Happened and im elected president he will do with multiple threats that iran brings. It up to spring the threat of being a nuclear country. Bute are serious problems, they are also the largest sponsor in every way of terrorism. Not just in the region but latin america. They support hezbollah. We have to deal with that threat. We have to push them back in that regard. Made harder because it will have at least 100 billion in fresh capital to carry out their agenda. We have to deal with the capability they will get when conventional weapons sections are relieved which is in of time. Y short period to have Ballistic Missile capabilities they are developing and have conventional weapons capabilities second to none in the region is something were going to have to deal with. The strategy needs to be to engage with the region. With the countries that field is strictly threatened by this. We have to leave this. We cannot be part of the community of length of nations. We have to lead and develop a strategy to push iran back into its own country in terms of its efforts to destabilize the regime and to make sure they never have the capability of a nuclear weapon. [applause] my last question. You mentioned something mistakes of secretary clinton with respect to iraq. Good to talk to us about what you think of her tenure and some of the differences you have an foreignpolicy vision . Bu is would say the obamaclinton foreignpolicy will be rememberedh as a foreignpolicy based on grandiose talk and little action. It will be based on wonderful then grandiose thing like red lines. Power. They regional invade crimea is the Junior Varsity and the the create caliphate and announce their intention of the black flag of isis on top of the white house. This is the linkage of this ministration and their inability to back it up has created real dangers in the world. They believe in soft power. I dont have a problem with soft power as long as theres hard power behind it. [applause] bush when there is no hard power you cannot skip over that part. You cannot just talk about things. We are not part of the community of nations. We have to lead. The when you create a more Peaceful World there is enough evidence in history starting with ronald reagan. Himre in this place honor because he understood that having certainty, having a word that everybody understood created peace. Lessens the chance of american combat troops be necessary. We need to restore that policy and make a more bipartisan. I have not heard Hillary Clintons he was on this. If anybody sees her when i do ask . It would be interesting. The president says for those who oppose the iranian deal, and there are solid reasons. I assume many in this room oppose the deal. [applause] bush the president had the gall to say that those who oppose withdeal were in cahoots the death to america crowd in a run. That crowd in a run is the group you negotiated the deal with. [laughter] bush this is the problem. We need to restore bipartisan consensus on foreign policy. You cannot keep pushing down people themisagree with calling, them warmongers every time they have a principal view and make your view this illustrious, so intelligent view that no one in the right mind would not embrace it. Youre never going to get the kind of consensus we need to create a more Peaceful World unless you start with the premise that maybe people disagree with you based on principle for crying out loud. And maybe you should engage with people for better consensus to get a better place. And this is wrong. [applause] bush across the spectrum of foreignpolicy we see this. Mrs. Clinton was the implement your of this foreignpolicy. I think the experience she had israel. Is real. Libya, failed record. Benghazi, the fight against terror. Its based on not backing up your word for america no longer has credibility in the world. I conclude by saying never country where our relationship is better than it was the daylight the day that barack obama was inaugurated and Hillary Clinton was one of the secretary of state. Cuba and iran. Name nations where our relationship are worse. It starts with canada and it is a long list. Thank you. [applause] guys. Thank you i saw a cute little baby. Governor, thank you for this inspiring remarks. I think by the response of the people of the audience, you can tell you have got every single one of them on your side. [applause] bush will you guys come to iowa . On behalf of everyone at the reagan foundation, i that everyone in this room, we have a little gift for you. This is an american flight that flew over the library today. We would like to give it to you. Bush thank you. Thank you all. [applause] president ial candidates appeared on the sunday morning talk shows. Donald trump was on he wasmeet the press. Asked about his reluctance to say he would run as a thirdparty candidate. Carly fiorina question the Party Trouble belongs to. You could win as an independent which would be more comfortable . I get what you dont want to run as an independent. Trump somebody was asking me that question the other day times 50. Im hearing it all the time. I am running as a republican. I lead by double digits. I am not prepared to close a door yet. I would not be surprised if someday in the future it happens. They treated me very well. I just wanted to be treated fairly. Heit is not clear to me that is a republican first of all based on his willingness to run a thirdparty bid and some of the positions he has taken. I think it is important as i got there and talk. What i see and hear our women men and women were sick of the professional political class. Problems in washington dc. They agree it is ridiculous that in the smartest and richest country in the world that we cannot get racing things done like served our veterans, secure our borders, and hold government accountable for being competent. Thearly fiorina speaks at iowa state fair tomorrow. We have that live at 1 00 p. M. Eastern. Scott walker live at 11 in the morning and in the afternoon at 4 00 eastern South Carolina senator lindsey graham. That is part of her live coverage of the iowa state fair continuing all week here on cspan. Our focus on president of politics continues at the iowa state fair with gop candidate and neurosurgeon ben carson. Is live on cspan at 5 00 eastern. After that at 5 30 p. M. Eastern former governor George Pataki talks at the Des Moines Register soapbox stage. Our live coverage on cspan. Odiernoef of staff rate is passing his duties on. He held a final News Conference where he said he disagrees with republican president ial candidate Donald Trumps idea that the United States should go into iraq and sees oil being used to fund the Islamic State militant group. He says are limits on what military power can do. Gen. Odierno i would send my prayer sergeant of Staff Sergeant mckenna who was killed in iraq this week. A member of the special forces group. That reminds us that we have our soldiers around the world doing dangerous and important things every single day. That is a reminder of the sacrifice that they make my. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family. First, i want to thank the press for what i believe to be a positive relationship over the last 15 years for me as i have worked around the world and here in the pentagon, i really do appreciate the work you do. I appreciate the candor and dedication that you have, especially how you recover the how you have covered the army in many different parts of the world. I always found it important that the press raises issues, keeps us honest, helps us to work through tough issues that we have, and i truly appreciate the relationship we have had. I have always enjoyed the time i had with the press. So thank you very much for that. As i get ready to go out the door, couple of points i would like to make. I believe this nation is in an important flexion point, specifically regarding national security. Our security environment remains uncertain and dynamic. And we all know that based on what is going on in Eastern Europe with russian aggression Chinese Military increased , investment in the military, increased aggression by china in the pacific. We continue to have a middle east that shrouded increasing instability. With the rise of isil, the underlying conflict in the middle east. I believe these are longterm problems we will have to deal with for the foreseeable future. We continue to have to work our mission in afghanistan to ensure that that government is able to survive and maintain itself for many years ahead. It is important that we stay engaged in afghanistan. We have to be concerned with the growing movement of global terrorism, whether it be in north africa, central africa, and other parts of the world. As always, we have an unstable, unpredictable, provocative north korea that we have to be concerned with. As i quickly summarized, there are a lot of issues out there, i didnt name them all. Those are the major ones. The problem we have today is we have a dynamic environment where we have increasing requirements on our military while we continue to have decreasing resources. This is of great concern to me personally as we continue to move forward. What i worry about is we are sacrificing a longterm viability of our military to meet current environmental requirements. I mean by that i worry about decreasing readiness over time, i worry about reduced modernization in our force and the impact that might have two to five years from now. Because many of the problems i listed are going to be persistent problems. They are not ones that will be solved overnight. There are a couple of things that we are doing in the army, and i would say in the last 18 months, we have an aggressive several publishing several documents that are helping us move to the future. We published an army vision which is trying to give us a strategic advantage in the complex world of we live in. To identify what are the unique roles the army will play, there are key characteristics that i see in the army in the future. It must be an army that is incredibly agile, we must be expert. What i mean is leaders of great character, competence, and commitment. We must be innovative, we must be interoperable with our allies as well as other services and joint force. We must be expeditionary, we must be scalable in order to meet probably simultaneous requirements around the world across several different continents. We have published an Army Operating concept the really looks to the future of what we need to look at in 2025 and beyond. We have identified challenges we will continue to look at. This will help us to synchronize and integrate our efforts as we decide what we want to do in modernization, what we need to do in developing future leaders, and what we think is going to be required of them. We have to also look in new areas. We significantly increase our investment in cyber, both in the force and are modernization technologies, we are developing new readiness models. That will help us to deploy forces when needed on time, and we must increase our efficiency and the ability to deploy quickly. We increased and develop a new total force policy that uses the entire force in a way that we can sustain over the long time. These are just a few of the things that are working now, and with that, i will open it up for questions. General, first of all thank you for doing this and i think we all appreciate the amount of time you have spent both here at the podium and that smaller gatherings. Roundtables and all. We hope you encourage your successor to do the same. I wanted to ask you there are two women that appear they may be completing the ranger course. We have been told they have gone through the hardest part. Im wondering if you can take a step back and look at that as you view your career and how things are changed . And whether or not you think this should inform the armys decision on whether or not to open the infantry to women, and what your personal views are on this as you leave, because your name may not be on the recommendations to the secretary. Gen. Odierno i would say as we continue to move forward as a military, the most important thing i was talking about Talent Management in order to best. You have to pick the best people that will conform to the establishment of the standards we have established in army. If the women can meet the standard, they should be able to go. They should be able to earn the ranger tab. I think thats how we want operators move forward. If you can meet the standards weve established, you should be able to perform in that mos. I think that is where we are headed. Again, we have not made any final decisions on infantry or army and, by think those are coming very shortly. We have really collected some significant analysis, we done incredible studies over the last two years. Weve integrated women in tall and to all formations and again, it is about can they meet the standard or not. And if they can, we lean towards the fact that it would be good if we allowed them to serve. I dont know how it is going to come out, you never know. There are several days left yet in ranger school. But the feedback ive gotten with these women is how incredibly prepared they are. The effort they put forward has been significant. They have impressed all that they have come in contact with. They are clearly motivated and frankly, thats what we want out of our soldiers. I think this has been a great effort. We will probably run in other course in november that will be integrated. That is where we are headed right now. And then we will make a decision after that on whether we make it permanently open to women. Given the fact that you have done as many tours in iraq as anybody, can you reflect a little bit on your perspective of what has happened in iraq and how it came to this point. And your solutions that you see out there. Do you think a nofly zone would make any sense . And do you think it is time to put u. S. Troops, soldiers on the ground with iraqi forces even potentially with syrian rebel forces, put u. S. Troops on the ground to embed with them and help them further train on the ground is it even feasible . Gen. Odierno as i look at iraq and ive said this before it is frustrating to look at what has happened inside of iraq. I believe that a couple of years in 2010 or two dozen 11, 2011, we had it in a place it was heading in the right direction. Violence was down, the economy was growing, the politics were ok. We turned it over to them it. The by the agreement that weve made back in 2008, that they would take full control of this in 2011 we would leave. As it is turned out, they were not prepared to handle that. I think it is more politically than it was anything else. The political factions just simply werent able to Work Together. And based on that, people became frustrated, and when people become frustrated, they tend to turn to violence because there is no other way to get their point across. That allowed a group like isil to exploit the fissures that were occurring inside iraq. The same thing happened in syria. When you have now are two countries are annexed which other the have the same kind of problems. And you gave them a fairly significant piece of ground that enable them to build their capabilities. First off, i absolutely believe that the region has to solve this problem. The u. S. Cannot solve this problem for the region. Theyve got to get involved and be a part of the solution. I truly believe that. I have said before, we could probably go in there with a certain amount of American Forces and defeat isil. The problem is we will be right back where we are today six months later. For me, its about changing the dynamics, the political dynamics, the economic dynamics. It has to be done by those in the region. It is important for us to support that by training and trying to develop capabilities and capacities. I believe that if we find it in the next several months that we are not making the progress that we have, we should absolutely consider embedding soldiers and see if that would make a difference. It doesnt mean that would be fighting, but we would be embedding them in moving with them as an option we should , present to the president when the time is right. When you say that the you mean both in iraq and syria . Gen. Odierno originally i was in iraq. I know generals dont normally comment on politics. But you are about to go. Whatever into duty of . Due to you . So when you hear donald trump say we should just moved in with our troops and take their oil, and bomb the iraqi oil fields, does anything like that even remotely have military utility . Gen. Odierno heres the issue i learned over the past 10 years. There are limits to military power. We can have an outcome, but the problem weve had is do we achieve sustainable outcomes . It is about sustainable outcome. The problem we have had is we have had outcomes, but theyve only been shortterm outcomes because we havent looked at the political and economic side of this. It has to be all three the come together. If you dont do that, its not going to solve the problem. That is what i continue to look at. For me, if you asked me, if you said to me if we didnt right now, isil is the direct threat, and theyre getting ready to have an attack on the United States that could be devastating, thats a different issue. That is a different issue. Then maybe we have to look at putting troops in the ground. But thats not where we are today. What we want to do is try and stop a longterm group that is potentially attempting to be a longterm influence in the middle east, that is clearly promoting extremism, and frankly, suppressing the populations in the middle east. In order to resolve act, you need countries in the middle east and those surrounding the middle east to be involved in the solution. Do you disagree with donald trump . Gen. Odierno right now i do. You know it was debated on who last iraq, kind of who lost china in the late 40s. The narrative goes Something Like the brilliant surge succeeded, obama abandon iraq, setting the stage for sectarianism to return. Iraq he forces collapse. Allowing the growth of isil. Do you agree with that narrative . Gen. Odierno i dont get is black and white. I believe it is great. Gray. The military operations we conducted provided as an opportunity to be successful. Us leaving at the end of 2011 was negotiated in 2008 by the bush administration. That was always the plan. We promised them we would respect the sovereignty. I think based on that, that was