mr. serwer: thank you, mr. ambassador. [applause] mr. rwer: i want to invite those, i see people standing in the back. i have seats up front. i am selling them for a good price. if you are too embarrassed to come down, you can come down to the room next to this one. by all means, i want to try to get people seated. professor abbas kadhim? mr. kadhim: thank you for the excellent overview of the current situation in iraq. your outlook into the future and you have the vision of the iraqi government, you are the best to speak about what the iraqi decision is on all various issues that you address. i will talk or i will take us to what we might call post-conflict iraq, because part of the aspects of it will deal with the future of iraq and where iraq is going. and just like the ambassador succinctly put his talk and his -- in a few points, i will put in three letters. all of them are r. three r's. washington loves these kinds of classifications. the 3 r's would be -- reclaiming the iraqi territory, reconstruction, and reconciliation. what each

mr serwer: thank you, mr. ambassador. i am going to use these last few minutes to see if you have anything to add. mr. kadhim: i am going to yield to the ambassador because he is the guest of honor, but i do want to respond to a question about the media. there seems to be a lot of -- again, we all appreciate the press and its role and we cannot live without it. ambassador faily: i could live without it, but. mr serwer: but beyond that, i think that there seems to be an alarming groupthink in the reports about iraq and what is going on. conservative, liberal, american, whatever, all of them speak in the same language talk about the same things looking for the same troubles to report on, and when they don't find anything, they just look for anything. one of the biggest battles that happened in iraq, major liberation of tikrit, a major advance that is probably the most important step taken, and what does the first report on it? they have looted some shaving cream and toothpaste. i am kidding you not. you go back to that repo

mr. ambassador. thank you, professor serwer. >> thank you. >> the floor is yours. [ applause ] . >> i am going to open the floor to questions. i see the microphone that i was looking for. you have to come to the microphone so that the audiovisual stuff will work right, or the microphone will be brought to you if you're in an inner slot. the floor is open, and i ask you to identify yourselves before you speak. i'll take two questions at a time. one there. >> thank you very much for a very interesting panel. i wanted to -- >> please identify yourself. >> from insight iraq. i want to talk on the three r's. some will make political campaigns out of it. i wanted to talk about the reconstruction one. when we think of reconstruction in the united states some will say it took 100 years until the 1960s until it was fully implemented, shall we say. my question is, how do you see -- sorry on the reclaiming of land it's obvious we have to reclaim ninevah but what about the disputed territories between the rest of iraq, how do you apply the thinking of reclaiming to those disputed territories? >> thank you. let me