From the American Energy point of view, iraq matters. Youve been there many times. The Central Government collapses and the iranians enrich and the world as a whole suffers. The American People its in our National Security interest not to give these guys safe haven in syria and iraq because the next 9 11 could very well come from that region, is that an is that anover statement or is that in the area of possibility . As i have said in other settings, there are several groups the al qaeda ideology has spread as we have seen. Several of the groups are more dangerous than others. Would you put this at the top . I think at this point in time i would probably keep al qaeda on the arabian peninsula. Director of National Intelligence says he thinks the deterioration in syria now is a direct threat to the homeland. Is he right . If he said it, and if he is assessing that its there now, then i would agree with him. Does that make sense to you . It makes sense they will be a threat to the homeland in time. Perfect. Iran is on the ground, secretary hagel . In iraq . Iran has been in iraq for many years. So the reality is that iran is on the ground. Do they have influence over shiia militia, the iranians . Im sure they do, yes. Are you worried about force protection . We have thousands of americans trapped inside of iraq, are you worried about that . I am. And we are are you worried about another benghazi on steroids . Its a bigger force, bigger threat, bigger dynamics, yes. Its a huge threat. When it comes to whether or not we communicate with iran, im not suggesting we do a deal with iran to divide up iraq and say you get a Nuclear Weapon if you help me. I know the strategic differences. They want to own iraq. We want to free iraq. We are strategicically misaligned. Is it fair to say the reality that exists today talking to iran about Security Issues on the ground probably makes some sense . I agree. You know there have been some sideline conversations. If we start flying airplanes, it makes some sense to talk to the iranians about what we are doing so they dont shoot us down and we dont bomb them . The iranians are there. They are in the region. Thats the reality as i see it. They are up to no good. I dont want to cede iraq to iran, but i dont want to blunder into a situation without thinking this thing through. For gods sakes ill touk to anybody to help our people from being captured or killed. This is a time when the iranians in a small way may help. Given their behavior. I know who they are. They are not repentent people at all. They are thugs and killser. We are where we are. Afghanistan, on a scale of one to 10, if we pull all of our troops out by the end of 2016, general dempsey, whats the likelihood of what happened in iraq visiting afghanistan . One being very unlikely, 10 being highly likely . I think based on the reports that i received on the development of the n. S. F. , i have to make an assumption about this government, i think it would be ill do it in thirds. Lower thirds, unlikely. What percentage of the iraqi im going to take two minutes what percentage of the Afghan Security forces are made up of southern pashtuns. Less than 6 or 7 . The afghan armian army is seen as an occupying power in the kandahar region. Thats just a reality. Seen ike the iraqi was i think the likelihood of this happening in afghanistan is at eight to 10. If you recommend, if im wrong and youre right, would you think the most prudent discussion would be dont let it happen even if its one in three . Do you think we should revisit leaving a residual force behind because the afghans will accept it, wont they . I think that there is already built in a residual force. The question is, at what size by 2016 we are down to an embassy force. There is no residual force. With an office of security cooperation. Couple hundred people. Would you recommend the president reconsider his decision to go down to a couple hundred people by 2016 in afghanistan, and a lot of iraq, and wouldnt the prudeyebt thing to do would be to say yes . Prudent thing to do would be to say yes . What i commit to is assuring you as we watch this new government form and situation evolve, i will make appropriate recommendations to the president. Pakistan is a neighbor of afghanistan, right . Correct. Do you worry if pakistan falls apart like iraq that one of the collateral damages could be destabilizing even further a Nuclear Armed pakistan . I do. Given that possibility, why in the world they want us to stay, the afghans, the two new candidates for president would sign a bilateral security agreement, they would accept troops, isnt that correct . They have said theyd sign the bilateral they have told me they would accept troops. If you dont know that, thats very disheartening because i have asked them both. Finally, this guy, is he being held under the law of war . Are we doing lawful interrogation of this man . Katal is under the control of the department of justice. But is he being questioned for intelligence gathering . Id prefer to answer that in a classified setting. Thank youall for your service. Senator feinstein. Mr. Chairman, good morning, mr. Secretary. Nice to see you again. Good morning, general dempsey. I would like to just kind of have a little dialogue with you informally. What is your assessment of size of isil . I spoke to the iraqi ambassador yesterday afternoon and his estimate is about 20,000. 10,000 being isil. 10,000 being very sunni extremist and tribal members, plus what he called passport fighters coming into the area. What do you assess the size and at far are they from baghdad this time . Without getting into classified matters, ill tell you if you think about isil they are located in about three places eastern syria. They have a wing that is operating in the fallujah area, and wing thats operating in Northern Iraq. And i think that the ambassadors estimates are probably high. The actual number, the only place i have seen it is in classified information i wouldnt want to say it here. Heres what i will tell you, senator. Isil is almost undistinguishable right now from the other groups you mentioned. In other words, in this caldron of Northern Iraq you have former bathists, grtn, you have groups that have been disenfranchised and angry with the government in baghdad for some time. And as isil has come, they have partnered i suspect its a partnership of convenience and theres probably an opportunity to separate them. But thats eighty number is a little hard to pin down. Ok. And they are disbursed and its difficult to establish a target. I understand all of that. It seems to me you got two things here. You have the military strategy which you just said that iraq would you rpower t recommend that . Airpower. Would you recommend that . Any time we use military force we use it for those things that are in our National Interest and once i am assured we can use it responsibly and effectively. So as we have been working to provide options to the president , thats the standard. As i mentioned, these forces are very much intermingled. Its not as easy as looking at an iphone video of a convoy and immediately striking it. Ill give you one vignette to demonstrate that. I had a conversation with a kurdish colleague from years past who was explaining to me that they had taken over an iraqi army that isil had taken over an iraqi army base near mosul and the persia had driven them out. In the course of about 36 hours we had iraqi army units, we had isil and the peshmerga in the same facility. Until we can actually clarify this intelligence picture, the options will continue to be built and developed and refined and the intelligence picture made more accurate. And then the president can make a decision. Youre known as a very thoughtful person, and i appreciate that. It seems to me youve got to have the military response and you have to have the political response. I think that most of us that have followed this are really nvinced that the mlickith mlicki government has got to go if you want if you want a shiiasunni war, thats where we are going right now. If you want partition thats where we are going right now. The question comes, if you want reconciliation, what do you do . It seems to me that maliki has to be convinced that it is in the greater interest of his country to retire and to for this newly elected government to put together a new government. What is the administration thinking or your thinking on that subject . As much as you can discuss. Because thats the one place where iran can be of help if they want to. Im afraid, senator, thats not a military question. Im not trying to toss it to my wingman here, but im not sure i cant answer it. Wingman, youre up. Its a high honor, indeed to be general dempseys wingman. A couple of things. First, lets start with formation of the new government. As you had noted the courts in iraq this week certified election in late april. At is now put on the path to formation, new government. I happen to believe, and i think the president has said it, that a political solution is the only viable solution. I said before you came in, senator, in response to one of the questions, one of the reasons i believe that iraq is in this situation is that the current government never fulfilled the commitments it made to bring together unity, power sharing government with the sunnis and kurds. I think thats probably generally accepted. What do we do about it now . The state department has the lead on all of this, as you know, and as general dempsey said, our ambassador there in iraq has been in daily touch with the Prime Minister and the leaders, the political leaders, as well as secretary kerrys been personally involved in this. I know the Vice President has. They are pursuing that political process. At the same time, we are providing, have been providing the president with different options from our perspective, the Intelligence Community is trying to inform all of this with the president to assess what weve got and where this may be going. I think general dempseys point about we are still clarifying what we have and what the situation is. Options like air strikes as the president said hes not ruled in or out, but there has to be a reason for those. There has to be an objective. Where do you go with those . What does it do to move the effort down the road for a political solution. The issue of whether or not maliki should step aside or not, thats an iraqi political decision, and thats something that we dont get into. But all these channels are being worked right now and have been the last week. Good. Let me ask a military question, then. According to the special i. G. On iraq, we have spent 25 billion to train and equip iraqi Security Forces from the start of the war in 2003 until september, 2012. In your estimation, general, why did the iraqi Security Forces perform so badly . And what does this portend for afghanistan . They didnt universally perform badly. They performed badly in the north, in and around mosul, where isil had gained a foothold and had convinced some of the sunni elements that wasnt just a few of them. It was tens of thousands. I understand that. If isil turned their leaders, in the absence of leaders of a military formation, the soldiers are not going to stick around and wait to see what happens. Isil was able to could he opt coopt some of the leaders of those two divisions. Now, i will tell you, when i was building the iraqi Security Forces from 2005twetch, it was clear that several several things were clear to me. We could train them to fight. We could equip them to fight. It would be harder to give them the logistics architecture, but we did. But the hardest thing of all as i said then and say now is to build leaders and then to have those leaders supported by a Central Government that is working on behalf of all the people. And thats why those units in the north collapsed. To your question about by the way, there are still many of the iraqi Security Forces, multiconfessional, not just one sector or another, who are standing and fighting, but the entire enterprise is at risk as long as this political situation is in such flux. Let me answer your question about afghanistan. Much different place. I think a much better prospect for a unity government based on this recent election. There are, of course i do have concerns about the future of afghanistan, and we will continue to do what we can to build into them the kind of resilience that we can build into a Security Force, but at the end of the day a Security Force is only as good as the instrument that wields it and thats the Central Government. I really appreciate that. One of the things that i have looked at on intelligence is the taliban there. And the shadow government there. And the amount of land controlled by the taliban where people live. And i think it sets up a very serious situation for the future. Im particularly worried about them coming back and what this does for women and the sharia law. I watched the women huddled in a corner in the newspaper standing in line or sitting in line to vote. I thought, if the taliban comes back, its just terrible. 11 years and we are right where we started in the very beginning. Could you comment on i went to north korea and you see our troops still there decades later. You begin to understand this is a different situation you begin to understand what it takes. Dont know senator graham mentioned, well, would you be for another secure agreement where you could send in troops, but i really worry about the sophistication of the afghani army. Could you comment on that . Will they stand . Do they have the leadership . Do they have the will . I will tell you this, the afghans are better fighters, far more tenacious fighters than their iraqi counterparts. That is both reason for optimism and reason for concern, because there is a history of them fighting each other as well as external threats. To your question of will, they do have will. While they remain optimistic for their future. As you know, afghanistan today, the country, is a far different country than it was in 2002. In terms of womens rights, connectivity, education, access to health care. If those continue to progress, then i would suggest to you that afghanistan will stay on a path. I have no doubt that there will be parts of afghanistan that from time to time because of their history do separate themselves from the Central Government, and the question then becomes what will the Central Government do to address it . They are far different countries, and i would caution us to compare one to the other and ayou sume that afghanistan will follow the path of and assume that afghanistan will follow the path of iraq. Senator collins. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, welcome. It has been nine weeks since nearly 300 girls were kidnapped from their school by the errorist group, boca had a ram boca haram in nigeria. I believe the United States should have provided immediate surveillance, reconnaissance and intelligence assets to locate these girls before they were split up into more difficult to find smaller groups. I further believe that contingency plans should have been made so that our special forces who perform so extraordinarily well as we saw during this past weekend with their capture of the terrorist who led the benghazi attack, should have been on the groundworking with Nigerian Forces to plan a rescue of these girls. Mr. Secretary, with each passing day the future of these girls grows more and more precarious. There is no doubt that some them have already been forced into early marriages. Others have been taken across the border and sold into slavery. All have been required to convert to islam, according to the video that we have all seen. Yet it feels like these girls have been forgotten, pushed off the front pages by a string of endless crises. I have made my concerns known to the administration in several venues about my disappointment that we did not act sooner and more aggressively to help rescue these girls working with the nigerians. Could you tell me my question for you is, is this an urgent priority . What is going on now . Senator, i can assure you this president feels exactly the same as you do, as we all do, as you have framed it up. And laid out the tragedy of the urgency of this, but let me also address your questions about why wasnt there more action quicker, so on. Cannot you know we just drop into a sovereign country without that countrys government asking us for assistance. That contry, nigeria, has an elected government, elected president , so we were preparing once we heard and knew what was going on, also working with them diplomatically, to get a request from them for each of the resources that we were able to provide and still are providing. Thats one. Second, the capability of the Nigerian Forces to be able to carry out what we can give them in the way of intelligence or assistance is still their responsibility. They have limited capabilities. Now, i know thats not a good answer, but thats the reality. We are as focused today on helping locate these girls, doing everything we can, to get them out of there, but this is a sovereign nation, and we require , obviously like any other situation, the government to ask us to come in. They give us the limits and the parameters on where we can operate, how we can operate. The other part of this, too, as you know, this is about terrainwise, as complicated a part of the world as there is. They have triple, quadruple canopy jungles. They move them around. Adly smart guys, haram aram boko had a ram haram. Make no mistake, this president and all of us are as committed to this, even though you dont read it in the front pages because of the reason you mentioned, we are still involved and assisting. Well, time is ticking away, and with each passing day the chances of these girls being reunited with their families grows ever dimmer. The fact is the nigerians did say yes. I realize they didnt say yes immediately. It seem to me we should have had a plan so that when they said yes we could swoop right in. We did as much as they would let us do. If you want to get to the details of the operation i just want to assure you, senato