Transcripts For CSPAN Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20150528

What do you think is the bottom line in terms of what cbo needs and how should the Public Health community the thinking about it . William h. i think you should ask the former director before you ask me. This is going to sound like a bureaucratic response. As a former cbo staffer but resources, honestly. Resources. I know it is a throwaway, but the need to weigh come as part of this activity we met with cbo staff. I was shocked at the number of Journal Articles they have to go through every week. 1000 Journal Articles, if you can believe it, just to weigh in. I concluded out of that discussion that what they need is a watson ibm program to condense at least narrow it down so they can find out evidence which is replicable, scalable at the National Level. I note it is a throwaway, but they need resources if they will translate this into actual good evaluation of the policies and forth. I want to pick up on something that jeff said, though and bill, too, to some extent. The problem as i see it is prevention is not homogeneous out there in terms of the communities. In some communities one prevention and intervention will work better than some others. It is difficult of a National Level to press National Policy that can be replicated in terms of the cost estimate. Lisel alice . Alice i would second bills feeling that the Congressional Budget Office needs more resources to you now you wait the evidence to evaluate the evidence, because the evidence on whatever it is on health intervention, prevention intervention is getting to be voluminous. But that said, what they really need is convincing evidence. And i alluded earlier to some of the enthusiasm for who would love to pass a bill that says for example, we should take available to every county in the country, and there are several thousand of them, resources to do what Hennepin County is trying to do. You could draft such a bill. And eventually it would if it got out of committee or even serious consideration in a committee get to the cbo and say what with this cost and what would the benefits the . Be . The cost wouldnt be very hard because you would specify what that was to be, when you are going to give all of these counties to do this thing. But what is the benefit . They would be driven back to looking at the county. Can we say that spending this money would improve the health of Hennepin County . If you can definitively say that and if you thought you could replicate it in several thousand other counties, then the problem would be simple. But neither is true. You dont yet have the evidence about hennepin and you arent sure that what has made it possible for them to at least get a start was the peculiar to Hennepin County. That wasnt peculiar to hennepin that wasnt peculiar to Hennepin County. That is the dilemma that cbo had to face and i think they do a pretty good job. Jeffrey i think there may be more evidence out there than we are accessing. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of investment in Community Prevention programs that was evaluated. And those evaluations have not been released. Community transformation grants was supposed to be a fiveyear program and was topped after three years so it is hard to do a full evaluation. But there was substantial evaluation money put into that. We have yet to see data from those. There is also an obligation on the part of federal agencies who are investing hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars and who have been directed to do evaluations to release those evaluations. Alice oh, absolutely. We need to know that. Jeffrey we need to know that. That isnt always the case on the clinical side. We tend to publish clinical results. But we are more open on the Public Health side. We want to know what works and what didnt work. We learn from those examples. What is wonderful about things Like Community transformation grants and partnerships to improve Community Health is that while they have the same targets, communities are taking varied approaches, evidenceinformed approaches, but various approaches to reflect the needs of their communities. But if we arent releasing what we are learning from that, then we keep redesigning new programs in the dark. Putting aside cbos needs, it is just not a wise investment of taxpayer dollars. Alice but it would help cbo to release that coul. William d. but waiting for cbo is like waiting for godot. [laughter] how do you settle for communitybased data, which is really based on a randomized trial . What is the level of evidence necessary to convince cbo . And back to jeff, i think there are other mechanisms that we are and not to be pursuing at the local level through the Community Benefits initiative of hospitals, which we need to w rap in, and there are mechanisms in place through the Affordable Care act to direct those hospitals to invest in Community Benefits and do Community Health needs assessments. Likewise, and this is a question for you, it seems to me that more flexibility on the part of medicated to fund the pilot programs that jeff has described, and certainly the ctg and cppw are implementing, would help to move the field forward. What are the likelihood that that will happen . Jeffrey you brought up Hennepin County. The idea very simple at its corporate you take all the money this is the idea at its core. You take all the money at the state level and wipe your hands clean and it is their job to do with that. They are the most context patients to deal with and they have been charged with doing that. They have certain unique advantages, that those patients are automatically enrolled in the program. You dont need to find anybody. They are yours. There are specific governmental structures that allow types of data sharing that are not necessarily present in other communities. The other thing is that the state has been very generous. While certain states have materialized, they have not had to pay that back. Those are the unique features of that particular program. It makes a lot of sense. I referred to the fact that i was apparent. I have two kids. The one kid i give 10 to come he says that money saves that money, and the other kid buys coming outs and is totally not responsible. This is the problem we deal with. Freedom is good, we believe that. However, in health care, there are big dollars involved. Not all actors can be trusted. If hennepin is so great, why doesnt that exist already . We have medicaid cbos. Incentive already exists. We as a nation and as visions ourselves are still uncomfortable with giving that much freedom away, or freedom without necessarily asking for a lot of accountability in return. How is it that you measure that accountability . We talked about having Population Health or clinical metrics. For those you go online right now and can go to places for quality of the hospital. Real patients often dont feel that the data really gets to what it is they really care about. I would just say that part of the issue is yes we want to move the nation that is what moving to valuebased payments is all about them if you look at how we have lay that out, but we think it has to be done very deliberately. And although the pace may seem like why dont we just directly passed the resolution to give everybody black granite payments, there is a downside to that. This is one of the reasons why we feel like doing it in a somewhat more studied and deliberate manner is going to be better for most patients. Jeffrey i agree that it is not just a question of throwing money out there and that is not the hennepin model, but it is also inaccurate to say that medicaid patients can do what hennepin is doing already. It brings all sorts of resources to the table that then get better integrated, and your typical medicaidmanaged Care Organization does not have the resources to do it, doesnt have the authority to do it doesnt have the capacity to do it. That is where it is fundamentally different. Lisel that brings us back to where the task force ended up you this exchange illustrates the issues the task force struggled with and the reason they focused on these concrete recommendations for example calling on cms, the model, not to scale hennepin to model and hennepinlike examples so that we can in a deliberate fashion uncover this Common Element that needs to be there and the models that can be tested and proved. We can scale in a way it is almost as if hennepin is priming the pump, giving us a little bit of an example. What are the mechanisms and tools that we have for access like, for example, innovation grant awards etc. , that can help us responsibly understand the attributes of a new model moving forward . I want to get to our audience questions. If anybody has a burning additional comment about the conversation we have been having yes. Only to mention that in passing that a previous study would put out a year ago called training doctors were preventionoriented care, we havent talked about that too much either, but it was headed by dan glickman and donna shalala. Jeffrey when bill mentions how you create trust, i think that is part of it could recognize that people in the community are their partners and that is rePublic Health could be an twopiece. An important piece. The clinician that is told that there is these Wonderful Community programs and you will have much Better Outcomes cms is holding me accountable for reducing calls among the elderly. How do i find those programs and feel confident in referring my patient . In massachusetts, the Health Department has developed a database that is integrated with Electronic Health records and makes those referrals to communitybased organizations and the communitybased organizations report back to the primary care provider. There is information going in both directions. Just as importantly, the clinician can feel confident because theres the thirdparty validator of the programs. But it is as appointed to mention that there is almost as much mistrust from the Public Health site as there is from the clinical side. Lisel if you could identify yourself and ask your question could you pass the microphone . Thank you. Is that on . I am any violation scientist an evaluation scientist and register owners of some 25 years. Worked a great deal of my time in home care but also worked inside hospitals. Recently i attended a meeting held in the National Quality forum where a representative asked a question that i initially thought was rather poignant and in some ways kind of wrong. But as i think about it, it makes sense. Its all of this prevention works, and it should, how are we going to keep our hospitals full was the question. Now, it is a bad question, but if you think about it, the question underlying it is how do we keep these people employed, and what do we do with the Cost Shifting that is going to happen because of prevention . Basically, how can i work myself out of a job and yet still going . Lisel alice . Alice thats a good question, but i dont think the answer is really as hard as it sounds. The answer to how are we going to keep all hospitals open is we are not. We are going to convert some hospitals or hospital wings or whatever as has already happened, as you know, to Outpatient Care and possibly other things that have to do with prevention. And so what are we going to do with the building is not so hard. It really is difficult to get hospital administrators to say that you are telling me that i ought to encourage things that give me fewer patients in my hospital. It is going to be a long road to helping them see they could reside over preside over a different and more varied enterprise, but it wasnt going to look exactly like the hospital that they have known and loved. But one of the things that helps answer the question what are we going to do to Keep Health Care workers employed is we are in a situation in which no matter how much prevention we do, we are going to need more health care because of the demographics because we have this bulge of older people and older people are sick or sicker, even into good prevention. I dont think the question of are we going to have unemployed pediatric cardiologists is a very serious one. We are going to have to retrain some people and train new people in the skills of prevention. This is disruptive on the Public Health care side. It is not like theres not enough work to go around, but the nature of the work that everyone is going to do, 10, 15 years from now, someone else in here will be observing the nature of the change not just on health care side but the Public Health side, in terms of who does what and how. Washington journal darshak one interesting model maryland is doing this right now. Hospitals have these fixed total costs. It is complicated as all these things are, but the bottom line is this you at the hospital cannot make a lot more money by just doing work anymore. You have fixed budget. Suddenly, think about the incentive. You euros to you used to go to the hospital and, oh emergency wait time is five minutes. Come on in. Now when you have a fixed budget it is totally different. They are like, we dont want to see you again. You have a situation and suddenly hospitals are investing in Mental Health clinics in their communities. They even themselves have the market incentive to do exactly what it is you are doing, and i think this model, it is come again, complicated should we are evaluating it, there are all these issues. But this we are trying to replicate this if other states are interested as well. These are the kinds of steps we are taking to address this kind of problem. We want to market, where possible, to take care of these local needs and not have us impose it from the outside. I would like to address something there are some biases excuse me . Oh i am alan ross and ive done quite a bit of Public Health work in my professional career. There are some biases that exist in terms of prevention on substances that could have a very big impact on prevention, but the biases have put these down. I bring up one, which is vitamin c. People will tell you, oh, that was line is calling and that is in disparate that was Linus Pauling and he has been disproved, that is not the direction to go. This will be a surprise to many of you George Washington University Medical center has a vitamin c clinic. They will tell you a lot about the science of items the of vitamin c, and why we should look at it. Take another one from a powerful steroid hormone for which there are 35,000 Journal Articles, enough rtcs were there too randomized controlled trials, and yet this substance vitamin d is not talked about much in terms of real prevention, when the sun could give us a lot of help and that. But then the dermatologists have given us the story that we shouldnt have this exposure. And a lot of Health Problems have resulted from that. Sure, you want only reasonable exposure. But we want the information getting out to the public. Things like this, where biases have crept in, the science has to be examined and understood deeply. There are those who know the science, vitamin d at boston University Medical center, when to them lisel thank you. Can anyone address this area, and have you thought about it . Jeffrey there is never going to be definitive answers on a lot of questions, and our answers on nutrition are shifting over time. I think the right policies are made based on the weight of the evidence and institutions like the institute of medicine bring people together to make those judgments. As with anything we do in medicine and Public Health, we go on the basis of the best knowledge we have at this time, with the technology and as new data become available, we make changes. Lisel bill . William h. alice and i were on a conference yesterday and brought up something called the white hat analysis, which comes from peerreviewed articles. There may be bias in those articles because the editor has a certain bias. The point i recently make here is we have problem we probably need to go outside for the discussion for hard evidence from other sources besides Peer Reviewed academic articles for determination of what should be pursued in terms of our analyses. Lisel question in the second row. Oh sorry. My name is mike and im with the National Organization of integrative physicians who are trained in prevention and wellness. And i guess my question is primarily for lisel perhaps. I was here about nine or 10 months ago, and i believe there is another task force, and the staff director, and want to say them is janet im not certain. My memory plays tricks sometimes. It is not wellness so much as memory retention for me. But that task force is an employer task force. There is a representative who is the chairman of edna, and verizo chairman of aetna verizon is represented, and cocacola, among other groups. When you talk about Community Support and Community Prevention and a Data Collection and Data Tracking is there a synergy between these groups . You guys talk have you guys talked . Do you foresee a role for employerbased incentives . Those are quite real for employees or could be made quite real. They are not bound by the scoring rules that entwine congress and the administration. I wonder if that is also a way to gather data and look at it longitudinally. Lisel thank you very much for the question could i will make two comments and see if bill has something to add. You are correct, bpc has supported the council on health and innovation with the ceos you describe. Theyre finding put out last september looked at ways that employers could improve health and three buckets. One has to do with the health of the individual, one had to do with the health of the community, and one was having to do with the Health Care Sector is health. Itself. One of the ingredients of the conversation was precisely that, the role of evidence and the role of the private sector in helping to contribute to the growing evidencebased. That is a charge that they are very mindful of and aware of, the role that they can play. The second thing i would say is in terms of employers reaching out to the community, that is, again, another place where there is a very powerful opportunity i think, for big employers. Collectively, the group employs one Million People in the United States. To make a real impact at the Community Level going forward. Bill, i dont know if you want to add anything to that. William h. you left out bank of america and a number of other large corporations and if you walk around, youll see a number of the bpc staff, because they launched a major effort, all those corporations, and a challenge in terms of physical fitness and walking activities. I would also like to point out i have the pleasant responsibility of overseeing the Health Care Area here. That is not just prevention. We have health innovation, we have health cost containment. In some ways, interestingly enough, when i find is be careful how i say this the silos exist even in a Small Organization like bpc are the same silos that exist outside. How do you integrate prevention, health care costs, technology . We are doing a great job of integrating here. But i just want to say, it is a small mike microcosm of what we see outside going through with these activities. Lisel second row . Thank you. David morgan. Im visiting from the united kingdom. There are many great differences and we have a National Health service and i know that they are already delivering programs which identify people of particular risks, share information, encourage healthier lifestyles, encourage doctors to focus on atrisk patients. But i walked across the parking lot from my own doctor to the supermarket and there are heavily discounted candy, major manufacturer, advertising the joint defeating joy of eating lots of chocolate, heavily discounted alcohol and even diet foods with lots of sugar. What is the evidence how do you measure how much and at what cost good efforts are being undermined . Bill . [laughter] william d. im not sure i know the direct answer to your question, what we are at a plateau with obesity rates in children. That coincides with the national changes, which includes a reduction in the consumption of fast food, pizza and sugar drinks, all of which are not welcome it for when someone consumes not well compensated for when someone consumes them. That is probably a consequence largely of new information. I think it is fair to say that michelle has played an Important Role in increasing awareness Michelle Obama played an Important Role in increasing awareness. Even the limit on sugar drinks in new york city fail, the press that accrue to the initiative i think had an enormous impact on recognition of the role of sugar drinks in obesity. I think the challenge here and i think the single most effective thing that i think we can do is pass a sugar drink tax of a penny for an ounce, which happened in berkeley pit it passed in San Francisco but did not have the requisite two thirds vote to direct the funds more directly. It happened in mexico. It is clear that ugly is already showing an increase in revenue berkeley is already showing an increase in revenue and it was already a decrease in the conception of sugar drinks in mexico could what we need is more data on what Health Impacts those challenges have. All of that is before we have really begun to substantially change the environment around food in a number of institutions. Schools have changed as a result of the healthy hungerfree kids act. The child and Adult Care Feeding Program which is about to emerge is going to set standards for early care and education. The one area there are two problems. One area we have not been very successful with his increasing physical activity in the population. The other thing that is worth mentioning more than worth mentioning, it is a significant problem is that although we are seeing decreases in the prevalence of obesity the municipalities and states, those are largely limited to the white population. As a result, the disparities in obesity are increasing in those communities despite their success. Unless we come to terms with those challenges, the disparities with respect to obesity, i dont think we will have longterm success. Some of the programs that we discussed have not been necessarily ethnicinformed or ethnicspecific. I dont think we yet know how to do that, or know how to do it well. Alice and it isnt just sugar drinks. It is smoking and other things that become markers of class and ethnicity unfortunately, in a way they were not before. Darshak to pick up a little bit on that, im optimistic on this. Not long ago physicians were advertising cigarettes. There is a tendency teen pregnancy rates are lower than they ever have been. Obesity rates are significantly decreasing. Smoking rates are lower than they had been in a very, very long time. In many ways, the substantial improvements in Public Health have occurred. It is a matter almost of are you a glass is half full or empty kind of person. Epidemiologic trends show that the system, for all of its flaws, seems to respond very positively in the long run. We have the lowest risk of cardiovascular mortality we have had ever in the United States. I think the other thing that is important is i think i made a comment that me in medicine know the price of everything and the value of nothing. The key thing to point out is that many of the interventions are not ones that necessarily we sat around the table and said, wow, are we going to calculate the precise costbenefit. They clearly made bets. That is how i would think about it. Why do we do Early Childhood education . Yes, we can find about the economics of it, but we can argue also if its an ethical responsibility, is it the right thing to do. We shouldnt lose track of the fact that we need to fight these battles politically not on the economic level, but one that does a field equity, chopper 2 appeal to equity, opportunity for all people. Health, we can all agree, its something that has universal appeal. We want to do things in a financially responsible manner but all this randomized data, it is really nebulous a lot of times. Even when you get all that data together about what the right thing is, what you are left is is what is your ethical responsibility. Lisel i would like to end on that cuphavefull high note and just say we have focused a lot of here on the federal policy levers for change that are important, and those are important. We do need more data, we do need more sustainable financing models, we do need better connection between the clinic and the community. But this is not all capsdown stop not all topdown stuff. A lot of this is homegrown ingenuity that people are figuring out on the ground could many of you who are watching online, on cspan, on twitter featuring out care reimbursement strategies, and if we can integrate the clinics the communities, health and Public Health, we can get all of us in this room to hold hands and march forward. We look forward to working with you as we think about how to implement some of these ruminations, and thank you all so much for coming. [applause] host [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] if you missed any of the conversation, you can find it online. We will have it on our video library, and that is at cspan. Org. Also, an article coming out from the news, this from politico former ohio congressman Steve Latourette is to be illegal with hank pancreatic cancer planning to file a medical malpractice lawsuit against the federal government, accusing his capitol hill doctors of failing to provide him with information that could have led him to an earlier diagnosis according to a court filing, an mri scan in 2012 showed a lesion. His cardiologist recommended followup care with a physician but the congressman says he was never informed of the recommendation or the mri results. You can read more at politico. Com. On the campaign trail for the president ial race, former new york governor George Mcafee made George Pataki made his run official today could he released a fourminute you and then held a formal kickoff in exeter, new venture. We will show you the announcement tonight at 8 00 eastern time on cspan. Tonight at an 9 00, a look at science to science denialism here is a look. [video clip] i was a regular host on the History Channel but they would present a show i was doing on asteroids or possible life on mars, scientific perspective and then they would have ancient aliens on right after it and they would be presenting these things as equivalent. This was enough to make me stop working with the History Channel. You know, the strange thing was i think this get that a lot of what is going on with this to nihilism this denialism. If somebody called me at nasa and said, oh my gosh, the world is going to End Next Week think about this. Do you think i would be here in my Office Answering the phone if i thought the world was ending in a week . Start getting worried when all of the scientists buy up expensive wines and max out credit cards and go to a tropical island, because then you know something that is going to happen. [laughter] something bad is not going to happen. The idea that i am not a person and i dont have the feelings and emotions in a family and a reason to be alive, that i wouldnt react emotionally if i thought the world was coming to an end what an auto disconnect. If something wants to separate the fact that you are a scientist in the fact that you are human being. Science denialism, a look at the doubts and questions on climate change, space exploration, all held in colorado. We will have that at 9 00 eastern time. Here are our future programs for this weekend on the cspan networks. On cspan, saturday starting at noon, politicians and Business Leaders offer advice and encouragement to the class of 2015. Speakers include former president george w. Bush the chair of dreamworks animation, and at nine point 15 p. M. , former staffers reflect on the presidency of george h. W. Bush. At noon, commencements pieces across the country with former secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Madeleine Albright and philadelphia mayor michael nutter. Saturday on cspan2 events from this years expo book expo and segments with authors throughout the day. On after words, the case hollingsworth v. Perry which looked at the constitutionality of proposition eight, which restricted the right of samesex couples to marry in california. On American History tv on cspan3, saturday 7 00 eastern a conversation with white house historian william seal on first ladies who have had the most impact on the executive mansion. Just before 2 00, the life and death of our 20th president james garfield, who served almost two decades as a congressman from ohio and was assassinated 200 days into his room as president. Get our complete schedule at cspan. Org. Conversation about u. S. Wars during the george w. Bush administration with one of the advisors to the Coalition Provisional authority to iraq former chief of staff two how former v. A. Secretary James Nicholson, and New York Times reporter peter baker. This portion was part of a threeday conference that was hosted by Hofstra University in new york. Ok, good evening. Welcome to the Plenary Forum waging war in afghanistan and iraq. I am an associate professor here at hofstra and i am pleased to be serving as moderator for this distinguished forum. The wars in iraq and afghanistan are arguably the most controversial and consequential Foreign Policy decisions of the Bush Administration. The decision to go to war, how to fight the wars, how to get out of the wars, and related issues have not only dominated the bulk of president bushs time in office, but have also shaped current u. S. Foreignpolicy options in and around the regions. And will continue to do so into the foreseeable future. There is very little doubt that the wars in afghanistan and iraq will continue to be measures by which the legacy of the george w. Bush Foreign Policy will be measured. With that in mind, the conference organizers have brought together this outstanding panel of public servants, journalists, and scholars to examine the way the Bush Administration waged wars and the consequences of them. Each of our panelists is extremely accomplished and i will try to keep the introductions relatively brief although that is hard with a group like this. As i go through, i would ask that you please hold your applause until i have introduced everyone and we can welcome them all together. Giving us perspectives from the administration, we first have thomas basile, appearing on forums such as sirius xm radio. For the Bush Administration in 2003 through 2004, he was a Senior Press Advisor to the Coalition Provisional authority in iraq. After this in 2004, he was a consultant for the Republican National committee, president ial campaign, and prior to this service, he was director of communications for the u. S. Environmental Protections Agency in 2001 through 2003, and was part of the bushcheney campaign. Last but certainly not least mr. Basile is a hofstra alum, graduating with a degree in Political Science and he was named the 2007 Hofstra Young alumnus. Ambassador James Nicholson is currently senior counsel at Brownstein Hyatt farber schreck, counseling clients in health care, regulatory Law International relations, oil and gas, and alternative energy. From 2005 2 2000 and he was u. S. Secretary of veterans affairs. Before this appointment he was u. S. Ambassador to the holy seat during which he was knighted by john paul ii for his human rights. Ambassador nicholson has been the director of the new Community Development corporation, commissioner and the commissioner on the Defense Advisory Committee on women and services. He was the chairman of the National Committee from 1997 to 2001. Lawrence wilkerson is distinguished adjunct professor of government and Public Policy at the college of william and mary. He served in the u. S. Army from 1966 until 1997, excuse me. While in uniform, he was a member of the faculty of the u. S. Naval war college, special assistant to general colin powell when colonel powell was chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and Deputy Director director of the war college in quantico, virginia. From 2001 until 2002 he was associate director of the state Department Policy planning staff. Colonel wilkersons last position was chief of staff for u. S. Secretary of state colin powell from 2002 to 2005. So, the journalists and scholars that we have present. First, anand gopal. He was a journalist that served as an afghanistan correspondent for the wall street journal, for the Christian Science monitor, and as reported for the nation, the new republic , and several other publications. He has extensively interviewed both sides of the afghanistan conflict. This is cited in his critically acclaimed book no good men among the living america, the taliban and the war through afghanistan eyes which was a finalist for the National Book award and the helen bernlstein award and recipient of the ridnour prize. Congratulations. He is also an insight fellow at Columbia University and was formerly a fellow at the new america foundation. Peter baker is the chief White House Correspondent for the New York Times and the contributing writer for New York Times magazine. Hes covered three president ial times in his previous work for the Washington Post. He won a prize in the beckman memorial award for white house coverage. In between his white house assignments, he was the Moscow Bureau chief for the Washington Post during the rise of vladimir putin. Hes the author of days of fire, which provides a comprehensive look at the Bush Administration from the election to the iraq war to the bush and cheney white house. Hes serving as a distinguished conference scholar for this conference. And Phyllis Bennett is a Phyllis Bennis is a director of the new internationalism project at the institute for policy studies in washington d. C. And is a fellow of the Transnational Institute in amsterdam. Shes been an activist in u. S. Issues and speaks widely as part of the global peace movement. She continues to serve as an advisor for several top top u. N. Officials on middle east issues and u. N. Democratization issues. Shes the author of eight books including most relevant to this panel, the 2003 book, before and after u. S. War on on terror. And the 2005 book challenging empire how people governments and the u. N. Defy u. S. Power. So please join me in welcoming this distinguished panel. [applause] so the format were going to have 10 to 12 minutes for each of our guests here. And then there will be a question and answer session and possibly in between a moderated discussion depending on how much time we have. So we will essentially go in the order thats listed in the program. So first mr. Basile. Mr. Basile thank you, paul, for that introduction. Always great to be back at this campus. I was thinking today as i was walking through that it was 18 years ago that i served on the student for the bush 41 conference and during the conference, i got to trail around john sununu for three days who happens to be the , fastest walker id ever encountered. And today joe is following me around. Two decades later. And joe, im sorry you got stuck with me. But i really appreciate the invitation of dr. Bose and the Calico Center not only as an alumnus in administration but also an alumnus of this institution. Its wonderful to see how the hofstras place in the policy and political discourse surrounding the presidency increased so dramatically. Its good to see secretary nicholson here with whom i was so fortunate to share a very wonderful and for me a very meaningful and emotional moment in American History when we were both able to attend president bushs meeting with john paul ii at the vatican in 2002. So it is good to see you, sir. For millennia, the causes of war and the strategies associated with it were defined by particular margins involving a combination of resource and territorial acquisition therefore producing resulting subjugation of populations. And i suggest that for most people this paradigm continues to drive perceptions of war and warmaking. I submit that with the close of the cold war and the rise of the United States hegemony, the proliferation of technology, the breakdown of certain alliances that we witnessed in the rise of alqaeda and the decisionmaking of the United States and the aftermath of 9 11 was a sharp departure from the usual war making paradigm. In fact, i believe we are still in a transitional phase as it relates to this country handling the military and diplomatic strategy to account for this shift. The administration of george w. Bush was the first such administration to have to deal with this paradigm shift. During the bush presidency, the white house was faced with the challenge of handling both the traditional territorial and institutional impacts of war in the form of external forces such as terror groups embedding the and influencing the governance of state actors. The viral nature of the radical islamic terrorist movement and the exploitation by governments of state actors of the new Global Paradigm that had emerged after the end of the cold war. It was a historically complicated confluence of forces and circumstances that led to both afghanistan and the iraq missions. The Bush Administration had to cope with the conflict of trying to fight mobile terrorist groups and dozens of countries while fighting traditional territorial battles while rebuilding infrastructure and institutions in afghanistan that perhaps may not have existed. And in the case of iraq projecting out the impact that state actors might have who may exploit and support the efforts of the terrorist enemy. We spent a great deal over the last decade and a half on whether we should have gone into afghanistan or whether we should have gone into iraq. I personally reviewed the decisionmaking process through what my old dosboiss paul bremer calls the reasonable man test. The president of the United States faced with the confluence of circumstances that i just described in a general sense buttressed by specific intelligence act in a certain way. Keeping in mind that Saddam Hussein had been declared a state sponsor of terrorism and regime change had been the policy of the u. S. Government since the clinton administration. When it comes to iraq and afghanistan i believe that , president bush made the correct choice for military intervention in both of those circumstances. However, i believe the more relevant conversation for all of us, and our country moving forward, remains once you make the decision to go to war, what is the principle purpose or desired outcome. You have several choices. You can, one, you can remove Saddam Hussein or the taliban and leave, which i believe is a false choice. You can two, remove the leadership and grab some general or expatriot and impose them basically trading one dictator with another. That, particularly for bush, the moral and political argument fails there as well. Or three, you could attempt to secure the country and build institutions that could support not what some people had suggested, called americanstyle democracy, but a pleuralistic and tolerant governance structure. The Coalition Provisional authority in iraq was developed to execute option three. This historic gathering of maligned members in our corps went with option three, and have the responsibility to get the economy growing and establish security and a political framework that would help goal accomplish goal number three working together with an iraqi population that is more supportive that is generally accepted. They tackled it with great commitment and their efforts going unlargely unnoted as the situation worsened due to the rise of al qaeda in iraq and sectarian violence and a white house that as the mission went on often failed to defend its own policy in iraq. President bush understood several key points very well. One, he believed that left unchecked it was likely that hussein would develop a Nuclear Weapons program. Two, hussein had funded external terror groups and it was believed that he would be supporting other terror groups. Three, the war on terrorism was a longterm global threat that involved dozens of groups. Some closely aligned, some loosely aligned not only with each other but also state actors. And also nationstates as well. And were seeing this today as you see isis and al qaeda and boko haram and the Muslim Brotherhood converge as a network and a very powerful one at that. Four, he believes this is a generationslong fight. And it would require longterm and aggressive engagement. Five, addressing the freedom deficit in the middle east and countries that serve as incubators, however longterm and complex that strategy might be, was essential in sharing a more Peaceful World and further International Cooperation to interdict terrorism networks. Where it fell short is how to fight and manage these various components simultaneously. After all, we werent just ejecting semi from a country or protecting the territorial boundaries of a nation. We were trying to fight an insurgency while attempting to build new government and social and political institutions. On my first day in iraq, i got off at the Baghdad Airport and i put on my vest. It didnt have any place in it because the government didnt issue me any. I put on my helmet. And i got on the bus to go to the compound. They said by the way, the road is closed. The road between the airport and the compound was closed because the army was not able to secure it. They call it the road of death. People were dying on it virtually every day. From that point on, and that was my first day and my first hour we knew that we were going to do have a resource issue. They plagued the iraq army early on and were very real. The administration had a vision for a lighter, fleet footed, hightech 21st century army. And that vision has merit. But it was incompatible with the mission that we had at that particular time. For our part, nearly every civilian and military liaison that i worked with agree from the outset that we needed to maintain overwhelming force size in order to accomplish the mission. Today, at the white house, former John Hopkins University professor and noted economist ashraf ghani, the newly elected president of afghanistan, told the American People thank you for the work that have helped give them a shot to instead of being a burden to the world to actually have a shot at a free future. But we are clearly seeing the beginning of what the president a generational process of development. In iraq, despite poor intel regarding infrastructure military assets, essential services, mass looting, the iraq mission also realized a range of successes not sufficiently promoted by the administration and frequently ignored by the media. The training of forces began within weeks of the promotion of the c. P. A. , which enabled anybody up to the rank of colonel to apply to a new professional army. They were better trained, better equipped. The central bank was reopened. In the currency transition to a single stable unit took place within six months. It took us two years in post world war ii germany. Oil production increased. Dozens of schools were built, a constitution was developed which shiah, sunnis and kurds and on the table to create an election in a degrading security environment. And lets not forget that more than eight Million People voted in iraqs first election. Perhaps most importantly alqaeda in iraq had been decimated due one of the boldest Foreign Policy decisions in my opinion of the last half century made by george w. Bush. Delayed, admittedly, but necessary surge. By the time bush left office the economy had increased in size several times over under its time under hussein. Life expectancy had risen. And Security Forces had secured most of the forces due the training and ongoing assistance from the United States. Despite the consequences of a precipitous withdrawal of troops administered by the Current Administration and the insistence of both parties via cnn, which left iraq all but something that had never before been accomplished in the middle east with the exception of israel. None of these can negate the challenges that persist but they can when added to the conversation give us a better understanding of the need and ability to move nations toward a more pluralistic construct. In my time in iraq i saw an encouraging conviction of the iraqi people eager to build a new nation. Successes overshadowed by a security situation we were unprepared to address. There are many things to be learned. If you the world has changed. The changes we face and the challenges we face of change. Giving people a chance to be free and selfgoverning the surest way to a greater piece. I saw firsthand the consequences of oppression and the people that took the solo at the people and nations in a way that we cannot fully appreciate here. You havent experienced the power of freedom until you have spoken to someone he was never known it and they realize for the first time that participatory torry government is not abstract. It is achievable with great effort and sacrifice. George w. Bush did not buy into the bigotry that suggests there are certain people in this world who do not deserve or are too unsophisticated or incapable of handling what we call freedom. I consider it an honor to have served him and i look forward to a meaningful discussion tonight. Thank you so much for your attention. [applause] good evening. I really appreciate being here at the university and participating in the panel with these distinguished people. And i appreciate what youre doing at hofstra with this conference on the george w. Bush presidency. And we wont agree here on everything that is said, im sure. But i bet theres one thing about which we can agree and that is that whatever is said here tonight about the george w. Bush presidency will look different to us in 20 years and different again 20 years after that. George w. Bushs presidency must be defined by the offense events of september 11, 2001 when the United States of america was viciously attacked by an enemy whos leader Osama Bin Laden stated as far back as 1983 that the United States was the mortal enemy of islam an and must be destroyed. A 9 11 president bush declared to the president of america an d to the world that he would do whatever was necessary toe protect our country to keep it safe and to keep it free. This became the mantra of the g. W. Bush presidency. President reagan had his mantra that was to bring down the soviet union and to shut down the cold war. President lincoln had his slavery. So did president bush. His global war on terror kept us safe and kept us free. So lets start with that. President bush foretold the kind of decisive leader he would be at his acceptance speech in august 2000 at the Republican National convention in philadelphia. I remember it well because i was there and i was a chairman of convention as the chairman of the Republican National committee. And then candidate bush said if you give me your trust i will honor it. Grant me a mandate, i will use it. Give me the opportunity to lead this nation and i will lead. Little did he know then of the events that would befall us a year later. But we found out soon after just what a leader we had. It started immediately at 9 11. The context is worth a reminer. Reminder. The president was at a school in florida but immediately authorized the shooting down of the civilian jet liner. The white house staff were told to evacuate. And evacuated in a hurry. The women were told to take off their shoes so they can run down the street. The reason was they thought a plane was about to slam into the white house. You have to think about when the last time the white house was evacuated under similar circumstances. The only time it comes to mind is when the british burned the building during the war of 1812. Soon after the president went to new york city to game three of the world series to throw out the first pitch in a sense that was a small act. President s throw pitches all the time. But in this case in new york while the fires were still burning at the World Trade Center and when the entire nation was on edge about another terrorist attack it was a big deal ha the president went of the ballpark and stood on the mound. He demonstrated that he was not afraid, that we should not be afraid and the game and the business and life of this nation must go on. The president addressed the nation at a joint session of congress. He was in command and he was comforting on safety and patriotism. An interesting side note on that date which was september 20th, 2001, the Philadelphia Flyers faced the new york rangers in an exhibition game. The teams played two periods. And the jumbotron switched to the president s speech. It was a live shot. When it was time to restart the game the third period, the jumbotron turned off the president and turned back to the game. The response was overwhelming. People started booing and demanding that the president be put back on. For a moment americans tuned in and heard what the president s say. They never played the third period and they ended up in a draw. So i think we can stipulate that war defined president bushs presidency. President ial his tore yeah author schlessinger he said of all the crises war is the moat fateful. All of our best president s were involved in a war either before or during their presidency saved thomas jefferson. He further opined that crisis helps though who can rise to it. And the association of war with president ial greatness has its ominous aspects. Lets start with afghanistan. Even the pope support ud us going into afghanistan. I showed my credentials to the holy father on 9 13 of 2001 at the palace. And we had prepared remarks to help me prepare. The first thing we did was said a little prayer for the victims and then talked. And i by then was able to give him a brief of what we thought, you know, the derivatives of what had happened were and he said to me, he said ambassador nicholson we must stop those people who were killing in the name of god. An that was not a privilege communication. So i was able to report that and put that out there and it really helped us in putting a coalition together to go into afghanistan. But the pope did see iraq differently. He expressed his opposition emphatically during his annual address in january of 2003. And he looked directly at me and said, no to war. War should only be a last resort. That was his affirmation to us. That was a disappointment to us after our affirmations in afghanistan . But it was not a surprise. It did set off our biggest challenge as the ambassador and our most robust endeavor to convince the holy father of the need to invade iraq who would not go to our lead. I looked at them to come to rome and assist ne an educated effort both at the holy sea and in italy. The professors both posessing cherished over their apartment welcome which means they have wonderful bona fides with the pope. But they felt the same way we did. We held meeting and talked about the need as we saw it to go into iraq. But the pope continued to view this on presemp active. Preemptive. But despite these personal interventions in a session with the popes personal emissary with the president cardinal piolagi who went to see the president in the west wing in the white house for long encounter which i attended. The pope dispatched a french cardinal to talk to the people there will to see if they could get it. If they could get hussein to come into line as requested by the u. N. Primarily. . Of course, neither were success ful but the president understood and often said that the pope was a man of peace and he had different responsibility. Importantly, though, the pope never said it was immoral for us to go into iraq. And he really couldnt because it would be violative of the doctrine of the church which has been there for centuries which says there are evil forces an there are innocent people who are entitled to be protected from those evil forces and that does on occasion require, you know, the institution of war an d violence. Today in the train coming up to new york, i read a report from a distinguished writer for Catholic News Service suggesting that pope francis may indeed end up advocating the use of force against isis. So there are precedents for this. And we of course are unsuccessful as ive stated with Pope John Paul ii in trying to underwrite or affirm our endeavor to go iraq. As we all know in march, 2003, we entered iraq for the purpose of protecting our country and eradicating our threat possessed by Saddam Hussein. The case had been made to our citizens to our friends, to the pope and to the world, really, and the facs as we saw them were that hussein was a threat. He had invaded kuwait and iran. He used weapons of mass destruction on his own people and on the iranians. He shot at our planes and ally planes. He was working to invade international sanctions. He failed to comply with numerous u. N. Resolutions that required him to prove that he had. He paid the families of Palestinian Suicide bombers. He gave every indication that he maintained stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. He remained belligerent and violent and refused to adhere to international demands and was interested in supporting attacks on the United States. He would unite with terrorisms and provide them with weapons of mass destruction and every material needed to attack american targets. Of course, no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction were found. Nonetheless he was a threat to peace. And due to his continued hostility to the world, we chose war. Hussein was toppled and iraq did catch a glimpse of freedom and democracy. Their courageous participation in elections demonstrated their hunger and their appreciation for freedom. In fact, i will never forget just weeks after we went into iraq, the Caldean Catholic patriarch came to rome and asked if he could visit me. I received him at my residence in rome and he was the leader of about 850,000 cal deian catholics and for whom hussein kept in a protected status, you know, in the dispute between the sunni and the shiah. They were kind of off to the side. They knew that this would probably be disassembled. He didnt walk. He ran up the steps to my residence where i was standing and thrust his hand and said thank you for coming to my country and freeing us, exhibiting that innate desire that man has for freedom and the euphoria that he exhibited was exhilarating knowing even as he did, the risks they were now in as a result of this. But you know, one can debate the conduct of this war as many have and one can argue that we should not have dismissed the Sunni Baath Party dominated army and the police forces. I think that would be a very legitimate thing. One could argue that we shifted too soon on nation building an democracy building in lieu of law and order building and infrastructure particularly law and order infrastructure. There were mistakes made certainly. Abouo grab comes to mind. Those were fair discussions as far as im concerned. But i will end the way i started which is to say again that president bush after we were invaded on 911 said he would do whatever is necessary to protect our country. He did. He kept americans safe for the next seven years as our president. Was war necessary . Was it worth it . Did it matter . The final report of the chief weapons inspector for the u. N. Concluded saddam wanted to recreate iraqs weapons of mass destruction capability after sanctions were removed and iraqs economy stabilized. I agree with those who say that had saddam done what we had done that we would have seen an arms race develop between iraq and iran and the sunnishiah terrorist arms race with the possibilities of biologically, chemical, or even Nuclear Weapons being in the hands of terrorist would have increased greatly. The possibilities of a dirty bomb being exploded in our country. The pressure on our friends like israel, kuwait, saudi arabia and the u. A. Would be greater today. And a result American People would be left safe as well. Only time will tell about president bush. All i can say that he is looking better and better as the world becomes more and more dangerous. And we become more vulnerable to those who want to destroy us. What is a president s most important job . Its to keep us safe and he did it. Thank you very much. [applause] yeah. Ok. Im going to take a little bit different tact. Im going to try to look at or hope i have time to look at three seminal episodes in what was my life after 9 11. Once the very chilling effects of that attack had sunk in and we had realized at the state department, i think its safe to say throughout the government that the profundity of what had happened to us and what kind of action we were going to present to the world. We sat down on the policy planning staff as did some other people in the state and we thought about it. One of the things that impressed us majorly was the phone calls the letters if you will that were coming in, the tv scenes. It was a moment of incredible Global Solidarity. My god, we even got a condolence message from fidel castro. The most influential paper in paris ran a headline, were all americans. It was a moment of incredible solidarity and my boss and his boss decided that one of the things we should try to do remember were the diplomats former soldiers but were were diplomats now was to captain lice on that moment of Global Solidarity not just for what we knew the president wanted to do with regard to afghanistan. But in so many other realms that we had problems. So we drew up a matrix and on that matrix were the missions and the countries and the people who would do it. In some cases like pakistan, it was the president of the United States and the secretary of state who would talk to the president mue sharif and the i. S. S. And so forth. In other countries it was our ambassador. Donald rumsfeld wanted to get back to philippines for example. Saif was a terrorist group in the philippines that we could capitalize on. So we were going to try to talk with the Philippine Government and get u. S. Forces back into the philippines in some significant sort of way. It was a huge task sheet that basically capitalized on this moment of Global Solidarity. Iraq completely shattered that. The invasion of iraq and the run up to that shattered that Global Solidarity. Shattered the diplomacy that was associated with it. Shattered our hopes on the wings of that, if you will. But it also occasioned the second episode of disgust. No one knew better than former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff colin powell and i was his special assistant at that time what we had done to the armed forces and what earlier was called the peace dividend. It wasnt president clinton who delivered it, it was george h. W. Bush. He delivered it because the congress of the United States demanded it. We cut the armed forces 25 . That was a huge cut, biggest cut since world war ii, really especially if you look at how we did it. Bases and everything. Bill clinton came with his secretary of defense and cut another 3 . What relevance does this have to this . Powell was former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. And even though dick cheney told him that, he felt it was his responsibility saying we cant do two wars at the same time. We destroyed that with the 28 cut. So we better finish afghanistan. No ones arguing with you about afghanistan. You better finish that before you do iraq otherwise youre going to negligent afghanistan which is what we proceeded to do. So we shattered the Global Solidarity and we went to iraq with too few forces in the first place because Donald Rumsfeld decided that that would be the amount we would send. Some of that amount was based on the give and take with the military commander tommy franks who powell had told on two different occasions you have too few troops and whom the general told the congress we had too few troops for which, of course, he was released. You had too few troops to lead iraq and that would lead about 100,000 contractors that would do the ultimate public function. And were still living with it, ladies and gentlemen. Still living with it. We havent put it to rest yet. The other item that powell brought to the president s attention other than timing and foresize was legitimacy. Legitimacy and the shape of the United Nations, other allies other than britain and so forth. We went of the u. N. In november of 2002 and we got a 150 vote unanimous vote proving 1441. Again, we had sort of rezz recked a little bit of that Global Solidarity. But what that would say to others at the iaei that they could go and do their jobs. They could go and continue the inspections, but you cant continue the inspections if youve already martialed 160,000plus force and started them on their way. We call it in the military tipfitting them. Youve already started them. The excessive heat in iraq. So if youre doing this, youre probably going to have to cut the inspector short. If youre really intent on going to war, youre going to have to do it even without. Thats the second point. Third point, my boss got put out for the United States secure council to give the most species presentation on iraqi m. D. That anyone has ever been called on on in American Government to rendure on the american council, to the American Public and to interNational Community. And powell showed afterwards it was very effective. Why was i very effective in because it was colonel powell which had Mother Teresa poll ratings. He was 77 on the polls an she was about 80 . Youre looking at the individual who went out to the c. I. A. And prepared colin powell for that presentation in terms of orchestrating all the analysts from 16 different intelligence agencies working daily and nightly with george tenet and frankly on three pillars of that presentation, mobile biological laboratories, existing stocks of chemical an biological weapons a Nuclear Program and then a forth one which was tantamount to the biggest lie of all, formidable contacts between Saddam Hussein and alqaeda. On one occasion powell grabbed me, put me down in a chair in the National Intelligence Council Spaces where nowhere else was, closed the door. And he said take all that terrorist crap out. None of it is believable. Take it out. I said boss, dont shout at me. Well take it out. Within 30 minutes, colonel powell told them about a high level operative who had been interrogating and revealed substantial contacts between the secret police and alqaeda to the use of chemical and biological weapon, that was a total fabrication. He gave a presentation that he believed in that had been orchestrated by carefully orchestrated plot, if you will between the Vice President s office, the undersecretary of defense for policy in the Defense Department and the c. I. A. Certain allies that were given to me by george tenet as gospel. And he presented that to Security Council the American People in the National Community to bring about a war that he had already seen destroy his strategy for exploiting the solidarity 9 11 has produced for good for diplomatic purposes and destroyed any hope of legitimacy and was based on false intelligence. It was not just an intelligence failure it was that too. But it was orchestration of that intelligence to make it present a picture that simply was not true. And there were people in that administration who knew that. So those are my three similar events about this particular war and in that sense i think id say disastrous decision and a disastrous aftermath. Weve already heard about that. We can go into detail about that. My time is up. Not a good time for the United States of america. [applause] thank you very much. I would like to pick up where you left off. Interesting hearing the first two speakrers endoused in inducing the fits of nostalgia. Back in 2001 on 9 11 i viewed the world through the language that they employed. Was living near the twin tower. I had lost friends in the attacks. I believe that the war on terror was one that was against people who hated our way of life, people who hated freedom, people who were hellbent on destroying everything that we stood for and maybe some of that is true the thing about alqaeda but what i learned very quickly its much more complicated than that. I moved to afghanistan in 2008. I hit the road very soon after. I took a motor cycle, i lived in villages and i got the opportunity to meet people from all walks of life. And what i learned in those trips is that those ideas really those mannequian ideas werent very accurate. I pulled into a village after a few days of travel and meet a tribe out there that tribal chief out there. And he had lived thrupe 30 years of war about 30 years of war. We got to talk about the american invasion. At one point i asked him, why do you think the invaded your country . And he knew about 9 11. But for him 9 11 was a far away occurrence the way a famine africa is for us. He looked at me and he said, the u. S. Invaded our country because they hate our way of life. There was phrase for me. But i didnt necessarily agree with him. But he put it in this way which was talked about back in 2001 it was a watershed moment for me because it spurred me to investigate how afghans really view the war on terror and the american war particularly afghans who were living in the south. So not living in those areas that were peaceful but living in the areas that theres constant fighting until this day. Heres what i found. After 2001, alqaeda had fled the country after the u. S. Invasion. We know that. Alqaeda went to pakistan. Eventually some of them regrouped in iraq. So after the 2001 invasion of afghanistan there were no alqaeda in iraq in afghanistan, sorry. At the same time the taliban from the rank in file to the Senior Leadership quit. They surrendered in 2001. And in subsequent months every single most of them or every single one from the senior officials like the minister of justice, the minister of defense all the way down to rank in file field commanders surrendered and tried to switch sides. The reason they tried to switch sides is not because they suddenly felt that they believed in the american ideals of freedom or they loved the United States but this is how war worked in afghanistan over the last two or three decade. If you go back to soviet occupation. When they left in 1989 a lot of the afghans who called themselves communist rebranded themselves as muja hadine because in a consulate where things can get so deadly you learned very quickly that you would switch sides depending on how the wind blew. There were a number of high profile incidents that were covered at the press at the time, covered in the New York Times and other places at which time they tried to cut a deal with the new officials and find a way to not be persecuted. As an example in early january of 2002, there were efforts to erase funds for the taliban by radical pakistani clerics. They were going to madrasa and trying to get donations in an effort to bring the taliban back on their feet. At the time the finance minister of the fanl regime he said publically to reporters please do not donate to us because we are defunct. Please give your money elsewhere. As another example in january of 2002 the minister of defense along with minister of justice and a number of other top officials publically cut a deal with the afghan governor and handed over truckloads of weapons in exchange for staying at home and living in that area. So you had a particular situation in january of 2002 where you had thousands of soldiers mostly special forces soldiers on the ground and in afghanistan but the taliban as a military movement was defunct. So in other words you had thousands of soldiers on the ground without an enemy to fight but we had a political mandate and that mandate was that we were here to fight a war on terror and you were either with us or against us. This world view categorized afghans into two categories. Really doing away with all that make the reality in afghanistan. This is a contradiction. How did it get resolved . The u. S. Allied were the war lords local commander and strong men, had an effective the enemies of those war lords game enemy of the United States. There were no cell phone towers some of most of the intelligence is human intelligence not signal intelligence. So all of the intelligence is coming to the u. S. It was coming through local proxies, local war lords, local commanders who had a very complicated history on the ground who had their own enemies who had their own riflery who is had their own hatchets to bury. And in effect their enemies became our enemies. And so the u. S. Didnt go to afghanistan and create a dictator or, you know, one of you refered to one of the options of the american policy. But what you did in afghanistan was create hundred drodse upon hundreds of small dictators in villages and in districts around the country men who were armed who were paid who were given contracts to the detriment of state building an nation building over the years. Im going to give you an example of this which happened to a friend of mine in kandahar plo convince and he was somebody who lived across the street from me. He was like 80, 85 years old. He was an old fighter who fought against the soviets. But he was in retirement. And he would come sometimes to a bakery that he owned early in the morning, 4 00 or 5 a. M. He would knead dough. His name was sharaf houdine. Militiamen showed up outside his house and they asked for him. They said are you sharaf oudine. He said yes. They said we have information that you are a terrorist. And they arrested him. He protested of course. Nonetheless they handed him over to u. S. Special forces. There he underwent interrogation. He had metal hooks inserted into his mouth. He was beaten. They kept saying that he was a taliban mastermind and they were convinced that they had information from afghan war lords. He kept insisting that he was no a mastermind. Soer chevpb lullly they turned him over to the militia men. These Afghan Militia men took him to a private jail in kandahar city, took him downstairs and they hung him upside down to 18 to 20 hours a day. And they whipped him. He was hung with other people who these militia men watched extract intelligence from. One of them was awe famous one and he was whipped so much that he was eventually killed. Saraf hue dine he realized that they were after money. If he were to pay he was given his freedom. The family delivered it to his captor and he was released. The problem is that once he demonstrated that he was able to pay for his release then he was a marked man. Like hog work every few months he was arrested again. He was then transferred to Kandahar Airfield who was accused of the mears mind. He was hung upside down and whipped until he could be paid again this charade went on for two or three years in 2005 until the commander of the u. N. Was killed in a ss attack. And the major commander of the Intelligence Services that ran the militia that was torturing him he now lives in california. He was brought here and he had many family members who are american citizens. So this is this is the situation. I can repeat hundreds of stories like this. In fact, my books have hundreds of stories like that of people are caught on the war on terror. In fact, in afghanistan turned timeout be wars against local communities in which certain war lords and certain commanders were eliminating their enemy or using the United States to gainl riches, to gain power. We live with that legacy today. I think the prophecies that created the insurgency in afghanistan in 2002 and 2003 by 2004, the taliban had reconstructed itself as a fighting force and who was now based the leadership was based in afghanistan. And the level of opportunity existed and now was very hard to undo what was do and were stilling with the consequences of that. When we think about legacy in the war in afghanistan an legacy of george w. We think about what that means on the ground and interrogate about why fighting continues in afghanistan today. Thank you. [applause] ms. Bennis we are going to switch the order around. Im not peter baker. I play him on tv. Id like to thank hofstra and all of the staff for inviting me. Im delighted to participate tonight. I want to start discussing george w. Bush with a hero, a woman named diane nash. Have people heard of diane nash . Diane nash was a great hero of the civil rights movement. At the age of 18 or 19 she was the one who orchestrated the marriage in selma. And on the commemoration of the march of selma she was being honored of those many the front row of those who were going to commemorate that experience. At the last minute she said this, she refused to marriage and he said, i refuse to march because george bush marched. He was in the front row with her. I think the Selma Movement was about nonviolence and peace, and democracy and george bush stands for the opposite for violence and war and stonal election and stolen elections his administration had people tortured. So i thought this was not an appropriate event for him. She was right. It was not an appropriate event for him. This is not an appropriate event for him either. I would assert that the only public event appropriate today for george bush and the others of it but of his administration is to be on trial in the hague for war crimes. [applause] and i think that when we look at war crimes its important that we interrogate it more thoroughly than we sometimes do. Both in my view, the wars in iraq and afghanistan were illegal. In afghanistan the claim was made that this was a war for justice and for selfdefense when, in fact, it was about revenge and propaganda partly to prepare the way for the coming war in iraq which was the primary war. It was illegal because it was not selfdefense. Article 51 of the u. N. Charter is very specific about what selfdefense is and what is not. And a country has the absolute right of selfdefense until the critical word until until the Security Council can meet and decide what to don that particular crisis. The Security Council met the the Security Council met within 24 hours of the attack on the trade center. The building was still smorleding. Diplomats had lost friends. It was a terrible event for those in new york and washington as well. They would have on that day passed anything the u. S. Proposed. But the u. S. Did not propose an endorsement of the use of force. It was a very specific decision not to do that, not because it wouldnt have passed. It would have passed unanimously and with great ferver as the resolution did. It called for a varietyy of things having to do with tracing the money and several other things but it was not a resolution to be taken under the terms of Chapter Seven the criteria in the u. N. Charter that is the only basis for the use of force. And in that sense it was not selfdefense and it did not meet the standard for selfdefense in the United Nations and under article six of the u. S. Constitution treaties are part of the law of the land. Treaties include the u. N. Charter. So that was clearly a violation. Whether or not the president makes a decision, Congress Makes a decision doesnt determine whether International Law has been violated. And in this case it was violated. In the question of iraq i would just say one other thing on the question of defense. If the u. S. Had managed to scramble a plane to take down the second plane that was about to crash into the towers that would have been a legitimate use of selfdefense. Going to war three weeks lateren later, against a country on the other side of the world was not selfdefense. In iraq we had many claims of why they war was legitimate. It was weapons of mass destruction. It was the possibility of weapons. It was yellow cake uranium. It was the aluminum to that could only be used for Nuclear Weapons. It was all these things. Well, as we know none of those were true. It was a war fought for a host of other reasons. I am not going to get into those reasons that have to do with power, oil and other issue of resources and power. But i think that we do have to recognize that the region is more dangerous now because of the illegal wars waged by George W Bush than would have been the case otherwise. I think when we talk about war crimes, it is also important that we distinguish the war crimes that have to do with how wars are carried out from other kinds of war crimes, the kind that has to do with how the war was carried out are more common in much of our discourse so the issues of collective punishment, shock and awe, the massive civilian deaths that were known that were going to occur and the acts were carried out anyway the thousands that were killed. The rendition the black sights of torture all of those things. The determination that some prisoners somehow dont deserve the Geneva Convention as though that the right of lawyers of the u. S. Department of justice decide that some prisoners do not deserve to be treated under the conditions of the Geneva Convention. All of these things were illegal. All of them were war crimes. They have to do with specific violations of the Geneva Convention. Article 33 that prohibits collective punishment, article 29 says that says that a party of the conflict the government of one side in that conflict is responsible for the treatment of People Living under occupation regardless of who what agent of that government carries out the action. That goes to the question of command responsibility and the obligation of the commander, the commander in chief and all those up and down the chain of command to be responsible for that. We saw none of that. We saw lowlevel accountability against three or four people in the abu ghraib scandal and nothing nothing above very few very low ranking soldiers. Article 47 of the Geneva Convention says that people who are protected under the Geneva Convention cannot be denied protection by actions taken by the Occupying Force or by the government in place. So things like dissolving the military and sending home 300,000 former soldiers without a job was a violation of the gee Geneva Convention. All of those are talked about not always in the context of International Law but theyre talked about a lot as the legacy as part of the legacy of the Bush Administration. Whats not talked about very often is what Justice Jackson who was the Supreme Court justice as you all know and served as chief prosecutor. What Justice Jackson called a Supreme International crime. Which was of course, not a violation of the Geneva Convention which didnt exist at that time. It was the crime of aggression. But that was the fundamental crime, the supreme crime from which all the others stem. And these were wars of aggression. They were not selfdefense. They were the Supreme International crime. They were grounded in the concept of american exceptionalism, something that has guided u. S. Forum policy from the first settlers on this land who took it as manifest destiny their right to slaulter the people to claim the lan of their own. That we are different, we are better we have the right to take the world to war because we have been the victims of a terrorist attack. Imagine if another country were in that situation. Lets take an attack that did happen years earlier in 1976. Cuba was the victim of a terrorist attack when terrorists put two bombs on a civilian airliner that crashed over the mediterranean, killed 73 people. Among them the entire young cuban sensing team, several government officials. It was a clear act of terror. One of the known master minds of that terrorist act luis posada cerreas waslying if more years was living for many years in miami. He was first charged at one point with an Immigration Violation and was put on house arrest but he was never jailed never tried for the terrorist attack. What if cuba had decided that because they had been victims of a terrorist attack that they now have the right to send drones to attack him or someone else in miami or to take the world to war to revenge that attack . Would we have said well, thats their right . They have been the suct of a subject of a terrible attack and therefore they have the right to go to war . I dont think that would have been our response. The u. S. Only allowed itself to violate International Law within impunity and to demand the world stand with it. That was the nature of this manichaean point of whether youre either with us or youre with the terrorists. It wasnt just about reclaiming the Global Solidarity that we saw during those first hours and those first days when the world said we are all americans now. It was about to say if you are not prepared to go to war with us, we will treat you as if you were terrorists an we will go to war against you. It was that kind of manichaean approach. And it has to do with this notion that we heard from george bush it wasnt on september 11, it was on september 12 i would submit that changed the world. Not september 11th. September 11th was a horrific crime, a crime against humanity. September 12th was the announcement that the response to that horrific crime would be to take the world to war. What we heard that the only choice we had was to either go to war or to let them get away with it. Unfortunately, we too often here that same argument now. It wasnt true then. And it isnt true now. There is never only the choice of war or nothing. There are always a host of alternatives and its our jobs as students, activists diplomats, elected officials to find those alternatives and that didnt happen. Is what Justice Jackson said Something Else in at the time of numberburg and he said and i quote him here if certain acts and violations are crimes they are crime whether the United States does them or germany does them. We are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct that conduct against others that we would not be willing to have invoked against us. Justice jackson was betrayed by george w. Bush and his administration. It was in the context of that refusal to knowledge the reality of International Law. You might want to think about one thing. Whether you want to accept the legitimacy of law not, it is how the rest of the world views our actions. It is how the other 197 countries around the world view what we do. It is through that lens of International Law and international gymsy or lack of gymsy that legitimacy. It is for that reason it is going to be the legacy of george w. Bush will be that of a war criminal. Ok. Great. Can anybody hear me . You can see im off the end of the table here. That might also be metaphor cal as well. I think what has transpired here is fabulous. As a journal i have, somebody who spends a lot of time in washington on the these debates i enjoy hearing a great diversity of point of views of points of view. I think hofstra should be praised for bringing together people who can have a vigorous debate about these things. I would say that as a reporter i was in afghanistan in 2001 before any americans arrived, because i was based in moscow at the time and the only way in was through tajikistan, and i spent eight months there in the early part of the war as it better, were, and i went there from the middle east and spent about six months in iraq, first when saddam was in charge and came back to cover the second term of president bush. I had a chance to see both sides of this period. One thing i thought was on point thats important to remember is how different it looks from these different vantage points and in fact how complicated these issues are whether you agree with secretary mickelson or these are in fact such they go beyond easy the easy conversation. The afghanistan who told them they invaded our country because this they hated our way of life. And it reminds me of two people in baghdad in the early days after the fall of the saddam government and they decided to test the very effect of different sper suspectives and each of them rode along with a American Military positions. And our arab speaking Foreign Correspondent whos passed away unfortunately, walked alongside and talked to the iraqis. And the troops cake away from this events and said, boy, theyre either waving at us and theyre happy and theyre very supportive. And another person heard anger and resentment and bitterness that would fuel obviously a lot of trouble to come. And i think its that sort of disconnect that has flavored this period in which we have tried to find solutions, and it has been a lot easier for president obama probably have a lot to say about him as well if this were a obama conference but this has voled and changed over time as two president s have tried to figure out what to take from it. I would argue that the first antiwar sentiments that inhabited the white house after the invasion of iraq and the invasion of afghanistan came before president Obama Took Office as president bush took a different tack by his second term. The anecdote that stands out is twrevpb when the israelis come to the