Thanking our witnesses, secretary esper and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff milley for appearing before us to testify. The purpose of this hearing is to discussour policy in syria , particularly in light of the tevents that happened just a couple months ago in turkey when they invaded and drove the kurds out of portions of that but its our first hearing since congressman brendici has joined the committee. We have a lot of new faces but theyre not new faces anymore but its good to have another freshman added to the committee. I appreciate him serving, welcome. As i said the purpose of this hearing is to look into the events around syria and as a bunch of questions and the other big issue for us is just the ability of members of this committee toask questions directly of the key policymakers in an area that is of enormous importance and give them an opportunity to learn more about policy and also express their views and that is a huge part of our oversight role in congress and i th
Here cspan3, well stay live and take you to the Brookings Institution in washington. Foreign Affairs Senior fellow michael o hanlan moderating a discussion on afghanistan. It will be moderated by tom bowman. Just getting under way here live on cspan3. Many other parts of the world. Im a huge fan of her bravery and brilliance as she studies these kinds of phenomena so without further ado, tom, thanks for joining us and over to you. Michael, thank you. Its great to be here and thanks to everyone for coming out. Afghanistan is back in the news, thanks partly to the Washington Post and its series, afghan papers. So i hope you have many questions because were going to be start calling on you very quickly. And i want to start by asking michael how he sees things right know with the peace talks and also talk a little bit about your proposal to have 5,000 troops in afghanistan for the next five years. As some of you may know, theres talk about reducing the forces in afghanistan, now currently
A proposal on table to salvage his government 100000000. 00 actually the issue there was a Satellite Phone so you did put a proposal on the table to salvage his government no wonder what the state department complained about then that was back in 2005 was a point in actual a very dangerous Satellite Phone the same thing you can buy and he threw dutifully we can argue about the fines lets just deal with this report the u. S. State Department Said you were manipulating personal records over billing the state department and your gods were partying drinking and even crashed an armored car a state department best occasion in 2007. Look we employed thousands of people and i would never say that the men were perfect we didnt employ angels we employed veterans who volunteered to serve their country again in a very dangerous place and like i said 41 of them paid the ultimate cost and hundreds more were seriously wounded its amazing that when you say we didnt employ angels we employed veterans b
Using private private contractors to take on iran to the trumpet ministration you know you have people have accused of advocate in the past youve talked about using private contracts to confront iran no no you see no role for blackwater s. G. In any relation to iran now ok just to check before going to what is what got us one quest last question you are part of a group of high profile Trump Supporters including steve bannon sheriff david clarke and others who are planning on raising private money to build a wall along the Us Mexico Border you even have a go fund me page what i dont get though is im pretty sure i heard donald trump say that mexico would be paying for the war. Dont discount mexico actually paying for the wall i think most of us have but yet more and more news and look theres a lot of places where its federal land and in a go fund me individual effort is not possible but theres a lot of places where u. S. Ranchers or u. S. Landowners own land right up to the border they a
A proposal on the table to sell the kids government no wonder what the state department complained about then that was back in 2005 was a point in actual a very dangerous Satellite Phone the same thing you can buy and he threw dutifully we can argue about the fines lets just deal with this report the u. S. State Department Said you were manipulating personal records over billing the state department and your gods were partying drinking and even crashed an armored car it was a state department best occasion in 2007. Look we employed thousands of people and i would never say that the men were perfect we didnt employ angels we employed veterans who volunteered to serve their country again in a very dangerous place and like i said 41 of them paid the ultimate cost and hundreds more were seriously wounded its amazing that when you say we didnt employ angels we employed veterans but right now you want to do it all again thats the problem is it not. Well heres the thing after after 17 years o