with that, i turn to michael nott for the first talk. michael? >> thank you very much, harold. glad to be back to discuss some of these issues. my assignment this afternoon is to give you a bit of an overview of the policy approach of the administration to missile defense that led to the publ dags of the missile defense review report in early 2010, why i advocated what it did and a little bit about what's sense. and then my colleagues brought a lot of detail on the technological issues, pros and cons, of the systems. i was tempted to spend a little bit giving background about the subject but harold basically said, don't do that. so just to say that there has always been -- well, there's been a debate for decades about the wisdom of missile defense, putting aside the technical fisibility. in simple terms, if you and i both had missile, offense ive missiles, that could destroy each other, and each of us was confident our missiles could get through, even if we were struck first, then we would havecom some sort of position of strategic stability through missile deterrence. but supp