Transcripts For CSPAN2 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20160729

We are going to go live to the u. S. Senate. The senators are holding a brief pro forma meeting. Live on cspan2. the presiding officer the senate will come to order. The presiding officer the clerk will read a communication to the senate. The clerk washington, d. C. , july 29, 2016. To the senate under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable johnny isakson, a senator from the state of georgia, to perform the duties of the chair. Signed orrin g. Hatch, president pro tempore. The presiding officer under the previous order, the Senate Stands adjourned until stands adjourned until this comes in light of recent reports now confirmed of nontravel related cases of the virus in miami, dade and brow wart counties in florida. Abc news reporting this morning it marks the first time the virus was found to be transmitted within infected mosquitoes in the u. S. The outbreak affected four people through local transmission, florida officials saying today. Watch that event with dr. Fauci live at 11 00 a. M. Eastern here on cspan2. The conventions may be over but candidates are still campaigning in full swing today. Hillary clinton and tim kaine will hold a rally as they begin a bus tour through pennsylvania as they kick off the postconvention campaign. That is live on cspan. Well follow that with viewers phone calls and reaction. Donald trump will hold a rally at wings over the rockies air and space museum in denver. That is tonight at 9 00 eastern also on cspan. Donald trump and Hillary Clinton made the republican and Democratic National convention as mustsee on tv. This weekend well show you many of the featured and most talked about speeches from cleveland and philadelphia, saturday night starting at 8 00 eastern, you will see democratic speeches by michelle obama, michael bloomberg, president obama, Chelsea Clinton and the acceptance speech by Hillary Clinton. Sunday morning at 10 30 eastern you will see republican speeches by rudy yule, donald and melania trump, tiffany trump, donald trump, jr. , ted cruz, eric trump, mike pence, peter thiel, and the acceptance speech by donald trump. That is this saturday at 8 00 eastern and sunday morning at 10 30 eastern on cspan, cspan radio app and cspan. Org. National review staff writer david french discussed what he called the fact and fictions on ongoing effort to combat isis. He spoke to College Students on at a an event hosted by the National Review institute. Hello, guys. Were going to get underway with our program this afternoon. Thank you so much for being here. Were just very happy to have you here. My name is nate mills and i am a campus outreach and programs officer at the National Review independence statute. Welcome to our talk today with National Review writer david french entitled, fact and fiction in fighting isis, hosted by the National Review institute. First i would like to give a quick note of thanks to congressman ted powes office for helping us book the venue with their generous help. Thank you very much. Many of you are probably familiar with National Review magazine. You may not be familiar with National Review institute. It is Nonprofit Educational Organization founded by william f. Buckley, jr. , in 1991. Nris mission is to preserve the legacy of william f. Buckley, jr. , promote conservative principles he championed throughout his lifetime an an compliment the Editorial Mission of National Review. Through nri policy fellows, Regional Partnership events and nri on campus and other national programs, the institute synthesizes the best thinking how to guard and build on our nations strengths and add vigor and Practical Application to our conservative convicts. Our event today is sponsored by nri on campus which is our program that partners with student organizations to bring National Review writers to College Campuses around the country. Providing opportunities for College Student to learn about the principles and ideas of a free society and empower them to stan forward with history. In our programs first year, nri on campus hosted 21 events on 19 campuses, four of which david french joins us for. To many students in the audience today, the event we are hosting is similar what we can bring to your campus this year. I encourage you to come speak with me after the event and one of our Staff Members and have our Promotional Materials from the dredge table. For those of us joining oust on cspan, visit us at nr institute. Org for more information about our organization and our programs. After davids talk today there will be time for questioning and answer. There is a note card on your seat there. Please write down your questions and make sure you send it to the outside of the room and our staff people will be there to take the cards and read questions out to david for the remaining time we have. Please note because National Review institute is a nonprofit organization, we will not be discussing any current political contests or any legislation. And now i have the pleasure of introducing our speaker today, david french. David is a staff writer at National Review, an attorney concentrating his practice on constitutional law and the law of Armed Conflict and a veteran of Operation Iraqi freedom. He is the author or coauthor of several books including most recently, number one New York Times bestseller, the rise of isis, a threat we cant ignore. He is graduate of harvard law school, past president of foundation for individual rights in education and a former lecturer at cornell law school. He has served as senior counsel for the American Center of law and justice and Alliance Defending freedom. He is former major in the United States army reserve. In 2007 he deployed to iraq serving in diala province as judge advocate for the second squadron, third armored calvary regiment where he was awarded brauns star. He lives and works in columbia, tennessee, with his wife nancy and three children. Please welcome david french. [applause] thank you very much. Given that this is a studentdominated event ive just been informed by one of our coordinators i need to begin with a trigger warning. So well be talking about issues of war, peace, religion, violent death and you will be exposed to male pattern baldness. If you have a problem of any of those, now would be the time to exit. No, im actually come here for a purpose, a little bit counterintuitive. It is to replace simplicity with complexity, and to replace clarity with confusion. If you leave today more puzzled than ever about what to do about isis and larger of issue of fighting radical islamic jihad, then i have done my job. So im going to do my job by going through a few simple things and youre going to see the pattern here pretty quickly, that i will call facts and fictions about fighting isis. Because if there is one thing that this town is not short of it is stronglyheld opinions and particularly when it comes to dealing with the threat of radical islam, opinions are extraordinarily strongly held. It is even strongly held opinions whether you should use the term radical islam to describe what we face when we face organizations like isis or al qaeda or boko haram, or any of the other enumerable radical islamic organizations. So, what i want to do, is separate fact from fiction in a way i think is a little bit unique. So lets go back to origin stories when we talk about fact and fiction. So lets begin with a fact. This might be come as a surprise from someone who writes for National Review, conservative, fact, george bush created isis. Hmmm. Why on earth would you say that . That sounds like something i would read in salon. Com or the Huffington Post but bear with me for a moment. There are some undeniable historical events occurred in 2003, 2004 and 2005 we have to grapple with. Historical event number one is obvious, an invasion iraq by americanled military forces. What is less discussed and often intentionally left discussed is that invasion was undertaken with a invasion force that was pressured, consistently pressured from senior officials in the pentagon to be smaller and smaller and smaller. Where there grew to be a real concern that the goal of the invasion wasnt so much to topple saddam and create stability in his wake but to prove a theory about military strategy and tactics, particularly what was called a rma, revolution in military affairs. You could do more with less than ever before. And the first six weeks or so of that invasion vindicated Donald Rumsfeld and vindicated the rma notion of the war in iraq. How so . American Armored Forces advanced farther and faster than any other armored force in the history of Armed Conflicts, penetrated into the heart of a great mideast capitol, toppled the government, literally toppling the statue of Saddam Hussein in late 2003, with casualties on both sides that were far less than the worst case estimate, far less. For about six weeks, seven weeks, eight weeks, nine weeks, three months it looked like one of the most brilliant military campaigns in history but there was reality out there that a lot of people were missing. A lot of people including me were missing. At that point i was celebrating a great military success. I was not in the military at that time. I supported iraq war. I believed in the goals and objectives the iraq war. To this day i still support the decision to invade iraq. To this day i support most of the goals and objectives of the initial invision. And i believe that a great victory had been won but for lack of a better term, there were a whole lot of people in iraq who were both regime hardliners and jihadists and sometimes the two were merged, who were sitting around in cafes, sitting around in their homes and villages going, nobodys fought me yet. I havent been subjugated. No one has taken this town. And what we did was a surgical removal of the head of a regime without dealing with the reality that there may in fact be a movement, a Resistance Movement that emerges from that decapitated regime and that emerges from larger historical and forces in the country. And so, yes, there was an individual there, a guy by the name who later became extremely famous, abu mass saab alzarqawi, a littleknown al qaeda cell leader which grew to formal died in iraq which grew to be the most fearsome organization in the world. In fact one of the most fearsome organizations that the world had seen in modern living memory. How did that happen . How did a terrorist Organization Grow so strong so fast when a nation was under American Military occupation . One of the reasons because our occupation footprint was in fact so light. Instead of 350,000 soldiers. We had 130,000 soldiers. Instead of, viewing our job as imposing stability, we allowed looters to run wild. Rather than creating continuity and leadership we impose ad program of debaathification and disbanded iraqi army, creating hundreds of thousands of unemployed militarytrained, militaryage males, who many of them later became insurgents. So when someone says to you, well, george bush created isis, there is a kernel of fact there. There is more than a kernel of fact there. Then of course that is oversimplified sentence. George bush never intended isis exist. George bush never intended that al qaeda in iraq grow so strong. I mention those two together because al qaeda in iraq is the precursor of isis. Al qaeda in iraq eventually became isis. They just had a name change. Let me move from fact to fiction. Heres a fiction. George bush created isis. All right, youre going to begin to see a pattern in my facts and fiction here. Fiction, george bush created isis. It is simply false to lay all of this at george bushs feet. Yes, there were strategic and military missteps that helped create the problem that we face today. But the problem that we face today predates george bush in some way, by some measures more than a thousand years. George bush is not responsible for the existence of a persistent jihadist universalist, expansionist strain within the islamic faith. That is not george bushs creation. It is not bill clintons creation. It is no american president s creation. In fact if you looked at, if you watched usama bin laden as he spoke after the fall of the twin towers in 2001, a awful lot of you guys were pretty young that occurred, so i doubt you were like surfing the web for bin laden speeches at that time. Let me fill you in on what happened. He gave a speech shortly after, released on videotape, more of an interview, describing what he did and why he did it. One of the things he listed as he was really ticked off about, really infuriating him, that really motivated him to take down the twin towers, the fate of a region called an today lucia. What is andalusia. That is spain and portugal under moorish, under muslim rule. He was upset, the reconquest of spain and portugal by christian forces. Reconquest created, or completed around 1492. And if you remember your history, 1492 is the year columbus sailed the ocean blue. That is how i remember that year, that rhyme from second grade. That wasnt americas fault. America did not take moorish spain from the muslim rulers. Yet we saw our twin towers fall in part because of the grievance dating back to 1492. So the notion that when it comes to this strain of islam, radical, jihadist, expansionist islam, that you can point to the United States and say whatever america does, there is going to be, for every action by america there will be an equal and opposite reaction and all that america has to do to live with peace with people, not act in ways that inflame jihadists. Well i have news for you. Jihadists are already inflamed. Theyre inflamed not by america but by their core fundamental belief system. Even see this more in recent history. I just said a name a lot of people would know which is alzarqawi. This is name a lot of you may not know. I dont even have it on instant recall. I had to regoogle it this morning. The name is mohamed basisi. A tunisia Street Vendor who set himself on fire in 2010. Many poem say that was the trigger for the arab spring, his protest, his suicidal protest was a trigger for the arab spring. He didnt set himself on fire because of george w. Bush. He set himself on fire protesting autocratic tunisian regime, which then ignited this arab spring which spread to syria. When it spread to syria, jihadists began to seize an opportunity they had there, to reform, to rebuild and to strike once again. Because you see the jihadists had been largely chased out of iraq by that time. So what is the overall less on here . The lesson here is twofold. One, if youre going to intervene militarily into the middle east, you had better be prepared for worstcase scenarios. You can not intervene in the middle east against a backdrop of idealism. The middle east is the place where idealism goes to die. Whatever bad you think the middle east is, it is usually worse. That is my rule of thumb. I try not to live in the world of simplicity when complexity is more truthful but here is simple truth. However bad you things are in the middle east, youre probably wrong. It is probably worse. So you have to be prepared for worst case scenarios. And you have to know history. You have to know history. Faulkner famously said of the south, the southern United States, that in the south, the past isnt even the past. Well that is a joke compared to the way the middle east views history. The past isnt even the past in the middle east if the past is 500 years ago, 600 years ago, 700 years ago. You have to understand the past. All right. Lets go to the next fiction. You cant defeat the enemy if you dont name the enemy. Okay. Who here, well, lets not do a show of hands. I assume you will all agree with me. I dont know about you but i am sick to death of every single time there is a terror attack, the following Public Exchange is the first thing that occurs. Say radical islam say it and then on the other side, you cant make me. What purpose does that serve . Look, im a conservative. I, it is no surprise that i disagree with barack obama time and time and time again on many of his decisions but i have to express that i have to admit there was a time recently when he was expressing exasperation over this very debate i was with him. Saying radical islam does not put a single other new marine in the field. Saying radical islam is not a military strategy. Just as the same not saying radical islam of course but weve gotten into this game, it has become a political game there is some magical power, both positive and negative to the words that you use. If you say radical islam, step one, to defeating the enemy is complete. If you dont say radical islam, well then, step one to preventing a cash of civilizations is complete. Well we have to realize is it is not so much the words that we use that matter, it is the tactics we choose to deploy. That is what really matters. Now, look, to he defeat the enemy, the name doesnt matter so much, but we do have to know the enemy. We have to know the enemy. Here is the word that i tend to use to describe the enemy, jihadist. I have dont say radical islam for a lot of reasons. I dont necessarily know that it is all that accurate in some parts of the world to call it radical islam. If youre dealing with some parts of the world where overwhelming majority of citizens support, for example, killing someone for a pot at that sy, stoning women to death because of adultery, throwing people from tops of buildings because they are gay, i dont know how radical that view is, it mainstream in some parts of the world. Remember what i said how bad you think the middle east is in some areas it is going to be worse. When you say radical islam i personally dont like the phrase because it cast some beliefs systems disturbingly mainstream as falsely fringe. That is one of my issues. I think jihadist is better term too, because it is in fact what theyre doing, theyre waging a form of jihad. When youre waging a form of jihad is a jihadist. So names dont dictate military strategy but we have to cleanse ourself of idealogical preferences when it comes to knowing the enemy, and understanding the enemys mine set. There is nothing magical about a name, unless, unless, youre unwillingness to sate name is unwillingness to face facts, unwillingness to seek knowledge about the enemy we confront. Fact you can not defeat the enemy if you dont name the enemy. Fiction, you cant defeat the enemy if you dont name the enemy. More precisely, you cant name the enemy if you dont know the enemy. One of the way you know the enemy and you describe the enemy accurately. One other point about this before i move on. Here is something we have to reckon with. Our worlds islam, do not really influence what the muslim world feels about islam. There are not a bunch of muslims in iraq thinking i wonder what secretary of state john kerry thinks about our faith. Completely irrelevant to them. Their imam down the street is far more influential than secretary of state john kerry or george w. Bush or president obama. Our National Leaders are not islamic theologians. All of their authoritativelily expressed declarations about what islam is or is not are largely irrelevant, largely irrelevant. Now, why did i say largely . I said largely because it is a fact that we do have allies who will ask our leaders to not use certain terms and not use certain language because it will help them in their efforts in their region and in their circles and in their alliances to build coalitions amongst frag still and competing constituencies. In that circumstance i respect decisions to comply with allies wishes. Language use at that point to me become as matter of tactics. It is a matter of strategy. As long as it is not betraying ignorance or wishful thinking. All right. Next, fact. Killing terrorists just makes more martyrs . Okay, now this is something you will hear a lot, particularly from people who say, America Needs to withdraw from the middle east. America needs to pull back from the middle east. Were inflaming terrorism because all that killing terrorists does is make more martyrs. There is a lot of truth to that, with this caveat. If your military strategy is something along the lines of what i would call terrorist whackamole, then, yes, what youre going to be doing is inflicting just enough losses to make the enemy really angry, and not enough losses to impact the enemys course of operations, conduct, tactics, strategy, or motivation. In fact you may just inflame their motivation. So there is a level of losses in fact that are quite tolerable to jihadists, and quite useful ultimately from a propaganda standpoint. If your level of losses includes, is both tolerable from military standpoint and also includes civilian casualties along with that, gives terrorists the ability to say americans are killing civilians, killing women and children, then, yes, indeed your military campaign is going to simply make more martyrs without putting a dent in the capabilities of the terrorists. In fact may enhance the capabilities of the terrorists because it enhances their ability to recruit. So, if youre a military strategy is to your military strategy is terrorist whackamole, cruising the skies, looking for target of opportunity when it presents itself, vetting that target of opportunity through 19 layers of lawyers and striking, i say that as military lawyer with shoot, dont shoot type decisions that military strategy will be largely ineffective from military standpoint actually may have a propaganda value for the enemy. It is a fact killing terrorists makes more martyrs. You know the drill now. Here is the fiction. Killing terrorists just makes more martyrs. Now, if, if, your military strategy is one that is designed to implement maximum losses upon the enemy to the point where the enemy reaches its breaking point, then killing terrorists does not merely create more martyrs. Killing terrorists deters the martyrcreation process. It is terrorists are human beings. Jihadists are human beings. They have different value civil from you and i and different motivations from you and i but they are human beings. They have breaking points. Collections and organizations of human beings have breaking points. Every army that ever existed, every military force that ever existed in the history of mankind has a breaking point. There is a point that you can inflict losses to dee dee private the enemy hope that the enemy loses motivation and loses the ability to recruit. During the surge in iraq between 2006 and late 2008, the United States of america pushed al qaeda in iraq, the precursor of isis to the breaking point. I know it, because i was there. I flew into diala province of iraq in november of 2007. To set the stage for what was going on in diala at that time, this is point where the surge was well underway. Enormous progress had been made at Anbar Province in the west. Progress had been made in baghdad. So al qaeda in iraq was doing what you would call, sort of a last stand in Northern Iraq and eastern iraq. Northern iraq in mosul, which isis holds now. Eastern iraq in did diala. It was one of the first places al qaeda in iraq began to transition to be a caliphate. They called themselves the islamic caliphate of iraq. Its capital was baqubah, which is 60 or 70 kilometers from my Forward Operating base caldwell. We flew into diala province, when we flew in there it was enemy held territory. We had caffrey squadron and 800 guys. We were replacing a platoon from the 101st Airborne Division or a company from the 101st Airborne Division. We were rapidly ramping up the force. We began in thanksgiving 2007 and deep into the summer of 2008 an incredibly hard, painful, costly campaign to retake that ground. I believe we had daily enemy contact, daily or near daily from november until july of that year. Hundreds of encounters with the enemy. We lost men. We lost friends of mine. It was hard. It was horrible. But we broke the enemy. We broke them. When i arrived, if you rolled out of the gate, if you left the front gate of our base, there was a one in four chance, a 25 chance that you would be struck by an ied, you would be ambushed, there would be some form of enemy contact. It scattered around the country. That was it. We did not do it just by winning hearts and minds. We did not do it by handing out candy. We had fired more around, more tillery rounds in those couple months of most intense combat than any other battery in the regimen since the vietnam war. We went house to house. We went doortodoor. We took villages, we had 36 hour firefights. We collected unacceptable losses on the enemy while preserving civilian life at the same time. In that circumstance, it is fiction, it was fiction that killing terrorists made more partners. We pushed them to the breaking point. We deprive them of their safe haven. They had nowhere to run for they had nowhere to hide. This was not terrorist whack a mole, this was taking and holding ground. We flew in to operating base caldwell because the enemy held the ground. In september 2008 when the squadron left, they drove out. Why did we drive out . We held the ground at that point. Yes, terrorist whack a mole is going to create more martyrs. A strategy that brings them to their breaking point, that is going to stop the enemy. Okay this gets to the brass tacks of a lot of our discussion and arguments over the past decade plus. No nation building well i would say that is a factual statement that nationbuilding is destructive and foolish if youre trying to replace afghanistan in its government with a slightly more violent form of nebraska. Thats just not going to happen. There are too many ancient grievances, too many tribal differences for that to occur. Im going to confess, i arrived in iraq in oh seven and absolutely dedicated, and i hate this term but im going to use it for purposes, neoconservative nationbuilding freedom agenda George W Bush acolyte. Thats how i landed in a rack in 07. We didnt talk politics that much but the guys had been to iraq before, their Immediate Response was oh, youre 11 of those guys. Just wait. We building schools . Are we liberating women from the oppression, and i just go on and on. Just wait. We notice something two or three months and that when the argument was that freedom beats in every human heart, wrong. There are human hearts that beat with the desire and motivation by the desire and the thirst and hunger for vengeance and power. When you lift the old ruler, there isnt so much a competition to say hey, lets see who can educate the most children and create the most small businesses, lift the old strongman off and there is a race to become the next strongman or to define the strong force is going to be an ride that horse. That may be the safest course for you and your family. I realized very quickly that i was idealistic, a little bit too idealistic and i had to get hit in the head by reality again and again and again. There are a lot of people who looked at that and they say that means its either go in and out or you just dont go in at all. Ive heard theres a favorite phrase a lot of people who comment on my articles, not that i like to quote common trolls, but this one i like. I think it betrays a mind set that people have and thats that rebel causes trouble and we should go in and bombed the heck out of these people and dont worry about nationbuilding and they will learn eventually if you bomb them enough. No, no, the opposite of nation building isnt carpet bombing. What i began to understand with this is if your focus is on creating democracy and youre wanting to fastforward that, you are probably going to fail. Not just probably going to fail, some of the brightest minds in the government, left and right, liberals and conservatives, every mindset you can imagine have tried to do it in iraq and afghanistan and why. Youre probably almost certainly going to fail. If your goal is stability and creating allies, thats a more attainable goal. It isnt the case that you can just go in and say the options are democracy or chaos. There is Something Else called stability. Our military action should be undertaken with the goal of not just defeating and deterring our enemies but creating stability. Sometimes that means staying around longer than you would like. Sometimes that means staying around even in circumstances that are less than democratic. The korean war was fought far more costly and deadly than the iraq war and we stayed and we stayed around a government that frankly wasnt all that enlightened but it was better than the north korean government. It was also an ally. Over time, that south korean government changed to the point now where south korea today is completely on recognizable from the south korea of 1953 or 1954 or 1955. What we tried to do is walk into iraq, press the fastforward button and see if we could go from south korea, something worse than south korea 1953, to something kind of like south korea in 2003 in one year. We began to panic and said nationbuilding doesnt work. Maybe our goals were the problem maybe our understanding of the problem is the problem. Lets not think in terms of nationbuilding but lets think in terms of stability. What does this teen . I was trying to think of a good acronym, some of you might know i spent seven days think about whether or not to run for president. I didnt. It was a great decision. You know, this would be a policy that i would prefer it would look like. I dont think its an electric electric electoral winner, but ill open this up to four elements. Permanent, realizing our war with radical islam and jihadists is not something that will be won or lost anytime soon or within a definite time horizon because its a war with the mindset and ideology that has existed for more than 100 years. Aggressive. Youre youre not going to sit and wait to be attacked. Not going to allow the enemy to build safe havens and maintain safe havens overseas because if theres one thing that we do know beyond a shadow of a doubt, if if you give them time, space and resources they will strike. Al qaeda had time, space and resources in afghanistan. It almost, you cannot wait. Permanent, aggressive, flexible, each nation each culture, each nation is different. They all have their own unique characteristic. What worked in iraq didnt necessarily translate to the surge in afghanistan. Different nations different cultures, different strategic strategic situations. In iraq, the terrorist did not have crossborder safe havens to the extent that terrorists in afghanistan did. They essentially take a vacation to the fight by going to afghanistan. It allows them to rest and rearm and recruit and retrain and go back into the fight when they wanted to. Insurgencies arent impossible to defeat but an insurgency that has a safe haven is extraordinarily difficult to defeat. Permanent, aggressive, flexible. You have to understand the unique challenge of each situation. Selfdefense the goal cannot be to remake the middle east. It cannot be to reform islam. They dont care what americans think about islam. Were not going to reform islam. Were not going to remake middle eastern culture. Our goal has to be to defend ourselves. It has to know and understand throughout the process that under no part of the formula or equation can include aggression against the United States or its vital interests. No part of it. They have to work out their issues understanding that we will not be victimized and we will be very, very aggressive in defending our territorial integrity, our way of life and our core allies. Permanent, aggressive, flexible selfdefense. I believe that is the way forward. Its not its not necessarily a popular way forward but he couldnt go to the American People, candidates cant go to the American People and say i promise we will have our victory parade by september 2019. I promise it will only cost this month. I promise it will cost this many lives. You can only say that i promise to defend our nation against its enemies and go into that defense against her enemies understanding who they are, understanding our limitations and our own capabilities. I think that has been lacking in much of our Foreign Policy across to administrations over the past 14 or 15 years since 911. With that i am happy to take questions. [applause] the way we will do questions as if you have a note card you can send it to the end it will have someone pick it up and we will try to get your question. We will give about 15 minutes for questions. If you have to go thats quite all right. The first question is, when you talk about killing terrorists and making more martyrs and the increased military level and pushing terrorist to the breaking point, that addresses the targetable isis in the middle east, but how do you combat the transnational ideology with military . Thats a great question. How do you combat that ideology. Our ability is readied are limited. Its not like we control, hold, own, influence the Media Outlets for the people who influenced jihadists were potential jihadists. We dont have a great megaphone there. I will tell you one thing that does speak loudly and one thing we absolutely have to understand about the jihad mindset, victory is self validating in their mindset. Defeat rebuts it. You cannot overestimate the extent to which that ideology is laced in really a religious belief system that believes allah will grant them victory. When isis sweeps through the middle east, thats validating their religious approach. Its validating their religious beliefs. When boko haram takes large chunks of nigeria its validating their belief. They believe god is granting them victory. So when you defeat them, when you you defeat them that is a theological argument. Its an argument that they are wrong, that theyre not being granted victory and when you understand that a lot of the motivation for people who are joining isis is that they want to be a part of the winning side, they want to be a part of the strong force. There was a great book about the strongest tribe and its taken with an exchange he had in the anbar awakening. He said essentially they were asking why did he switch side. That the marines of the strongest tribe tribe. If your theology is built on victory and strength, what rebuts that . Thats one thing we have to understand when summary says you dont want to fight isis, because thats exactly what isis wants, isis wants it because they think theyre going to win. I wrote an article after the paris attacks and i said its time to give them the apocalypse it craves because it wants to encounter western military forces. It wants to. It doesnt really. If it does encounter military forces than the full force, we already know what will happen because we saw what happened in the search. We saw that al qaeda and iraq was not just defeated but largely amongst the people discredited. It was not the strong force anymore. When youre talking about jihad, there is an argument that you can make, a theological argument, and its called defeating them. On the larger issue of what about the larger number of people might be sympathetic to the jihad message, thats a lot tougher nut to crack. Thats talking about influencing people when we dont have ready means to influence them. We dont have a ready ability to influence them. So if you have them id love to hear them. They dont care about what the president of the United States says about islam or the secretary of state or celebrities but they dont care in the lease. Their influencers are not the same people who are our influencers. So we dont have a great way, in the west of influencing those who are potential jihad. Thank you. Our next question is what are some practical ways for the state of iraq today that we could perhaps create stability. Its a little bit more attainable than people think. You have to retake muzzle. Its one of the three largest cities in iraq. It provides a home and safe haven for isis to essentially create a vast propaganda mill. They are generating and educating children and those large sectors of iraq and syria and that should chill you to the bone. You have to take them. The Obama Administration recognizes this. I think of most everyone recognizes this whos given it any thought at all with the possible exception of a reality tv star. I dont talk politics, i just talked to be celebritys. So. So, there is an absolute need to retake them. You have to limit iranian influence. If iran becomes a satellite, if iraq becomes a satellite of a rant, they will use them as an instrument of destabilization. It will use use it. Iraq will be a weapon of iranian regime. You have to limit iranian influence. Then you have to go back a little bit to square one. You have to put more americans back on the ground in iraq and the people who stand beside the generals. When the generals want to get all sectarian when the Prime Minister and the leaders want to begin to use the powers of government as a weapon of vengeance and exploitation, there has to be a check on that. We had a check on that, it wasnt a perfect check, but we have to try to recreate it as much as possible. Its a long road and a hard road but is not impossible. There is still a colonel, a seed of stability left there. There has to be an enduring settlement with the kurds in this uni in a way that they can live together yet separately at the same time. We were heading in that direction in 2009 and 2010. No longer. I think the last question is related to your comment. You said we supported the south korean during the korean war and they proceeded to democratize over time. In the state of the middle east, is there a parallel to south korea, a group thats more moderate that maybe we can make and roads with . Its not all unrelentingly bleak. We have supported government of jordan which for all of its flaws has in fact been a good ally. We have long supported the kurds. It has not been all as robust as i would like to has been relatively steady going all the way back to the first gulf war. Its been four administrations, george w. W. Bush, bill clinton, george hw bush, and now barack obama. There has been more or less support for the kurds and the kurds have over time, the nature of their own selfgovernance has changed. They have been allies in many way. The jordanians in the kurds, i refuse to use the name saudi arabia in this context. I think we have been dancing with that devil for a very long time. There are defensible strategic reasons why those have been made, i dont agree with many of them but its a challenging region, its hard to find friends but with saudi arabia, i think its often just a bridge too far. There could be more examples but not many more. I think the current egyptian regime actually has quite a bit of potential to be an ally of the u. S. And antitear effort, but right now the relations between egypt and the Current Administration are extraordinarily strained for lots of obvious reasons. Thank you. What does turkeys reason or how does it play into the future of middle east in your opinion . I dont know. Look, turkey is an interesting beast. They recently reached a bit of a reconciliation with israel prior to the two and at the same time the regime has been sliding through authoritarian is him. The nation is a hotbed of anti american conspiracy theories and antiamerican thinking. It it has one of the largest militaries in the world and its in the middle of a purge in a crackdown. I think anyone who can say for sure whats going to happen in turkey, either theyre a turkey expert unlike anything else ive ever seen or they are just shooting from the hip at this point. Its its in a state of flux. Its a dangerous situation. I could just sum up the whole middle east. Its just dangerous. You mentioned understanding jihad and knowing their mindset is important. How do we understand that when there are very few troops and no journalistic presence because of the dangerous conditions . How do we actually know whats going on in the ground in the region . Thats a great question. The lack of a strong american presence on the ground has been a problem, the lack of a strong american presence speaking truth to the American Public about the middle east has been a problem for really long time even when we had 150,000 troops on the ground in iraq. Even only had 150 troops on the ground in afghanistan. When we are the middle of a war zone, it is incredibly difficult to do real journalism. The kind of deep dive that people can do here in the u. S. Where say you want to explore the problems of the inner city in the United States, journalist can go anywhere in the United States and it might be a little more dangerous from one neighborhood to the other but they are going to talk to real people, they talk to community leaders, they, they can talk to all sides of the discussion. Theyre going to be able to report on the issue. When i was there, one my subtasks as soon as my Squadron Commander found out that i had experience dealing with the media and some of my Political Activities back home in the u. S. , he assigned me to babysit our in vets. Once every three months we would have an embedded reporter come out and i would go out with the reporter and follow them around just to make sure our guys went saying stupid stuff, which which of course they were always saying stupid stuff. Its like 22yearold guys and especially with a female reporter they hadnt seen a western woman in three months and they all competed to impress her. It was an interesting experience because the reporter could only see what we allowed her to see as she could only go where we provided the security for her to go. Its not like she could say im in a head out to this al qaeda held territory and talk to the Al Qaeda Leaders and get their views on whats going on and come back and have this great story for the los angeles times. No. It couldnt happen. Thats a great way to die if youre going to do that. So i do think we do have an untapped resource that is, we have an awful lot of american men and women who have spent years on the ground in iraq and afghanistan. The reality that most of our vets is that they are not all that political. They dont get into the political debates in the clinical arguments that much but they do know when they have spent far more time having tea with villagers, sometimes getting to know translators better than members of their own family, living in and around its imperfect but they do no more than many journalists about the middle east. Their voice is largely absent and silent. The United States. I wrote a piece some time ago that said one of the reasons, in spite of the fact that our National Leaders, republican and democrat have been extolling the virtues of islam get americans have a negative view of islam overall, part of of that influence is that there have been well over a million americans who have gone there, live there on the ground and come back from the zones and described what theyve seen about family relationships. How children are treated, the value of violence in the value of human life. That has colored american perception. We do have a largely untapped resource and those are Service Members who have spent sometimes years on the ground in iraq and it in a stand but, youre right, there is there is no easy way to correct the problem of the lack of Good Journalism reporting. I think thats all my time. I appreciate you coming out and i will hang out after words if you have some questions. Thank you very much. Mac. [applause] [inaudible] [inaudible conversation] book tv on cspan two, 48 hours hours of nonfiction books and authors every weekend. Here are some featured programs this weekend. On saturday at noon eastern, the 18th annual harlem book fair. Its the largest africanamerican book fair in the nations premier black literary event held every year in harlem. Our coverage includes black riders in the state of literature, diversity and book publishing, Panel Discussion and the book democracy in black, how race still enslaves the american soul. At ten pm eastern saturday, after words eric fair, author of, author of consequence talks about his experience as an interrogator at the prison in iraq. Hes interviewed by the director of National Security advocacy for humans rights. The image of a number of men chained to their cell doors with their hands down between their legs which was essentially forced standing which was an enhanced technique. Donald rumsfeld at one point said he stands at his desk all day. I can tell you that seeing someone in a forced standing position has nothing to do with standing at a desk. It was torture. On sunday night at 10 00 p. M. Eastern, strained relationship during world war ii is the subject of nigel hamiltons book commander in chief. It the military and tactical frustrations between president Franklin D Roosevelt and winston churchill. Go to book tv. Org for the complete can schedule. We are live this morning to hear from the National Institute of allergy and Infectious Diseases for conversation on the zika virus. This happens on a day where drug centers were ordered to stop taking blood collections from Miamidade County in florida until they can screen for the virus. This should start in just a moment. Good morning everyone. Took him to the bipartisan policy center. Thank you to our audience and thank you for everyone joining us on cspan for taking part of our discussion about the zika virus. Im director of the National Security program here. You might be asking yourself why should we be introducing about the cup. While it started about two years ago when we were approached by two lines of the senate and two of the long time senators out of concern of the one thing they were proudest about achieving during their political careers might not be replicable today and that was the bipartisan support for the creation of the presence emergency plan for aids relief back in 2003. Senators daschle were pleased that bipartisanship was made possible and there was much less interest among the public and politicians in the plate and suffering of people around the world and that when Global Engagement is discussed today there always seems to be only a binary option. Military intervention or nothing at all. The senators challenged us to make a case for similar programs for todays environment. The result, working with the two senators was a study we released last year introducing a concept we call Strategic Health diplomacy. Looking at the impact we found that beyond improving peoples health, it also had key second order effects on public opinion, social and Economic Development and state stability, all all of which in turn contribute to National Security. Some fundamental ideas is that a healthier population create more stable societies which in turn create a more peaceful world. By doing good the United States does well, that the Global Health and National Security communities can accomplish munch by working together. So last november, we released our findings and report on the case for strategic help the policy. We are honored to have him attend and discuss the report and were honored to have him here today to talk about the u. S. Response to zika which could be another case for Strategic Health diplomacy. He is the government preeminent scientist for the last three years in a national treasure. He has served as the director for the National Institute of allergy and Infectious Disease since 1984. There he oversees an Extensive Research portfolio to prevent, diagnose and treat Infectious Diseases and emerging diseases. He has advised five president s on hivaids and other domestic and Global Health issues and was also one of the principal architects. He will deliver a timely and informative presentation today about the state of the zika pandemic and how the United States is responding. Following the presentation, we will have a moderated discussion between the doctors, who previously spent a decade at the department of health and Human Services including the Deputy Assistant of health and a special assistant to the science advisor on Public Health and emergency preparedness. Will then open it up to the audience for questions so with that, let me encourage everyone to go to bipartisan policy. Org to check out the report and invite dr. Up for his presentation. Thank you. Thank you very much. Its great pleasure to be here with you this morning to talk about what i dont think i need to convince you is really a very timely topic about something i have described which is a pandemic in process and that has not made up because if you look at what happened over the last several months to last month and, this is indeed a pandemic in process. I became very interested in this very early on when we started to see, the fact that we were seeing the confections in the americas, namely in south america predominantly, i wrote a paper early on in the beginning of this process for the journal of medicine and as you can see from the title, ive called it yet another threat. The point i wanted to make and put into general contacts, because were all focusing on one disease right now is that over the last several years, we have seen in the americas things that we have not seen before. Viruses that are transmitted by mosquitoes and in this case mosquito in question is a mosquito that is very much in the area that we are. If you look at whats happened over the year, all these viruses weve seen west nile, and others and now we see zika. This is a process of emerging and reemerging Infectious Diseases which happens all the time. Sometimes its the blip on somebodys radar screen but sometimes its a very important Public Health problem that not only attracts the attention of but impacts us globally. With that as a background, i want to talk a little bit about each of the four bullets shown on this slide to give you an idea of where we are and where we might be going on this. Well start off with a discussion on the background of zika. By this time, given the attention by the press, theres probably a lot known about zika but for those of you who have not followed this very carefully, let me make a few points that i think will help with this into perspective. As i mentioned at the virus, its a single single strand rna virus. The important thing is the second bullet. The reason i say that, because its very similar to viruses that we have a lot of experience with that. The reason i bring it up to, it isnt this strange virus like hiv that came out of nowhere we never had experience with it. Weve had experience with yellow fever and we have a good vaccine against him. West nile, japanese encephalitis. The bad news is its here. The good news is weve done things with viruses like that including making vaccines. Its transmitted by a mosquito, a particular type called 80s. Theres a couple types that will get into in the beginning. What about history. One of the things that reporters have asked from the beginning, when did this all start. You say well it was first isolated in 1947. Then the next question is why were you not prepared for that because in 1947 this was an inconsequential infection. It was discovered in the zika forward of uganda hence the word zika virus. It was first infecting and nonhuman primate the monkey and it was not until 1952 when the first human cases were reported in nigeria. It went under the radar screen and occasional case seen in africa and southeast asia. No major outbreaks that were recorded, were there many outbreaks that we missed in Subsaharan Africa and asia, possibly but no recorded big outbreaks until the outeak on the islands in the state of micronesia in 2007 andhen in French Polynesia in 2013. This next slide is a very revealing mask about the concept of emerging Infectious Diseases. If you take a look at what this is, this is an epidemiologist dream but i dont want to say that because that means its a disease that makes you feel good. Its a big red flag, the things you teach in test textbooks of Public Health. You can see how it worked its way, and look at the dates on the slide, across the pacific and went from the islands to French Polynesia until it finally landed any place that have the right ingredients for a major breakout. A big country, crowded in certain sections, plenty of mosquitoes, tropical or semi tropical. Unfortunately they never had any experience with zika before. It was a completely unprotected population. The perfect ingredient, the perfect storm for an outbreak. Now before we go any further, what about zika as a disease . This is the thing that tends to confuse people because just look at it in a vacuum, to someone who is a healthy 25 for 30yearold man, what happens when you get but by a mosquito. It generally is a mild, and for many years seemingly inconsequential disease. 80 of people get no symptoms. The 20 that do get relatively mild symptoms. Fever, joint and muscle ache, a rash thats in a high percentage, redeye and it usually goes away in 7 10 days and youre done. Thats it. Thats the reason why there wasnt any attention paid to that. We will get back to something you are all aware of as to why we are suddenly paying attention to this. Lets take a look at the mode of transmission shown on the slide. The overwhelmingly major modality of transmission is by a mosquito bite. Similar to other mosquito borne diseases. Im infected, a mosquito bites me, me, flies around for a couple days and then if im infected there is a chance, not 100 chance but a chance but a chance that you will get infected. Mosquitoes are terrible beasts because i show you this is somewhat tongueincheek, but not really. It is probably the worlds deadliest animal because if you look at the number of deaths per year resulting from an animal, 725,000 deaths per year due to a mosquito, if if you go all the way to the righthand side slide there are ten deaths a year from sharks which means for every person a shark kills mosquitoes kill 72500 people. Theyre really rather nasty animals in our environment. The two major types of mosquitoes that are capable of transmitting are these 80s friday. For the purpose of this lecture but also when you read about things and report about things these mosquitoes are the major vector. Even in the environment where there are these varieties, this is the major billion. Not the exclusive villain but the major villain. How do we address this . We address it with Mosquito Control. I will get back to this in a bit thats the thing that we have right now in our hands that we can do something about. We are working on a vaccine. Ill get to that in a moment but things like larva sides and insecticide remove standing water, the mosquito is a very resilient mosquito. Standing water. It has doesnt have to be in a big pool. Even larva by catching have been seen in water. This is really something that is very difficult to clear up the environment. Screens and air conditioning, they bite day, night, indoor, outdoor and thats why have to keep them out of the house and make sure screens are in good repair. Thats what we are trying to do with the cdc help importer rico and other places. Proper clothing and insect repellent. Particularly deep up to 30 . We we need to get over thinking that insect repellent is toxic to us. Its not. Deet is not even toxic to a pregnant woman which we will get to in a moment. What about transmission. Obviously its transmitted from a mother in utero into the baby. We know that for the terribly tragic situation we have seen which started off in brazil but its in other countries of babies who now have severe abnormalities in the now very recognizable because of multiple pictures we see in the media of a baby with microcephaly. We will get back to that in a bit. Sexual transmission. This is an evolving thing. I said an epidemic in process. This is what we mean. When you see enough cases, if you have ten cases and something occurs once every 5000 times, youre going to miss it. When you have tens and hundreds of thousands of cases, you start to see oddities but may be more common than you think. Right now its no doubt that it is transmitted sexually, predominantly from a man to a woman. We thought it was only a man to a woman because you were able, over many, many days following recovery of infection that zika virus was found and isolated from the semen. In most circumstances, you bit seven or ten days later and you clear the virus in your good. Except in manic can stay in their system for a long. Of time. The longest documented as 80 days. Thats what we will get to in the moment the idea of guidelines for sexual transmission. We will get back to that in a minute. Then we found well, it isnt only from a man to a woman but in rare occasions there is a transmission from a woman to a man that has been well documented now in new york city. We dont see a lot of that but thats the reason why you have to Pay Attention and carefully follow to make sure you pick up the rarities, the outliers, the oddities. Blood transfusion, this has become relevant as of last night because some of you may have read what has gone on in florida and i will get back to that in a moment. Clearly if someone has active by rea it can be transmitted by blood supply. We know that because there was a blood screening which is going on a lot now but blood screening back then, 3 of blood donors in the French Polynesian outbreak were asymptomatic at the time they gave blood. It may be there were many more in the population that were able to show they were demonstrating zika. Then there are others. So, what others . Outliers that we Pay Attention to. Youve heard about a lab worker in pittsburgh accidentally was infected with it. That happens all the time. That is one of the things that happened to me in the past. Not with the cup but you get stuck with things that get you into difficulty. The son of a utah man, there was one case of an elderly man in utah who was very ill and had the highest level of virus that weve ever seen. 100,000 times higher than anything else weve ever seen. Why that why that happened with this man, we dont know. It happened that his son, purposely healthy young man took care of his father, the father died he had exposure to body fluid. The sun got infected. We dont see that a lot. We dont want people to be fixating on transmission from one person to another because we have hundreds of thousands of situations where people came into direct contact with people with zika and there was no transmissibility at all. We dont want to make one case as the defining aspect, but we do want to Pay Attention to it. Lets move on quickly. What about the current outbreak in the caribbean and latin america minus puerto rico . We will get back to puerto rico in a minute. Right now there are over 50 countries and territories with active zika virus transmission. 422 of them are in the americas. Often you see whats going on in african america and asia, this is our backyard. Now if you look here, people who are living in areas that are environmentally suitable for zika transmission. What do i mean by that. I mean they have mosquitoes that are in robust enough populations that they could be transmitting. There are 300 million People Living in that area. About 5. 4 million of them would be pregnant in that there are that many births that occur in this area. Now lets get to the gene change of zika. Why it went in the perception historically of an insignificant, inconsequential disease to something that is causing a justifiable considerable amount of concern. That is the increase that was seen in microcephaly in brazil and now in other countries in south america as well. It was a remarkable increase as shown by the bar. Use almost nothing in the Previous Year background and then all of a sudden this. This is a picture of a scan of a normal baby next to a baby with microcephaly. Microcephaly, in its classic form is an interference with the development of the brain. The brain develops in the fetus over the first 18 or 20 weeks it starts to develop and then when the brain develops and pushes up the skull and gives the skull a nice smooth correct size contour if you interfere with it, the brain does not push the skull up and you have a small head hence you see the pictures of the babies in the newspaper with microcephaly. The virus can also directly attack brain tissue and sometimes the brain starts to develop normally and then you get destruction of the brain and it collapses. That is some of the pictures you see of the folds of skin on the babys head that we see sometimes on front pages of various newspapers. What is the incidence of this . We dont know. We are doing a major study that will take a couple of years funded out of nih. We will look at pregnant women but a study that was done by the cdc showed that of women who are infected in the first trimester, there is a 1 13 chance that the baby will have microcephaly. Remember, microcephaly is the tip of the iceberg. Thats a macroscopically, grossly visible abnormality. What you also have our other things that may not present as microcephaly. Hearing loss, visual abnormalities, joint involvement, i have hundreds of pictures of these. I just wanted to show you one that isnt the classic peer to few look at the babies hands curled up like that, that is joint involvement that is a developmental abnormality abnormality. Thats the baby. Now if youre not pregnant and you dont get infected, is there any other danger to you . The answer is yes, but it is really, really rare. For example, a postinfection neurological symptoms characterized by paralysis which is usually reversible, we have seen it after influenza and after some vaccinations, weve seen it after bacterial infection, we know from studies that are ongoing now that there is an association in people who have been infected with zika. The latest calculation was 24 per 100,000. Its a rare event but its not zero so i cant say that if you get infected with zika you have absolutely nothing to worry about. No. The chances are over whelming that if youre not pregnant you could have a very mild disease but there are risks for other complications. Lets take a look at zika in the United States. United states, im including as a territory first puerto rico because puerto rico today, as i speak is having a serious problem. There is a major outbreak of all thing in puerto. The last reports from the cdc where that there is 1 of the population per week that are getting infected. The reason why we are concerned about puerto rico, because the mosquito that transmits zika is the same as the mosquito that transmitted chicken good yeah. If you turn the clock back and you look historically back in 2014 when that disease hit with a storm in puerto rico, take a look at the map going from may 5 through june 4 through july 4 through august 12. The red coloring are the regions in puerto rico that have cases. At the end of the outbreak, 25 of the population of puerto rico got infected. That shows us that unless there is very, very aggressive mosquito abatement, and even if there is good mosquito abatement, a lot of people in puerto rico are going to get infected with the cup. Now, lets lets take a look at the continental United States. The potential for imported cases , i didnt realize the numbers were as dramatic as these numbers are. In any given year, over 200 million passengers take journeys from the United States to and from regions that have zika transmission. 34 million by air, air, 173 by land, just people going over the border and 9 million by sea. Thats one ingredient for a possible situation. The other is that we have, and these are the maps shaded in blue and gray concentrating on the one on the left, because thats the more relevant one. The minute quito is seen very clearly along the southern part, particularly particularly the gulf state which is why we know historically when there was local transmission of the diseases, hardly anybody paid attention to it but it happened in florida and it happened in texas. Very aggressive Mosquito Control prevented the local transmission of those two infections from becoming disseminated. I bet nobody remembers reading major stories about genki in florida or in texas, but it happened. How do you get local transmission . When you get local transmission, if you first understand what travel related means. Travel related means somebody either is here in the United States, goes to a region of Central America or puerto rico, gets infected, there on business, they come back home and when they get home, they get sick. They get sick in the United States continental but they really got infected someplace else. Or, they got infected someplace else and they moved to the United States. Thats a travel related case. A local transmitted case is if i am sitting here in washington d. C. , never having left continental United States and theres a travel related case that comes, bites that person and then bites me and i get infected, im a local transmission. Its not travel related. Lets take a look at the numbers. The latest is that almost 1700 travel related cases in the United States. Several hundred of them are in florida. Thats travel related. In the United States territories, specifically Puerto Puerto rico there are over 4500 cases, most of them not travel. Most of them actually occurred in puerto rico. If you look at the number of women who are pregnant, who have been infected during pregnancy, almost exclusively from travel related, there are 443 pregnancies among women who have been infected with zika. Whats going to happen to them is going to be followed very closely. Now, what has happened . Some of of you have heard me in the press saying when the accumulation of travel related cases are current, i was saying sooner or later its almost inevitable that we are going to see local transmission of zika because we have the mosquito, its summer and we have a lot of travel related cases. Sure enough, miami has reported first a travel related case. Soon thereafter, within a day or week or so, as of yesterday and in this mornings press discussion, the department of health in florida and confirmed by the governor has said they are now investigating for possible non travel related cases, mainly cases that are locally transmitted. I can tell you right here today, im almost certain that we are going to see more. The critical issue is how do you respond to that . If you go back in history and look at how we responded to other diseases, very aggressive mosquito abatement will prevent it, we hope and i think we will from becoming sustained and from becoming disseminated. We know its local, we just want to make sure it doesnt spread. Since it spreads by mosquitoes, we certainly want to make sure that the situation that we pursue in controlling mosquitoes let me close up and obviously we will have a lot of questions coming up. Ill tell you a little bit about the role of research and development and the kind of things that we have done here to want to tip my hat to the cdc because im not talking about what they do. The part partnership is between multiple agencies, the cdc is doing an extraordinary job in trying to help state and local authorities as well as internationally in Mosquito Control and Public Health measures. They need the support that we hope to get very soon, the same same way the nih needs the support to do what we do which is fundamentally research, mainly understand the virus, understand how it works, why does it cause the effects . Importantly, developing what we call countermeasures, vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, etc. I want to, et cetera. I want to talk briefly and that i will stop about two major initiatives that are going on. One we initiated with the Child Health Institute in collaboration with our resilient colleagues, a study called vic which stands for zika in infancy and pregnancy. What it is is that we are going to follow a cohort of 10000 women. we put this on a really, really big fast track so we have a number of vaccine. The first one of the top is the dna vaccine candidate. We will be going into phase one trials in humans the next couple of weeks. Sometime in early august. So stay tuned for that. We will do that right here in the washington bethesda area. We will do it in about 80 individuals who are normal people from 1835 thats what you do with vaccines. You want to make sure its safe. Once you know it is safe, then you move on to a phase two, three study determine if the ift works. The reason i show this to you, realize we are on very much of a fasttrack for vaccines. I will and with this last slide which is kind of a bookend to one of the first slides when i said yet again, another challenge. Because we are dealing with an emerging infection, one of many emerging infections weve had to deal with over the years. I wrote a commentary a few years ago with my colleagues at nih, and i entitled it a perpetual challenge. The reason i did is because this is not ever going to go away. We will be continually challenge with emerging and reemerging infectious. Its up to us as a society to build what we need to build to be prepared for this so we can respond in an expeditious manner. So i will stop there and happy to answer any questions. Thank you. [applause] to questions if i could. First of all do you want carcass to come back immediately to do with his . Sound like im 10 and found. I cant comment on telling congress what they should do with regard to their session. But what i can do is reiterate what i said many, many times in briefings of the congress, both members and staff, over a period of a couple of months now, saying we really do need the money. Because in the activity that we initiated early on months ago, this vaccine were going to put into Clinical Trial in the next couple of weeks did not all of a sudden start yesterday. Its something weve been working on for months. The cdc has been working on but for things. What we both did is we took money from other accounts that we would normally be spent on other important things, and we put into our seek activity so we would not slow down with the cd the cdc is doing. Were getting to the point very, very soon. We will run out of money we borrowed from ourselves so we really need the money right away. How they get that, what congress does i cant speak to that. Thats not within my purview. But i can emphasize what ive been saying, that we really do need the money. [inaudible] speed of what the fda has done is quite prudent. I dont know whether you followed it. The local transmitted cases in florida. What the fda said is that ultimately hopefully soon we want to test the blood the way we test it for other things to keep the blood supply safe. Its going to take a little while to implement the testing. So when order to be really safe and did not take any chances come into two areas where there is local transmission in broward and miamidade, they are closing down and not accepting blood donations so that you cant contaminate. But as soon as they get the implementation of the testing or the mechanism whereby you can decontaminate the blood, then they will go ahead and start collecting blood again. What they did was the prudent thing. I think you will be quite a to audience questions. Questions. I want a leader with a couple of questions that i think will be common and maybe well get there three or four and i do want to open it up to the terrific audience we have here. I think the first question is the focus on miami, florida. Again not unexpected but for the media i think this is breaking news this morning in the last hour Florida Governor rick scott, some reports confirming, some reports saying its highly likely the first cases of locally acquired zika virus transmitted by native mosquitoes are now theyre again. This is not expected to be said. They predicted this with bank and chikungunya and previous history but if you explain more about what the implications are here and business is what new phase in our response . When you say new phase, what is happening right now is the kind of implementation that went on with the dainty chikungunya. Imaging correctly, this is not unexpected or i mentioned it in the doctor let me underscore do. Its not unexpected that when you get a certain number of travel related cases, particularly when you look at the state of florida where there are a few hundred of these, that the chances of the mosquito biting one of those inviting someone who never traveled gets greater and greater as you get more travel related cases. So as we started to see the travel related case number going up, i had to revise my slide twice a day, literally as it was going up, it became clear that the ingredients were there, aedes aegypti mosquito, summertime come areas we dont have necessarily the opportunity to spent a lot of time in an edition place like this, its going to happen. When it does happen and even before the cdc was doing it before, thats when you have very aggressive mosquito abatement. That has succeeded in the past. Given the conditions of our country as a broad nation, it is unlikely that for a number of reasons that we are going to the same sort of disseminated outbreak that they have in brazil or in puerto rico. But as Public Health officials and of Public Health people and of Public Health conscious population, we must assume that it could happen and thats the reason why you di get very aggressive in trying to present it. If you were to ask me if i think its going to happen, no, i dont think so but that doesnt mean we need to relax and be cavalier. We need to be very aggressive about the things that you do to prevent this get a transmission. You get rid of the mosquitoes, you get rid of the reading place and shut the population particularly pregnant women come if youre living in that area to protect themselves against mosquitoes. Theres multiple ways to do that. It seems like obvious but they are there. One, stay indoors if you can. Fixed screens that are broken because mosquitoes cant get in. Make sure that when you go out to the extent its possible with comfort, where close that cover most of your body. And in the part that isnt, where insect repellent, particularly deed. If we do that we could have a major impact on not allowing this to spread what it is. Spent one followup question on vector control, Mosquito Control. One item i didnt see on your slide, new technology genetically modified mosquitoes. Are these technologies ready for prime time or are they still in investigational thats a good question. You say are they ready for prime time. There are some who definitely think they are in some who think no, we have to learn a lot. Whenever you release something indian tribe you dont find that there are unintended consequences. Theres a lot of work going on and some companies themselves that are actually doing it as well as research that we are supporting to look at ways in which you can directly impact the mosquito to help us to stop the transmission, genetically modifying them, getting them infected with the bacteria which battle is bad for the mosquito but it doesnt allow the virus to get to the point inside the mosquito where it can be transmitted. So theres a lot of that going on. I think there is some promise for mosquito manipulation without necessarily killing the bug by genetically modifying them but theres a lot of concern about a target of vicious. I want to move to the political battle over zika funding. I think back to last 10 years, a 21 in 2009, ebola in 2014. In all of these cases there were deliberations, discussions, debates between administrations and congress what to do and the funding needed. This has been different to what has been your impression to date of the administration and congressional deliberations . Are you optimistic that there will be a Funding Agreement when Congress Comes back in september . There are multiple questions. I will take them one at a time to lets look historically at what happened. Acting february the president called us, myself, tom friedman and others to the widest together with a variety of other officials and wanted to know what do you guys and ladies need to address this epidemic . We put together a proposal which came out to 1. 9 billion. It was multiagency. It was cdc and fda, state and usaid, et cetera. 1. 9 billion. That kicked around back and forth in congress. The center came in with 1. 1. The house came in with 622 million. They came together again and they made a proposal of 1. 1 but they started adding things onto it which was very frustrating to us who are nonpolitical people, like myself and the cdc, saying lets get over this, weve got to get this money. Lets just get the money appropriated. For one reason or another which you know as well as i it didnt get appropriated. It didnt get appropriated by before the fourth of july. They came back for a couple of days then it went to the convention and now theyre out for the summer. Its very frustrating because as i said we are going to run out of money presumed. Im jumping around topics by want to cover a couple of areas of should we will come back. Given the olympics will start in about a few days, one week from today, can you please summarize your views to the audience on how the olympics may or may not impact the trajectory of the pandemic . Back in may the with some scientific discussion in the community. I think theres probably more consensus now that this is probably something that we dont need to worry about as much as previously thought. If you could just touch on that and also for all the fewest travelers the next few days going to rio, what advice do you have speak with multiple questions but all good questions. The first thing i want to make sure doesnt get any confusion, the areas in south america including brazil, brazil had a massive outbreak in january, february in their summer which is our winter. We are now in their winter which is our summer. So the mosquito issue has dramatically decreased in brazil. Historically, during the month of august with him it had a lot of credit for historically genuine inside were it only seems to go down in august. The same with other diseases. Right now the infections with zika are at a very low level in brazil. Thats point number one. Nonetheless, if you are a pregnant woman, might be pregnant, think you could be pregnant, do not travel to brazil because brazil is still a place where theres active transmission. Do not travel to places that theres active transmission. So i needed to get off because im going to tell you can that the risk to someone who is not pregnant is really low. As i said its a relatively mild disease with the few outlier exceptions that i mentioned. You cant go down and say theres absolutely no risk. Nothing in life is riskfree but the risk is very low if youre an otherwise healthy person and youre not pregnant to go to brazil. Thats the traveled there. The also asked will have an impact on the infections in the rest of the world. Theres a lot of discussion, if all of these people come to brazil and they all get infected and they go out to Different Countries where they come from, will we be helping to disseminate this throughout the world . The answer is very unlikely. If you look at the number of people that come back and forth to south america anyway, notwithstanding the olympics, if you compare that to the additional people who come to the olympics. The delusional factors such about it is not a very much bigger percentage of people that travel. Thats something people dont realize. They think you have this may be this desolate place that dont those two ended when the olympics come give millions of people come and they spread, i mean, the traveled back and forth to south america is or dengue. I want to get one more question in and it will open it up and then again we can come back to all these subjects. You have advised the last five years president. With respect to zika if you were to advise the two current president ial candidates on how they could exhibit leadership on the zika, and we dont have to limit it to the president ial candidates, political leaders today on how they could exhibit leadership on zika, what advice would you give our political leaders . Its something weve been talking about for some time right now. It would be first of all the obvious that we have a Public Health challenge like we do, do whatever you can to get the resources that we need. In this case with the zika. But the other thing i would say is that we need a different way of responding to public and Global Health emergencies. So just the last couple of years from 201416, with ebola in the zika, has shown is we cant be chasing the problem. We have to be prepared for the problem. My strong suggestion, i hate to use advice, but suggestion would be that we have a global Public Health reserve fund just like you have a Disaster Fund for an earthquake or for a hurricane. Where if you need to move quickly, you dont have to go through something which in most circumstances is a very good process. The appropriations process. You present the budget, you discuss it, a coast to the house, a ghost to the senate, it goes through congress and goes to the president that it gets signed. It goes to the senate. Sometimes you take them in and do what you need to do with the. I think we need to do that in the Public Health arena and stop trying to chase something after it happens. That would be my suggestion. I think and the Silver Lining there is some promising progress and that bipartisan agreement that we do need some sort of theme back like public Emergency Fund like the, so knock on wood. Maybe they will heed dr. Faucis advice but lets open it up to questions. We can cover some of these issues more in depth or other questions that those in the audience have for dr. Fauci. We have roaming microphones so please state your name and affiliation if you would like an astrafter question. My name is alan ross and one affiliation is u. S. A. Track and field. I was on the board for 10 years and still try to stay active. I look at the issue in brazil, and you have the Brazilian Health ministry saying what you just said. Used the term always lower in august. Well, i researched it and thats not the case. And 2012, there was more dengue in rio then there was in february, march and april combined. Just happened to be a little different that you. So what is the risk . Risk probably is a low but it could be fairly high. He gets into the 90s in their winter to the average height is 78 degrees and it often doesnt go below the 60s. It stays in the 60s. You have an environment where mosquitoes can do pretty well. There is a risk, and its been misstated now, even the World Health Organization has an advisory to assess its very low in august. The other thing is that nobody talked about anything else you can do to protect yourself other than whats in the literature abnormal literature. The are some things you can do but the government doesnt get behind us. And those are, people may have heard me say this before, its vitamin d. You will find it works on viruses. Its not going to be 100 but its going to be significant, worth taking. The same with vitamin c. That also can kill viruses. So its not something that is easy to communicate because we dont have fda trials that have been approved for this. But they are there and it should be encouraged. If theyre going to do some good, it is public or the. If you look at the downside there isnt any. He might say there is and where these studies to show for it. There isnt, there arent. Theres no Science Behind people who say you take too much, you will be in trouble. I can go into great detail on that. I sent out an advisory to the u. S. Olympic committee, to the athletes, and others through my network. I have an advisory. Is somewhat like a copy of the kidney your card. Can i have your . I dont know, dr. Fauci, on the olympics. First of all when you look at outbreaks, i never say theres no risk ever. So anybody who says i said that has never listened to me. The risk is diminished compared to what was in the winter. There were thousands of cases per day reported in january and february. The are a few hundred at a reported mail, okay . Silverbacks on that theres less zika now in brazil than it was in january, period, fact. Thats the first thing. The second thing is that sure, we have an outbreak that peaks of it has a pattern that then goes down and think is the. Thats the outbreaks are. We had a massive explosion in brazil and what we are seeing now going down is the natural evolution. When you have a disproportionate amount in an unpredicted season, its because i in the season whe you shall have bound it never really peaked and you had a late peak, the same way we see every once in a while a strange distortion when you have a new influenza outbreak like we saw in 2009. So just to reiterate, the risk is much less now in brazil than it was in january but its not zero and thats the reason why, ill say it again, if you are a pregnant woman, you should not travel to an area in which theres an outbreak, and that includes brazil. There was an excellent modeling study in the internal medicine saying exactly what dr. Fauci just mentioned. Yes, please. Go back to the basics on the blood supply. If youre a normal healthy meal and you get, then youre better for a while. Is that persons blood likely to be safe or because it can remain in the sperm for 80 days, what do we think . With the test show once they had it you wouldve been disqualified . I dont want to make a definitive test on that but if, in fact, you were infected you would not be giving blood anyway. So whether its gone from your blood and in the siemion, you would not be if you were infected. So they will be testing for the virus very soon. Theyre testing for in puerto rico. [inaudible] right. [inaudible] if youre asymptomatic i understand the question now. 80 of the people are without symptoms. 20 of the people have symptoms. It is very reasonable to assume that if youre asymptomatic the virus is not going to stay in your body any longer that if you werent symptomatic of you very rarely examined an asymptomatic person because they dont have any symptoms of are not going to come in. But we do know that in the regular run of the symptomatic person, the virus stays in the blood for seven to 10 days and stays in the urine or an extra week. Thats one of the reasons why we are leaning more towards when we screen people, screening they yearn for virus because it gives you a longer window to see who was infected. Thank you. Yes. Thank you dr. Fauci. Im with congressional quarterly. Has the lack of congressional action so far endured the administrations response . Do you think the new locally transmitted cases in florida to put additional pressure on congress to act when they come back in september . You know, i cant speak for every agency so i will only speak for the National Institutes of health, of which i am responsible. I have moved a fair amount of money from other accounts to do what i think is a very proactive fullcourt press on the research. Therefore, nothing has substantially slowed yet. I am preciously close to the point where i dont have any money at things are going to start slowing. Let me explain what i mean. We are going to start a phase one trial in august. It will be finished by the end of 2016. In order to smoothly go into a phase two trial in the beginning of 2017, which will be done in the countries, plural, that have active transmission, i need to prepare the site but i need to prepare the clinics, repair the laboratory, trained people, get everything ready to do the trial. I have to start that now at the end, the beginning or end of august if i dont get money so im going to delay the preparation which means what could happen is that we finished the phase one at instead of smoothly transitioning into the phase two we will have to delay the vaccine. So we have not delete anything up till now but if we dont get money so its going to have a Ripple Effect down the pike. Next question. Been in the back. Im with pandemic and emerging threats. My question, could you speak about the use of aeros break him to go in puerto rico, what your views on that . Also some upcoming strategy. I know dr. Freedman mentioned you could tell a while ago and maybe something we could look at any future . Obviously the use of aerial sprays has been done right here in this country and it was one of the mechanisms that was used in mosquito abatement when we had the dengue and the chikungunya outbreak. The sprays that are used, the material that are used, are proved by the Environmental Protection agency. The situation in puerto ricos been somewhat problematic, as you well know otherwise you would not have asked the question, that it is a reluctance on the part of the puerto rican authorities to spray, aerial spray. I cant get into that discussion because im not there with them talking about it, except to say that the aerial spraying that has been done has been done safely with some effect. Question all the way in the back. Theres a microphone coming. I am the ceo of Americas Blood Centers of our our members provide over half of whats what in the United States. One of our members, one blood is a provider of blood in south florida. I wanted to let you know weve been in touch with him and he did it in testing today. They received a close look at whawho did the statement from te fda yesterday, so implemented the testing which is under investigational testing approval. And so i wanted to make it clear, business as usual. Theyre testing and collecting the blood in south florida. I also want to make into the previous speaker as far as asymptomatic donors and that concern, that the fda also some months ago provided guidance, and we modified the question that we are deferring donors which means they cant donate if they traveled to the area within a certain period of time or if they have symptoms or if they have had sex with someone whos gone to those areas in a bit of time. The fda has reacted very quickly with guidance to the Blood Community spirit and getting that test out quickly. Just for a second i want to get back to your question because shes no major question very clear. Im in a symptomatic person that i was infected, and ago to donate blood. If the blood come to the virus has been i dont know if im infected and the person thats going to stick the needle in me doesnt know im infected. If i go there, asymptomatic am if i do a virus in my blood, the test will say you cant give blood. If i dont have virus in my blood, theres no problem. So the problem is solved. Once you get testing you solve not only the problem of symptomatic ones, you solve the problem of asymptomatic ones. [inaudib]