Transcripts For CSPAN Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20140912

Changing the expense side. That is happening right now. I think that is an area where you could see some consensus. One that i also think was messed in the whole debate over obamacare. Frivolous lawsuits. There is some issue with regard to the federal versus state role. There is a clear opportunity to reduce cost. The Budget Office has laid it out for us repeatedly. It is over 50 billion over 10 years. There is some areas here where you can find some common ground. What about Medicaid Expansion in your state . This is a decision that our state made. The governor and legislature. We will see what happens. My concern has been that i think these important programs, unsustainable programs on the entitlement side, need to be addressed. A vital program, but we need a way to pay for it. Right now, these programs, medicaid, medicare and social security, are not sustainable. I am curious that some in the other party are talking about expanding these programs at a time when they are already looking at, for those retiring today, the very real possibility that most of these people would see their benefits sharply reduced. In social security, in a 2024 timeframe, there would be a roughly 24 cut in benefits without the law being changed. This is within the lifetime of people who are retiring today and we seem incapable of dealing with the issue. We need to figure out a way to come up with entitlement reforms that make sense. Small changes now to ensure these programs will be there. We have about 40 seconds left. We have six people who want to ask questions. Lightning round. I am going to ask one. You told the Washington Post, i am not eager to run for president. You added, if nobody is running who is able to win and willing to address these issues, i might have a change of heart. You made a trip to New Hampshire . My daughter goes to school up there. Part of my heart is in New Hampshire. I do feel the same way. I am focused on 2014 and on doing my job as a senator. Right now. After the election, as i said in that story that somehow the Washington Post got out of may, i am going to take a look at it after the election. Thanks for doing this. You will be mobbed on the layout by the people who didnt get their questions. Thank you all. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] mikeuth dakota governor rounds, the nominee for the senate seat, leading their according to recent polling followed by democrat rick wiland with larry pressler. Another independent, gordon howie, far behind in single digits. The three others did debate on wednesday. Heres a look. I recall my dad saying to me at our farm over in humboldt, south dakota, i was a Rhodes Scholar and they could have kept the deferment for several more years. He said to me, you can take your student deferment, your Rhodes Scholarship, but if you do not , that mightd serve go in your place. For service in vietnam. I was very disappointed in that war. I feel that i can speak with authority to boots on the ground. I think we need to strike lethally and quickly. As Henry Kissinger said yesterday, have a plan to get out. You strike with High Technology weapons and get out. That is what i would do. I would not have a forced to stay there. 60 second rebuttal if you would like it. Really an fortunate mike is not here to answer this question. These are the kinds of questions youre going to give answers to when you get elect to to the United States senate. Here we are on the verge of another middle east conflict where we are talking about at the minimum airstrikes the community, arming the syrian rebels. Au made the decision to take 54day vacation from all of these public forums. Isis is a threat. We need an international solution. We need to lead as a country. Sending our kids back to fight this war is not something i can support. Democratic senator tom harkin steakg his 37th and final fry. Former president bill clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton live from iowa this sunday starting at 330 p. M. Eastern. You can watch it here on cspan. We are excited to announce that it is launch week for the student cam contest. One hundred 50,000 will be awarded. This years is the broadest ever the three branches and you. We went you to tell a story how by anyy, law, or Action Branch has affected you and your life or your community. It is open to students in grades six through 12. Students may work alone or in groups of three. Students are asked to produced a five to seven minute documentary and include some cspan programming. Cash prizes will go to 150 students and the 53 teachers. The grand prize winner for the best overall entry will win 5,000. The deadline for entries is january 20, 2015. Winners will be announced in marched. M. Org for morea information on this years contest, the three branches and you. On tomorrows washington cohn and why he thinks this election will favor republicans. An on anthony coredesm president obamas isis strategy. Washington journal with your facebook comments, calls, and tweets. From this mornings washington journal, co a discussion with the president of the university of iowa. Ke us on facebook. Wa joufrnl continues. Washington journal continues. Host interviewing University President s giving you a chance to talk to University President s. This is a cspan bus tour. Morning the cspan bus is in iowa city, iowa at the university of iowa and joining from the bus is the President University of iowa, sally mason. That been the president of University Since 2007. President mason, begin by whats the budget for the university of iowa, the annual budget. Revenues derive from . The total budget for the iowa is 3. 4 million. We have a Large Medical Center includinge operation, a big hospital. Its a big budget. Absolute ly absolutely. Its one that continues to grow Natural Disaster in 2008, a flood that impacted us significantly and were from. Ring were recovering in fine fashion with nearly 1 billion of construction going on in iowa right now. The education budget is 680 million and 220 million of this come trillions the state of iowa and the rest comes from tuition. Resident is going to pay about 8,000 a year to attend the university of iowa. Resident going to pay 28,000. Hy that discrepancy between instate and out of state . Instate bviously the students are subsidized by appropriations from the state of iowa. Always s in iowa have valued education very, very highly. Here in this state and were pleased and proud of that. And that continues to be the case. Or out of state students, we know, as a state university, out of state students need to pay the full cost of their education, hence the difference between the in state and out of state rates. Host you have proposed a degree, back laureate degree, havent you . Instead of a fouryear bachelor . Guest i have. Words about few that. One of the things that we ocused on in the seven years ive been here are Student Success and affordability. Priority ts a high for me. I was a first generation of college student. To t student in my family attend for college. It was a stretch for us to pay for college. Have a great deal of sympathy for students who are struggling and looking for ways to attend cost them t dont everything they have. So in terms of trying to make college affordable, we know are a number of ways we can do things. Degree. Year a threeyear degree not going to be for every student. Highly motivated serious. Include Summer School and we have a summer hawk tuition allow students in this threeyear program to attend Summer School for free. This will hasten their progress hope. Ds their degree we obviously complete in three years and be able to join the orkforce after that time or perhaps go on to graduate and professional school. E have a lot of great graduate and professional programs here that we encourage students to consider. Whats been the response so far for students, parents, faculty . Guest we Just Announced it this week. Were still in the process of the degree programs that this likely applies to. E want to make sure this applies to degree programs that are quite sought after by students. Degree programs that will likely be included for this the tunity for students in future. Host going to put the numbers up. K we divided the numbers against students, parents, and educators. You can see them there, theres the university of iowa, 2025853880 for students. 5853881 for parents. Educators, 5853882. We have set aside our fourth line this morning b for iowa especially you graduated from the university of iowa, weed like to get your perspective as well. 2025853883. An y mason, how i read rticle that youve secured or come to the agreement with the State Government to put a tuition freeze on for a couple years. How much work how much influence does the state of iowa and that government have on how how you function . Of well, the state board regents which governs all three of the public universities in the governing s authority. They have a great deal of authority when it comes to and policy and so forth. Theyre an important governing state obviously. Theyre appointed by the governor. Citizens of idual the state of iowa generally that have a great deal of interest in Higher Education and a passion for helping us maintain a very here educational system in the state. Its its always something on. Always something going i have to say, theyve been of our ry supportive moves towards threeyear degrees. Maker continued efforts to colleges affordable as we can, especially for iowa residents. Host is it worth a College Education to come out of four college and have 50,000 in student debt . Thats a lot of student debt. I have to say our students of our egin with 40 students graduate with zero debt, which is something that pleased and proud about. And then of the remaining tudents who do graduate with debt on average, their student debt might be in the 25,000, 26,000 a year range. This is this is something that we watch very carefully. Can actually monitor that amount of money and know how we of that debt is what call true needbased debt versus how much of that debt might be perhaps life style. And about half of that 26,000 needbased debt. Thats actually what the students and their families need be able to attain that College Education, that college degree. Now, is it worth it . That price, its absolutely worth it. I can remember graduating from 1972 with about 3,000 in student debt, which at that time was about the price of a car. An average car. Again, our students are graduating with a debt level for the most part that is very manageable. Counselors here. We encourage every student and family before they enroll to sit advisors our financial and our Financial Aid officers a plan that would allow them to go to college, not occurred debt that obviously would be impossible for them to deal with. Thats not the way we should do Higher Education today . What is the career track . Phd. In n purdue, a cellular and molecular biology at the university of arizona. Whats the career track for a College President . Uest well, im not sure theres a career track for a College President. Ranks as a the professor. Once i got to college, the joke was once she got there, left. Ever my familys concern, still there, still there. Still in t im college. It doesnt cost anybody any money anymore. Good thing. Bly a my career track probably would ave been what would have been typical for a College President. I came up through the ranks assistant an professor. Ook on administrative jobs ape long the way including serving as a department head, dean of a and provost at Purdue University before having the privilege to serve now in last seven plus years as the president of the university of iowa. My big ten roots are strong. Perhaps that comes from my mothers roots from going back to indiana. Job. Sally mason, your how much time is spent fundraising. How much time is spent being the administrat administrator, etc. , etc. . The job of a College President today is very, very different from a couple of years ago. Midst of a Large Capital campaign, the largest in the history of the state of iowa, certainly the largest in history of the university of the process of raising 1. 7 billion in the state of iowa, forever more campaign. About 1. 3 billion on the way to 1. 7 billion. A lot of that money is being raised to provide scholarships students, to provide professorships, infrastructure, the excellence of the university of iowa to continue well on in to the future. It. Joy to be able to connect with so many alumni, literally all across alumni the country and around the world who have a passion for the who have of iowa and been so generous in giving back to us. I spend probably half of my time fundraising and half of my time in administrative activities, in activities. I try to remain active in the number of organizations that are to Higher Education. Important to the university of iowa. Its important to be important world. Rest of the attendees are ge women. Of College President s are women . Uest we have room for improvement there. I tell the story of young women the chance to interact with today when i was coming through college and a ophomore in college taking organic chemistry, i was one of organic en in an chemistry class. One or two students in this class. We were obvious. Row d to sit in the front all the time because the instructor would know if we were there or not there. Us by name, not surprisingly. Today, you wouldnt see that. Chemistry rganic class would be much more heterogeneous in terms of the of gender, in terms and frankly in terms of diversity. Diversity is really what a lot focus our attention on. Theres r of women, still room for growth there. Opportunities in a we miss sometimes with women and the talent that they can bring to workforce in virtually every freshman. And Higher Education is no different. Its great to see the number of young women pursuing Higher Education today. Excites me a great deal. We have wonderful engineering programs here in the University Iowa and im proud of the engineering programs having spent a number of years as at Purdue University known for the engineering, the ngineering programs here, almost a quarter of our students are women. Thats actually unusual in the engineering programs today. If i look at the the of the young women, our retention rates and our etion rates as wellals placement rates for the young omen who attain those degrees are very, very high. 98 . Rds to 92 to that is tremendous. Bodes well for the future. Well be well served if we continue to grow these numbers, it be minorities or women in the underserved areas. This is your chance to talk with a major University President. We divided our lines a little bit differently. Were going to put it up on the screen. Students, parents, and educators. 2025853880. Students, 3881. 3882. Rents, for educators and iowa 2025853883. And the first call for sally mason, president of the from anty of iowa comes iowian and a parent. Iowa. In west liberty, hi, paul. Caller hi. Good to speak to you this morning. My son is going to be enrolling in iowa next year and engineering. Wondering if engineering would be include in the threeyear program. Aisle take my calls there. Thank you. Great, good , question. I believe there are portions of the engineering degrees we can years. Hree if hes highly motivated. He knows about this. He knows what he wants do do. On a good eye, hes track to complete in the threeyear period. Were going to do everything to including allowing him opportunities to attend Summer School for free. Host dee dee tweets in to you, does iowa project out a decade jobs will be in demand in the future and adjust programs accordingly . Your question ar appropriately, youre wondering about jobs in the future. We look at how we best prepare students for what we think the future might be. None of us has a crystal ball. I can tell you that. But as we look forward, one of he things we learned with our students is having that opportunity to earn that degree in a chosen major is great. A little bit further. One of the things thats familiar to our students entrepreneurship. Lets offer the student an opportunity to couple an entrepreneurship certificate a degree. Whether its art, engineering, might be. T we see students with the entrepreneurial spirit with the with ng we provide them are often deciding they can make their own careers. There are often great jobs out there. The Health Care Industry is just going to continue to boom. We have great strengths in ealth care here in the university of iowa training a lot of students for the Health Care Industry for the future. Have r the students who that extra Creative Edge and want to go on and do something different. Little nd perhaps a driver for future technology or future job pportunities that might be out there. We think learning and entrepreneurship, one of my top in entrepreneurship programs the country exists here in the university of iowa. Weve grown that program so that and every student here if the opportunity can have it. Atching our students start their own company is an exciting thing for us as administrators too. Host you mentioned the flood that hit iowa city. Out of that grew the Iowa Flood Center, which is what . Yes, thank you for mentioning the flood center. An educational institution. Have to say that in 2008, id been president for hit. Months when the flood and it was certainly one of the worst Natural Disasters in u. S. To watch in eastern iowa during that time. Campus has sustained 1 illion worth of damage including two square feet of space impacted by that. Event, i at particular have to say the world famous decided this up was the best opportunity they could think of to begin to study disasters like floods and create the flood center. The Iowa Flood Center not only butnown now throughout iowa across the nation. And even around the world for he research on floods and flooding. Theyre doing Ground Breaking things with technology to help understand how and when and why floods occurred. Us to iously helping nderstand how to mitigate and the these things from being Natural Disasters do to us in 2008. Priorities tohest make sure we fully recover from can begin to we grow. Host sally mason, the resident of the university of iowa and allen is an educator in washington. Youre on the air. Caller im a student advocate called studentloan does justice. Org. Questions gine my regarding student loan debt. The presence of the colleges have been very unwilling to iscuss this issue at any length. So im sort of glad i have you here. So i apologize in advance. But im not sure if youre but almost half of people out of college are unable to pay loans. The lifetime default rate for all colleges in federal student in excess of 30 . You know the other big numbers, on and so forth. What i found after looking at question for quite a long comes w is systemically, down to the fact that Student Loans are the only type of loan country to be exempted, standard bankruptcy protections. Statutes of limitations. Heard other Consumer Protections that are soon there. T provides adequate warning to the students. The students never know these things before they sign for the debt. Host weve got a lot there. Ets get a response from dr. Mason. Guest thank you for the question. I think its an important issue. Iowa that oure at student loan default rate is about 2 . Its quite low. Theres certainly great examples out there of abuses of i dent loans, and by abuses, ean people really not know iing what the student loan businesses are all about. We try here on the front end enrolling for are the first time to sit down with hem and their families to make certain they know what theyre getting into if they decide to go the route of a student loan. We try to steer folks away from of loans that we dont think are really good for them in the short and the long that o make certain theyre not getting into situations that would ultimately ultimatelyefault and affect their lives negatively for a good long time. An issue we should be paying attention to. Look hard at the default rates schools out there and make certain that the institutions themselves are doing everything consumers. O help the in this case, our students and their families making certain hat they know exactly what theyre getting into when they that they ent loan need for college. Host jenny in rainbow city, alabama. Line. S go ahead, jenny. Caller yes, this is dr. Dresden. I wanted to comment on i had a son that graduated from the university of iowa. Got a degree in international relations. Model one of their best un students that got an Outstanding Award from harvard. And he went to china for three the economy was bad enough there were no jobs for people his age in this country. I didnt want him going to china. China was him that not what he thought. The the idea that all ultures are full of great people, they all are full of great people. All people are the hand work of god, all people are great, all governments are not equal. Of socialist government china is very, very not like er host what would you like sally mason to respond to . What i would like her to respond to is the college aught him that all of the governments were equal. He was over there three years, started his own business. Pictures at a tourist area. There was a battleship way in the background and a citizen taking im in for pictures there even though its a tourist area. Nothing said no pictures. He spent seven hours in the basement of a Chinese Police tation with three counterintelligence people interrogating him. Host again, is there a do ific question there or you want her to respond to your story . Not r education there was accurate as to reality. Host okay, we got it. Thank you, sally mason . Guest im sorry. Im trying to understand her story. Me like her son had perhaps overseas that might not have been the best. One of the things we try to do is help our students have International Experience with are vision, with folks who very, very skilled in helping understand the different cultures, different parts of the orld that they might be going to. And i think the study abroad experience that students can get today, especially at most of the universities in the country today are just amazing. Theyre wonderful. I did not have that experience as a student myself and i would every student who can to try to take advantage of the tudy abroad to immerse themselves in another culture, to learn what its like to be in very, very different situation with a different government, with different people around perhaps very different language being spoken. Nd maybe not one that they fully understand. First experience is one ways rows up in different and quickly its always life changing. With a little bit of help, on side, with the First Experience that they have would them to navigate the world well and go on to take them to world and in to different cultures. Good system. Ure a and should it be kept as is . Guest tenure just allows them ability to do the kinds of things that are necessary for all of us. Freedom of speech, free tom of ideas. Freedom of ideas, freedom to do work that perhaps isnt going necessarily appreciated by everyone. Nd in a particular case of the tenure a long time ago now in biology and i work hard to do so. Prove that i could do everything that was expected of a faculty member and some. And it was, to me it was a real honor and a privilege to say had accomplished that goal at a point in my career i was still quite young. And it is really about hard work as anything. And the reward for hard work is to know that you have a sense of job security. You have a sense that if you ere to do some research that turned out to be controversial that, in fact, that research disseminated out to the public and valued, obviously, by groups that want at this research and not have to worry so much about that. That. Appreciate i can understand it. I can see the pluses and the minuses as well. milo is calling from let me get milo on the line here first. Milo is calling from jefferson, iowa. Hi, milo. Thank you for having me on. Theres been serious questions good ones. Ive been an iowa fan my entire life as long as i can remember. Im 63 years old. But iowa city is awesome, all of facilities, just a great place. And but i have a very serious question. If you have to know on how de information many, not if, how many points the cyclones tomorrow ask coach to let ark wiseman run the ball a little bit more. Thank you very much. I want to say were proud of you very much in iowa here. And its just been a pleasure. Thank you. Guest you just experienced love about my job. Hawkeye fans. Theyre great people here in the country. Around we had a rivalry game with the instate rival. We were here this morning. We didnt try to predict the score. But i did ask them, my fans will this, i did ask him not to make this one quite so dramatic. For the less drama football games, concluding these would be a lot better. Pass the d certainly word along about allowing mark wiseman to run the ball some more. Host surprised he didnt ask for tickets. Guest im sure he has tickets. Host how important are sports to fundraising . Revenues for the university . Maybe you were looking for potential donors . Guest at the university of iowa, were one of the fortunate pays forhere athletics itself. Again, the testament meant to the fan base we have, the loyal the ase that we have, support they give to the athletics department. Our athletic students who are on scholarship here. These. Are 500 or more of they pay the full tuition back to us for every one of those that weathlete scholars have. That contributes, obviously, to of the om Line University when it comes to the academic mission. Taxpayer ay any dollars, no taxpayer dollars goes to athletics at the university of iowa. Way, were hat fortunate to be a part of the big ten conference. Were able to get from ticket sales, from tv contracts, all of that is we were able to pay for everything athletics. In on the fundraising side, obviously, its a big plus. Fundraising side, our loyal hawkeye fans. Many of them not only loyal to teams. Letic but theyre loyal to our academic teams as well. Ere blessed to have some amazing, amazing donors who have really stepped up in a big way. Wo especially that are unusual for us to support our medical operations. We have a great diabetes here from a fern order who made an incredible gift. We were able to name the Center Director world class for this center assembling a eam around him with the ultimate goal of curing diabetes. Similarly, in the Vision Research group, the Wind Institute for Vision Research stone was funded again by the generosity of steven winn. Blessed because mr. Winn who he himself has an eye committed to helping s, our researchers, cure blindness here. On the fundraising side, great support on the athletic side. Spills over that on the academic side. Lot of fun. E a host always chair of the big chancellors. S and theres been movement one of your fellow universities, northwestern, about unionizing athletes. Whats your take on that . Would hate to see that. The student athletes here erform well above not only the School Average when it comes to but also and gpa, well above the national average. They take the study and the piece here. Athletes needs to stay amateur. We need to provide a great environment for the student make sure they have all of the support they need. Whether its support for them ics or to keep healthy. Im all for making certain that benefits e to add to from them. That we provide the highest quality opportunities for them. Would really hate to see them think of themselves as than as student athletes. Think that really is not what i looked to College Sports for. Robert from tampa, robert, youre on the air. Mason. thank you, dr. Thank you for the opportunity. My question to you is can you arek as to why universities intentionally gouging nonresident students . Incurs higher student load debt as one of the largest reason for higher student debt. Host sally mason. Guest yeah. Thatnow, im sorry to hear you think were gouging. Were charging them the full cost of education because the of the state of iowa who made huge investments in the theyve cture here, done so because they want iowa opportunities in iowa, were able to provide them er tuition needs than we are from the out of state students. We have to really in good the full rate e for the out of state students. E believe we provide an outstanding education at any price. Our out of state tuition, seem high is y actually still quite reasonable. Aid. T of financial half a billion dollars in Financial Aid a year. Iowa student and you meet the minimum requirements, the basic equirements that the board of regents set for the admission to the iowa public universities, admitted. Every iowa student who applies that meets those requirements from out e can select of state students. We select, obviously, from out f state students and we try to help them as well from Financial Aid. Cholarships for all kinds of students. The donors were willing to iowa e dollars for students as well as for nonresident students. Put together n good Financial Aid packages to doable. Not for in state students, especially for in state students also for nonresident students as well. I hope people understand that. To ask you t something the viewers across the nation have heard of. Iowa writers workshop. What is it . Do you get start . Guest yeah, its world famous as it should be. Have had the best creative writing programs here for a long, long time. We live in the only city of north america, iowa city, iowa designated unesco in 2008. Proud of that designation. Ere embed in what is known as the creative corridor here in eastern iowa. As well. Ud of that we had tennessee williams, everyone hass that heard of come to the workshop. We have writers on staff of names. Who know the were known for an International Writing program, which was an of the writers workshops named paul again, one the directors of the iowa workshop retired from his job as workshop. That weve had s wife writers of the writers from around the world who have participate in that program have gone on to winnow bell prizes in literature. Of the tradition of the arts, humanities, literature, here in iowa, in were so proud of that because we were thedegree. In essence, it was invented here and it was in response to our creator writers but also to our artists. You may be familiar with the painting known as american gothic. Painted by grant wood. He was on our faculty many years ago and was part of the source for this idea of giving academic credit for creative work. Whether it is writers, artists, musicians, we have a long and proud tradition of supporting the arts and humanities here in iowa. Sally mason is the president of the university of iowa. We appreciate you joining us. Documentarian ken burns on his new document terry, he roosevelt. Ken burns onian the roosevelts. Here are some comments weve gotten. Keep it up. Watched threeust hours. Its very depressing. Of a white half hispanic 20yearold shot dead a nonwhite Police Officer as he was described. They would not even say. They said nonwhite. That was from the police chief. There are no riots in salt lake city. There is no looting. You have three hours of hate, abouts of 50 years ago dead racist from the south that are either dead or dying now in their 80s. , if you want to talk about race, have preachers get on there because i did not youre a word about forgiveness. I did not hear a word about love. All i heard were prophetic stories about the past. Racism is not going to change unless we look forward. Ive been watching and calling in for the last 30 years. It has changed with all of this twitter and stuff. Im not familiar with our history. He is one of the best biographers ever. He is so accurate. Im thrilled to watch doug brinkley. I wish we could watch more of him. Thank you very much. Continue to let us know about the programs were watching. Call us. Email us. Or you can send us a tweet at cspan comments. Like us on facebook. Follow us on twitter. Were excited to announce that it is launch week for the 11th annual student cam documentary contest. Will be awarded to middle and high school contestants. This years theme is the broadest ever the three branches and the year. Demonstrate how a policy, law, or action by any branch of the federal government has affected you, your life, or your community. It is open to students grades six through 12. They may work alone or in groups of up to three. Students are asked to produce a five to seven minute documentary and include some cspan programming. The 100,000 will go to one hundred 50 students in the 53 teachers. The grand prize winner with the best overall entry will win 5,000. Is january 20, 20 15, and winners will be announced in march. Studentcam. Org for more information on this years contest. 0 House Minority whip steny hoyer joins us on newsmakers discussing congressional approval of the president s plan to combat isis. He talks about the upcoming midterm elections. Newsmakers sunday at 10 00 a. M. And 6 00 p. M. Eastern. His sunday, tom harkin hold 37th and final steak fry. Speaking at the event former president bill clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Cspan spoke with senator harkin about the steak fry. A request to hillary. I spoke with her sometime ago. Herwas getting ready to do book tour. She said she did not know how it was going to be or transpire. You just give me some time to figure out what my schedule will be like . California at an event and i saw bill clinton there. Then we started commiserating about this and that. I remember as he was signing some of his books for people in a room and there was just two of us. I told him that i invited hillary to come out to speak at my steak fry. Youurned to walk away a and are both good friends of ruth and mine. Couple, thato would be great. Think about it. Its just a great honor to have them both out. They have been great friends all these years. They have provided great leadership for our country in the past for our respective ways. I served with Hillary Clinton all the time she was in the senate. We had great working relationships in the senate. I think she just did an outstanding job as our secretary of state. As ive traveled around the years, it last few has just been amazing how the stature Hillary Clinton has among women and girls all over the globe. Fire among women and girls and they are just holding her in very high esteem. Harkins 37th and final steak fry with bill and Hillary Clinton live from indianola, iowa. You can watch it here on cspan. Ford, the last u. S. Ambassador to syria before the u. S. Closed its embassy in damascus spoke at the center for American Progress at the response to isis. We hear this from several Foreign Policy scholars. This is an hour and a half. We are gearing for here is an indepth discussion on the challenges we face in syria, isis and iraq. Have aneally lucky to excellent panel with us today. Im going to briefly introduce them and say a few things and get the discussion rolling here. First and foremost, i will introduce in the order of speaking. We are very lucky to have ambassador robert ford who after more than 30 years of service in the Foreign Service resigned in february as ambassador to syria. He is wellknown to everyone in this room for the commitment and dedication to service. We really look forward to hearing his remarks. Linell hear from part in hardin lang. He has been a leader in some of our Field Research. Some remarks from fromw taylor, our friend the Washington Institute for near east policy. And we engaged early way back when when we were thinking about things like this on syria and the depth of his expertise is wellknown. Last but not least is our friend the newivant from america foundation. Hes part of an Informal Working Group weve had here and other institutions to try to wrestle with these tough issues. Before we get underway, i thought i would make just three basic points just to kick off and maybe frame our discussion. In a policy discussion like this, the first point i wanted to make was to acknowledge and perhaps offer words to bear witness to the fundamental challenge of the syrian and iraqi people. We sit here and write these papers in think tanks and we often forget that even beneath the statistics of 3 million syrians outside of the country and hundreds of thousands killed both in iraq and the syria that these are human stories. , we areield Research Just remembering the people who are there. Family carrying everything they could on their backs out of aleppo. Appropriate to start there. Quite often you just talk about diplomacy and other things. Framework we need to keep in mind when we begin Something Like this are the crimes against humanity both by the assad regime and groups like isis are really difficult to bear. The second, i wanted to acknowledge colleagues on this stage but hopefully you picked up a copy of our latest two reports on serious and isis. The Syrian Opposition we released today. On isistrategy report earlier this week. These reports of the product of Intense Research on the ground. It is something new we have done americanhe center for progress. We have a core team including. Eter jewell their brilliant talent to have been out in the field with us interviewing people and weeks at a time. Jordan, tunisia, this is the fourth in the final series. And our leadership year has been very supportive of that. Is it knowledge rents are important. If you read these reports. How do we understand the political dynamics including syria which is a very confiscated situation. I hope you have a chance to look at them. To tee up our discussion and framework, i want to add in my own analytical interpretation to the president s policy. We can talk about that later. I think a useful way, perhaps, to think about how this with isis, syria, and iraq is going to approach it. What we have seen this week with the regional coalition, international coalition, trying to do something that we all could resume is different with friends and syria and other things, that is one component. Leadership tos. Construct. The second is iraq. Is very well constructed although fraught with booby traps trying to work with iraqi partners and getting them to be more inclusive in their response to the islamist state to do the sorts of things they have not done. This is a wakeup call. The third leg is obviously syria. In my view, its the one even after what president obama said the other night that needs the most development. Also in terms of how we connect with these actors in the region that will be working in a renewed sort of way. In that pillar we want to hone in on a bit today. Again, with ambassador ford here, i thought we would kick off our discussion just asking ambassador ford. Are you encouraged, and maybe a second question of this key question of the Syrian Opposition, the debate that i think our congress is having right now and will have and will vote on possible additional funds for the Syrian Opposition this month how do you see the president s mistress g, as they call it, and where do you see sort of the next steps on the Syrian Opposition . Thank you. Thank you. Nice to be here. Thank you for the invitation. My first time here. I see two distinguished colleagues with whom i used to work, and i just want to highlight that. Its great to see you, rich. I think he is just now leaving government. Let me tell you that its ok. [laughter] colonel rob friedenberg, and he was our and repeatedly put himself at some physical risk in order to help us understand what was going on there. Rob, its great to see you. Im actually a bit incurred. I dont want to overstate that, but i am encouraged. I think the administrations overall approach of lining up that is to regional, say, above all, support for the effort against Islamic State as well as political and financial, trying to cut money flows into the very wellfinanced Islamic State these are very well spot on. I was extremely struck by the picture coming out of saudi arabia yesterday of the arab foreign ministers, and there was from iraq, the former Prime Minister of iraq, 2005, 2006, a man with whom the saudis would have nothing to do when he was Prime Minister, requests fromed the american embassy. We could not convince the saudis to engage with him, and yet, yesterday, the saudis brought him. I think we are making progress on that. I think it is really important that the governments in the gulf work with a rack and a new and better way than they ever have before, so i thought that was a good sign. I have three other points i would like to make, and then i will get to serious specifically. You said we need more coherence on how we are going to do this ith the syrians, and completely agree because its going to be extremely hard its not going to be easy. Three points then first. I keep seeing in the press that there really is very little left of these syrian moderate armed opposition, and im here to tell you, please check it out. Get on the social websites, get into the arabic press, and check it out. The moderate armed opposition is , friday right now september 12, fighting the Islamic State up along the turkish border. Interesting that they are fighting there. The Islamic State actually things the battle for armageddon is going to come based on some statements from carotid koran oranic teachings. Theres a big battle going on right now over that border area because the Free Syrian Army depends on the bylines that come down from turkey, and theres a sharp confrontation going there around aleppo. Theres not a confrontation any longer. To the west of that because the Free Syrian Army kept the Islamic State, militarily defeated them and kicked them out some months ago, they are. Ighting them right now also farther to the south on the south side of aleppo. The moderate armed opposition is very much fighting the regime, too, in northwestern syria as well as around damascus. To say theres not much to work with i just think is completely wrong. Its a bad analysis. That said, they are there and on the ground, but their number one priority is not the Islamic State. The Islamic State has killed thousands of people in iraq and brave american journalists, but the assad regime has killed tens of thousands, if not more than that. We just saw pictures of victims of the military intelligence facilities brought by a guy named caesar who was just here in month ago, six weeks ago. Just that part of what the regime has done killed 55,000 people, and we got photographic evidence. Islamicore than the state has killed. I do not for a minute justify what the Islamic State has done not at all but i think as we try to work with the Syrian Opposition, we must understand that today, the Syrian Regime was barrel bombing damascus, which tells you right there, theydo not condone it, and were barrel bombing down in the south in the north, and dozens of civilians were killed, so their priority is not the Islamic State. The moderate opposition. It is the Bashar Alassad regime. We need to understand that going in. But that said, they are fighting the Islamic State, so we can work with them against the Islamic State, but we need to thatstand Going Forward tactically, on the ground, as , regime,syrian army Free Syrian Army or moderate armed opposition call them what you want and the islamic link with the al qaeda maybe is a variable out there. A lot of going to be Tactical Alliance is on the ground. In particular between the nusra front that will make a very uncomfortable. They are going to make everybody in washington very uncomfortable, but they are there because of a tactical necessity, not an ideological affiliation. That is really important to understand. The only way we are going to be able to avoid that is if we flood the zone so much that their help no longer becomes important, but im not sure thats what the administration is thinking. Its not clear to me. We will have to understand going in this is going to be a very hard problem. Its not going to be smooth. Its going to be very bumpy. Its going to be a turbulent ride. The only way to make this work is being patient and keep our eyes on where we are trying to go, which is the destruction and incredibly vicious and ideologically rid and ideologically extreme and marginal force in iraq and in syria. Thanks. Thank you, mr. Ambassador. We have done these fourcountry studies, and again, i encourage you to look at we went into it looking at the various strands of islam is him, especially the Muslim Brotherhood in egypt and tunisia. When we did our field work on syria, it was a hard time to figure out what our sample was. Given how diverse and fractured even at the start of the spring this year its very difficult to figure out what sample size we want, but we came out with it, and i think we have a very indepth report. Week, group when out this and did a report thats very good. I thought maybe you could walk us through specifically what we saw in terms of the Main Findings there, and then to the central question which everybody i think is focused on now is there a Syrian Opposition that we can work with . Sure. 64,000 question thanks very much for getting us started, and, ambassador, thank you very much for the overview. Those points, i think, are spot on. And we did not rehearse ahead of time. The center for American Progress put out a report today, and it was focused more on trying to understand over the course of a series of Field Research trips where we find ourselves today. In the are trying to do report as outlined some observations that we think the administration is going to have to take account of as they craft a strategy moving forward, particularly getting the Syrian Opposition into a position to play an effective role. The point the ambassador makes with respect to damascus is quite important. As brian said, it is in depth, which is a polite way of saying very long. [laughter] to report a few key findings at this stage. The first one is the urgency of the situation. The point the ambassador made about Syrian Opposition, sort of, theres nothing left to work with. The key finding we came back with is that there is something still to work with, and its time to put our shoulder in. Going to be clear that this is not going to be easy by any stretch of the imagination, and the only point i want to build on with his there is a sense of urgency to getting increased levels of the system into the forces of the what remains of the moderate opposition and aleppo and in other areas in trying to fight the three sided war. Ices and the a sawed regime have been squeezing these forces for quite some time, and their situation, while not as essential at the moment, is quite higher. The president has put forth a request some months ago for 500 million to get this effort started, and i think we are at a point now where would if we are serious about this, congress does need to move forward quickly. The news over the last couple of days from the hill is welcome in that regard. The other point i would make is something we heard a little bit about here in terms of the importance of the regional peace. One of the things we found in our interviews with the political and military leadership theres this constant refrain about the managing regional politics inside the Syrian Opposition. Discord and competition between certain states and the gulf has become a problem for the different factions that have been backed over time in syria. This is kind of the expense of the unity of effort. The competition is diverting undercut resources that are not being used in the best way possible. We have seen some news out of the gulf recently, and i agree that the press conference and the communique out of saudi arabia is deeply welcome news, but its going to require, as brian said, u. S. Leadership to maintain this over time. Weve been able to pull together a group now thats looking good at the moment, but this effort is going to take years, and we are going to put into place some for thisechanism process or its likely to fall apart as time goes on. I dont think anyone coming into this things its going to be any of the effort, and i think we need to moderate our expectations from the get go let me explain why. Be thatt point would the nature of the battlefield much of the Free Syrian Army at this stage is deeply granular in nature. We have a number of local forces fighting to protect their locality. Theres not a great deal of tactical tactical coordination is consecrated, and the strategic effort at this point is purely operational. Being able to work through this point, i think expecting too much too soon is a huge mistake. The second point would be there have been incredible efforts by bothpposition with political and military to try to lead this effort, but there is a significant divorce we picked up at least in our interviews between some of that leadership and those on the ground who we could get access to. Being able to bridge this gap or finding another way to mobilize and organize those fighting on the ground would be a critical part of the solution. Third, theres a question of absorbent of capacity. The ambassador mentioned the idea of if the u. S. Were to flood the zone. Im not sure, from our interviews, that flooding the more than itlp would hurt at this stage. Some of the groups we met with that are already receiving weapons from the United States made it clear that there is a limit to the absorbent of capacity. If we work to proceed with pushing too much down the pipeline, the outcome would not necessarily be a concerted effort with affecting the battlefield. There is one group put it to us, the most important thing now is that we get a sustained pipeline which is predicted over time, and that we work with this as opposed to a mass influx of weapons. We came away with a bit of a goingn about what we were to call for lack of a better term the syrian salafi of groupst, referring to like the islamic front and those fighting under that banner. I think this is something their master made reference to. Here, you know, the islamic front for those groups who have been fighting up to this front composed tens of thousands of sort of conservative salafi fighters, many of whom as one member of the leadership put it likened himself to the syrian television. Likened himself to the syrian taliban. I would be remiss if i did not note that at least some of these organizations in the way in which they operated next to the more moderate elements of the Free Syrian Army has not been helpful. We saw a major effort were starting the islamic for and in and seize weapons caches, warehouses, logistical support, elements for the Free Syrian Army. This gives you a deposit in terms of thinking about how we are going to coordinate the effort Going Forward. Is be all i want to say careful here. These groups are not like ices in the sense that from what we heard in the interviews and the way they explain their ideology to us, they are not transnational and aspiration. But the syria that they would rule i think theres a huge difference between that and the aspirations of the moderate opposition and what they are fighting for. The good news is that some of these groups have begun to terms of their organizations, their capability. Their leadership has seen a significant strike recently, so there are questions about whether or not they are going to hang together, but the question for u. S. Policymakers is what do you do with tens of thousands of more conservative salafi extremists, some of whom might be willing to bleed over into the ices threat or into the ices camp at a certain stage, and how do we understand the role they are going to play and the effort we are going to fund Going Forward, given that their aspirations are probably quite different than the one to which we would like to ally ourselves. N syria if you look at the report, you will see that what we try to obama ministry should if it does lean into this problem is to look at the challenge of the Syrian Opposition, not only from a security standpoint, but also this political standpoint. When you see oftentimes plans developed by some of our agencies, we assume we can just do a Technical Assistance and as we see, i think, a lesson from iraq over the last few years is that you have to Pay Attention to those internal politics, and who really has access to resources, and then what is their political vision . That is something that requires a lot of intelligence and intelligence on the situation inside of syria, which is something andrew has. Sitting here in september 2014 thank you for reviewing doing a peer review of our draft paper before it came out how do you see the situation now . Are you encouraged by president obamas strategy . Any encouragements or criticisms of the report just outlined . First of all, thank you very much for the invitation and not just the opportunity to read the study, but also just the thoughtful discussions we have had over the years. That goes for everybody on this podium at the moment. I feel much better after the president s speech. There are a lot of details that need to be worked out. Clearly, our attempt to degrade and destroy ices the hard part is going to come in syria, and thats where a lot of the hard work is going to come. The study, i think, plops into the middle of that discussion moderate and particularly the opposition are key to this. In that regard, i see the situation inside the country as quite a higher overall. Not just because isis decapitated to journalist that i knew, and they were both really great guys i cannot emphasize but echoing ambassador fords comments, there are moderates inside of syria. There have been since the beginning of this. I remember when i set up one of the first unofficial meetings between moderates and an unofficial member of the u. S. Government in southern turkey, this is been going on for a long time. There has been armed opposition. They have been significantly weakened, particularly since the nonstrike incident, what we know is the redline incident. It was interesting that president obamas remarks the other evening were exactly a year from that speech, and, boy, what a difference a year makes. Backing off the regimes in an ordering what it seems our strikes against isis. He talks about the nature of the battlefield and what is in this report, i think this report is extremely sobering and fair to the situation. Withentimes am caught people whether its out there who have limited amounts of time because they have families and so on they want easy answers on this stuff, right . There are no more easy answers because we waited. Earlier on, things could have been easier, could have been addressed through state structure. We do not have those options anymore, and theres no sense we cannot go back in time. There are moderates. The problem is they coordinate assadihadists against the regime, and coordination has been a keyword throughout the syrian uprising. Withnk they coordinate them out of necessity. My long experience in syria i lived there about seven years and have been there for far too long. Colt or in thee region as well as in that part of the region is primarily mercantile. Arelieve that the people motivated by security but also by the provision of basic goods. The United States has an opportunity to back moderate them tond to work with defeat common enemies like ices as well as the assad regime. That said, i think the report outlines this as well, syrian moderates are extremely difficult to deal with, and i cannot emphasize that enough. Because of their unwillingness because of the situation they are in to make clear distinctions. I would echo ambassador fords statement about we have a choice here. Either we flood the zone and really try to back these forces and by the more and do the fighting that needs to be done, or we try to go into this piecemeal. I hope we do not do that. I hope we do something more comprehensive. I think this report will help inform that strategy as it eve alls. I was just in the golan heights, and i had the opportunity to and watch what could only be described as sectarian armageddon. The assad regime, has belowbacked forces, and a whole , battling against a plethora of opposition groups in southern syria, and they were not pulling any punches. It was like being in the middle of a storm, and it has been going on for weeks. The other day, when the fighters captured soldiers and held them for ransom, they had been released as of yesterday, and thats a step in the right direction, but that does not mean the war ends. Allies in the region, i think we. Hould not be surprised they need to see it fleshed out and whats in it for their security and for their interests. I think we are on the road to that. Smart place to start here is to move from a title 50 program to a title x, which is a covert program, which is before congress now. To say we do not know anything about these groups is inaccurate. They have embedded for years. Thats the reason president obama makes the decisions he does. Thats the reason they are extremely difficult decisions, but we need to start with this title x program, the eight or so , and i thinke back thats what we are going to do. Our goal should be to qualitatively and quantitatively aid motter groups visavis. Ihadists in general in syria second, assad is not the answer. At best, he is a container along with the iranians east and west of the ice is outbreak. There are a lot of reasons for that. Ambassador ford outlined them. Most important like, to anybody who follows this, they just have limited capacity most importantly to anyone who follows this. Chief proponent of this is ambassador crocker, who i respect very much, but i think in all fairness, i do not think that the regime he was ambassador to years ago before ambassador ford was that regime no longer exists. Its constructed to early in. Erms of personnel the constellation of forces, the assad regimes army has undergone the offensive and only does when it is backed up by the National Defense forces, the shia militias that are backed by. He Iranian Quds Force very difficult situation. Third, i urge americans in trying to square defeating isis and confronting the assad regime teed things that seem almost incompatible at the same time these things only seem compatible if you use the math that we have now besides the coboundaries. Those have not existed for some time. They do legally, and not saying that this country should not iist into the future, but wrote about this a couple of years ago the country that i lived in for so many years, the one i have been discussing it no longer exists. It has been divided and partitioned for well over two years, and we have to deal with that reality. Totever assistance we give the moderate opposition to defeat isis would carve out a zone of influence within that center, and sunnis are the majority inside of syria, and it is there that president obama has outlined the important thing is to harness sunni aspirations Going Forward as part of any kind of settlement. Bashar alassad and his regime are struggling in the west as well as kurds in the northeast. I think this will continue, and hopefully, at the end of the process went isis is defeated, those different parties can negotiate. Last but not least, i would urge you to be patient. Ist is required right now assertiveness, not aggression, and not acting in haste. We need to think this through. Assertion is different than aggression, but most importantly, i think the policies of the last few years has shown us that if we keep the rest of the world at arms length, sometimes the situation does not get better. We are not the problem in this. We are part of the answer, and we need to do whatever the answer is and do it in an intelligent way. Last but not least, i want to turn to doug. We were on a panel over with our friends at the American Enterprise institute, and this was before the ices blitzkrieg into iraq. If i recall the discussion, we were talking about how surprisingly good the iraqi elections were. Everything was looking pretty good. Wee wanted to do here wanted to look at this as an integrated problem set. I think this summer was a world, forl for the this administration. If im correct, this administration i think is doing a better job how it looks at these challenges, both iraq and syria, together. I think theres a different process thats going on right now, and i think thats a good thing. I thought maybe you could give us some thoughts on how you see primarily the pathway forward on iraq a cousin think everyone assumes, given how difficult syria is, and i think we all agree its probably the weakest leg in that preleg stool, there still are challenges ahead for iraq. [inaudible] this,you for organizing and always great to see you, ambassador. I have been working in iraq on most exquisitely for 10 years now. Iraq kind of hijacked my life in 2000 or and has never given it back. This is not something i get to do very often. So lets talk first about iraq and briefly, the military see. Ns we expect to ace upon a time, i was military planner and strategist and spent a long time doing that. Our watchword was always youre are never going to build a plan that is going to work. You want to build a plan that could work. Thats always the best you can hope for in a war, in a military operation, in a world where there is fog and friction in the unexpected and no unknowns and unknown unknowns. You want to build a plan that could plausibly work if things go your way. I think thats where the president is. Has a plan that could plausibly work. Not to say theyre a not all types of difficulties, all types of hazards, all types of ways in which this could be terribly wrong, but this is a plan that could work. That said, its going to the and interesting plan as it unfolds. I was on television the other day, and a phrase i wish i could come up with but did not was when he said we should expect to see in iraq a coalition of the weird. Which i think is going to be exactly right. I think the administration probably rightly sees as proof of visible operations. What we see is an unusual menagerie of allies. As best as i can piece together, the information from the north and like in syria, information is hard to get and is contradictory, but as best as atcan tell, the Operation Center mountain seems to have been done on most exclusively by the turkishbased terrorist group, which is on our state Department Foreign terrorist organization list. They are a known terrorist group. For a long time, we have helped the turks deal with that terrorist group. On the other hand, they are the ones that largely in conjunction with u. S. Air power ropey siege broke the siege. It appears that this operation was conducted primarily by iraqi home we have, with a very storied past. The latest transmutation of the advisers if not shock troops, again, in conjunction with u. S. Air power. This could very well be an interesting coalition as we move forward. The phrase that ambassador ford used. This is going to be done out of tactical necessity, not ideological affinity. May well be our watchword as we move forward and see these various groups start to Work Together in different ways. Bethe same time, we have to aware that while theres tactical necessity, we need to be very, very aware of the politics. Theres going to be political and military tension constantly as we work through this. In a world where there were no political considerations, the fight against isis would be easy. We would grab the military force from the Syrian Regime, and from the iranian regime. We would ally with them, and then we would all come together and annihilate isis. Militarily, that makes absolute perfect sense. Obviously, politically, that a lot of difficulty. The tension between what militarily makes the most sense and what is politically feasible in the long term. If i can turn a little bit across the Syrian Border were i do not have near the experience as my friends here, but i have watched a bit it appears to me we will have some very similar issues as we move forward, which all of our panelists here have alluded to. Is absolutelyd right that the moderate syrians, the Free Syrian Army, are there. They are not going away. They are not going to be wiped out. At the same time, they are not the most milk powerful military force on the ground in syria, and most of their action statet the islamic consists of defense of operation, keeping isis from overrunning their town. They are strongest in defending their own territory. Units that defend a town and keep isis from coming in. Thats not nothing, and we are grateful they are doing that, but they do not have the force, the military power to pick up and go attack isis. Even in conjunction with u. S. Clear to mets not that the Free Syrian Army has even the power to just go occupy that. So how are we going to get them to be a plausible partner . By investing a friend of mine says support is in dodge and us indogenous. We they are getting a lot of resources having a lot of success, therefore they are getting a lot more recruits right now. I will come back to that. We are going to have to turn that equation on for the Free Syrian Army. But we also need to have eyes wide open about what that means. What we are going to try to do , that groups, small bands have been affiliated with our syrian taliban islamic front, or perhaps even a looser to join the Free Syrian Army. This is a variation on a theme to what we saw in 2006 and iraq to what we called the sunni awakening, much of which i think has been mythologized, but nonetheless, it happened, and we iraqi sunnis who were fighting against us, in whom in some cases were at least very closely aligned with if not actually part of al qaeda and iraq, came over and joined the other side. Were going to have to be eyes wide open about that is exactly what we are talking with. As a nation, as a country, are we comfortable with these former al nusra and islamic front fighters coming over, joining us, being trained by us either in a covert manner or perhaps even overtly under title 10 are we ok with this . Do apect if we were to strict application of the leahy amendment, there would be problems with this. We are just getting an understanding of what moves forward and how we are going to move on. The other point that the ambassador made that i want to followup on he made the very attacking isist is not the Free Syrian Armys First Priority. They are first and foremost concerned about the Syrian Regime thats absolutely true, but i think that point also needs to be expanded with perhaps the notable exception of shia leaders in baghdad. Im not sure fighting isis is anybodys First Priority in the region. We also need to be eyes wide open about that. But kurds are willing to fight isis. However, prior to the kurds fromg their left hook mozilla up into her bill, we had some very open statements from the carriage he leadership that this was not their problem and not their fight. They have their own agenda, their own things they are concerned about. Clearly, the iraqi sunnis who have been willing to give at least some semblance of aid and comfort to isis, as they at least initially moved in, saw a isis as a preferred option to. He Central Government following me yesterday, it is still clear to me that these countries see isis as a greater threat. Is an enemy to everyone, but its not clear it is the first tier enemy to everyone. We are going to initiate the military campaign against isis and iraq, and that is the right thing to do. If you have someone who is bleeding, the first thing to do is stop the bleeding to use a medical metaphor. In this case, this region is bleeding from the isis innovation, and that needs to be stopped. The president is doing the right thing to address it. There are root causes that are not going to be impacted by f16s. Have a serious issue with solid fest ideology in the region. Thats not to say that all solid fists are violent that all solid fists that all salafists are violent, but the dusting to be a correlation. This is not a region in which any of the regimes are particularly laudable. Even the most edition decent still havethe region significant shortcomings in their dedication to democratic governance, human rights, liberalism, is that we hold dear. This authoritarian regime that keep people from freely expressing themselves i think does give rise to finding an alternative means to express their discontent with the region, turning to isis and emily violent groups. Finally, lack of Economic Opportunities for the youth in the region. 15yearold young man in north africa or in the gulf sees no future, no job, no economic prospects, no possibility of mamet marriage, no ability to raise a family, the ideological heal of himoup its willing to give a home, a cause, and through violence 11 to achieve things he could not otherwise get will continue to be a very serious problem in the region. Thank you. Before i open it up to some upstions, i want to open it i want to ask one. What do you all see as the biggest challenge in terms of u. S. Policy implementation. I would like to start with ambassador ford and doug because you to have the most experience and senior Level Experience in u. S. Government and how it works. When i saw the president s speech the other night and some of us were in meetings and getting prebriefings, i want to believe it. I wrote a piece saying that its the most compelling strategy one could come up with, but i also felt like i have seen this movie the obamah administration, that it outlines a very good speech, and then, you know, the next act is that everybody reacts on cnn and panels and everybody is tweeting about it while the speech is going on, and theres a little bit of a debate on the hill. Then the buzz fades, and the policy implementation actually proceeds. I suppose that this will not be the case. This will be in the spotlight for a while, but when it comes anything hastion, had challenges in implementing its stated goal. My view is that this policy is probably the best a can come up with in a worst situation, the only game in town, but at the same time, executing and implementing is a big challenge. Know, you alle seem generally where im at. This seems like a decent strategy, but i have to say, i am skeptical because there are so many pitfalls that can happen. What might we do wrong that we based on yourre experience . Ambassador ford . It will be very hard to do this and iraq. Your points are spot on. The irony of us tactically cooperating after all the have killed is something. Just to narrow that down, on the diplomatic track, which kind of leads out to me i think about john kerry visiting turkey today how hard it will be to secure on a variety of levels, and the turks have they are in kind of a tough spot. Or 40 nine of their diplomatic personnel are being held hostage i the Islamic State of theirk 48 or 49 diplomatic personnel are being held hostage by the Islamic State right now. But turkey is essential. They are going to have to find a way to bring them into this and to be able to find a way to cooperate with them. Side, broader political and doug touched on this, and he is exactly right, the biggest isblem in iraq and syria that there is a very disgruntled sunni arab community, potent minority in iraq, a majority in. Yria not saying that the solution is one broad solution, but the Islamic State problem comes out s communitiesarab communitys dissatisfaction. We have to be sensitive to that. I was very struck today. The report out of reuters that when the shia militia went in, they killed a bunch of sunnis in retaliation. Thats exactly the kind of thing that will set us back. Andhe report is true i do not know if it is or not but if it is true, i certainly hope the Iraqi Government moves to discipline those shia militias because otherwise, they will subvert the progress we are trying to make. Then on the syrian side, again, were going to have a lot of. Essy Tactical Alliances i think thats great, but again, how our government if you have any thoughts on this, i think the moderate opposition is probably one component. The socalled moderate opposition, but what do you see a he biggest implementation challenges in this package . I think the largest implementation challenges will be less in the executive branch and more on the hill. Bringing forward title x assistance to these groups, whether we are talking about the to any substate actor, the moderate resistance in syria is by a strict reading of our export control laws not permissible. Congress could pass a onesentence bill for the purposes of our export control regime that syrian moderates or krg will be treated as sovereign states, but its hard to see that happening in the near term. Nor do i think we are going to see any congressional action to go on record with the vote. I dont think on either side of the aisle in either house of congress is anybody going to be really excited about a vote on cousin there are so many ways in which this could conceivably go wrong, and who wants to be on record for the vote on something that went wrong . On the executive side, it will simply be the implementation, having to work under the again, you hate to start quoting titles, but under the limitation that you cannot get an open,. Bove the board assistance act it has to go through people who are not limited by export control actions. This makes things very, very difficult. I think that is going to be our largest executive branch challenge moving forward. Doug. Gree with title x assistance here is key. It gets everyone politically signed off for it. One of the constraints weve had in terms of policy u. S. Policy in particular is when you have a covert program, syrians cannot understand it because it is a secret program. A lot of times, they do not know the assistance they are receiving, and they also do not know who is training them. Syrians are much smarter than i think many people give them credit for, so they might have figured it out, so thats going to be important to and wagenen forces Going Forward. On syrianworking policy with people in and around government including the ambassador for several years. Over the last year, decisionmaking on this has been incredibly centralized. I would recommend when you were producing this report, theres a lot of good work on their on syria from open sources. There are no secrets in the syrian war. There is contradictory information. Sorting through it will require a collective effort, and i think if we do that, it will be easier to defeat isis and easier to sell it politically to the American People, and i think that is the smart way forward. I wonder whether or not to the level of coordination inside u. S. Government can be helped by, for want of a better term, offender responsibility and making somebody it for getting things done. We are beginning to see this on the military side. Something like this could help on the humanitarian peace, something we have not talked a lot about here, but the u. S. Did has put a tremendous amount of money and effort into humanitarian relief in the refugee crisis in the region around syria, but there are other countries in the region that could probably do a little , andore on this maintaining and galvanizing that effort, i think having someone who is in charge of that be quite helpful. I wonder also how that would relate to the diplomatic piece of this we will have to maintain over time. Reports about the john allen, a brilliant guy. I would just worry that if we start setting up a series of sort of equal structures or teams or something, much better to have it integrated into one team with one leader to whom all of these different drafts financial, political, diplomatic, military are all fused. The relationship between that departments here will have to be very clear. Who does that team report to . And finally, i think Andrews Point is right. Its very hard to run that kind of operation out of washington. One of the lessons i took out of being in iraq so long was that tactically, it is much better to devolve it down to the field. Im not sure how that you coordinate with embassies in places like baghdad and riyadh and ingres ancora ankara. Thats the trick for responsibility to be laid out very clearly, not just in the administration but also to the congress and the public. One of the thing we just need to because doesnt of and to manage what we are talking about is revamping up the war. Lets be candid about this. Up the war, the humanitarian crisis is going to metastasize. Im not saying thats not the right policy or not the right thing to do. This reminds me of the 2011 surge to get casualties down, they had to go up first. We need to be prepared for that and mitigated as best we can, but we need to prepare ourselves and the American People for an increase in its already a catastrophe. I do not have a better word for the humanitarian situation in syria, but however bad it is now and it is terribly bad its going to be worse as this war is essentially reenergized order to empower the Free Syrian Army to take the , and thats going to be very painful to watch, i think. I know one that makes if yous eyes glaze over are in the media, but when you are in government, its essential to have this what are we doing in terms of implement thing and executing . With some of our friends and set of government, one hand of say the state department not knowing what usaid or other agencies were actually doing and that lack of coordination even within the ,ocalled smart power agencies not bringing the pentagon or intelligence agencies into the mix was enormously difficult and tightening up our game, and that seems like if we are going to be serious, if we are going to put our shoulder in, essential to do. KeySyrian Opposition is the focus of our report today. We have talked a bit about it. Theres a lot of understandable concern about if Congress Approves it, and we talked a little bit about the leahy amendment and other things. How do we actually are there can put some sort of constraint or safeguard against this going terribly wrong . When anybody brings this up and again, understandably, they say look what happened to the iraqillion in the security forces. You were part of the surge and a key part of that. How do you answer what i think is a very smart question an important, of are there ways that we can safeguard, that these weapons, especially looking at images the summer, of u. S. Supplied weapons in the hands of isis how do we actually you all are advocates, and i guess we are, too, here in a sense. How do we make sure there are things in place, based on your experience are there practical things that can be done to safeguard against these eapons ultimately . It will not be perfect, as you are saying, but are there things you can put in the play . There are never guarantees and the stings 100 . We would be deceiving ourselves. However, if we had not backed various factions throughout the world, we would never have won any kind of proxy war. In that sense, that is where the president is very right. Iranians are much better at fighting these proxy wars than we are. Our arab allies also do not have a quds force, and we have talked about this a number of times, which is funny because this would be a fortunate time to have one, not that i am advocating that. But what the u. S. Can do is work with allies in the region to be theate and not to quds force, but rather to coordinate the different agencies. I think in terms of from our side, particularly you know, training is one thing, and weapons are another, and this will be the real question what are the weapons that are provided to this force . Will they remain relatively light weapons, or will they go into something more significant . It comes down to antiaircraft weapons. At least that has been the major debate. It will might be the only one. Only one. Not be the i would urge people to realize that there are more than one kind of antiaircraft weapon. Theres more than one way to shoot down planes or shoot at isis or any kind of aircraft. It does not have to be stingers. There are lots of other ways you can do this. An intelligent discussion has to be had. I think the u. S. Government has looked into that significantly. Our regional allies will be providing some of the heavier weapons along the way, some of which will require our permission, and some of which will not, and we need to keep track of that. Weapons like money are fungible and ubiquitous. They are going to flow. Weapons are a form of cash and any type of ore zone. If we think we are going to give weapons to one group, no matter how wellintentioned and how moderate they might be, and that they are not going to flow across the range of groups involved in armed conflict, possibly including the people they are fighting against, we are just kidding ourselves. They are going to move. They are going to flow. Not to say that the bulk of them will not stay with the people we want them to, and that without give them a qualitative advantage. They may needr, more to continue to build their qualitative advantage, so they may use weapons as currency to indirect week build up what we want, even if that is certainly not the means we would have chosen. But we need to be eyes wide open about all the downsides of the proposals that we are making, the increasing humanitarian casualties, and the flow of weapons being two of the most notable up front. Have a couple of thoughts on that specific to syria and leakage. First, there is no perfect solution. A better way forward, it would be great, but this is i would say the least bad of a set of bad options. Working with Bashar Alassad. Robably being the worst by the way, ryan has changed his view on that. So that said, there are many places in syria where there are moderate, more or less secular armed opposition groups who are not coordinating right now. To the extent that we are leaking, thisarms is particularly true up in the north so that if we are concerned about stuff leaking i think that is the biggest risk right now we could start with them, but in order for that even need to we are going to have excellent information about what those groups are doing, so we will have to bureaucratically ramp up the effort to have that information. A lot of it is on youtube, but it is in arabic. Second, we have be very transparent with the syrian partners, that this stuff leaking for us could change everything. I think a lot of times, syrians read stuff into our intentions which is not exactly right. Because they have their own reality, and its not always where the washington political reality is. Sometimes, it is dramatically different. In addition to explaining, we will have to be agile and flexible. This group, if they are not dependable, the message will get out the quick among them. At the americans really are not serious about this. I take your point that you cannot fill up the zone immediately, but cash would be a good start to lower recruits away lure recruits because thats how they got them in the first place. That are steps we can take do not failsafe, but they can reduce the risk. As i said, its going to be a bumpy, turbulent ride. Hartline has worked in places line has worked in places like mali and iraq. With respect to the importance of civilians of money, with all the groups we talked with, even those based out of turkey, for them, money was an incredibly significant thing in terms of Building Momentum over time, that the ability to pay some element of a salary would be a thing that could perhaps build some of the greatest cohesion going there is the second part that if we minimize the leakage to bad guys well still have friends in the region that are contributing and so what to do about them . This has been a problem for years now in syria. So all i can say is, again, it must be transparent. I think this is one where the president himself is probably going to