Good morning. Welcome, everyone. Thanks for being here at our first military strategy form event of 2010. Let me start by thanking our very generous sponsors, Rolls-Royce, and I would be remiss if I neglected to give you the very sought-after gift. Is this a CSIS coin? No, it's a Rolls-Royce, or at least a keychain, acceptable under the gift rules. Isn't there a television ad like this or something? There's a light on there. Oh, a light?  Exactly. We're a spill-tailor. And that's how we'll pick out questioners when we get to the Q&A. We are continuing our series of combatant commanders. John Petraeus this morning, and we're going to talk about the quiet little corner of the world known as Central Command. But before I start, I just want to make a few admin notes. First, please turn off your cell phones and blackberries. Second, when we do get to Q&A, if you could wait for the microphone, we've got a number of folks around with microphones. State your name and your affiliation, and please be succinct. And I will attempt to be mean and blame it on hormones if people get too verbose. And finally, John Petraeus needs to take off at about 11.50 this morning to get to another event. So if everybody could stay seated as we wrap this up and allow him to get out quickly, it would be much appreciated. So with that, let me introduce our very well-known guest, John David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. Central Command. And he may well be the best known military officer on active duty today for many, many good reasons. Iraq, a recurring theme in your career. He was the commander of the 101st Airborne in the first year of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He later became the commander of multinational security transition command Iraq and NATO transition mission Iraq. And then culminated his time there as the commander of multinational force Iraq. He has also served in Bosnia, Haiti, and Central America, I believe. He's a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, has had just about every command and staff position at some point, both within the Army and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in international organizations and in agency organizations. So he's pretty much done it all, and many of you may have heard he got some degrees from Princeton along the way. And also picked up a few rewards, sorry, awards and other recognitions that just are a clear demonstration of how he's always been a very high performer. His commitment and integrity are reflected in all of that, and we are very honored to have him here as our guest. Thank you. Thank you. Well, it's good to be with you, and you have a couple of choices when you're in this position. Of course, we've got a whole staff of PowerPoint Rangers out there. They're always eager to provide the latest update. Actually, so Tony Courtisman can take them then, by the way, and repackage them and send them out, which we are happy to have happen. No, truly. Actually, I think Tony will be the first to admit that there has been no more cooperative provider of slides, metrics, data, and everything else to him since, I don't know when we started that, probably when I was the Minstiki commander. And it's quite a good partnership. And in return, in truth, Tony has been a very good conscience for us at various times. And one reason we do these kinds of events is because it does, it challenges us at Sharpen's. Our thinking, it forces me to come to grips with issues and so forth. And so I really am pleased to be back with CSIS because we have done this before. But each time I've done it before, again, we always sort of started out with a monologue of about 40 to 60 minutes of PowerPoint slides. And they're very informative, I'm sure. But I thought what we would do and what we've done in a couple of cases recently is we'd do these so-called conversations. Now, having said that, of course, it is every Army four-stars inalienable right to have PowerPoint slides. There's a little asterisk on the First Amendment. And if you read the fine print, it says general officers are allowed PowerPoint in addition to freedom of speech. And so I do have PowerPoint slides loaded up. And I guess they're going to be shown on either of these screens right here. There's some terrific folks that are sweating bullets out there trying to figure out which slide I might ask for. And we'll use them if necessary to illustrate some of the answers to give some of the metrics, in fact, that Tony has helped us sharpen our thinking on candidly as we've gone about the endeavors that we've been engaged in over the past couple of years. I probably ought to say up front, Mary, just a reminder of what Central Command consists of now. Because it did change on 1 October of 2008 when the U.S. African Command was formally established and stood up. We have 20 countries now. Egypt in the west to Pakistan, including Pakistan in the east, Kazakhstan in the north, and the waters off Somalia. We had to keep the pirate infested waters as well. And obviously a country or a region of real contrast. The richest of the rich, some of the poorest of the poor, innumerable religions, ethnic groups, tribal elements, and so forth. An area needless to say rich in energy resources, often poor in water. And a whole gamut of levels of development of government, social structures, political development, economic development, and so on. No shortage of challenges. Occasionally I am asked, you know, what does the Central Command commander do? And in some cases I will respond that, you know, we're a little like the guy in the circus that gets a plate spinning on a stick and then tries to get it going enough so we can go get another stick and another plate and get that one spinning. And the truth is we've got a fair amount of plates spinning out there and we're trying to keep them all spinning. And even as we occasionally add a new plate, or sometimes occasionally actually are allowed to slow down the revolutions on another. So we're going to be in Yemen, of course, coming up while we obviously seek to sustain the gains in Iraq. But with that, why don't I let you have the first question, Maren? And then we'll launch the conversation. Okay, sounds great. I wanted to ask you about Iraq and actually more about Afghanistan than Iraq. You frequently talked when you were in Iraq about the Washington Clock and the Baghdad Clock. And so my question is whether there is enough time on the Washington Clock to make meaningful gains in Afghanistan and what we might see in the next year that will allow for the Washington Clock. Well, you're right. I mean, when we launched the surge, you know, those questions limb very large from Ambassador Ryan Crocker and myself. We used to talk about the Washington Clock and the Baghdad Clock. And of course the Washington Clock was racing forward. We weren't sure when it might expire. Indeed, there were some Washington Clocks within Washington Clocks. And of course the idea of facing the September 2007 testimonies loomed very large in particular. And then there was the Baghdad Clock. And that clock on some days seemed to go backwards. And, you know, on other days you had to hit it to see if it was still working or not. But, you know, it gradually started moving.  Levels of violence down by well over 90 percent now. Violence, civilian deaths down by well over 90 percent. High-profile attacks down by over 90 percent and all the rest. Having said that, innumerable challenges. And yet the latest one, of course, is this political issue that is quite substantial that has sprung up where an organization that really was supposed to have been replaced, the former debathification committee supposed to have been replaced by the Accountability and Justice Committee by law, never had its members replaced, some of the old members still manipulating things and came up with a list of over 500 individuals with links to the former, ledger links to the former bath party and therefore said they ought to be disqualified as candidates for the election. This is of enormous concern to the Iraqi political leaders. They are quite feverishly behind the scenes working out how to deal with this and how to come to grips with an issue that could really undermine a key element in the progress over the last three years, which of course has been the reconciliation effort. By the way, it's been reconciliation not just with Sunni Arabs, which is seen as the most prominent, of course, but also there's been reconciliation with a whole variety of Shia elements as well. The release of Qais Qazali recently, for those who know about Isabel Haq and all the rest of this, at the request of the Iraqi government was indeed to further the process of reconciliation with that particular subset of former Shia militia elements. But this could have a very, very difficult effect on the Sunnis in particular, although there are some Shia in the list as well, and could really reverse some of the progress. There is keen awareness of that by Iraqi political leaders, and as I mentioned, they are indeed working very hard behind the scenes to figure out what could be an equitable and just resolution of that particular issue. Back to Afghanistan and Washington Clock and the Afghan Clock in this case. I think that it is possible to demonstrate progress, and that's what you're going to do in Afghanistan. You're not going to turn Afghanistan. Iraq was so horrific that I think there were really very, very few who thought there could be dramatic improvements, but if you knew what was possible there, and if you knew that if you could change certain aspects of what was doing, remember that Iraq was not just a surge of 30,000 forces. It was really a surge of ideas, emphasizing above all security of the population, promoting reconciliation, living with the people to secure them, sharing their risks, 77 additional locations in Baghdad alone for the occupation by our forces and Iraqi forces together, being first with the truth, living our values, all the rest of that. And that enabled the sort of the reclamation of some of these forces that if they could get back on the straight and narrow, could really help, and that was indeed among a number of different factors that led to the progress that took place there. I have personally always seen Afghanistan as different in that regard, and I have stated on the record a number of occasions that in September 2005, on getting ready to come home from Iraq, Secretary Rumsfeld put his arm around me, he said, hey, really good job. You've done great stuff out here in this 15-and-a-half month tour of standing up the train and equip mission. I'm really glad to hear you're going to come home through Afghanistan. I said, look to Adam. I said, well, thanks for that, Mr. Secretary, but we'll be happy to do that. We put together a team over there and looked at their train and equip mission and came back and, you know, of course developed some PowerPoint slides, one of which had on the top of it the title was Iraq and the Do Not Equal Sign Afghanistan, and indeed then also offered that, by the way, not only were there a bunch of observations about the train and equip effort, but that overall I thought that Afghanistan was going to be the longest campaign in the long war. And that, I think, and that was, by the way, when the level of violence was considerably lower than it has been over the course of the last two years during which each of those years, and indeed the third year prior to that has gone up significantly. So I think what the objective is in Afghanistan is one of demonstrating that progress can be achieved with the appropriate approach enabled by the additional forces and the kinds of directives that General McChrystal has issued and the counterinsurgency guidance that he issued, his tactical directive, even the tactical driving directive, all of these essential, if again you are truly going to be seen not only just to secure the people, but to serve the people and not play into the insurgents' hands. Of course, a huge emphasis of his has been to reduce civilian casualties, and indeed that is the case. And some of you may have seen in the press very recently an assessment by, I think, I forget which of the groups, international groups that looks at civilian casualties, and indeed announced that the vast majority of civilian casualties in Afghanistan last year was caused by the insurgents, the Taliban, and the other members of the extremist syndicate, not by ISAF, and in fact ISAF's numbers have continued to go down even as the operations have expanded. So we have to show progress, we have to show that it can be done over time, and I think that's the key to maintaining time on the Washington clock, and by the way on the Kabul clock and the Afghan clock as well, because they also want to see after some eight or some so years of this effort that there is a prospect of improvement in their lives that merits them supporting our effort, and really the effort of their forces. You may have seen by the way, I think it was yesterday it was announced, that the JCMB, one of the joint boards of international organizations, ISAF, and Afghan leaders, approved an end strength for the Afghan National Security Forces that is a good bit, a little over 100,000 more than it currently is by October of 2011. Right now it's a little under 200,000 end strength right now, and that's indeed with a verification process going on for those police who are on the books, and then a little bit over 300,000, 305 or so by October 2011 is the new approved end strength for that time, and then we'll see where it goes after that. There's also an end strength for October 2010. Okay, well let me get out to the rest of you also. Let me start over there, and we'll work our back this way. General John Alterman, I run the Middle East program here at CSA. I want to ask you about Yemen, which you mentioned briefly. As you know, Yemen has a host of problems which are only tangentially related to our concerns with Al-Qaeda. They have an active insurgency in the North Rebellion in the South. They've been pouring tremendous scarce resources into fighting both of those. I'm wondering what steps we've taken, what steps have we taken to ensure the resources we put into Yemen stay focused on our issues in Yemen, not only given the fact that they're diverted in the North and South, but also they have a history of diverting the weapons that come in and shipping them right out to fight other insurgencies, including against us in Iraq. So especially as we're thinking about a light presence for ourselves on the ground, how do we make sure that the Yemenis we're supporting are doing what we're asking them to do? We partner with the elements that are focused on the extremists of most concern to us, and that is, of course, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, given that name this past year, franchised now by Al-Qaeda senior leadership in the federal administered tribal areas, western Pakistan, mountainous region, border with Afghanistan, as you know, prior to that they were Al-Qaeda in Yemen. And there are certain units, or three of them in particular, that tend to focus on that particular challenge to Yemen, and not surprisingly those are the three that we have focused our efforts on. By the way, this is not something that is a total surprise to us at all. I've noted that Yemen was very much in my sights as much as two years ago when as the commander in Iraq we were looking very comprehensively with the entire interagency. A lot of effort with the state, with the state counterterrorist ambassador at that time, Del Daly as well, Treasury, great hero Stuart Levy, the undersecretary does designations. And again, the entire interagency was working to try to cut down on the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq. At that time it was as high as 120 or so per month through Syria principally. And we had to cut that down. So we went after what we could do in Iraq, needless to say, with various special and conventional forces to go after the foreign fighter infrastructure. The Amir of foreign fighters indeed was killed in Iraq I think in the fall of 2006. And then we also worked hard with elements in near agency and of course the intelligence community as well to work with host governments, source countries from which military-age males used to be able to fly in a one-way ticket to Damascus, something that most countries outlawed around that time. And over time, the combined effort, external and internal, reduced that flow to now it's down under 10 or so per month and that's very significant because of course a number of those used to blow themselves up inside of Iraq targeting innocent civilians. And you recall Abu Ghadea, the foremost facilitator, also was taken out of the mix about a year and a half ago or a little less than that as well. Now, part of the target countries, if you will, that we focused on as the source of foreign fighters and one that emerged loomed ever larger was Yemen. We all knew Qasem al-Rimi and others escaped from jail back in 2006, about 20 other hardcore al-Qaeda fighters and he escaped. We knew they were there, we knew cells were going in, it's a very rugged area, of course there was an operation in there some years back as well. And you had a lot of political dynamics and these other challenges, the Houthis in the north, the southern secessionists, economic, social, political issues that were all really occupying the attention of the government. And when I took over as central command commander, I announced right up front in the early guidance that one of the countries on which we were going to spend a great deal more time and effort was Yemen. Also obviously Afghanistan, Pakistan and Lebanon, interestingly, we had some interest there. But Yemen was very, very prominent in that guidance and in fact I made the first trip in there as a central command commander, I think it was in November or December of 2008. Candidly that we had some what diplomats call frank and open discussions during that particular visit. But as you know now, because it was then released I think a month or so ago, I had a very, very good trip in July. In the meantime we had a central command country campaign plan in April that we did in coordination with the ambassador state, other interagency groups, intelligence agencies. And then after the meeting in July, which was a literal and figurative embrace, we got on with building the kinds of efforts that are necessary to develop above all the intelligence baseline that then enables you subsequently to help the amenities and to conduct operations. And indeed it was that effort that as the threat stream started to come in in the late fall, enabled the operations on the 17th of December, the 24th of December and a host of others, right up until I think it was the last 24 hours, the Yemenis had a very good operation as well. In these operations, two training camps were targeted, three suicide bombers were killed that were literally on their way into Sana'a. There was a solid gold intelligence on that and the fourth one was captured by the Yemenis with his suicide vest still on. A very senior AQAP leader was killed, others were either wounded or very narrowly missed and that pressure has continued. I think periodically the Yemenis will announce this operation or that operation and that does continue. And again to come back to your question, we are focused on supporting first and foremost those who are dealing with that challenge. But I think to be fair you also have to then help them with the greater challenges, not necessarily with stuff that they'll necessarily use with the Houthis or the Southern secessionists but with development aid and so forth that can help them deal with the economic issues that are often reasons that individuals are willing to become extremists or inclined to become extremists in the first place. Very tall order but it requires not just a whole of U.S. government approach but a whole of governments approach because of course the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Imanis a number of other governments in the region that I've talked to about Yemen have an enormous interest in helping President Saleh and the government there keep the country together and then deal with some of these very difficult issues that have led to the situations that they find right now. We'll go right there. Good morning, General. I'm Bob Dreyfus with The Nation magazine. I have two quick questions about AFPAC. One is in reference to the Washington clock that Marin talked about. The President, as you know, has set a deadline of July 2011. I think it was in August 2011. August 2011. Okay, I don't start sliding it to the left just yet. I think he was thinking about May. Not just to demonstrate success but actually, as I understand it, to start a withdrawal. Start a transition that is conditions-based of tasks from our forces to Afghan forces again in areas where those forces and the situation allow it and the key words are conditions-based and you'll recall this whole discussion when I was in Iraq about conditions-based as well. I might point out, by the way, that people have said, well, General, you never agreed to timelines before. I've never been a wild fan of timelines but at times I have indeed announced timelines myself. Again, conditions-based ones but in September 2007 in the testimony before the four committees on Capitol Hill, I did announce, for example, that the first of the surge brigades was going to go home in December of 2007 and then laid out the rough proposal for the remaining four to go home as well. Sorry, go ahead. Well, in any case, the way I read the President's comment is that perhaps the pace or the degree of the withdrawal might be conditions-based but in fact the withdrawal would start on that date. So my question is, what kind of plans are you making as the contingency since it isn't that far away in military terms? What kind of plans are you making? It's quite a ways away in military terms. I mean, don't get me wrong but our focus right now candidly is on getting all of these forces on the ground as absolutely quickly as possible. By the way, pay no attention to these reports that have said that there's some kind of difference of opinion here on how fast to deploy. Everybody engaged in this from the President all the way down to the lowest ranking member of the deploying forces is making an effort to get in there as rapidly as is absolutely possible. We committed, the Secretary committed to the President. I did as well in the sit room that we would get, again, virtually all of the combat forces on the ground by the end of August. There is one element, a division headquarters that's not needed prior to then that will come in after that but otherwise virtually all of those 30,000 will be on the ground by the end of that time and that is something we're all pushing. By the way, we're also obviously watching very carefully as we are providing, as the U.S. military and DOD are providing resources in the government to Haiti. And so far there's been no impact whatsoever other than the slippage of one airframe that was used to bring in the air traffic control tower, a critical piece of equipment. I think it was an A&124 airframe that did a contract down there and that just caused a 24-hour slippage of one, again, airframes worth of kit going to Afghanistan. 24th Mu, the Marine Expeditionary Unit that is announced as diverted down to Haiti, was going to go through the European command and route to Central Command anyway it was actually not intended to go on the ground in Iraq or Afghanistan. It was to be the Theater Reserve. We always have a Marine Expeditionary Unit with several amphibs in the area. We have occasionally put that on the ground but relatively rarely and indeed that's what that force is intended to do and so far it is still intended to do that and if necessary we can extend the existing force that's out there for whatever period of time is necessary until it arrives. But right now there's no plan or necessity to do that. Sorry, let me just do Tony. Okay, sure. And then we'll head back there. Tony Cordesman. Tony Cordesman, CSIS. I'd like to go back to clocks in Afghanistan. One of the clocks we don't really talk about is our NATO and ISAF allies. You may not talk about it. I can assure you some others of us do. Well, I'm sure you do. We don't see much of it in the press or the media. And when you have as many national caveats as you have. When you have the military who are running various areas often decoupled from the national PRT under them. The question really is can we get the level of coordination? Both military and civilian from our allies it's necessary to make the President's strategy work. Let me sort of frame this a little bit first if I could, Tony. And I mean, first of all, we really mean it when we say that we obviously don't want to go it alone in these kinds of endeavors. And, you know, having said that Winston Churchill, of course, an ally had it exactly right when he said that the only thing worse than allies is not having allies. But look, this has always been this way. Even when I was the Chief of the Force Operations in Haiti, as an example, in the mid-1990s, not necessarily a combat operation, there were some operations to get some bad guys, but by a small subset of the force, by and large a peacekeeping humanitarian assistance operation, there were still caveats even there. In Bosnia, when I was the Chief of Operations for ISAF and some other hats, I had an actual matrix on my desk with the countries down the left side, the tasks across the top with as much definition as we could, and then a check in the box as to whether or not that country could perform that task in that particular area. In Iraq, we had all kinds of caveats in Iraq as well. And let's not forget, this was, yes, a U.S.-led multinational force, but the entire southern part of the country from Baghdad on down for quite some time really was all in the hands of non-U.S. coalition members. And I think, so you have to then say, okay, this is reality. What you're going to try to do needless to say is get as many contributions from as many partners as you can.  You're going to obviously look at the mission and the campaign plan, and then you're going to figure out how you capitalize, you exploit those strengths, and most of those, and obviously compensate where necessary for the shortcomings, the weaknesses, the caveats. So, and there's a point at which you actually have to just sort of stop whining as a commander, and I think the military has long passed that. But you just stop that, again, identify the strengths and weaknesses and figure out how to best try to get the job done with the forces that you have. Not to say you don't ask for more if you need them and all the rest of that, you know, so forth. But in this case, I think we're up to somewhere, the latest is somewhere between 7,000 and 8,000 additional NATO and non-NATO ISAF coalition partner forces, non-U.S. I think that's going to continue to grow. There are some really important niche capabilities that are also now coming in because of the advent of the NATO training mission Afghanistan and the way it's been blended in with the U.S.-led coalition security transition command, Afghanistan C. Sticca. So you have trainers now that will increase the capacity of your throughput, your output at the Afghan National Security Forces training tasks, and you actually have the EU poll that finds that that's a very important place that they can contribute and some of the gendarmory type units like the Italian caribinary and so forth. And again, there is an enormous amount of discussion ongoing, you should be assured, behind closed doors and it's nice to know that it's not all necessarily spilling out into the press about which countries could indeed perhaps do a bit more, which ones have certain strengths in their forces that have some capacity that could be brought to bear. And then in some other cases, of course, just, you know, we'll take contributions, you know, monetary contributions too. So again, I think Afghanistan certainly merits all of that and that's the approach that is being taken with considerable emphasis as we approach the big conference in London which is a very good action-forcing mechanism, not just for additional contributions but also for discussions on reintegration policy, the civilian counterpart issues in Kabul and those kinds of things. I'll go right there, blue tie, and I'll keep going this way. Jeff McCausen from Penn State University. Hey, Jeff, how are you? Dave's good to see you. I want to broaden the question on Afghanistan for a second. Back to your slide, you know, the Iraq does not equal Afghanistan. One of those certainly seems in logistics, the exponentially and much more difficult problem. As somebody said to me the other day, this is the only war where you have to drive through the insurgency with your logistics to get to the good guys to go back and attack the insurgents. And as we try to expand that, because right now we're very dependent, I know, on line networks from Pakistan, that brings into cooperation with many other countries that people don't talk about in Central Asia and how we can... I know, I'll be happy to explain it to you. Obviously, of course, there's even implications for the Russians. Obviously, we've been talking to the Russians about using that, and that doesn't seem to go too well. Can you talk to us about that bit? Oh, to the contrary. I'd be happy to. First of all, you have made, as usual, a great point here, and that is that the infrastructure in Afghanistan, again, this is a case that Afghanistan does not equal Iraq. There's not all kinds of Saddam-era infrastructure in excess quantities into which the 30,000 surge forces can go. Yes, we did indeed then expand that footprint very dramatically, as I mentioned, 77 additional bases just in Baghdad alone, but in the same and all the other divisional areas, so that we could indeed live with the people as we were endeavoring to secure them and so we could hold areas that we fought to clear and so forth. But the fact was that in Iraq, we had Kuwait right there. We could drive right in. You could actually come in through Jordan and by air from other directions as well. The vast infrastructure, all kinds of excess airfield capacity in certain areas and so on, some pretty crowded like Baghdad International, but generally not a big issue. Afghanistan is the opposite, and of course it was, I think, what was it, the poorest country or among the poorest countries in the world before 30 years of war did such colossal damage to it. There is a fair amount of Soviet-era infrastructure, that's long since been occupied and the capacity vastly exceeded. So there's quite a building boom going on. Some wag the other day, in fact, assessed that this is the largest building boom in Afghanistan since Alexander built Kandahar, and I think that may be accurate. There is a huge amount of construction to develop additional airfields, additional ramp space, additional forward operating bases, combat outposts and all the rest of that. And indeed, enormous pressure on the two southern lines of communication, the one that comes through the Khyber Pass, and there's enormous effort by the Pakistanis to keep that open. They're really not driving through insurgent-controlled territory because indeed this is a hugely important source of income for the tribes in those areas as occasional attacks, but really nothing serious for, gosh, I think maybe almost a year now or so. I remember one time, even during those attacks, it was less than 0.1 percent of what flowed in there. It's a huge number of containers. Another route up through Shaman in the Kuwaiti area there as well, and those are really, again, almost maxed out in terms of... So about a year, over a year ago, I started going up into the Central Asian states, together with the great General Duncan McNabb of Transcom has done a terrific job, and together, CENTCOM, Transcom, and so-called Logistics Nation, as they're proud to say, even more fierce fans of Logistic Nation I am than the Boston Red Sox, especially since I'm a Yankees fan. But anyway, this is... The Northern Distribution Network has now been established, and there's now, I think, five routes in. Now even a route that comes out of a rock goes up through Turkey, I think through Azerbaijan, across the two bodies of water, ends up in Kazakhstan, I think, and comes down through Uzbekistan. There are ground routes that come through Russia. Russia has been very cooperative, actually. And indeed, our approach in the Central Asian states, at least, has been to propose to really all the states in that region, Russia among them, that the so-called new great game, the new competition for power and influence in the Central Asian states ought to be replaced by a broad partnership against extremism and against the illegal narcotics industry, both of which threats are very real to those in that part of the world. This has helped rebuild the Northern Distribution Network. The key piece was Uzbekistan, and once President Kremov gave me the go-ahead for that early in 2009, that was what provided the final piece in this, although we have a number of air routes that also go in, we also obviously had to work with Kyrgyzstan when there were some issues about the Minas Air Base, which is now the Minas Transit Center, being closed. There's a good partnership there now, and that's going forward as well. So a lot of effort to try to expand all routes into Afghanistan because this surge is frankly vastly more logistically challenging than was the Iraq surge, although Iraq, I think arguably, was vastly more out of control. You know, when you have a situation where there's 53 dead bodies per day in Baghdad just from sectarian violence, that's a pretty bad security situation from which to begin. Let's go here. Sorry, I've been right here. Hey, Tony, how are you? Hi, Sirat. Tony Capasio with a Bloomberg. The Congress this year passed $6.6 billion to help increase training of the Afghan security forces. That's a major boost from the O9 budget. What steps are you taking or will you take to make sure that not only is the money effectively spent in creating a viable force, but also efficiently spent so that two years from now we won't get stories or a cigar report saying much of this was squandered in corruption and small payouts? There are a number of these. Let me just make sure I capture these. There's quite a comprehensive effort in this regard. First of all, the Joint Contracting Command Iraq Afghanistan, which we created several years ago and the headquarters of which used to be in Iraq, we have shifted quite a bit of the focus for that organization, needless to say, to Afghanistan and they really work under CENTCOM now rather than used to be sort of worked under the MNFI commander although they did do Afghanistan as well. So there's quite a shift in focus and assets in that very critical element. That was formed in the wake of CPA and the rest to use the resident contracting expertise in the military services and DOD at large and to provide the kind of expertise and technical competence that we need to carry out very, very large programs. Second, you mentioned SIGAR and indeed SIGAR is being augmented and I have committed to Major General Retired Arne Fields that we will provide whatever he needs to ensure that he has access to our different bases, our processes, our contracting and all the rest of that. Then of course we have substantially upgunned the overall train and equip mission. It used to be only the U.S.-led Coalition Security Transition Command Afghanistan C. Sticker for short. It is now that plus NATO training mission in Afghanistan that gets much greater NATO contribution to it. Put a three-star general in charge, Lieutenant General Bill Caldwell, very, very highly competent, extremely thoughtful, visionary, energetic and so forth. He replaced me out at Fort Leavenworth for what it's worth so we have great confidence in him. And so he is in charge of that. We've again added to his overall strength and tried to help build an all-star bench that supports him there. We are substantially increasing the numbers of trainers and then partner elements for the Afghan forces when they're going through training. The ratio, in fact I talked to Chairman Levin on the way up here today from Atlanta. He had just been out there. He was really quite heartened to hear how the ratio between trainers and Afghan forces is going to be substantially increased, which is necessary by the way. I reached the same conclusion some time back. In fact we are going to use the next infantry battalion that goes in, the second battalion, 22nd infantry for this kind of trainer role. Just as we use the 4th Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division in the partnering role down in Regional Command South to mirror what we had already done with the 48th Brigade of the Great Georgia National Guard in Regional Command East. And we're dramatically increasing, General McChrystal placing very good emphasis on the partnership programs. And indeed a number of the additional U.S. forces will have partnership responsibilities in addition to area of responsibility security tasks as well. And then finally we've also brought in different outside groups and consultants and so forth to take a look at the program at different times. I in fact contracted one of those at Central Command headquarters ourselves. That's for internal use and that's how we are using that. But that is yet another, I was at the request of General McChrystal. So again we're trying to get as many different ways of looking at this as is possible. And we are also doing what we did in Iraq by the way, which is inviting a variety of the different audit agencies and inspector generals in. We brought in the Army Audit Agency to Iraq every chance that I could basically get them in. They did at least two or three looks for example at the CERP program there. We had the DOD IG in a number of times as well to look at for example weapons accountability of the Iraqi forces and we've done the same thing in Afghanistan. Go ahead then. Hi General Todd Bair from Al Jazeera English. Are you able to talk to us about these Biblical messages that have been coded on the weapons of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and why this may be a problem, a perception problem for what the real intentions are and how long you have known about it and what will be done about it. It is a perception problem that we're asking the question and it is disturbing to us frankly that this was done. I've known about it for about 24 hours and probably not even 24 hours I think it was sometime yesterday or yesterday afternoon and in fact DOD has put out a statement on this. CENTCOM is actually just about to hit the CENT key on a statement. The contractor did this without anyone knowing it or even frankly noticing. Again it's not an actual verse as you know it's a reference to a verse and it comes right after some other data and pretty small print on a data plate and just folks just literally haven't picked it up. And so this is a big concern to the Army and the Marine Corps who have contracted for these particular sites. That was obviously not part of the specification in the contract but we are in some pretty considerable discussions right now about how to deal with that and I don't want to get into contracting issues but I mean I hope you can sense from that that this is of serious concern to me and to the other commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan because indeed it conveys a perception that is absolutely contrary to what it is that we have sought to do. I mean there's a reason that we put people after all awareness training and try to give basic language training and a whole variety of other tasks that are conducted during the year that a unit prepares to go downrange and I can assure you that there is much greater sensitivity among our troopers about this kind of thing than apparently there is in whatever contract or produce those sites. Anybody over here let's take right here in the middle right here and then I'll come up here. Good morning General. I'm Frank Sullivan, private citizen. Let me try to pull together a question that I think is my question is sort of could you comment on the ability of the Afghans to recruit retain, train and lead the forces there trying to build to on somewhat the timelines you've got it's you hear lots of stories about retention of the Afghan police and so forth. Yep, I'd be happy to. In fact I'm particularly happy to do it because there was a major upswing in recruiting in the month of December and that has continued into January. In fact there were actually more recruited in December than the system could accommodate which is obviously a very positive development after frankly not meeting the recruitment goals for the months prior to that and frankly not surprisingly that corresponded with the announcement of some recruiting and salary initiatives and so again and we found that in Iraq as well by the way and that's when it comes to retention you know that's another issue that they are addressing I've actually discussed this at the highest levels of the Afghan government others have had those conversations and it was great to see the Afghan leadership come up with various proposals and then to announce those and then more importantly to see the effect of those on recruiting retention so recruiting if sustained touch would will be on a glide slope that allows the achievement of what are indeed as you noted fairly ambitious goals of expansion of over 100,000 over the course of the next less than two years. Now retention needs to be improved as well I'm not sure that we have the data yet to show whether that is going to have the same kind of upswing after the announcement of these various bonuses and the salary increase but with no question about it that particularly in certain parts of the country not surprising the parts of the country where the fighting is the fiercest training we have not had the capacity in the past although it is very rapidly developing that's why as I mentioned earlier we're literally diverting some combat units to function as trainers that's why we're soliciting for contributions for trainers from various of the other ISAF partners and also increasing the Afghan to train because of course over time we want to hand that off and indeed they're there with us but the ratio has not been anywhere near what it needs to be for the conduct of that training leadership I think is always the long pole and the tent in these kinds of endeavors it was in a rocket as anytime you're trying to expand a force very rapidly that is a huge challenge it's a particular challenge in a country where the illiteracy rate is so high a country that suffered so much from wars of all kinds for over 30 years and where you haven't had the kinds of institutions developing these military leaders of the pool of candidates to be military leaders in fact until just a year or two ago when there was an Afghan officer I think who made it through the US Army Ranger School it had been 30 years or more since the last Afghan made it through Ranger School and he's now the Minister of Defense actually I think there's two he's one of them there's another General Karimi who also is something of which they're rightly very proud but it had been quite a few decades since they went through Ranger School as young officers so that pool of leadership candidates has certainly been been mined already if you will for those that are available and what you're having to do now is to develop them on the job but it's one thing to develop an infantry trooper a basic private soldier perhaps even a young sergeant over time but to develop company commanders, battalion commanders and their supporting staff's brigade commanders this takes in our system years of education, experience, study and so forth and it is very difficult to try to compress that for someone to hand it off to them so that is indeed a big challenge and that's something we'll have to deal with as this goes along and have been dealing with frankly. General the Pakistani army has been battling Taliban in south Waziristan since last October and they announced recently that they've stopped that offensive I guess because of the winter and now as of yesterday they're thinking of signing an agreement with Massoud in north Waziristan and I was wondering given the history of such agreements how you reacted to that I'm sorry I have not seen an agreement with the Massouds now of course there are Massouds and then there are Massouds as you know and I suspect they are not seeking an agreement with the organization led by the former by Tula Massoud who of course was killed some months back let me just talk about Pakistan more broadly if I could because as Arno knows is one of the closest observers in here of Pakistan in years of experience on the ground what happened about 10 months ago is very dramatic and that was a true sea change in Pakistani public opinion the approach of the political leadership and even that of the clerics to recognize that certain extremist groups in particular the Pakistani Taliban the TTP and also the TNSM these groups were really threatening the very existence of Pakistan so this became Pakistan's war on terror not Pakistanis fighting America's war on terror that is an enormous shift and they showed that by then going into Swat Valley and of course it was precipitated the catalyst was the Pakistani Taliban out of Swat Valley coming further south from the Northwest Frontier province threatening some of the more settled areas and really threatening the very rid of governance as they term it there the result has actually been quite impressive they cleared Swat Valley and most of the Malikan division of the Northwest Frontier province they have held it unlike previous times where they cleared and left they are clearing and holding you know the saying in the military that amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics in counterinsurgency amateurs talk clearing professionals talk clearing holding and building and even transitioning and in this case they have done all of those steps and they are even thinking ahead to transitioning the challenges of course the limited assets that the government can support them with and that the military has access to to do the rebuilding and to do the preparation for transitioning even as they are working on holding with the military forces they then so that's in the Northwest Frontier province they then were over in Bajur, Moman and Khyber of the Federal Administrative Tribal areas did some quite good work there is still work going on without questioning Bajur in particular then down jump down into eastern south Waziristan really not even all of south Waziristan focusing on the Baitullah Masoud organization that blew up the Marriott Hotel linked to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and a lot of other truly barbaric acts blowing up the visiting cricket teams numerous Pakistani officials and innocent civilians and even market places and indeed have done quite good operations there quite a deliberate operation but very very mountainous terrain very very hard operation and they have literally taken over all of that area that contains so much infrastructure I've seen the pictures I have been into Pakistan or met with the army chief about every 45 days over the course of the last 15-18 months starting with the first visit that was on meeting that was on an aircraft carrier parked off southern Pakistan a year and a half ago while still the commander in Iraq and these operations have been impressive and the challenge right now though is that there is a limit to their capacity to put more short sticks into hornet's nest and they've got a lot of short sticks in hornet's nest right now and they are going to have to figure out how to hold some of these areas through agreements with tribal elements not necessarily those that have signed on in the past with the Pakistani Taliban and in some cases there are deals with other elements that have turned to us as well certainly Commander Nazir most likely and some others and but that's going to be the way ahead I think our task and Secretary Gates has reaffirmed that during his ongoing visit has to be to show that we are going to be a steadfast partner that we are not going to do that country what we've done twice before which is provide a substantial amount of assistance in some cases create challenges that they have to deal with in the future like Mujahideen and then leave precipitously and leave them with those problems let's not forget the 12-year period during which we did not allow Pakistani officers to attend US military education and training a real handicap now there is an entire generation or more of Pakistani officers who didn't have the opportunities at General Kiani the Army Chief had rightly a proud member of the Command and General Staff College Hall of Fame at Fort Leavenworth needless to say those shared experiences help enormously doesn't mean they're necessarily completely pro-American for life but it does mean again that there is least an appreciation for our approach and typically personal relationships that help as well so again we've got to show that we are in this that we are going to provide sustained substantial commitment and I think the Kerry Luger bill does that very important 1.5 billion for each of 5 years in terms of economic assistance the commitments on the security assistance side about like amounts in a variety of different categories our assistance to them not in direct combat certainly they see this as their fight and that is heartening and they are prosecuting it so what we need to do is to continue to support them we need to rebuild partnerships rebuild trust and confidence show that we are going we are in this to as I mentioned in a sustained substantial way that we have mutual interests and that we're going to carry to pursue them together I think we maybe two maybe one more we'll go right there sorry Charlie Stephenson Seiss General you're a long time student of American civil military relations what's your assessment of those relations today and what are the greatest challenges I think they are very good right now actually obviously there was a period during this the discussion right at the outset of the discussion of the way ahead for Afghanistan and Pakistan in which due to leaks some other activities there were some concerns that were raised but I think frankly that the period of several months of very intense discussions I mean I think as you noted of civil military I actually went one time and looked historically at all the times for example when the JCS met with the president when combatant commanders it was really quite rare in the past to work for a chief of staff and for a chairman and the exception of the chairman during some ongoing operations again not that much contact to have nine meetings or eight or nine meetings with the president and then another Oval Office session and all the other ancillary contact as well from combatant command activities and so forth is really quite substantial and during that we sharpened our focus on discussions and concepts and had some very good debates in the real situation room I hate to break it to Wolf Blitzer but there is another situation room out there and in that room again some very very good discussions and I think there was as I look back on that honestly as I was flying back on Air Force One in fact from the West Point speech and talking with the president who came back to chat and so forth at the end of this long process I sort of thought back and said you know there's been some pretty substantial team building that took place here as well and I think that that is the case I think that that was a byproduct of this whole endeavor that was really quite positive as well We'll take one last question in the front right there Teresita Schaefer I'm the head of the South Asia program here at CSIS General could I take you back for just a moment to Pakistan I spent much of my diplomatic career in India and Pakistan before I retired and went to CSIS instead of to heaven One of the constants in our relationship with Pakistan as you rightly noted is their conviction that we are an unreliable friend Another however is that every time we've had a big relationship with Pakistan it has at the end of the day been founded on a false premise that our strategic objectives completely overlapped or very heavily overlapped I think we have the same problem now and I think one of the things you're dealing with is that it's becoming visible My two questions to you are do you see us getting closer to a similar way of approaching Afghanistan and how do you deal with the gaps between our strategic objectives Yeah it's a wonderful question actually and I thank you for raising that I think you are exactly right and as I mentioned earlier there are questions about our reliability I thought you were going to say the only constant has it been our occasional inconstancy or something like that but I mean that is exactly right and beyond that though I actually don't think it's a false premise that we think our objectives converge I think we are very clear on where they diverge I mean again one byproduct of all of this contact with the Pakistani army chief for example and a variety of other Pakistani leaders has been indeed to recognize where it is that we do have mutual interests and where we do not and in some cases where those interests are conflict rather than in concert and the result has been because of that recognition an increased effort to try to refine those to try to figure out how you work your way through the fact that based on our history they see things differently and based on their situation they see things differently now you asked in particular about our approach to Afghanistan and their approach and interest in Afghanistan and what we are doing there is in fact literally trying we are starting to build a foundation of cooperation that is initially founded on cooperation of what goes on on either side of the border there have been for example various statements where gosh the US closed out this combat outpost and the Pakistanis on the other side didn't know about it at the right level or vice versa because there is a whole host dozens of outposts on the Pakistani side that are closed or open periodically as well and so what we did is we sent up a joint coordination cell right at Torquham Gate at the Khyber Pass that has been in operation I think probably now for about 8 months we picked up steam in recent months General McChrystal has been quite assiduous and energetic in going to Islamabad and then having General Qiyani come to Kabul and then doing the same at lower levels all the way down to division commander and frontier corps commander for example to again coordinate what it is that we are doing and most recently we briefed them on the whole campaign plan for ISAF and laid out our plans for the future as they would affect the Pakistani efforts on the other side of the border and vice versa and in fact there was a recent Pakistani operation launched very recently in which we were briefed on it ahead of time and in fact we changed some tactical dispositions of our forces on the other side of the border in response to that the goal is to build that to solidify those particular relationships and then you continue to build it up from there there are other efforts like that by our US interagency partners and I mean some of these have been fairly interesting I remember for example ahead of a very significant intelligence organization in the United States who thought it might be a nice idea to have the ISI chief on one side and the Afghan intel chief on the other and that was an interesting conversation but actually that's what you need to do and that was a good eight, nine months ago and I'm not saying that everybody is linked arms and starting to sing the same tune or something like that but again that's where you start and that's how you have to move out and if you have ideas on how to reduce tensions between India and Pakistan welcome to david.patreus at us.army.mil that's an important component of this in truth because obviously the historic tensions there the historic enemy to the three wars the attention on India or India on Pakistan obviously detracts from the attention that could be given to some of these internal extremist elements that are we think and now the Pakistanis agree oppose the most urgent, the most pressing existential threat to Pakistan itself all right we've got a stub there I think to let you get to your next engagement again if everybody could just please stay seated while the general takes off thank you again so much very good thank you


Hello and welcome to Station 204 for your Space News for December 5th, 2019. We're going to be talking about the space launch system actually making progress a little bit into how space may save you from cancer one day and your weekly space weather report.  Those are three valid traits that you can throw at NASA's much bemoaned space launch system program. Progress that is not something that we associate with SLS very often, but we actually can because recently they did take steps that have moved forward one of the most important parts of a rocket that nobody, nobody ever wants to talk about. But you can't fly a rocket without it and it's the ground support equipment or what we call GSE. No GSE? No flight. And pad 39B is no stranger to flight and with Artemis 1 set to go from it, upgrades to systems were recently tested with cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen fully flowing. Some of the equipment is new for the space launch system. Some of it is old from Shuttle, some of it is really old from Apollo and the test showed that this new, old and really old systems, well, they all work together extremely well. In case you're wondering cryogenic liquid oxygen, much more difficult to move than cryogenic liquid hydrogen. You see liquid hydrogen weighs about 0.2 kilograms per gallon, but liquid oxygen weighs just a little over 4.3 kilograms per gallon. Now both of those systems were thoroughly tested, both of them worked and there were no leaks. So, excellent. While all of this was going down at pad 39B, inside the vehicle assembly building, stacking of mock-ups of the massive solid rocket boosters happened around the clock across three shifts, replicating the all day, all night timeline for doing so. Training folks on the ground, that's just as important as making sure the equipment on the launch pad works. And progress continues towards Artemis 1, the first deep space test flight of a Narayan capsule, which arrived at NASA's Plumb Brook Test Facility, where it now has a rigorous 16-week testing regimen of high and low temperatures, hard vacuum, radiation, and every awful thing that space can throw at it in an attempt to destroy it, as space does. Once testing wraps at Plumb Brook, Artemis 1's Orion will move to the Cape, where it will begin to stack on the actual space launch system vehicle, and then the launch campaign will begin in earnest. So look for that to be happening sometime in early 2020. And now to talk a little bit about how space can help us here on the ground, here's Jade Kip. One thing we love to cover on this show is just how unfriendly space can be to our fleshy little human bodies. Whether it's tissue degradation or making us more susceptible to that old herpes virus, there are no shortage of cosmic messages yelling, hey, you don't belong here. It just so happens that space may actually be the answer to eradicating one of the most profound of human ailments, cancer. Scientists led by Dr. Joshua Chow at the University of Technology Sydney will be sending cancer cells to the International Space Station to see how they react to microgravity. Microgravity seems to work by shutting off cancer cells by disrupting the way they sense each other. See, cancer cells divide uncontrollably, eventually coming together to form a tumor which can then grow large enough to signal the cells to invade other healthy tissues in the body. The tricky part is, we don't know exactly when this happens. Scientists speculate that there must be a way in which cancer cells communicate and sense each other using mechanical forces, which only exists when gravity is present. So take away the gravity and disorient the cancer? Kind of.  Scientists those tested were ovarian, breast, nose, and lung cancers, some of the most aggressive types. The next step is to test out this experiment in actual space, which will happen early next year. If successful, the teams hope to develop a drug that can simulate microgravity's effects in cancer cells and ultimately be used in conjunction with chemotherapy as a double whammy approach to fighting cancer. And this isn't the first time research done on the ISS has been used to aid in treatments. Dr. Chow's previous research into how microgravity affects disease progression led to the development of avenity, a drug used to treat osteoporosis. Making the case for space can oftentimes be anything but easy. People often wonder if the billions of dollars we invest globally in a space program is actually worth it when we have so many issues here on Earth that require our immediate attention. Dr. Chow's research illustrates that well-funded space programs can lead to vital research that can literally save millions of lives. Absolutely fascinating work that they're doing up there. Now, cancer can be caused by radiation. And radiation, you can find plenty of that in space. And that's why space weather comes in pretty handy. And to talk about this week's upcoming space weather, here is Dr. Tamatha Scove. Space weather this week continues to be a bit on the quiet side. As we flip to our front-side sun, you can see a couple bright regions that have been rotating through the Earth view, but they've been fizzling as they've been rotating. We also have one that is a high latitude region that was beginning to rotate into Earth view. It fired off a few many flares and then a solar storm and then it fizzled. This was most likely a solar cycle 25 sunspot, what we'll never be able to know because it died before it came into view. Oh, well, what can you do? You just wait for the next one. Meanwhile, on top of that, we do have a coronal hole that's gonna be rotating into the Earth strike zone here in the next, maybe five days or so, which could bring some aurora to high latitudes from the fast solar wind that's gonna hit, but it's not gonna last for all that long because these coronal holes are getting pretty small as we get close to really transitioning into solar cycle 25. As we switch to our far-side sun, you can see that bright region in stereo's view. This is stereo looking at the sun pretty much from the side. That bright region in the middle of the disc there, that thing fired off a couple flares and then it kind of fizzled into nothing. Now the rest of the far-side sun is not looking all that good. There's a couple bright regions and there's one in the northern hemisphere that looks like it might actually give us something. So we're gonna have to pay attention and see if these regions grow or fizzle and whether or not they're gonna help boost the solar flux for amateur radio operators and emergency responders. For more details on this week's space weather, including when and where to see aurora, how amateur radio and GPS reception will fare, come check out my channel or see me at spaceweatherwoman.com. And now let's hop around the earth just a little bit in order to cover this week's space traffic. Five, four, three, two, one, zero. Yeah, door on your ground, we're gonna step on it. Let's try it again. Starting in India at the Satish DeWon Space Center, an India space research organization, Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, lifted off the pad on November 27th at 0358 Universal Time. Its primary payload was India's own CardoSat 3, the highest resolution earth observation satellite India has developed. Also included were 13 secondary payloads, 12 of which were new Super Dove earth observation satellites from imagery provider Planet. Back to China as they continue to absolutely bury everyone in the dust with their end of year launch cadence with a Long March 4C setting off from the Taian Space Center on November 27th at 2352 Universal Time. It successfully deployed Galfin 12, a radar observation satellite that provides a resolution of one meter or better in all conditions. And here are your upcoming departures. 61 years ago on December 3rd, 1958, a place we absolutely adore here at tomorrow, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, was handed over from the U.S. Army to the newly formed NASA. Originally started in 1936 as an aerospace research group, not many folks know that JPL was acquired by the U.S. Army and then used as a weapons development facility producing some of the earliest rockets and guided missile systems. After changing the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics into the Modern National Aeronautics and Space Administration, so did operational ownership of JPL change from the U.S. Army to NASA. JPL, born of weapons, but now shooting for the stars. And just a reminder to set your alarms now, our final live show of 2019 will be next Saturday, December 14th at 1800 Universal Time. We'll be having one of our famous round tables about everything that happened in spaceflight in 2019 and a look over the horizon at what's happening in 2020. Make sure to tune in live so you can get your own questions answered and let us know what you're looking forward to the most in 2020. And of course, we wanna give a huge thank you to all of the citizens of tomorrow. Without your help, we wouldn't be able to make any of this possible. No news, no live shows, and no letting off steam. So if you got something from us and would like to give something back, you can head on over to youtube.com slash tmro slash join. And as always, hitting that subscribe and notification button, liking, sharing and giving us in front of as many of your friends as possible helps us pursue that core of our mission to get everyone, everybody excited about space. And that wraps up your Space News for December 5th, 2019. Until the next one, remember, keep exploring.


If you don't have celiac disease, should you avoid gluten? Hi, this is Dr. Ruscio, and let's discuss this question. There's an entity known as non-celiac gluten sensitivity, and these are people that do not have celiac disease but appear to have a reaction to gluten. So they're not celiac with their gluten-sensitive, so non-celiac gluten-sensitive. So this is a somewhat controversial issue because the previous thinking was that only people that had celiac disease need to avoid gluten. However, there have been a fair amount of randomized clinical trials that are really the gold standard in medicine that have found that non-celiac gluten sensitivity is a legitimate issue. In fact, the majority of the clinical trials that have been done have shown that it does appear to be a legitimate issue. A study was recently published that challenges this. Another randomized clinical trial took two groups of patients, had them go off of gluten, and then one half was given a gluten pill, the other half was given a placebo pill that did not contain gluten. And the researchers wanted to see if the people receiving the gluten were the ones that had symptomatic flares, and the ones that were receiving the placebo did not have symptomatic flares. What was found was that about 35% of the people taking the gluten pill had a flare, had a symptomatic flare, whereas 50% of the people receiving the placebo had a symptomatic flare. Now, this definitely challenges the concept that non-celiac gluten sensitivity is legitimate. However, this is only one study. Right now, the majority of studies still support that non-celiac gluten sensitivity is a legitimate condition. There's a couple other details about this study that we should talk through just to help people understand this finding. The amount of gluten used in the pill was enough to elicit symptoms. 10 grams was used, or it was the amount in the pill. Some studies have shown that if the gluten pill contains a small amount of gluten, 1.5 grams or less, that may not be enough to elicit symptoms. 10 grams was used in this study, so clearly the gluten pill had enough to cause a symptomatic reaction. It's also possible that one may react to what's known as FODMAPs. The placebo pill was actually high FODMAP or had normal FODMAP content, so it's possible that the 50% of people reacting in the placebo group, they may have been reacting to FODMAPs. There are certainly a lot of people that are sensitive to FODMAPs. FODMAPs are fermentable compounds in carbohydrate that can fuel the signs of IBS, abdominal pain, discomfort, bloating, indigestion, constipation, diarrhea. It certainly may have been the FODMAPs. There's been another clinical trial that has run a similar study as this, and the placebo was low FODMAP. This study did find that most of the reactions were in the gluten group and there was very little in the placebo. It's possible that the reason why we're seeing this study find that more people reacted to placebo than to gluten could have been because the placebo was high in FODMAP. At the end of the day, what I think really matters is what you can do to feel better. It's a very simple and practical thing to go on a somewhat restrictive, very clean diet for about 30 days and then reintroduce some of these foods to see what your tolerance is and what your tolerance is not. A paleotype diet can be a great place to start, re-evaluate, see how you feel, reintroduce grains and gluten and FODMAPs. Usually when people do this and they observe for a little while, they fall into a diet that's right for them. I think it is important to mention that while I do see many patients that do well gluten-free, I think there may be emerging an equal amount of detriment being done to people that don't need to practice a high level of avoidance of gluten who are being feared into thinking that they do. It has been published that there's a high degree of social and psychological distress that accompanies having to go strict gluten-free for those people that have celiac. While it's good to get someone the recommendation to be gluten-free or to reduce their gluten intake, who needs it? For those that don't need it, this can create a lot of unintended suffering. I think it's important to be practical on approach and realize that those that have celiac will have to definitely be very strict avoiders. There's this group of non-celiac gluten sensitive where there's probably a continuum of those that can get away with quite a bit of gluten before they have a reaction and those that are really sensitive. We should try to get each person to a point where they practice the level of avoidance that's correspondent with their level of sensitivity. Then there are those that have no problem at all with gluten. It's important that we respect and identify this entire spectrum because the more that we try to fear people or force people into being gluten-free that don't need to be, we run the unintended risk of potentially creating a lot of stress in their life. Gluten-free can definitely be helpful. It's just trying to make sure we make that recommendation reasonably and responsibly so that you can reap all the benefits and not have any negative or any detriment. Remember, there can be the detriment of making your life harder than it has to be by avoiding gluten more excessively than you need to. Non-celiac gluten sensitivity in my mind and as per supported by the medical literature right now still seems to have the majority of the evidence in its favor. However, there are some other factors like FODMAP that may skew some of the findings like in today's study and it's also important to be practical and to realize that just because non-celiac gluten sensitivity is being identified as a legitimate condition, it doesn't mean that we need to be even more overzealous in trying to force everyone into gluten-free. So tinker, do some experimentation. If you need to work with a nutritionist or a health coach or a doctor to help you figure this out and then practice a level of avoidance that's going to feel right for you. This is Dr. Ruscio. I hope this information helps you get healthy and get back to your life. Thanks.


We are on our journey of corporate governance and we are looking at its various stakeholders, its various perspectives, its various interpretations and its various implications and its imposition at a local, institutional, national and global dimension. Now when we are looking at corporate governance then it is very important to understand that it is a process of continuous learning. We have seen in the past how history has changed corporate governance, how the contextualization of corporate governance has changed the role and the way corporations basically work internally and externally. We have seen how different stakeholders tend to have different interests and the government being the largest stakeholder has a regulatory context in all of it and therefore understanding it becomes much more important. Another thing is that bad kismat hai wo shaks jis ka aaj guzhara vikaal se beto nahi or bad kismat hai wo organization jis ka aaj guzhara vikaal se beto nahi and that basically means that we are all in a continuing learning phase and public and corporate governance systems have to be evolutionary and accommodating the needs, desires and implications of that particular time and the times to come and to ensure that all stakeholders and shareholders rights are basically protected. Oscar Wilde said something very interesting and that while talking about fraud, the thief is an artist and the policeman is only a critic. Something which carries immense philosophical value that again when we are talking about corporate governance and its misgovernance then definitely there are so many contextuals and so many dimensions and so many ways of doing it and the policeman or the regulatory bodies are only the critics and seeing what is being done right and what is being done wrong. So, all of this is basically taking place. This does not mean that systems are always outdated. So, there are certain things which can keep on continuing. There are various universal laws and then again there are various morality issues which are universal but there are various ethical issues which are universal and therefore they do not get outdated. But with the advent of technology, with the advent of globalization, with the advent of global businesses and most importantly the speed of communication and the way the mindset and attitudes are changing therefore evolution becomes necessary and systems have to accordingly adjust themselves. The efforts to devise a system that can ensure better governance are critical. Therefore it has to be the responsibility of the government and of the other stakeholders that they keep on improvising their systems, their processes and their frameworks so that better governance can prevail and again keep a balance and counter check on all of those individuals who are trying to break the system, who are trying to compromise the corporate governance framework and mechanisms and that becomes very important and then again when we are talking about technology creating problems then technology is also creating solutions and that is extremely important. There is a need of wide range of acceptance of stakeholders perspective. Governance should be understood as a construct which includes the accountability of the entity to all of its stakeholders. So, again the very essence of accountability of transparency, of meritocracy, of ensuring that there is an ethical approach to the different mechanisms of an organization is very important because otherwise what we can see is that they could result in total chaos and could also then result in many detrimental implications for global economy, for national economy and also for the institutional economy and that is extremely important. Governance is as much a political process as it is economic unlike management which is only economic. So, again ladies and gentlemen what do we see is that when we are talking about management then we usually are talking in the economic context of efficiency and effectiveness but governance has its own political connotations also and it is about managing interests, creating a balance and also ensuring that no one interest tends to overwhelm the other interest and that is what governance is all about. Corporate governance is about catering to the environment in which the corporation basically operates. Corporate governance is concerned with the rule of law in the company and good governance is basically about the leadership of the entity which has to manifest states person like behavior. So, ladies and gentlemen what we are basically seeing is that in the whole greater embryoil of and glossome of corporate governance we basically see that one we are talking about environment, two we are talking about rule of law and three we are talking about leadership and the implications of that leadership and therefore when we are talking about states person like behavior then we are talking about someone who will watch the interest of all the shareholders and all of the stakeholders and that is very important in corporate governance and this is a process which is continuing and improving from different parameters from different spheres from different dimensions and definitely it is not time locked it keeps on moving forward and caters to the needs of the stakeholders and the shareholders. Thank you so much.


Hi everybody, Joe for jaspyscasebreaks.com coming at you with 2020 Panini select baseball three box random division break number four All-card chip in this. I'm pretty nice stuff here big. Thanks to these folks for getting into the action. I appreciate it They're the divisions right there. Let's roll it. Let's randomize each list six times two and a four One I know we're about to pull heat two three four five six So much fire here that the fire department always around John down to next over two and a four six times for the six divisions one two three four Five and good luck sixth and final time after six. We've got the AL East down to the AL West All right, so John with the Al East Walter with the Al Central guy with the NL West Nick with the NL East Mac with the NL Central and Nick with the Al West Let's sort this by it's alphabetized by division And here are the final three box right here that I marked with the X's so you know that they're all from the same case We're gonna pause the video when we come back. We're gonna see if there's any trades of divisions And then we'll do the break stick around. We'll be right back All right, welcome back folks No deals were done. It's all good. So that list remains the same here in three box random division four I don't think we have any more 20 20 select baseball. That was the that was the whole case, but it was pretty fun Thanks, everyone for joining on those breaks. I'm sure we'll try to dig up some more Select or similar such products in the near future. So keep an eye out playing a baseball so on the site though Plenty of other kinds of baseball on jasky's case breaks comms. I'll always check it out All right. Good luck everybody. I don't know what else is happening with it Trevor Bauer baseball news was pretty exciting for me as a Dodgers fan. I don't know what else is what's happening these days Looks like Rich Hill is Progressing towards a deal with the Tampa Bay Rates Cubs agree to the deal with Jake Arietta Padres to sign Mark Molanson Mariners to sign Ken Giles Red Sox to sign Marwin Gonzalez Diamond back sign as Rubel Cabrera. I don't know if there's any other big news Twins officially sign Alex Colomane Dylan Floreau going to the Marlins and I guess there's still According to MLB trade rumors comm I guess Justin Turner is still unsettled Jackie Bradley Jr. I think was supposed to be on the move And Chris Bryant may get dealt. I think there's been some Chris Bryant to the Mets chatter I guess the Mets were also interested in Justin Turner. So maybe if they don't get Justin Turner, they'll go Chris Bryant Or vice versa. They don't get Chris Bryant. They'll go Justin Turner I'm sure the Dodgers are still in conversation with Justin Turner. All right. Here's the first box There's phenoms Christian Pache who's supposed to be pretty good That's for the NL East mixed over And there's 46 out of 49 Corey seager autograph. Nice NL West guy with the Dodgers nice Cory seager is probably on the cusp of getting Getting paid Big deal of money. There's Trent Thornton to 199 Toronto AL East John We've got a Michael King to 199 84 out of 199 for New York AL East John Ryder That Luis Robert. I was hoping it was a silver one, but At least save that one AL central Walter with the Luis Robert premier level. We got Danny Mended Rookie silver for Walter AL central premier level Ronald Acuna Jr. For the Braves all card ship, of course And we got Shohei Otani piece of his jersey AL East John Ryder Nope check that AL West Nick Stover eBay saying JT still still an all-star bring him back hashtag red turn to Liam Hendricks To 140. Yeah, I would love to have Justin Turner back.  So So I get that he wants to try to get the most possible But I hope that that both the Dodgers and Justin Turner can get, you know Can get together and figure out a deal that works for both sides AL West Nick Stover with the Nick Solak Relic Justin Turner has been dealing with Some nagging injuries here and there but if Edwin Rios can kind of give him some some time off during the regular season You know, then I'm hoping that he'll that Justin Turner be fresh for the post season So on and so forth Randy Arroz-Irania for John and the AL East Nelson Cruz who I think is is elsewhere now right Nelson Cruz We got Josh Hader 148 to 149 a NL central Mack P with that and all of those of course will be Will be top-loaded before they go out Before they're sorted in ship Jack Flaherty silver Aussie albies and Jeff McNeill. That was box one Right. Yeah, Justin Turner is totally clutch. He's an X. He's still an excellent fielder as well So he's an excellent defender. I don't know if Edwin Rios is is that It's kind of bummed about jock Peterson leaving to or not leaving but being assigned elsewhere because he was He gets pretty clutch in the playoffs, too so I'm gonna kind of miss that that bat either off the bench or against Insta Certain pictures got Zion versus Luca on in the background great turnaround jumper for Luca Dodgers Turn around fadeaway jumper mid-range nailed it Another Arroz-Irania let's hope Arroz-Irania keeps things going Takes the playoff momentum from last year AL East John Ryder John Ryder is hoping that too He's got a couple of these cars now and we've got a phenoms die cut JJ Bladet One of the Miami Marlins kind of high draft picks I think Number five fifth overall maybe in a recent draft number four overall.  For the NL East Nick Stober I just thought it was gonna be a parallel No, it's a three out of ten Acuna, Jr. Autograph. It's not bad. He's pretty good There's Michael King Lyme green for the AL East and there's 006 out of 199 Josh Rojas Josh Josh, what are you doing? Look at that autograph? Looks like he was signing he was like audit signing these stickers on Like a in a car in the backseat of a car that goes to the NL West guy with the Josh Rojas Francisco Lindor Vlad Guerrero, Jr. And we got an AJ puck Piece of his jersey going to the AL West Nick we got Keston here a blue to 149 NL Central MacP and we've got a Raphael Devers for the Red Sox AL East John Ryder 43 out of 75. Oh a nice Kyle Lewis Right here for the AL West Nick Stober nice rookie Kyle Lewis pretty nice. I like the that Tri-color look there too. We've got a silver Brock Burke also for the AL West Nick Freddie Freeman to 199 Braves a NL East Nick and the final box. Good luck everybody Yes, we gonna baseball eBay wants to get that sapphire breakdown. I'm down Let's do it. Let's do it. We only have Three breaks the current one and then two more to do after that Then we run out of sapphire and then no more after that I don't think we've seen any out of fives or one of one any train whistle car that sapphire Pita Lonzo Kind of like to look at that card NL East Nick Justin Verlander for the Stroh's AL West Nick. We got the Catman Tony Gonsolin 008 out of 149 He might slot in pretty nicely as the fifth starter for the Dodgers Maybe him or Dustin May Hulu Urius Dodgers have options guy They're pretty nice of your last year though Look at this. I've never seen this. I felt different on the back Bit of masking tape behind is Brian Reynolds This must be when they were setting up the entire Entire sheet someone maybe accidentally put that on there. It's a special now There you go in L central Willie Castro for the AL central piece of his jersey Walter Ballinger Alberto Shogo Akiyama rookie silver Christian Yelich Shogo for the NL central for Mack P. You Chang Rindon Longoria Geolito. Oh, look at this a red Mike trout little color match Parallel matching the color of the team For the AL West Nick Stober At the coast are having a nice break here 49 out of 199 that the West and the East Julio Tehran Polanco Blank card We've got a 22 out of 25 cracked ice Aristides Aquino NL central Mack P nice one and AJ puck to 200 Jersey and autograph for the AL West Nick Stober We got a Yusaka Kuchy 32 excuse me 32 out of 50 AL West Nick and the last little bit here We got Travis Demerite 6 out of 99 Tigers autograph that's for the AL central Walter and we got Justin Turner silver And there you go, and there you have it ladies and gentlemen that was three box random division number four 2020 Panini select baseball. Thanks for buying into the into the breaks boys and girls. I'm Joe I'll see you next time for the next one. Bye. Bye


Next up, DigiKey and Adafruit present. Hi, I'm M-P-I. Alright, this week's Ion M-P-I is from Diodes. I know. Well, you know, first up, I want to say, they do make Diodes and they make great Diodes, but they also make things that are not Diodes. And I feel like Diodes Incorporated, they don't get enough love. I mean, they're not one of like the big five semiconductor companies, but they do make really good stuff. In fact, our favorite regulators, our power converters and regulators, are from Diodes Incorporated. So I do want to give them a shout out. And so when I saw this product show up at digikey.com slash new, I was actually, and some people are like, oh, like, do people like, you know, are you told what to put on Ion P-I? No, believe me, the things they pick, these are things I'm actually personally interested in. And you're going to see this chip appearing a lot more of my designs because this chip is awesome. This is how we decide on what things we're going to put in our products. So the AP63300 and 001, which looks like this, very exciting. It's a T-SOT6. What is it? I'm glad you asked. Here is a leaflet from Diodes Incorporated, which kind of covers everything. New product announcement. This is a three amp, low quiescent current, synchronous buck converter with great EMI performance.   And I'm like, well, usually there's a big price difference or a cost difference. So here's what's really cool about this series. So this is a table with a couple of different chips on it. I'm talking about the two ones at the top, the 6300 and the 63301. Okay, so the first thing that's awesome about these is the input range. It's 3.8 volts to 32 volts. So, like, you can put almost any voltage in here. Like, this is great. You can run off lead acid batteries. You can have it work in a vehicle. You can have it run off of like solar panels. You can run it off like anything, right? Alkalines and up. The output voltage is also a very wide range. It can go from 0.8 volts, that's the lowest, up to V in. And when it gets very close to V in, it actually kind of makes the chip turn into a low dropout regulator. You can read about that in the datasheet. Basically, just 30 volts up to 30 volts input up to 30 volts output. So this is great because a lot of the buck converters that we've seen are like, oh, max is at 12 volts or max is at 6 volts. This one, it's like pure range, right? I've never even used more than 24 volts in any of my designs. So this is great. I know there's people who are like, I have robotics projects. I want to have a buck converter for my robotics project, but I have 14 volts in or something. Not a problem. I have 28 volts in. Number three, the A out. Three amps continuous. Love it. And you don't need any external MOSFETs or diodes. It's synchronous. So all you need is a couple passive components. And we'll show that next. There's two versions. And I'm going to chat about the two next versions. Why there's an 01 and an OO. There's slightly different operation modes and quiescent currents, and I'll explain that shortly. But let's show off the template application circuit. Again, I love it. You don't need any external components. There's even a little boost converter thingy inside, booster for the high side FET. So that's the C3 capacitor. Input bulk cap, output bulk cap, voltage divider feedback loop with a little feedback cap, a little mini cap there just to stabilize it.  And you're done. That's it. There's an even enable pin. Love it. Like I said, it goes up to three amps. There's going to be differences in the efficiencies when you're talking about lower current. Lower current, less than 100 or 50 milliamps. So this is the, if you look at the bottom, it says the AP63300, which I'll just call the 300. So the 300 has good efficiency pretty much across the board. You can see here like various V-ins and V-outs. You're always going to be basically looking at, you know, 70 to 90% efficiency from a couple of milliamps all the way up to three amps. This is a log scale, of course. The 301, you'll notice, has a totally different efficiency scale. Once you get below, you know, about 100 milliamps, the efficiency plummets. So if you need high efficiency, whether it's at low or high current draw, you'll want the 300. There are some situations where you'll want the 301. Oh, the quiescent also matters. The quiescent current for the 300, the one that has high efficiency across like all the current, is going to be only 22 microamps. The 301 is, I think it says 280 microamps, 200-ish microamps, so a lot worse quiescent. You know, pretty high quiescent current for the 301. So you're probably like, well, wait a minute. So the 301 has much higher quiescent and is much less efficient at low current. Why on earth would I want that? The reason you would want that is, this is the 300, right? So the one that's high efficiency, low quiescent. And what I want you to look at in specific is in the top right, you've got that V-out ripple. So this is the ripple at low current, right? That says, I think, 50 milliamps. So you'll see that this version of the buck converter changes the way it does the PWM output, the frequency plummets to get better efficiency at low current. But it's a lot noisier. You see that range there is, it says 100 millivolts per division. Whereas the one that is fixed, more fixed frequency, and you can see the top right, the graphs are not in the same location. So just be aware that frequency is in the top right, you see the frequency stays stable. And because of that, the output voltage ripple is much, much lower. So basically, use the 300, you're going to get better efficiency at low current and you're going to have a lower quiescent current across the board. But if you're doing a lot of low current stuff under 100 milliamps and you need low noise, this might not be good for you. They're pin-compatible so you can switch and swap. Start with one, try the other. There's an eval board, I even picked up an eval board and just love the simplicity of it. It is a T-sot chip, which is kind of weird, you might be wondering, well, how it's doing three amps with internal MOSFETs, how is it dissipating all that current, that heat from that current draw? Well, first off, the internal MOSFETs are pretty low. I think they're like 75 milliamps. But also this PCB has a 2-ounce copper and you can kind of see that, I'll show on the overhead too, the pads are really big for the T-sot. Maybe, yeah, you want to zoom in. Of course, zoom in. You're near. You always talk about near and far. So that's the T-sot there and you see this has, it's much wider than you would expect a T-sot to be. So it uses this for current carrying and also for heat dissipation. You see the big chunk inductor, the bulk capacitance, and then of course here is the resistor divider and then on the bottom they have a little bit of a copper ground plane as the heat sink because this doesn't have a central heat sink pad, and they use a bunch of vias to help. There's a big ground plane stitch here. Oh, sorry, actually it's not the heat sink. I apologize. So that's the A that is just like a heat sink, sorry, a large ground plane with a larger ground plane on the bottom. But the heat dissipation, I think they do talk about, they just say use 2-ounce copper and just use these big pads. So that's the only thing. But otherwise, comparatively it's a very easy package to solder. You're not going to have any rework issues with this. You can even hand solder it if you want. So I think this is a great comparison and then of course the best thing about this chip is the price. It's like 40 cents on a real. Which means it's basically the same price as an LDO.  You're going to have wide input, wide output, extremely high current, no heat sink required and for the same price. So you get like better performance. You do have a little bit more noise because it's a buck converter. But overall, like, I looked and in this class for this range of inputs and outputs and current this is definitely the cheapest one. And I've always had a great experience with diode's ink converters. They're rock solid, even though they're like often the least expensive available. I've never had an AP2112 break on me. They've just been so solid. So I really like this buck converter.  It just means you can use it for anything. Like I'm going to use it for stuff that is, you know, 5 volt to 3 volt conversion. You know, with only like maybe a half an amp of current draw. Why? It's 40 cents. Put it on everything. Put it on your cheesecake. Give it to your kids for Christmas. Whatever. It's 40 cents. How can you go wrong? It's the AP63300. Alright, that was this week's... I have a very cool, unique product. Good find.