Feel free to come forward if you would like. Good afternoon. Im peter bergen and peter bergen and i run into National Security foundation and its my great pleasure to introduce my colleague and friend Michael Waltz who has this wonderful new book out warrior diplomat a green berets battles from washington to afghanistan which really outlines mikes unusual career both being someone who is creating policy in the white house and the south asia adviser to Vice President cheney and carrying out the policies and the field as a special forces officer. Mike is also running a successful business. Hes a fellow here at the new America Foundation so he is going to outline the big ideas and some of the interesting stories in the book and then we will open up to question after session. Thank you. Mike. Thank you peter and thanks everyone for coming out today. I will just take a brief moment and talk about some of the broader Strategic Issues that i have tried to address in the book and really underl
Production you would be familiar with the processes and the targets and things like that . In terms of the military targets . Yeah, youre sitting there, youre fairly comprehensive in this report here, are you in that room is all im asking . We are linked up closely with the Defense Departments in terms of the overall level. But on a scale of one to ten how committed are you to stopping the oil revenues from coming in, the administration, one of ten . I would give that a ten, congressman . Okay, so why didnt you stop it this afternoon . You really want to do it, youre in the room. You can stop it today. You can move 30,000 barrels of oil basically is what the report is saying. That sells anywhere from 25 to 60 a barrel, resulting in 3 4 of a Million Barrels of oil. To move 350 barrels requires trucks. Now the report talks about choking off the funding for insurance. The insurance could cut the insurance off themselves, you dont have to truck one Insurance Company down. It is the trucks
Kuwait as the two jurisdictions in the gulf where additional steps could be taken. Time of the gentleman is expired. Chair now recognizes the gentleman from massachusetts, mr. Lynch. Thank you, mr. Chairman, again, mr. Secretary, thanks for your willingness to testify. I just want to make one observation. I do share the frustration that some of my colleagues across the aisle have expressed about staunching the flow of oil and degrading some of the facilities that are currently under the control of isis. But i do want to point out that, for instance, the beiji oil refinery, i dont know, about 75, maybe 150 miles north of baghdad, ive been there a couple of times. It is not really its low tech, but its the largest refinery that they have there in that region. If we had destroyed that a month ago i think the iraq government you know, last week, two weeks ago, the iraqi forces retook that refinery. So now it is pumping oil for the Iraqi Government. Its a key asset, if we had gone in there
Agreement. And now postponed. What would a good agreement look like . Is it still possible do you , ink based on what you know the administration and its alleys have agreed to . Yeah. And this is felt in a bipartisan way. I know senator menendez has been pretty vocal. But i think we began in a place in our initial agreement that put us online not to do the kind of deal that most americans would be an appropriate deal with iran. So were starting in a place ere were already behind the curve. So how do you figure out way to make it better . I think one of the things to put it in context is, i mean, basically if you think about where our negotiators are theyre hoping to stave off for a period of time until theres a different regime mentality in iran. Their production of a nuclear weapon. Hat iran is doing is hoping to alleviate sanctions until such a time. Theyre in a better place to be in a position to move to a nuclear weapon. You know, this is an interesting dynamic and when you think a
Chemical weapons use. The group is tremendously destabilizing force across large swaths of iraq and syria and the brutal campaigns have approximately u drawn the condemnation appropriately drawn of the broader International Community. In addition to the horrific massacres, kidnappings and decapitations, officials believe that isil is one of the Richest Terrorist Groups to ever exist with estimated assets in access of 1 billion. Unlike most other terrorist groups, which tend to rely heavily on foreign sponsors, isil generally raises funds internally limiting available to the Treasury Department to cut them off. From the formal Financial System regardless. The ability to sanction and block assets remains vital to ensure that over the long run the United States and our allies can shut down any funds that are tied to elicit oil sales, extortion and kidnapping for ransom. As we make progress in curtailing isiss internal funding schemes, it may be forced to rely more heavily on types of fund