And helmand. As far as advocacy for the corps there. Before they had the advisers to do this. Because we were going liftoff we wanted to make sure they had some kind of advocacy. We built a cell of four or five Coalition Members and some function that we thought they needed to continue to mature in our absence and put them up in kabul in september and they were foc in october before we left. Two interpreters were up there and all these individuals had served as advisers with the corps and the police. The leadership knew them. They knew the interpreters. So they would have a means of communication via cell phone, tactical means that was in proximity of headquarters and they were the advocate. Make sure the process was working. We knew at the tactical level they could fight bp we just need to make sure they could sustain themselves and resource themselves from kabul. So we built the cell and it those where the theater was. Where it went to right now. I think the one and four you see right now with kabul, tact north, south and east will go to kabul and continue to evolve what we have with any Long Term Partnership. Odc model. In my humble opinion i think the relationship with afghanistan is important to the International Community and stability in that region. I think thats what rsm sets the stage for. Its a decade of transformation and partnership that we talked about and the tokyo mutual framework and donor countries that pledged money, i think validate this long term commitment to afghanistan and i think the london Conference Also revalidated recently. So when we lifted off we looked at three areas. Institutional, Operational Capability, security normalization where it was afghan supported and afghan sustainable. When we talk about institutional were talking about the battle school. Their basic war training. Centralized program of instruction. But for standardization decentralized execution. Their training happens right there in helmand. At the same time frame we want ad school that could continue individual progression in collective trapg as well too and before that was coalition led. When we lifted off in june on that perspective they were doing all by themselves. This is an example of the general right there leaning over and working with one of the young soldiers on land navigation. The other aspect of that is a medical capability that they needed and road to a hospital they had here. We wanted to make sure at the same time frame that any infrastructure we built for them was sustainable as well too. Those are the institutional aspects of it. And they needed the airfield because of being abling to reach kabul not just from a sustainment perspective but more importantly repatriation of their dead and to passaic sure soldiers had a way, a means to gelt on leave, to go on leave and come back. That itself was a huge force multiplier. When you think of helmand and the kinetics of that district you ask why sociology continue to come back. Because they had a means to do that. When you talk about Operational Capability integration of air. The coordination between the occ, the c 2 command and control operation and Coordination Centers that they used to monitor the election. Thats the cross pillar coordination. Some checkpoints instead of being specific local Afghan Police station or Afghan NationalPolice Station or ana Afghan NationalArmy Checkpoint some of those need to be conso lie mediated you had joint security checkpoints. With f it was a local issue they could identify those outsiders. If the police couldnt handle it because we didnt build it with the capacities, then the ana were there. We wanted to rationalize some of the checkpoints and give them a maneuver capability. Normalize some kind of deployment cycle where you have a red amber green third training, third on leave, third deployed. We wanted to make sure they kept this District Security and provincial security where they brought in the leadership the elders and looked at issues from both the Governance Development but most importantly security perspective. Thats what we built and as you can see these were the critical capabilities that we talked about. Ill briefly talk about this. This is important. This is really whats lost on everybody is the challenge in order to get everything out in good order. It was a mature theater. When we showed up it was rapidly became a mature theater. And the green here is what we call the green zone. And theres a 12,000foot runway right there. And for those that im sure there was a lot of interest, the attacks when they came through the wire was over in this area between guard post 17. You had the brits the afghans had this portion. Around here. Our intention when we were going to lift off is that, again whatever we left behind because we were going be good stewards with the taxpayers money is number one it was secure. So afghans could secure it. It was sustainable and safe. We didnt want them to go to infrastructure that would fall down and electrocute themselves. We didnt want the taliban to occupy it because, again, the impact on the campaign as well so we wanted to make sure they were secure. We thought that we would build this green zone for two reasons. One, because we thought thats what they could sustain and two we needed that as critical infrastructure. As we were drawing down we needed the life support and the c2 in order to command and control our retrograde and redeployment out there was. At the end of the day we remediated quite a bit of this. They elected to keep the whole perimeter and we reduced as you can see quite a bit of infrastructure to them and transferred a lot. When we look at transferring whether it was Real Property buildings or equipment we looked at three things. Number one if it was a piece of equipment that we needed to reset from a coalition or u. S. Marine corps perspective we paid the known redeploy the gear and get it out of theater. If it was cheaper to destroy it in theater and buy new equipment because it was beyond its service life we did that. But if it was a piece of equipment the afghans needed and they could sustain we gifted it. Those were the business rules so to speak of how we did that. So, i think we were very very pragmatic on how we did it. We were very responsible in transitioning in good order. As you can see over here when you talk about transfer and closure of bases pretty significant endeavor throughout the battle space. I think theres 25 now in all of afghanistan that is still out there that belongs to the coalition and that will transition as well too. Then if you look at how many equivalence to get us of there. Because of the uncertainty of this and whether they could do this we didnt advocate our security to anybody. Up to the last day we had end of operations ceremony on the 26th. We lifted off on the 27th using all tactical means. We moved the last security element out of the green zone from this airfield back to kandahar and thats where we broke down our aircraft and redeployed them from there. This is quite a success story. What we got accustomed for. When we came in 2008 and surveyed it and showed up in 2009 it was to build a compound that was large enough for 25,000 in anticipation of the surge. In reality it became a home for 40,000 between the surge force and the many contractors as well. When we talked about going to expeditionary standards and doing things with marines, it was hard at first but then realize this is our bread and butter. We took a service of 2,500 people and reduced to it 600 people using uniformed services. To reinfor the point about them supporting us we retrograded a lot of our heavy stuff. At the very the end last couple of days we were using Southeast Commercial vehicles nontactical vehicles we would gift them and they are loaning us some of the service we bought from them to raining towers seven tons in order to have mobility up to the very end. Okay. Bottom line. 2014 was a seminal year from a political transition and military transition. There were challenges out there. No doubt about it. But im confident based on firsthand experience of watching them and now sitting back here reading the paper every day, i have a vested interest like many of us that have served in afghanistan but specifically southwest on whats happening. Im very happy that ghani has announced his ministers and starting to seat his government. Im curious to see at the core level and provincial level what will happen as far as the leadership perspective. I saw how they executed firsthand for the elections. I saw how they executed after we lifted off. It was a little bit of a growing pain when we were disconnecting ourselves and they were used to us doing it for them their first reaction was to come and ask us for help. I saw what they did when we didnt give them the help. Ive seen what they did since we left. I know you hear about things in helmand and all over afghanistan even kabul. Still very dangerous out there but i am very i should say cautiously optimistic from a security line of operations. Im convinced the effort we put in from a security line of operations has been very successful. I got contacts to see the professionalization of that force from 2001 to where it is today. The real issue which will carry the day is 0this government does in taking advantage of some of the development projects. When you look at the three lines ever operation traditionally that we focus on i think the Development Pieces probably the area that probably need the most emphasis. And this is just a backdrop really just tribute to everyone that served there from both a civilian and military perspective. You see the t walls that it represent. All the way to rt wall. And then the memorial there for the fallen comrades and the colors of all the nations that participated. I truly believe transition is a sign of progress. And in this case for us it certainly was success at this stage of the came. I ask you to raise your hand. Ill get the mic and state it in the form of a question and give him adequate time to respond. You had one of your breaking things organic hazard act. I was at the confirmation hearing for the general and confirmation hearing for general campbell and one of the issues that came up with is several senators wanted to shut off mi17 support. Why cant you go ahead and buy u. S. Products from boeing and the comment that both generals made was if you shut down the mi17 support, not only the new aircraft youre supposed to be getting but the parts it would be almost catastrophic. Your comments on that . From personal experience there and also understanding the topography out there. Mobility is key for their success. When you look at the aviation enterprise its probably one of the things we neglected. I think in southwest, if i had been there from the very beginning and looking back based on our experiences two areas i would have pushed for was the hospital. Because it gives confidence to their soldiers they will get taken off the battlefield like we do and taken care of. And thats a huge success story. And then i would have done, spent more time on the aviation enter flies. I think what happened is we were so focused and were victims of our own experiences and we went to our comfort zone. First part of the campaign we focused on the army. Like i said earlier key to long term stability in supportive governance is the police, and at some point we made that transition and we realized that. But theres still more maturity that need to happen and its going to evolve. Theres too many different pillars out there where they can consolidate those for efficient isis and unity of command. When you talk about the aviation piece its critical for them. So they have the mobility. Some of the capabilities they bring from a cast perspective because it was certainly the case for us for civilian casualties where you had to have zero civilians, zero Collateral Damage even if you had the authority to support them. It became very challenging and therefore having mi35s or what he has now where its a multiplatform, multimission platform is one of the reasons i think they are having success in these areas we lifted off. I hope we continue from provide them that aviation support. Next question. Some interesting reports, pardon my voice im losing it, from the last couple of days have been confirmed reports about the presence of Islamic State groups in helmand. I want your take on that and how that might affect stability how it might affect the ana and other balance of power in the region and also if youre aware of any kind of isis presence at any point while you were out there. Okay. Ill start off with this. Just like anyone thats been in theater there. You leave afghanistan one day, your information is dated. Okay. Its true. Because thats how rapidly things change over there. So most of my information is just like you. Wordofmouth. And reading the media. Again, as i mentioned earlier the media is not always accurate. During our time there we did not see any signs ever isis recruiting or actually fighting in afghanistan. There were rumors about some of it happening in the east. In the article youre referenced i saw the same one when they said there were black fashion up there and a rift between the taliban and isis and at the same time the mullah who was recruiting was somebody in detention at gitmo. Thats as much as i know. I dont think thats the case that there is isis in afghanistan. But, again i dont know. Its not a very good answer. I wish i could be more defy definitive definitive. But during the time i was there we didnt see any indication other than the taliban. Sir, based on your experiences, do you see any large changes based on Lessons Learned when we realized well be fighting a protracted complex insurgency in the future such as changing the tour length or focusing on different lines of operation such as Development Like you were stating earlier . You know its a dilemma were in and the military is in, because of our capability and capacity. Were normally the first once on the scene and asked to do some things that i would say are not in our lane. I think there was a civilian surge that didnt turn out to be the surge we anticipated and i think as we went into transition, some of those organization from the interagency that i thought would be in the forefront would be there when we left. But because much security concerns, some valid concerns from their organization at the very end, you know, the prt that i had lifted off really, they were sitting with me, not really of much use sitting there. Eventually leaving in the early spring, some leaving before the elections. The rp was reduced to one person and he was ineffective not because of individual but because of his capacity and capability based on that. So, i think when you look at this, again, it gets the whole government, whole International Government and who is responsible for that to make sure that youre committed not just to the naermear term but the long campaign. Thats one i was there in 2001, we went in there and lifted off and did the transition. I saw a perspective from the afghans of a lot of hope and future opportunity. And i think from International Development perspective that one time they talked about 10 billion to 15 billion that they thought they were going to get but think ended up 3 to 4 billion. Which was still a significant amount of money. A lot of that money was siphoned off and didnt go back into afghanistan because you had venture capitalists in afghan expats that came in and made all this money but didnt leave it. And so the people never benefitted. When you talk about just afghanistan itself, you know you look at their they are a donor state right now. But there is potential with Mineral Resources and its been validated. In 2010, from rare earths to lithium to the copper mines. And i think one estimate i read was a trillion dollars potential there. Thats significant. So when you go into these reconstruction projects. I mean the military does one thing. We can do other things we were designed for one thing. You have to have the whole International Government realizing that its important to have a stable, sovereign, united afghanistan for stability in the region. And i think people realize that. That is the mantra the generals talk about and i think most of our civilian leadership throughout the International Community understand that as well too. But it gets backs to ends ways and means. And each countrys own perspective of whetherats Vital National interest to them. It is a challenge. I think rsm is headed down the right path and hopefully the commitments made in chicago and tokyo and revalidated in london t monitor everything thinks about the troops on the grounds that. Seems to be the discussion, the authorities. But what part of rsm is natos commitment. It is natos commitment to a Long Term Partnership where afghanistan and the monetary aspect is very important to the afghans and they realize it. And i think because of that they will work out their differences. It is whether they can work out their differences and actually sew progress and tangible benefits to the locals at the subnational governance level. And that is where i think some of the gap is. Otto. Otto chrysler with. You mentioned earlier on that you thought the taliban was at a point where they are in debate whether they were going to do remain military or whether go political. We have isnt seen in the last fighting season we didnt see much line of them running for office or anything like that. What did you mean by that and did you think there is a possibility of a negotiated end to this thing . I think all counterinsurgency end with that that process. And again this is coming from the media. At one point they are talking about ghani was going to give three positions to the taliban. And make provinceial governors were going to be taliban. I dont think thats true and they came out and said its not true. But i this i there is gong toib a point that is if the Afghan National government and