host: tom vanden brook, thanks for being on the program today. we are not going to go to the brookings institution [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] the panelists include steve coll, vali nasr, michael fellow andenior director of research at the brookings institution of foreign policy, and general karamat who is retired, and a past chairman of the pakistani joint chiefs of staff. this will be live and should run for about an hour and a half. thank you very much for watching this edition of the "washington journal." see you tomorrow morning again at 7:00 a.m. eastern. >> good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the brookings institution. thank you for joining us in the dog days of august. anotherso joined by audience and the next room, so you on closed circuit television, thank you for coming too. today to discuss afghanistan, the great off debate, part iii, as labeled internally. we will discuss, will u.s. strategy succeed? i am martin indyk, the director of the program here at brookings. we have a distinguished an

host: tom vanden brook content -- and joins us from usa today. he is here to talk about a minor resistance ambushed protected vehicles, otherwise known as an route's. -- as mrap's. the first, tell us what is an mrap, and how does it differ from the humby? guest: it is a big truck, basically, that has a v shape cone on the bottom that deflects the blast forced from a bomb in the road. it also said about 3 feet higher, the crew capsule's it's about 3 feet higher off the road. a blast, when it happens, disobeyed pretty quickly. it makes a big difference. whereas, a humvee, about half the way to at least of an mrap, has a flat bottom and it tends to observe the blast and is that much closer to the ground as well. host: when did become apparent to the military and civilian hierarchy that they were going to need more of these mrap's in iraq and afghanistan? guest: initially it happened in 2007. we ran a story in april of 2007 in which we talk to some marines in anbar province about the performance of mrap's there. i was told by general allan at the tim

later, military reporter tom vanden brook is our guest and he discusses afghanistan and the mine-resistant vehicle program, also known as mrap. washington journal " -- "washington journal" is live everyday at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> it is all available to you on television, radio, online, and on social media networking sites. finder content in any time through c-span's video library. we take c-span on the road with our digital bus and local content vehicle, bringing our resources to your community. it is washington your way -- the c-span network, now available in more than will get -- in more than 1 million homes. provided as a public service. >> united nations estimates that 17 million people have been affected by the flooding in pakistan. next, the special representative for pakistan talks to reporters about his recent trip to the country. this reading is about 25 minutes. -- briefing is about 25 minutes. thank you -- >> thank you your much. good to see you again. i want to give you a quick read out of the trip i took last week. i was part of senator kerry's group, showing the cl