batting cleanup, mark namer, who now heads up the japan desk at the state department, so dealing with the follow-on effects from 3/11, but probably the leading person in his generation on japan affairs in the state department, having served there as well as in other parts of the world and most recently in baghdad. so we're very happy to have you back and handling affairs from foggy bottom. without further ado, i'll turn it to russ, then we'll go to sheila and mark. >> thank you very much. it's a pleasure to be here. thank you for organizing this. let me speak briefly about my perspective, having come back to a position i had 20 years earlier a few days before the earthquake. i think, you know, when the earthquake hit, we approached this with a great degree of humility. we've been through our own crisis management issues over the last three years -- katrina, the gulf oil spill, the haiti earthquake and even just a month before the christchurch earthquake in new zealand. we learned a lot of lessons about how to manage a crisis, and we knew how did i feel it was. and so when we went into