Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Tara Sonnenschein, Executive Vice President here at the United States Institute of Peace. And I'm delighted to welcome you all to help welcome and hear from Ambassador Chris Hill. There will be time for questions after the ambassador's remarks. And I think we're using microphones, or there will be microphones roving mics. And if you would please identify yourselves before you ask a question and to keep it relatively short so we can move around the room as quickly as possible. To introduce our guest of honor, I turn to Ambassador Richard Solomon, President of the US Institute of Peace. Good morning, and thank you all for turning out. And thanks to all the cameras in the back. It's clear we have a very important and timely session today, which in some ways is heralded by the lead headline in the Washington Post today, Spectre of Sectarian Strife, Resurfaces in Iraq. This is a special occasion not only because of the work the Institute has done on Iraq over the years and the importance of something that isn't so much in our headlines these days as we focus on Afghanistan, Pakistan, other issues. But very much because of the opportunity we've had to work with Ambassador Hill over the years. He has taken on some of the most difficult diplomatic assignments. And I suppose you could say in the old saw that no good deed goes unpunished after four years of trying to get the six-party talk process moving forward in terms of the North Korean nuclear program, something that I'm sure he will detail has had some significant and lasting impact in a positive direction. He was given the most challenging assignment that he has today as ambassador to Baghdad. In 2005, there were elections in Iraq that generated a wave of sectarian violence. And in terms of the president's objective of seeing the country stabilized and focusing on other challenges in the region, the upcoming elections are really critical. And we'll be hearing from our presenter his assessments of the current situation. Ambassador Hill, one of the outstanding diplomats of his generation and others, no doubt, began his career in the Peace Corps and the Cameroons. Has been ambassador to Macedonia, Poland, and South Korea, Republic of Korea before his current assignment. He's received distinguished honor awards for his role in supporting the Dayton Accords and a special envoy for trying to stabilize the Balkans. So we're exceptionally pleased that Ambassador Chris Hill is with us today. Please, Mr. Ambassador. Thank you very much, Dick. It's a great pleasure to be here at USIP. I gather you're going to move to the new building pretty soon. I will miss this building, mainly because in my old job at East Asia Bureau, we had a terrific view of the river, which we don't have anymore. So you remember the office. I mean, you'd look out there and look at the Potomac River and think of North Korea, but it's all gone now. And in its place is a beautiful, beautiful facility, which I really do believe befits the status and the tremendous mission of the US Institute of Peace, the things you've done, your work in really all over the world. I've worked with USIP in every different part, I mean, whether in the Balkans or in East Asia. But I particularly appreciate what you're all doing in Iraq, because you're taken on one of the major challenges there, which is conflict resolution and getting people in the same room to talk to each other and getting people to understand that there's a way through problems and a way through by dialogue. And I really appreciate the fact I saw Ambassador Bill Taylor out there just a couple months ago, I think, and visiting your office. When you have a standing office there, it's working. You've gotten Iraqis to buy into the process. In fact, I think you've got some Iraqi employees there. And I think it's just a great credit to what you do, because we've got a lot of talk shops in Washington, but probably fewer do shops in Washington. I think you do both very, very well. So we really, really appreciate what you've done with this Institute and the direction it's going. So it's a great pleasure to come here. It's always a pleasure to be in Washington and even greater pleasure to leave, I guess, after a few days. But I really do believe this is an important time for Iraq. I think it's an important time for US-Iraki relations. I think really a time that will, I think, when we look back, it'll be a time of probably one of the most critical periods, because we are now on the eve of national elections in Iraq, which are coming up in some 2 and 1 half weeks. I was talking to the prime minister a couple of weeks ago, and I said, we have elections. You have elections in 30 days. And he said it's actually 28 days and seven hours from now. So I think everyone is very aware of the moment. It's also a year in which our military is preparing to draw down after seven truly heroic years of service. It's a year in which the US military will be out of combat operations. And we'll leave in its place later this beginning of the fall. We will have advice and assist brigades. But we will not be directly involved with combat operations. It's also a year in which our embassy, Bill, in fact, was as someone who's run embassies, was commenting on the size of the thing, I think along with the Great Wall of China, it's one of two things you can see from outer space. It truly is extraordinary. We are there. The US embassy is there for the long haul. People who equate our interest in Iraq with our true presence have, may I say, kind of missed the point because we are interested in a long-term relationship. And the embassy that we have there is very much symbolic of that relationship. It's also a year in which I think new economic potential very much beckons Iraq into a new decade. We have a number of oil contracts that have been reached with international companies. Iraq is really on the move economically. It's also now a year just after President Obama stated his vision for Iraq and his Camp Lejeune speech. And I think it's a very appropriate time to share some of the observations from the ground in Baghdad. And if I can, lay out some of what we believe will be the road ahead. This will be a landmark here as we pivot from a military-led engagement to a civilian-led presence. The dynamic of our relationship with the Iraq government will mature. And as we make this shift, the American civilian military team, and it is one team and one mission, put into practice the hard lessons of the past seven years. General Odierno and I share the president's strong resolve to help Iraq finally become a place where its citizens can live free of fear. It's a resolve to help Iraq build an inclusive political system where people have a say in the decisions that affect their lives. It's a resolve to help Iraqi communities settle their differences peacefully, just as USIP is engaged in that process. It's a resolve to help Iraq modernize its economy and very much a resolve to help Iraq integrate with the region and with the world. It is no doubt a daunting agenda. Our embassy works very closely with US forces Iraq to chart the course forward. We're committed to this course not just for the satisfaction of helping Iraq or to write past errors, but rather because it's undeniably in the interests of the United States to do so and to stay engaged. Opinions about Iraq, among pundits, professors, politicos, are about as varied as a choice in the NFL draft. And I must say when people talk about the various ideas they have, you hear a lot of terms must and should. The US must do this. The Iraqis must do that. Defense Department should do this. State Department must do that, and so on. And there are a number of musts. In fact, I saw one in a US newspaper at an editorial around Christmas. And there were 11 musts in the editorial. We called them the 11 musts of Christmas, in fact. So in looking at all these musts, I think I've tried to boil them down to maybe three of them. And they are that the first must is we need to, we must help Iraq build healthy political and democratic institutions in an environment peace and security. Second must is we must help Iraq modernize its economy. If it doesn't have a modernized economy, it's not going to work. I mean, that is really the name of the game. And thirdly, we must help Iraq establish a productive relationship with its neighbors. And in so doing, we can secure Iraq's role as not only a reliable partner for the United States, but a strategic partner for the United States. Now, of course, you can have 1,000 musts, and it won't mean anything without a stable and secure situation in Iraq. Years of sacrifice and strategy have moved us ever closer to this critical stage. First of all, we won't ever forget the sacrifice of our US military. Our coalition partners are Iraqi counterparts who have taken on what is often a deadly and surely a daunting challenge. Due to their collective efforts, violence against civilians, violence against elements of the Iraqi state have dropped dramatically. In addition, violence against our forces has also dropped precipitously in recent months. These changes, which are evident all across Iraq's 18 provinces, are not only a sign of a stronger Iraq, they're also a sign of a smarter American presence. A presence where we have learned the lessons of the last few years, and frankly, some of those lessons were very hard indeed. Just as we have brought change to Iraq, so Iraq has changed us. We have new military doctrine, a new counterinsurgency doctrine developed from our experience in Iraq. We have new civilian military engagement. I worked on military civilian engagement in the Balkans. I can tell you what we have going on in Iraq is unprecedented in the scope and depth of the degree to which we work together with the military. The United States has developed many more effective uses of smart power. All of this can be traced directly to this war. And while every war is different, the lessons learned through the sacrifice of lives and resources in Iraq will inevitably change the way America interacts with the world. Our efforts in Iraq will be indelibly it etched in the history books for future generations to judge. In 2006 and 2007, Iraq's interests and power were played out on the streets against the backdrop of death, of uncertainty and fear. Today, notwithstanding the article in today's Washington Post, power and interests are battling it out with election posters that frankly obscure the bridges and blanket the markets in every province. If you drive through Iraq today, you will see these posters just everywhere.  It is inspiring stuff. Everybody has these posters out there. The campaign for this election has indeed begun. We know that late night of intensive negotiations and anyone who's negotiated with Iraqis, you immediately see the prayer beads and the tea. I must confess, I've engaged in both. As Iraqis politicians consolidate their blocks and hash out very tough political deals. Truly, the Iraqi people have embraced the reality of democracy. And I think it's very important to understand that it is a place where people speak their minds. The Iraqis are quite comfortable letting you know where they stand. And the issue is to try to create some rules of the game of that, try to explain that politics can be just as tough as American football, but at least in American football, we have a field that's 100 yards long and we need some type of scope for how that Iraqi politics is going to be played out. One of the major issues in the recent weeks that has been very difficult in Iraq has been the debathification issue. Given the history, given the bath as legacy in Iraq, it is very understandable why it incites strong emotions in Iraq. Given the history of the US in Iraq, if you look at the 1960s and how the US, the United States, was very concerned about the potential spread of communism to Iraq and how baptism was seen as an alternative to communism, where the US in fact preferred baptism in the 1968 process that led to the return of Bathis, how the US preferred that outcome to a communist Iraq, it is understandable. It is really understandable why some Iraqis look at a pattern in the 1960s and think they're seeing a pattern today where the US has been so concerned about other influences in Iraq. And somehow, when people look at that pattern, they think we must be in some way supporting a Bathis resurgence in Iraq. For Americans, it's hard to understand. After all, we have lost 4,000, over 4,000 of our countrymen in the struggle against baptism. We took on Saddam Hussein. We defeated him. We rooted out Bathis throughout the country. It is simply extraordinary for Americans to try to understand that some Iraqis actually think we somehow support Bathis. But when you look at this pattern in the 1960s, you can see how this distant and cracked mirror can somehow affect people's view of the current situation. So we need to be respectful of the history and respectful of people's emotions. I think when the initial list of excluded candidates was read in the Council of Representatives, and this was a process that I must be very clear with you that we did not feel past any measure of transparency, a process of naming people, essentially denying them their rights to participate in the election without, in our view, any kind of due process. We had a lot of concerns about this, but I think it is very, people need to understand that when this initial list of candidates was read in the Council of Representatives, it received standing and sustained applause from all the members there. Bathism is a very vibrant, important subject there. People feel very strongly about it, and we need to respect that, and we need to understand that in dealing with it, we need to try to deal with it in not as a fundamental issue that is reflected in the Constitution, but deal with the question of whether it was done with sufficient transparency and done outside of political scope. Obviously, we had some concerns about it. We registered those concerns with the Iraqi government. We were very active in making sure Iraqis understood our views on this. And so we felt, for example, that there was a scoring political points was definitely a part of the controversy, yet I think it was very important for us to make clear to the Iraqis that as they got ready for elections, they need to make sure that this bathist issue was handled in the context of rule of law. So we have gotten through this issue now. It hasn't been easy. It is very upsetting to people who were excluded, who don't feel that they should have been excluded, but we have moved on from that period now. And now with two and a half weeks to go, we see, I think, a very vibrant campaign. And I think we will see that Iraqis will, whether they're Sunni or Shia or Kurds, they will be voting in mass numbers. Voters on March 7th will decide who fills 325 seats in the parliament with the winning block taking the lead in nominating the prime minister and the main cabinet posts. Now, I know many, this being Washington, people wanna know, well, who do you think's gonna win? What are the polls suggesting? Well, it is a very complex process because after the actual votes are tabulated and we have worked very hard with our colleagues in the UN, worked very hard with the high election commission to manage the technology of the elections, which we believe will be run well. We know that as they get through the votes, they will have to, there are five major coalitions and we'll have to see which one actually wins. And it will go to the major, to the major winner to see who will then try to form the government. And then that day, that March 8th, or whenever this is finally decided, it will be later than March 8th, they will begin the process of putting together a new government. And this process will not be an easy process, it will be a process in which they need to reach out to different coalitions and put together some kind of coalition government. So I think this first of the musts that is helping Iraq build healthy political and democratic institutions in a secure environment is something we really need to focus on. In the end, to this end, we have been our diplomats and the embassy in Baghdad and the civilian experts are very heavily involved. Secretary Clinton has assured the State Department is adequately funded to assist in this democratic project. We've provided some $200 million to assist the Iraqi people in holding these credible and free elections. The true test of victory will not be in the behavior of the winners when they are finally announced, but rather it will be how the losers accept the results. So I would argue in Iraq as elsewhere, losers have an even bigger responsibility to be part of the political process. And I've always felt that the quality of democracy is determined by the losers and Iraq will be no exception to that. Those who do lose need to understand that they have this responsibility, they have in some ways as great, they have to win the public's trust as well. This has implication for what could be a lengthy government formation process and it also affects the security. Security concerns keep us very watchful of the frictions that have been in plain view during the current full contact political season. The issue runs much deeper than the election math of Iraq. We all know about some of the showcase political splits in Iraq, the Arab Kurd issue, the Sunni Shia issue, but you know, when you're there, you of course you're concerned about Arab Kurd issues. Of course you're concerned about Sunni Shia issues, but you're also concerned about Kurd Kurd issues in Soleimaniya. You're concerned about Sunni Sunni issues in Saladin. You're concerned about Shia Shia issues in places like Najaf. In Kirkuk there are also Kurd Arab Turkmen issues and frankly the Turkmen and other Turkmens have grievances with each other. Those differences are deadly, deadly serious for those of us who are there and none is more essential than the disputed internal boundaries, the so-called dibs. These are the center, this is, the dibs forms the centerpiece of the Arab Kurd dispute. There are some 15 features along this Kurdish Arab divide, Sinjar, Talifar, Tilkaif, Sheikhan, Akhre, Hamdania, Makhmur, Al-Hawija, Dibis, Dakhuk, Kirkuk, Tuz, Kormatu, Kifri, Kanakhin and Baladruz. These are all, these are all areas in which there is a dispute, in which there are Peshmerga forces who do not share the view of the Iraqi army forces and we need to deal with these things. Kirkuk, which is number 11 of those has rich oil fields, but also a very difficult history and it's become the focal point of this Arab Kurd dispute. The United States is determined to help resolve these differences and to play an important role alongside the Yunami in trying to address them. We have sent one of the State Department's premier regional experts to be in Kirkuk, a senior foreign service officer who speaks flawless Arabic and he is meeting every day with the various parties in Kirkuk to try to deal with these problems. The Shia-Sunni relationship has implications well beyond Iraq's borders, even beyond our times, but intramural fissures among Sunnis are also common if you witness the various reactions to the debathification issue last month or the continued divisions among secular and more strictly religious Sunnis that we see playing out in some of the provinces. The standoff at the Saladin provincial government building last week would showcase the shadow line between political gamesmanship and potential for violence. Some observers think of the Kurds as a united front, but the picture is far more complex when you look at what is going on and especially in Sulamania with the development of the change list which is a new political identity that has come out of the PUK, out of President Taliban's PUK. This change list is going to be fielding candidates in some eight different provinces, well beyond just the three provinces of the Kurdish regional government. The Shia-Shia divisions are also front and center during the campaign. Prime Minister Maliki is fending off serious challenges from opposing Shia parties such as Iski. Recently I visited, I had the opportunity to visit Grand Ayatollah Hussein al-Sadr who was actually a cousin of Muqtada al-Sadr. So sometimes the divisions are within the family as well. And he spoke of the benefits of a united nationalistic Iraq that incorporates all religions and ethnic communities, a refreshing message I think for the Iraqi people. We had a long discussion that spans subjects from debathification to preservation of water resources. He talked about his concerns about Iraqi politicians lacking a strong base and the fact that some resort to religion and sectarianism to define themselves. Actually, this is part of our conversation but he mentioned our conversation on his website so I don't mind telling you about it as well. In short, it was heartening to see a cleric of the stature talk about these issues. And I think there are such people in Iraq and such people that we need to reach out to and listen to not just the politicians of Iraq but also people who I think have a great role to play in influencing Iraqi public opinion. Which this does lead to a question that I think comes up a lot which is there is no question, there's no doubt that today there's a big difference between where Iraq now has its sovereignty and where we as diplomats must deal with a sovereign Iraq and the old days in the CPA and O3 when essentially Iraq was ruled by U.S. issued decrees such as the one that put Mr. Chalabi as the head of the debathification commission. I think it's important to understand though that what we are, the way we deal with Iraqis is through diplomacy. We need to, which is diplomacy is really, I mean there are probably a million definitions of it but for me it's getting people to do things that they wouldn't otherwise do.  That was a great argument, I never thought of that before.  I mean we need to engage with Iraqis, we need to show them what our interests are, why we believe those interests are their interests. And essentially at times just make them trust us because their good relationship with us depends on trying to work through problems together. And I'd say we're doing that. But one thing it is not as a sort of false dichotomy where somehow we're quote not using our leverage that somehow we have this leverage in our back pocket but for some pedagogical reason we prefer to spend six weeks arguing with them over something rather than use this leverage that we could pull out of our back pocket and end the discussion on that day. It just doesn't work that way. We certainly have leverage in Iraq. We certainly have a major role in Iraq and I would say the most important leverage we have in Iraq is not just the number of troops we have there today as opposed to what we might have in a year or two years from now or the troops we have today compared to what we had two years ago but rather our leverage is that we want to have a serious long term relationship with Iraq and if the Iraqis desire a serious long term relationship with the United States they need to work with us on some of these issues. So that is how the process works. We sit down, we explain issues that we think are important whether it's how they handle debathification or how they have or whether there's the use of the army in an inappropriate way in Salahuddin and try to explain why these are important issues to us and that if we're gonna have a good relationship we need these issues resolved. So we are continuing to chart a way forward that draws on the talents of our best soldiers and we have some truly superb soldiers in that country. It's truly amazing. We have specialists, we also have diplomats like myself but we're determined to find workable solutions with Iraqis. We have worked a security mechanism along the Arab Kurd fault line. This has not been easy but this is really directly due to the great efforts of General Odierno and his staff in trying to get members of Kurdish Peshmerga to work with Iraqi army, to work with US troops to go through joint training programs. This is something where you really have to do it step by step and it is working. It is beginning to work. We're bolstering civil society, we're providing guidance and support to local organizations dedicated to uniting rather than dividing communities. We're maintaining a strong presence in the provinces through our provincial reconstruction teams. We still have some 22 provincial reconstruction teams. These are teams, these are joint military in US. We have American diplomats out in these places. People who've curtailed assignments in other countries such as places literally like Paris, France. We have people out in these provincial reconstruction teams. We have people every day are dealing at the provincial level, helping provinces with social, political and economic development. Our provincial reconstruction team, we also have cell phones out there as well. We've recently been working a very tough political military problem in Nineveh and Mosul which is one of the most difficult issues in Iraq and we have the head of our provincial reconstruction team, a guy named Pat Murphy who if you look in his bio was also a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon. He has been out there working with the governor in Nineveh, working with the Kurdish minority there. It has been a really tough issue but we have people out there dealing with these things. So even our strong advocacy for opening Iraq's oil sector has also had, we believe, a salutary effect on some of the Arab Kurd issues that we've been dealing with the KRG. I think as Iraq has begun to develop their oil sector, I think the Kurds have been interested in the fact that 17% of what potentially in the next 10 years could be 10 million barrels a day, 17% of 10 million barrels is more than 100% of 100,000 barrels. So I think what we've been able to do in terms of encouraging transparency and openness and careful management and development of the oil sector has also contributed to trying to pull Iraq together. Time and time again we've seen the power of the US stand on issues as a key factor in promoting essential tolerance and limiting extremism. Despite the drawdown in funds and troops, it remains true in Iraq that what we think and more importantly what we do matters profoundly in Iraq. And so while all of us need to acknowledge and respond to the changing nature of our presence, this is not a time for slipping into complacency. The US must remain mindful of its continuing influence and be prepared to use that influence to realize positive outcomes in Iraq that benefit both the Iraqi people as well as the American people. So as I mentioned with these oil contracts, the economic life of Iraq does need to begin to mature. With targeted, smart help from us, the potential is really almost limited. This is our second must. We need, we must help Iraq modernize its economy. And there's no mystery here. Iraq's economic future hinges on its careful management of its oil sector. Iraq is off to a good start, albeit a slow start but a very good start. And it's also a transparent start as the use of these plexiglass boxes on live national TV as oil companies put their bids into these boxes and the bids were opened up on national TV as they, as that would suggest. The oil sector taking off in Iraq could fundamentally change the lives of every Iraq citizen, build the confidence that Iraq needs to stand with its neighbors. They've realized some 10 contracts, two of them are US companies and some major US companies, including Exxon Mobile, are going to be there. But they also have companies from all five members of the, all five permanent members of the UN Security Council. In short, many other countries now have an investment in Iraq's security and its future. So modernizing the energy and energy service sector, it could create tens of thousands of jobs, attract hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign investment, which in turn could fund rapid reconstruction and development of Iraq. It can import modern business practice, modern technology to an Iraqi sector that has not seen foreign involvement since Nixon was president. In short, when you look at the fact, the emergence of foreign oil companies in Iraq that has high technology companies, this is a major new development in Iraq they haven't seen for a long, long time. But this doesn't mean it's going to be easy. It doesn't mean that we're going to, that this is all assures Iraq's future. It's going to be require every day very old fashioned advocacy and that's something embassies do best. We have experts from the commerce department, energy department, interior departments, deeply involved in advising on contracts, technology and geology and environment I might add. And our PRT in Basra is ramping up to support international oil companies as they set up in the operations in the oil rich vicinity. You know, I think it was important, it was important to me that actually the first oil companies were not American. I mean, we have some representation but the first oil companies were something else. There was a British company, a Dutch company, also a Russian company before the US was, US companies were there. So careful management of Iraq's oil riches is essential because in Iraq that succeeds economically as well as politically will be self-reliant and secure in its place in the region. Also be positioned to live up to still another must which is that the fact that we must help Iraq establish better relations with its neighbors. We still have considerable work to do on this front because Iraq's place in the world depends not just on us, not just on oil but Iraq itself and on its neighbors. Egypt and Turkey are stepping up forging genuine multifaceted relationships with Iraq but it's troubling that some other neighbors and in particular some of Iraq's Arab neighbors have been slow to embrace Iraq, a predominantly Arab country since that in 1945 was one of the founding members of the Arab League. Of course, there's one neighbor that plays a significant role in its own history as well as Iraq's and I'm of course talking about Iran. There's no question that Iran has shown a very malevolent face in Iraq. It has probed for weaknesses, it has tried to frustrate US and Iraqi common goals, it has been responsible for helping armed militia groups, it's been responsible for training, it's been responsible for some of the munitions that have found their way into Iraq. Indeed, it's been responsible for some of the munitions that we've found land almost on our heads in the green zone. So this means we need to be very mindful and very vigilant to this continued interest from malevolent interest from Iraq. It's an interest that seems to emerge mostly from the Quds Force in Iraq. It seems to be very much militarily and security focused. But we also need to be respectful of the complexity of the shared history in Iraq and not understand these issues to be a sort of American, from an American solipsistic point of view. We need to understand that the relationships there go far back in history, far before we were part of the equation. Iraqi Arabs and Iranians have differed over the proper role of religion and government for decades. And in this context, we sometimes see Iranian influence through too narrow a prism thinking it's always about us, it is not always about us. I can assure you that no one in the embassy or at Camp Victory is naive about this Iranian presence. We know the Iranians are very much engaged in some of these malevolent acts. But we also are working with the Iraqi authorities on it and we are convinced that the Iraqi authorities share that concern. They did not choose Iran as a neighbor and therefore in the way they deal with Iran as a neighbor, they deal very carefully because they know that for the next thousand years, Iran is likely to be their neighbor. It does not mean that they are any less vigilant. For those who say that the Shia in Iraq are somehow part and parcel of the Shia in Iran, they do not understand the fact that during the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein fought that war with an army that was 80% Shia who never gave in to the Iranians. So I don't think people should be concerned about the notion that somehow the Shia in Iraq are inadequately concerned about the continued independence and territorial integrity of their country. So I am not sure that even if there were a big change in Tehran and people woke up and decided they wanted to be like Valensa instead of martial law Poland, that I'm not sure that that would mean a sudden end to the meddling or easing of relations with Baghdad. I think it is going to take some time and it's going to start with an acknowledgement from Iran that if they want a good relationship with Iraq, they had better start respecting Iraq's sovereignty and respecting the fact that Iraq is going to be their neighbor for the next thousand years. And not an isolated neighbor as it has often been in the past, but rather a neighbor that will have a good relationship with the United States, a good relationship with the world. Indeed, I would argue that the United States, one of the great calling cards we have in Iraq is that we can introduce Iraq to the international community. At present, Iran can introduce Iraq to North Korea and not much more. So all of these, all of these musts, all of these political and economic conundrums, all the harsh chapters of history, whose pages we need to turn, all of these constitutes an enormous challenge for us. And so the last thing, obviously, I want to be is guilty of careless optimism, but it's also no time for pessimism either. It's time for tenacity, steadiness, and resolve. We must be persistent in the face of adversity. We must be committed to achieving victory, achieving success. We're aware of the political complexity. We're realistic about how to address it. We have no illusions that things will be easy, as Vince Lombardi once observed, the only place success comes before work is in the English Dictionary. But as a new Iraqi government forms and lays out what kind of relationship it wants with the United States, they will need to see that the United States is committed to building a relationship that will redoubt our mutual benefit in the long term. We know as we deal with this very difficult problem, as we contemplate the effects of our mistakes, the effects of many mistakes that have been there, we need to approach the subject of Iraq with a great sense of humility, humility in the face of the sacrifice, humility in the face of the mistakes that have been made. We need to understand that as we deal with this complex place, information and knowledge are not going to be sufficient in addressing our role in Iraq. We're going to need some wisdom as well. We're going to need that wisdom as we move through the future. Our diplomat soldiers and civilian experts will continue to apply American power as best we can from Mosul to Baghdad, from Anbar to Basra. We'll continue to support the development of a robust rule of law in Iraq, carried out by impartial judges, trained police, competent military. That is another issue we work on every single day of the year in Baghdad. We'll pour our energy into expanding private sector trade and investments so that Iraq entrepreneurs have a shot at success and will stay deeply committed to helping create a politically sound and prosperous Iraq whose leaders and diplomats, friends to the United States, engage confidently and prudently with their neighbors and with the world. A stable, secure, and self-reliant Iraq, in other words, is a strong and proud Iraq, can be a catalyst for stability in the region. And given the threats that remain, the pains of the past and all the blood that's been shed there, this would constitute a major strategic success. So for Iraq, certainly, but also for those military and civilians who have served and indeed who have sacrificed so much. So in the end, we are there, we are in Iraq, not only for US-Iraqi relations, we're there for US interests. We believe we can succeed there. We are very mindful of the difficulties and we are very steady in confronting them every day of the year. Thank you very much.


Welcome back. We derived four equations pertaining to the second derivative relations and these we called M1, M2, M3, M4. Let me now say M was for Maxwell and these four relations are known as Maxwell's relations. Let us write them down once again. The first relation we obtained we using the thermal energy u that was partial of t with respect to v at constant s equal to minus partial of p with respect to s at constant v. The second relation we obtained was partial of t with respect to p at constant s was equal to partial of v with respect to s at constant p. The third equation was partial of s with respect to v at constant t was partial of p with respect to t at constant v. And the fourth equation was partial of s with respect to p at constant t was equal to minus partial of v with respect to t at constant p. These four relations are known as Maxwell's relations. These relations are funny. They link some property relation to some other property relation. Sometimes surprising relation which we generally will not imagine. These relations help us find our way through many property relations which we seek. And in particular these two relations there is no particular name or order for these relations. These two relations the third and fourth in our list are something special on the right hand side here as well as here. We have only p v t as the variables. So the right hand side of these equations depends only on the equation of state which is the basic equation of state is a relation between pressure, volume and temperature. So these two relations help us relate the variation of entropy with volume at constant temperature or entropy at pressure at constant temperature purely to the p v t or equation of state data. We will find these equations very useful. Now Maxwell's relations is the name given not only to these four relations but even their reciprocals. For example you take this equation and using the partial derivative relation that partial of x with respect to y at constant z equals reciprocal of partial of y with respect to x at constant z. It is a simple reciprocity relation. Conditions are required for this. For example the functions involved need to be continuous and the derivative should exist. But these conditions are almost invariably satisfied by the relations between thermodynamic properties. So generally we will use these purely mathematical identities to be applicable in thermodynamics. So using this for example this equation will become partial of p with respect to s at constant t is minus partial of t with respect to v at constant p. And similarly you can write the reciprocal of this equation, this equation and this equation. And even those equations are generally called Maxwell's relations. Since the Maxwell's relations are useful there is a need to remember them. But if you look at them there does not seem to be any straight forward structure. But since they come out of thermodynamics some simple thermodynamic principles must be involved. But before we come to that we will take a mathematical detour to be comfortable with partial differentiation, partial derivatives and some relations between them. Thank you.


Okay, on the summit of Ben Neves, the highest point in the UK with Ken Applegate. He's currently just popped a short red table. Believe it or not, this is an awesome day in Scotland. With a little bit of sun. We've had sun actually most of the day. It's just now. It's starting to cloud up just a little bit. Had a great day climbing the Tower Ridge. Climb on! This is Alan. Memories are everything.


As an international student, if I'm arriving in the US, I've made it through customs and that okay What are my next steps of going to campus? I know I'm really excited at that point probably What do I do to make sure that I'm meeting all the correct things? Well, the first thing you want to do even before you get to campus is to call your DSO Just let them know that you have arrived in the United States The next thing that you want to do once you've arrived on campus The first thing that you want to go do is go see your DSO When you're an issue to form my 20 year issued that with a program start date basically that program start date indicates to SCVP and CVP and the rest of the US government that you have your you're starting your program on this date So as soon as you arrive on campus go see your DSO tell them that you're here you're ready to start studying so ready start classes ready to move into your dorm and They'll basically know that you know your This person has arrived on the the date. That's the program start date and they're ready to go


Coming to one and all, this is Howard Wigg, Cold Green, Think Tech, Hawaii, all of us, Oahu residents are continually hearing from Board of Water Supply, Ernie Law, we're having a hot summer conserve water, and by George, I'm proud to join my Hawaii for Honolulu residents in the success in conserving water. I believe our use has gone down about 10% purely on a voluntary basis, and when you look around downtown Honolulu at some of the government grassy areas, they are brown. They're heeding Ernie Law's message, conserved water. But isn't there a better way of reducing water use then, letting our poor grasses go brown? Yes, there is, especially when you listen to one of the nation's leading water efficiency experts, and by the way, when you save water, you save the heat or you reduce the amount of heat needed to make hot water. Putting that all together is none other than good friend Gary Klein met Gary years ago at Energy Code Conferences, and the U.S. Department of Energy used to have an in-person meeting of energy efficiency subject matter experts, and they always pick that year the innovator or inventor of the year, and it was none other than Gary Klein just a couple of years ago, and it was for his very, very innovative design of water piping, but there's a whole lot more than that. So if we want a painless high tech, not so high tech, painless real common sense way of reducing our water use in our buildings, we just listened to Gary Klein, please introduce yourself, Gary Klein, and let's get rolling. You've got a lot of ground to cover. Thanks, Howard. I'm pleased to be here sharing with you all. So the simple introduction is that I'm in hot water. I have focused on the hot water as a system question for over 30 years now. My degree is in energy efficiency and renewable energy from Cornell back in 1975. This has been my career. About 30 years ago, somebody called me up and asked me how long did it take to get hot water, the fixture furthest from the water heater in my house. And I lived in a home built in 1978, single story slab on grade construction to the first title 24 energy code in California. And you know what? It wasn't a big house. It was a U.S. median home the year it was built. The guy calls me back every month for a year, have you done the test yet? Nope. I haven't done it yet. Only to make him go away, I stood there one Saturday morning with a bucket to stop watch and I waited for four gallons and four minutes till hot water arrived. I had a one gallon per minute shower head that was very satisfactory. I felt like I was in a shower. I was very pleased. The problem? There was less than two gallons of cold water in the pipe from the water heater to the shower. And I couldn't explain why it took twice as much water before hot water arrived. So I called all my friends and I asked them to give me an answer how long to take in their house but don't wait a year, get back to me next week. What I found out was that it was getting worse, not better as houses got newer. In large part because we were spreading them out and because the plumbing code was being implemented and the modern plumbing code wanted you to put in bigger diameter pipe. Next slide, please. Some years ago we started looking at how much we're doing on water efficiency, right? And we have this nice paper that looks at the slide we're looking at from 1980 to 2017. And if you look carefully, all of the things we have had installed back in 1980 use somewhere between 50 and 96% less water now than they did then. So when my house was built in 1978 it was the high end of these numbers and modern flow rates are much less. Now I'm not sure what Hawaii has adopted for its fixture flow rates, but California has adopted 1.2 for private lavatories and 1.8 for kitchen faucets and 1.8 for showers. And those are less than the legal numbers that went into the U.S. in 1996, part of EPAC. So for the most part those who are trying to conserve water are using less water for their fixtures and appliances. Howard, you're very familiar with Energy Star washing machines and dishwashers. Well, they're also water star, they're water efficient, if you will, right? US EPA water sensors, the program for those. And if you got one that does both, you have energy and water efficient appliances. And a lot of us are buying those just because they work better than the old ones did. So we use less water, but the pipes kept getting bigger. That's a conundrum that's been bothering me for some time. I'm interested in getting rid of the unintended wastes. I want you to take a satisfying shower of eight minutes long on average in the U.S. I want you to enjoy it. I want it to be the right amount of water. And part of the problem is we're designing systems that have wastes, that have nothing to do with the use, okay? I want to get rid of those unintended wastes. Next slide, please. So the question I have for you is how long should we wait for hot water to do a rut or how long do we wait? Well, I've put a red box around the one gallon per minute line down to the green. And the American Society of Plumbing Engineers developed a guidance document back in 2003 that gave if hot water arrives within 10 seconds, that's acceptable. Up to 30 seconds is marginally acceptable and beyond that's unacceptable. So green, orange, and red. Gary? Yes, sir. Interrupt and say I live in a 1954 home and my shower is at the furthest point from the water heater. I turn on the hot water, I go make my bed, come back after I've made the bed, and the water is just now getting warm. And I'm afraid that I'm pretty typical along those lines. I believe it. So I think it's, Howard, do you know any architects? I do. A few? No, it's, no, I don't know the architect. No, not the architect of your home, but we know architects because of our work. And what I would observe is I think that there's a special clause in their license that prevents them from putting water heaters close to fixtures. If they do, they'll lose their license. But so it turns out that we have this time to tap question. And it pervades us and it has to do with the volume between the source and the use. And so pretty much everybody, including the ASPE guidance document of 2003 says, if you calculate the diameter and the length, you'll get volume. Well, that's true, you will. But what we've measured under research projects at the Energy Commission and other places more than once is it takes roughly one and a half to two and a half times the volume that's in that pipe before hot water reaches the other end of the pipe. So if you have a gallon in the pipe, you should expect somewhere between one and a half and two and a half gallons to come out before hot water gets there. And of course, we've lowered fixture flow rates. So every time you buy a new shower head, it's got a lower flow rate than the last one did, which makes time longer even though the volume remains the same. So when I do design, I'm aiming for what's in the green box, in the red box in the green. At one gallon per minute is where all fixtures are headed toward in flow rates except for really low public lavatory faucets. And if you know you've got really low flow rates below a gallon a minute, use numbers that are to the left here on this chart. But I designed for one gallon a minute for hot water arrival times. And if I can get hot water in the green to you within 10 seconds, you'll have hot water. It means there's 10 ounces of water in the pipe between the source and the use. We take the volumetric number and divide by two to get the actual volume we need in the pipe. That turns out to be a really simple rule that's really straightforward to implement and it gives good hot water performance. Next slide, please. So about 10 years ago, eight years ago, I sit on a committee called the Water Efficiency and Sanitation Standards Committee. And that's sponsored by IATMO. Gary, this is a California commission? No, this is actually a national body supported by IATMO, the same people that support the model plumbing code used in Hawaii. And so IATMO formed this group called the Water Efficiency and Sanitation Standard Committee. And I'm a founding member of that group because of my interest in hot water and things that they asked me to be on it. And about eight years ago or so, we started looking at the right sizing of plumbing. Fixture flow rates are going down, as we pointed out earlier. Distances in houses are actually getting bigger because the average square footage of a home has grown, not gone down. So we've made it longer to get hot water at fixtures because water heaters are still eight miles away from the last fixture in the house. That's the architects issue. And so we formed this committee to talk about right sizing. And so what you see on the screen in front of you is the uniform plumbing code line that converts water supply fixture units into gallons per minute.  Those are something like 20 different apartment buildings. And there might only be 16 apartment buildings. But it doesn't matter. It's the same point. And you notice that they're really close to the x-axis. And so the code is overpredicting the measured peak flow rates by rather a lot. Next slide, please. Now you can see we're looking just at the left-hand corner of the first graph. And you can see that even though now you can read the letters for each of the buildings that are there, what you can also see is that the red line is still really far from the black dots. And so what we've learned is that the code is overpredicting the measured peak flow rates in apartment buildings, which is what we're showing here, something on the order of magnitude of 1, 10 times, ranging from 5 to 25. That's a big difference in what the code is making us design to based on predictions that were written down a while ago. So the methodology we used for sizing plumbing was published in 1940 by a fellow named Roy Hunter, who back then worked for the National Bureau of Standards, which we now call the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST. And it was great work for the time. But nothing flushes or flows at those rates anymore. I just showed you from 1980 to 2017. 1940 to 2017 is an even bigger change. So nothing flushes or flows. The other part of the puzzle is that the pressure drop through the pipe fittings was published in 1941 for steel pipe and threaded and flange fittings. And that research was actually done in 1892. So a few years ago, let's just say, Howard, all right. Next slide, please. And what we developed as part of the right sizing is important because we've been able to come up with a new method that allows us to size piping much more in line with what we're actually experienced in today with modern fixtures and appliances, which makes sense. And we still have a good safety factor. And when we next get together and talk about this in some detail, which we'll probably do sometime in early December, it looks like, we'll do a webinar and invite lots of people for that one. We'll go into the details of it. But what you see on the slide here is that as one does a whole bunch of work to right size the plumbing, one has to pay a lot more attention to what the pressure loss through pipe fittings is and modern pipe are, right? All those things has to be figured out. And so I've set up two labs to measure it myself because I couldn't wait for NIST to get around to doing it. They didn't have funding. They've just recently gotten funding to start down this path of developing a correct method of test for the pipe fittings. In the meantime, I contacted all the manufacturers I knew who made various types of modern pipe, so the Copper Development Association for Copper and the different PEX manufacturers and the people who make CPVC. And we got them together and said, how would you do it if it was up to you? And so we set up a lab first in Downey, California, which is in Southern California. And if you look carefully at that cart, you can see on that cart right now there's over 1,000 feet of pipe. There's 50 feet of one type of pipe with and without fittings, with and without elbows.  We do that for each different pipe type that we're interested in, each different fitting type we're interested in. And we've got half and three quarters and three eighths. And we even went down to quarter inch tubing for one experiment on this cart. And so the idea is to figure out what the actual pressure loss is through modern pipe, which is fairly calculable using the theory, but the fittings, everything is different. Copper fittings are external fittings. Pex fittings are external fittings. Most, sorry, CPVC fittings are external fittings. Most pex fittings, the crosslink polyethylene fittings, are insert fittings. They go inside the waterway. And going inside the waterway, they make the inside diameter smaller and they disturb the flow of water as it goes through the pipe. And so all of that contributes to increasing pressure loss per fitting rather dramatically compared to copper. But I want to point out that none of the modern materials have published numbers on the pressure loss per fitting using modern flow rates and modern materials just not been done. So we started an effort a decade ago to figure that out. The first lab was in Downey. The second lab was up in Arcata, California because I have some friends there that made it available for me to use, worked with some students from Humboldt State. It was great. And we created a method of test that has proven to be extremely reliable at giving us good data points on the pressure loss through the pipe and the fittings. Very predictable numbers, very stable methodology. And so I'm not certain they're perfect, but they're certainly consistent and reliably consistent, which is very helpful here. How do I know I like the numbers? Not just because we did them, but because we've taken the data from this research and applied it to build buildings in upstate New York. So we, and we then measured the, what happened in the buildings we designed and we got what we predicted. I'd say that's pretty good sets of numbers to work from. All right, next slide, please. So I've covered the topics I wanted to cover today. We can talk about lots of things going forward, but I think that the, look, my goal, as I said earlier, is to get rid of the unintended wastes that are in our plumbing systems. We, I like you, Howard, wait for hot water to arrive. We wanted to take a shower, but we develop a routine because it's not easy. Hot water doesn't show up quickly at our shower, right? You could put in a research loop that costs extra money. You have extra energy to run the research loop. There's lots of ways potentially to fix things, but not everybody has the ability to add a research loop. There are retrofit solutions and there are new construction solutions. My goal in new construction is to have all fixtures within two cups of one water heater. So Howard, how tall are you? I'm five foot 10. I'm same. Same here. We're both about the height of one cup of water and a half inch plumbing. If you know someone who's five foot four, they're one cup and a half inch copper. If you know someone who's six, six, six, seven, they're one cup and a half inch CPVC or PEX. But that means that many, many American adults are roughly about the height of one cup of water and a half inch plumbing. And what I'm saying is that if we could have all of what I call twigs from the source of hot water to the fixture be less than two cups, everybody would be much, much happier than they are today. You'd get hot water within 15 seconds and I'd say that's pretty darn good for practicality purposes. Gary, some years ago at an energy conference, you laid out on an auditorium floor and imaginary the diameter or edges of an imaginary house and then you stood in the middle and you were the water heater. You're not in some obscure corner somewhere. You were in the middle of the house. Yes. And of course, now it's the, I think you call it twigs, all your piping is going out, it's, you were talking about 1,000 feet of piping. If you put the water heater in the middle of the house, how much, how many feet of piping might you need? So it actually depends how far the fixtures are, the bathrooms are from the water heater. We did some analysis for the energy commission in California a few years back. It's now, the final report's been published where we look at taking what I call architectural compactness and taking it from a typical 80% of the floor area of a single home, single story home down to 15%. And the effect of doing that saved $1,000 to $2,000 in first cost, perhaps. And all we changed was the horizontal feet of pipe. Yeah. Okay. So it's a big difference. You can put the water heater anywhere you want to if the fixtures are far away, you still have to connect the pipes, right? And we all want, we want to place our bathrooms where there's windows. You don't wanna put bathrooms in the middle of a home and in a windowless space unless you're building a safe room, but... So that's a really interesting question, Howard. I live in suburbia here in California and our master bathroom, it's a master suite. So it's got the bedroom and it's got the walk-in closet and it's got a very generous five-part bathroom. So two sinks, a tub, a shower and a toilet. That's a pretty typical thing in new construction here for master suites. And we have two windows over our master tub. One of them faces north and the other one faces east. The one that faces north faces the window in my neighbor's house. So we put curtains over that one. And in the summer, the sun comes around and gets up early in the morning and comes in and creates too much light and too much heat. So we put extra shades on the outside to prevent the sun from getting in. And the other window faces do east, which for the same reasons overheats in the middle in the summer throughout the morning. Okay, so, and we have curtains on it because it provides too much light. So we've never actually looked out of our windows. And so I'm not certain that having windows over master bathtubs is particularly helpful. As you know, in much of the US we're doing a lot to tighten up the air sealing of our buildings. And if we're doing that, it may not be so necessary to have openable windows in a bathroom. Good fans may do a better job. I'm thinking Hawaiian style and traditionally our bathrooms always had openable windows because that was our source of ventilation. We don't have little fans up in our bathroom ceilings. I get it. And so we're talking in much of the country about using ERVs and HRVs. And we're tightening up the envelope rather dramatically. And Hawaii is a very different climate from where I typically live. But even there, you're telling me it's in the 80s. When it, in the 80s, is it also humid? So not overbearing. Right, so I think that we have to adjust some of these ideas based on climates and based on ultimate desires. But mostly the builders tell me they put the really big window over the master tub so you can look out over the great view. Well, in suburbia, my view is of my neighbor's window and the view may or may not be any good. And so I think that we're spending a lot of money on things that people tried to fix because they didn't work quite right. Right, the idea and the architecture sold the idea but they spent four grand on the tub and another $1,000 on the windows. And we spent another five or 600 preventing from all the light from getting in because it was the wrong place in the wrong time, right? So it's like, what was the point of that exercise, right? Well, Gary, on a slightly cheerier note, you got permission to build an apartment building. I believe it was a Northern New York state for your specs and by George it worked. Did anybody in any other states or any municipalities pay any attention to your proposed design and have they done anything about it?  We have taken the data that I shared here earlier with you about the right sizing and the comparison to code and it started sharing it, not just in California but all over the US. Hawaii has adopted the use of the appendix M as in Mary which is part of the uniform plumbing code which is this method of right sizing. And so I would be happy to share that with folks in Hawaii who want to learn how to use it. We found that it saved us, it saves roughly between $500 and $1,000 per apartment and first costs by right sizing. So it costs less to build a healthier and safer building. The water spends less time inside the building so it turns over more quickly which is inherently safer than having it sit there forever. We can do a lot better job of the architecture and the layout so that we minimize the distance between things, we share common risers so that we cut the volume of the water and the risers down. There's lots we can do. Oh, by the way, we're still using the water demand calculator overestimating the measured peak by a factor of two to four. We still have a good safety margin just not 10 times or only two to four times. It works. Now, in the year we've only got about a minute left, what are the typical consequences, single family residents, in terms of water savings according to your design and in terms of energy savings because to heat water requires energy? Well, actually to pump water requires energy too, process the waste. So everything we can do to get rid of the unintended wastes is a good thing. You know that people actually only take six minute showers? They spend the first two minutes waiting for hot water to arrive? Good point, good point. Yep, I'm a case in point. I probably take three minutes, yeah. Right, so in which case you're waiting half as long as you spend in the shower. So there you go, right? Almost as long as you spend in the shower. So what I would say is this, that the water and energy savings are in the apartment buildings. If you cut the volume of the water between the source of the use and half, I don't know how much it is, but if you reduce it by half you'll waste half as much water waiting for hot water to arrive. You will also waste half as much energy when the pipes cool down at the end of the day or every hour, whatever it is. So it's a number, it's probably on the order of 10, 15% somewhere in that ballpark. If you do what one of my friends in Stockton has done, he's actually got the entire hot water system down to less than 1% of the floor area of the home. Back-to-back bathrooms, kitchen on one end of the wall and a washing machine on the other end of the wall. He has one plumbing wall. It's pretty darn good. That's tight. That meets all the rules. That's tight, yeah. So on a final note, you mentioned the fact that the energy storage dishwashers and clothes washers reduce energy use and water use. I might point out that our beloved Hawaii Energy, the rebate people offer rebates for energy star dishwashers and clothes washers. So we have come to the end of our time, Gary. I wanna thank you very, very much.  Oh, yes, IATMO, IAPMO, the International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials is going to sponsor a webinar that looks at these questions, particularly of the right sizing of the water supply piping. We're looking right now to schedule something in early December. As soon as we know, we'll let the word out. And for those of you interested in that seminar, either contact me or you saw Gary's contact information right up front there. And if you missed it, this program will be archived. You can get it again on that very cheery note. I bid fond of you, Howard Wigg, Code Green. Thank you so much for all you do, Gary Klein. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo.