weapons program, if that were to be achieved robustly, that will would be a rethinking of epaa? not totally locked in and no longer valid? >> we made a substantial commitment to epa to homeland missile defense and to the nuclear deterrent. so when the department went through its strategic choices management review, those were among the three, plus cyber and space capabilities that were going to be highlighted and protected and preserved. part and parcel of that and as we've gone through the various budget deliberations, it becomes really hard to protect those things you want to protect. epa is clearly one of those things we want to protect. we've done so far a pretty good job of protecting phases 2 and phase 1 and 2 and 3. we canceled phase 4. but that's where there is a connect

>> madlyn, want to take a shot at that. >> okay. i think -- i think you have to balance what -- i think you have to maybe balance a little bit what the american public is tired of. and not what the will to do if it arose. i think tler two different things. i think that the american public is just very tired of intervening in places where they may not see a definite threat to the u.s. that said, i don't think that there's anybody that would say that if there were definite threat to the u.s., the u.s. wouldn't be there or there was a definite threat to a close ally, the u.s. wouldn't be there. i think they are two different things. the way we train and everything we're doing at dod is certainly supportive of the fact that we would respond if there were a definite threat to the u.s. or close allies. >> i have to go in a few minutes. i think that one's attitude toward -- the demonstration of this problem is supposed to be syria, that's the argument. that depends an awful lot on whether you think it was in fact a good idea or is still a

i'm glad madlyn is the chair of the h.o.g. and it's an important instrument -- i was always pleased that that level was called the working level, implied there are other kinds of levels in the alliance. the nato planning group, however, which was very important at one point, at least in my experience, the meeting, it was late in the meeting, everybody wanted lunch or being europeans, a cigarette. and the briefing went up and it was warmly received as a sign of how much the americans were consulting the europeans. i think one of the things which ought to be done to educate at least the nato community about some of the realities of nuclear weapons, is to revive and make more serious the nato -- the nuclear planning group and really to involve europeans. there are very few good things about -- but one is, let's hope we will stop lecturing the europeans about how lousy their security is so we can't tell them things that you can get out of the newspapers. much more open about the realities of nuclear weapons. i think a core issue f