Country, which is so essential to its security. , thee story we got American University the town student talks about his life experience. The taliban was there and took refuge with his family. Younger boy at that time. As third soon as the taliban were dripping out he came back. As a matter fact, how to read and to write. Now interviewing as a job as a. Ales manager there are full fulbright scholars at the university in kabul. He wanted me to say thank you to the American People. This is as close as i could come. The Education System and afghanistan. So many of them, the number given to them is counterintuitive. So i do not use it. In terms of the lower grades, before you get to colleges and universities, before the taliban was driven out, to the extent they have been, 900,000 boys. Now a Million Students in school. 3 million of those are girls. None of those who couldve been educated before we got there with our allies. Were 20,000e teachers, all male. Is now 200,000 teachers. 60,000 of whom are women. Health care much improved. Child mortality significantly down. Afghan refugees who fled pakistan have returned home. How is it that 67 of the American People recent survey think that the afghan war was not worth fighting . How did that happen . Because the picture is much, much better than that number. I just dont believe that the American People have had a fair or fuller picture of the events in afghanistan. I believe that the press has missed a good story. It hasnt missed the problems. It has missed the progress. The impression that our people get doesnt come from either. It comes from what they read or hear or see and what they have which is fair game. And they should be brought into the light and disclosed and written about and talked about. But what has been missing, i believe, is the part of the afghan story which represents Real Progress so that the American People have been deprived, denied the sense of success or at least partial success which i believe they are entitled to because of the loss of blood and treasure by our people. I think it is a sad it is sad that our people dont have that sense that hey, we have made some progress in afghanistan. The picture basically has just been too onesided focused just too much on failure and on discord. To leave you now have to decide what we are going to do, what is the next steps in afghanistan . We need a Security Agreement a socalled bilateral Security Agreement for our troops to be able to stay. I hope that will be reached and reached soon because i think we need a continuing relationship with afghanistan to try to do everything that we can within reason to keep the progress moving in the right direction and not to see a fallback to taliban control or taliban rule. In terms of the security on the ground, the taliban has not accomplished their strategic goals. They have not been able to hold any additional territory. Last year there were 4,000 sites that had been turned over to the control of the Afghan Security forces and there were attacks against 3,000 of those sites. In 100 cases of the 4,000, there was temporary success by the taliban attackers. Temporary. And in none of them was it any kind of permanent success. It was very temporary and then turned back. So that the security situation from a military perspective has significantly improved. Even though and this is critical and i will stop here, we turned over the entire security basically to the afghans. And that has been a huge success story. We our commanders have been surprised by how well the Afghan Security forces have done. Now this is not perfect. There are places where the security is not quite as good with the Afghan Forces there on their own. They are now basically on their own. Pretty quick. It doesnt seem quick. A ten year war seems like forever but in terms of the transfer of responsibility to the Afghan Forces this has been the last couple of years essentially. I remember now much time and energy and effort we spent just a few years ago trying to get the data on how many of the Afghan Forces were being partnered with us. How many were being led by us. How many were on their own. Now basically they are on their own. Obviously we have supporting troops still there. On their way out. They will all be out by the end of next year except for perhaps a force that will remain. We dont know the number but perhaps a total Coalition Force of 10,000 who will remain mainly to help on logistics on perhaps on intelligence and perhaps additional training, perhaps on the helicopters and air force. There is some special activities which will be engaged in by whatever the residual force is, and ha that hasnt been decided yet. Nonetheless, they are basically now securing this country on their own. They have done a better job than i think most of our commanders have expected. We need to be continually engaged in afghanistan. We need for that to happen. We need to have a bilateral Security Agreement. President karzai is always a challenge. And im very diplomatic when i say that. This is a place of diplomacy. I want to be diplomatic. And his rhetoric has been stunningly bad at times inaccurate at times. Said things that i cant figure out why he is saying them, what the motive is. Like one of the things that he says is that nato has not achieved any security success in afghanistan or he will say that we have at time be in lee with the taliban. And i asked him directly. I said what possible motive could we have to be in league with the taliban for one minute when they are killing our men and women and your men and women . What could possibly be our motive . And he said well, he has been trying to figure that out himself. [ laughter ] and then he i said well, it hurts, it hurts. The American People hear you and by the way, he is almost alone in terms of the leadership of that country that acts as though it doesnt make much difference whether we come or stay. He is almost alone. You talk to the ministers there, you talk to the educators there, they want us to stay. We cant stay. We can have a residual force but we cant stay. And so finally he says well, he said there has been a western history of divided rule. Divide and conquer here in afghanistan. That is the best he could do. Because what happened 50 or 100 years ago. Or when the brits or russians or whoever. Alex and. Alexander. You go back further than i do. Anyway, that is it. And i just told him, i said you know, it just is you are undermining a goal which you obviously want, which is for there to be some kind of a residual presence and your people clearly want by any polling or any conversation. And so we had a good healthy conversation, not my first with karzai but perhaps my last, i dont know. Anyway, thanks for the invitation and we would be happy to engage in conversation thank you. [ applause ] so i want to ask you there is a lot i want to ask you about afghanistan. But i want to start with the current dustup over the n. S. A. And over our, you know, alleged espionage of friends and allies around the world. Still alleged . I guess it is pretty much acknowledged. I tried to get an explicit acknowledgement out of the white house and they havent gone that far. What was the apology for if they havent acknowledged it . Anyway. The statement about Angela Merkel is that the United States is not and will not be listening in on her phone conversations. There was never any statement about the past tense. It was always current, future. Did you know this was going on . You got all of the security not specifically. I think the most that i would have known would have been the security would have been the intelligence assessments. Without saying specifically where they came from. In other words, it could be say, well, that the source of some assessment would be high level officials, for instance, in a country but you dont know whether that was one on one or transferred anonymously in conversation. Whether it was overheard. So the source is they dont describe in the reports that we get that so and sos phone was conversation was tapped. That is not the way the reports. I would say that people assumed that there were conversations which were overheard but i dont it wasnt as though they come to us with a report saying we want you all to know that we earliesenning in on that we are listening in to conversations of leaders. Not going to believe with merkel just said. Yes. It didnt shock you when you read the report . It didnt shock me. I think it startles us when we look at or we hear of something that sounds to me so wrong. I dont think we ought to be tapping the phone conversations or listening in on the phone conversations of our allies leaders. Period . Period. Now the question is who are our allies. If there is a list. There is a list. Nato and the major nonnato allys. I cant confirm that here. But allegedly now nine additional leaders according to some of the reports. I dont believe all of the things i hear or read. Even from you. Present company excepted. It depends on your source. Right. And sometimes you guys say anonymous. Right. Just maybe no more than once a day. But we hear frequently in the media an anonymous white house source. We dont know who the heck that source is. And there is times with some investigative reporters, obviously not you, who will try to get information from us. It happens all the time on the hill. A reporter will come up and say i heard that you are planning a trip to the moon. Or i better make it more logical. Planning a trip to north korea. Okay. Kind of like the moon. And that reporter never heard that. He is saying i heard, hoping because i did go to north korea ten years ago that maybe i got plans now. And what or there is a rumor that he heard. So, you know, some very aggressive investigative reporters are able to get anonymous statements and use them to get confirmations. I mean it is a wellknown thing. But back to i mean the question here though is we have our nato allies, we have the major nonnato allies. That list includes afghanistan. Includes pakistan. Would it be smart for the United States to foreswear any listening in on the leaders of those two countries . The test for me is whether or not the leaders have a reasonable expectation that we are not going to try to listen in on their expectations. That to me would be a test. And if there is a reasonable expectation that we would not be trying to listen to their conversations then i think we ought to have some kind of an understanding with other countries about protecting our leaders from listening in from being listened in to. It is kind of a using it as kind of a privacy test, what do americans, what is their reasonable expectation as to whether or not their Business Records are going to be opened to more than the telephone companies,. Right. Kind of that issue. What is the reasonable expectation about privacy . I think that our friends and allies, leaders ought to have do have or should have, by the way, even if they dont and they are so cynical now giving up believing that they wont be tapped by their best friends, i think we are better off in terms of trust because we need the trust of our allies leaders. We need that trust and i think it is better that there be a reasonable expectation if there already isnt one that the conversations that are intended to be private of our friends p. Leaders are not going to be intervened by us. That is my test. Are you concerned that we could see the pendulum swing back. You talked to officials that are concerned that we are going to overcorrect this. Even if it went a little bit too far. Why are we listening to chancellor merkel, that there will be a move to really constrain what the n. S. A. And what our intelligence agencies do and we could have Something Like, you know, i mean much of the 9 11 report talks about how we went too far after the Church Commission and all of that. I havent seen evidence of it yet. Sure, it can go too far. But from what i have seen, we are not anywhere near going too far even though we could go too far. The pendulum could go too far with the whole n. S. A. Metadata issue. A fascinating issue. You didnt ask the question so i wont take the time to give you my views on it. Him i havent seen the pendulum swing too far yet. Get back to afghanistan. The meeting with karzai. He said all of the things you said he said, talked to some u. S. Officials, some offtherecord. We will talk about him as if he is a little bit unstable. I dont think he is unstable. What is it like to be in the room with him . He is a a very friendly conversation, first of all, by the way. He was very direct. I talked to him about the things that he says and the impact that that has on us and on our people and that i dont understand his politics, by the way. If his people want a presence a an ongoing presence why is he saying things that make it either unlikely, less likely, or that he doesnt care that much . What is the politics . I dont get it. Im a politician. Once in a great while you will see politicians say things for public consumption. I know it is rare. But once in a great while politicians will Say Something for their publics that they dont exactly believe themselves or they would stay differently. Why is he saying these things . His it is totally inconsistent with where his public is. I dont get that. The conversation i want to emphasize are very friendly, very direct. His first question was about n. S. A. You know, trying to put me on the trying to put me on the defensive. He said why are he says i presume you are tapping and i go why are you doing that to me . And i said we are we tap everybody. We dont discriminate. [ laughter ] not quite true, but it wasnt true but i decided lets go on to afghanistan rather than right, right, right. Now, he obviously you have a president ial election going on in afghanistan. See any signs of that when you were there . A lot of evidence of it actually. When i say evidence, a lot of discussion about it. Not evidence. The signs, the answer is we didnt see visible signs. A lot of discussion about it and a lot of confidence that it is going to happen. Scheduled for what, april 10 . I dont know the exact date but it is in april. The military there are pretty confident that they are going to be able to prevent the taliban from disrupting it. That is the taliban goal would be to make it so that the Afghan People dont have confidence in the outcome . What does karzai do after all that . Go and establish a president ial library . No, he has got he is building a modest little apartment for himself. 10,000 or 20,000 square feet or whatever it is. On the grounds. And i think that he will he is going to stick around. You think we will have a genuine transition. There are how many candidates . 11 left or 10 was it . I heard there were 10 out there. And do we i thought my staff would help me. Ten, thank you, bill. And do we what do we think happens postkarzai afghanistan . I mean we got war lords running i mean what is im obviously more optimistic than perhaps the average american is given the information that has been given to them. I just see evidence of progress. If we can maintain and if we can work out a Bilateral Agreement for us and our allies that allow us to have a small presence but an effective presence there i just think i know what they want to do. They dont like the taliban and they like their army. They got no confidence in the government in terms of it being corruptionfree or anywhere near that. The corruption problem remains there. The lack of services remains there. This isnt like the Afghan People have great confidence in their government, they dont. But they do have confidence in the army and they have for a long time and a few years ago they didnt have a lot of confidence in the national police. They seem now from everything we can gather to have more confidence in the national police. And the local police which i think now is at about 25,000 and they are trying to increase to 40,000. And to have it in more places. They really have confidence because that is their own elders that basically are pointing and connected to that. They are defending their own villages. Anyway, the security part i believe is going to continue to give the taliban problems. The taliban will continue to be a force particular fly rural areas. I dont want to underestimate that. By some measures they have actually in some places afghanistan is slightly less secure now than it was two years ago. In some places. They are protecting their own villages. That heart, the security part emma i believe will continue to give the taliban problems. They will continue to be a force particularly in rural areas. I dont want to underestimate that. In some places, afghanistan a slightly less secure now than it was two years ago, in some places. If there is no Security Agreement, we cannot stay. We will not put our troops in a situation where they are at risk because of how they might be tried in a court order we dont have confidence, for instance. How really possibility is it that there is a deadlock and no agreement . What happens if we just take up and leave 100 cent . I think it is likely we will get a bilateral Security Agreement but there are a few issues that may remain unresolved i still call him senator john kerry, but secretary john kerry did a terrific job and working on a couple of successful solutions. Does he get along with karzai . He is directed his hands on, so i think people respect that. He does not just read from talking points come a which he makes good use of, but he also has his own knowledge and experience which he brings to bear and his own background working out problems with people, being direct. People like him. He is a big plus there are. If it does not happen and we pull out, theres a greater chance that they will fall back into a society which they dont want. Before you get to other questions, just a few more quick ones on this. Should we be negotiating this agreement with karzai along with his successor . Is it essential to get it done before he leaves . It is. Why . You dont want it to be an issue in their campaign. All of