on the battlefield. special operations is in favor of technology. our position is that those technologies have a broader application than special operation forces. we are advocates for it, but have few of those programs initiated in a special operations budget. .

>> i saw that dm on -- >> i saw that demonstrated and don't know what happened since then. >> i want to go back through the members as well. pie as makes been emerging as a threat or a challenge. actually had an opportunity to brief those that had acted in that operation. all those years ago you were trained to do, basically were set up if there was a hostage situation anywhere in the world you would respond very, very quickly. you've been doing a lot of other things in between but was very impressive to see the training paid off and you knew what to do. going forward in terms of how to confront piracy and that's a challenge off the coast of

somalia and as huge implications we need to try and confront at the same time, as we mentioned in this hearing, you have a wealth of other responsibilities that are also important, afghanistan and pakistan, and one of my concerns is with the media attention on piracy coming up, if we shift too much of our focus in that direction we distract from these very important issues as well. just wonder if you could comment on how you see socon's role in combating piracy in 5 thwart of the world and how it might distract from some of the other missions. >> yes, sir. we have obviously across the military there's robust capability to take on piracy in different ways and special operations contributes some of the capability to that as was evidenced here a couple months ago. how the force is used is a matter of policy. it's my responsibility to train the force to do what it is it's

asked to do. we do keep some elements of our force on stand by, on alert to respond to that kind of situation so that if they are infrequent, then i think we would consider it not to be much of a -- >> that's all it takes, even with everything that's gone on the last eight years it's always been the case you've had that stand by in force. >> yes, sir. >> sorry to interrupt. >> again, it's more of a policy issue, but the question is, is really are we going to prevent piracy, are we going to respond to piracy with the military force? and today we've been more in the business of reasoning, with my course of responding -- of providing those who respond to it. and we're able to continue with that mission without impacting on our others. >> certainly. >> mr. miller? >> i'll pass. >> ok.

i've got more questions. you have anything you wanted to add? >> i just wanted to ask you if you feel like the partnership with nato and their special operations capabilities are working well? >> sir, we did address that briefly earlier. the nato special operations coordination center, the nscc, is an up and running operation, it's not fully manned or fully capable yet, but the relationships that have occurred within that organization have developed quite strong bonds among the nato special operations forces. i was able to attend their first annual conference last year, 28 countries, i believe, came to that conference and it was remarkable how similar the conversations were, the vision is across the special operations forces of nato. some of which say they feel they have more in common with the special operations forces

of other nations than they do with other forces of their own nation because of the way that they train and exercise together. i think that there's an opportunity to take that to the next step. i'm just not certain what the next step is. and what i mentioned before, is we might explore a way to talk to operationalize the nato coordination center in some way and provide an independent director who is now a dual headed officer. >> thank you. >> following up, it was a trip i took in january with some members from the way back from iraq and had a chance to visit special operations forces, nato command and just can't tell you how impressed we were by the degree of coordination. and without getting into too many detailed aspersions here we did not find similar coordination in other parts of nato we met with. that's a major which will he can in -- challenge in

afghanistan in figuring out how to get all our partnered nations, it would be far too ambitious to stay on the same page but at least in the same book in confronting pakistan and afghanistan. and nato set up the way it's set up is an important alliance and very difficult to manage, that many different countries coming from that different amount of perspectives so i respect the difficulties the organization faces. we went through the meetings on increasing frustration and the last meeting we had which regrettably didn't have as much time we would like for was visit the operation and we saw it can work and you can bring that many different nations together to tornado nate -- coordinate in a way that is effective. and my plea is the soft forces over there try to spread that message out more prodly among the other aspects of nato i think would be very, very critical. >> sir, if i could make a point. i need to attribute more

countries to nato and more to this conference. what we're seeing actually is an extension of special operations, cooperation beyond nato and those who parts pailt in -- participate in other operations where they work with a nato soft country are now becoming part of this team. so this first annual conference we came to was actually attended by some non-nato countries because they choose to develop those and it's encouraging to see this play out. >> if you want to work with the host nations and many are participating in this and learning the necessary skills to implement that policy. i want to ask a little bit about some of the contracting issues and something we dealt with and what we always tried to do on this committee is find ways to enable socom to have a more nimble approach to acquisition, so that the normal

processes are difficult operating with such speed and technology that's rapidly changing and if you go through a acquisition process the time you acquired the product it's out of date. we tried to speed it up in a couple different areas. curious how you think that is going in general and give you an opportunity to respond, "the washington post" has written an article critical of the contracting but it hasn't followed the process and in some instances i have a strong bias that drowning the d.o.d. process is one of the things inhibiting our ability to move forward but it's not to say we don't need to have some transparent process so we make sure it's all in the up and up and not in the best interest of the taxpayers and i'll give you an opportunity to comment on a couple of those issues and where you see it headed. >> i certainly agree with you and am encouraged by all secretary of defense gates has said about relooking at how that position is done departmentwide with an eye

towards cost reduction and streamlining acquisition processors. within the special operations command, as you said, we are attended by those who are more agile than their services can be with their acquisition programs using our mfp-11 budget for the special operations peculiar acquisition procurement actions that we take. i focused on this a couple years ago and in investigating our own house i realized many of the barnacles that growed on were barnacles we let grow. and i thought we were operating comfortably, sort of in the middle of our authorizations and certainly not pushing the edge. so we've got several initiatives in our headquarters to provide more agility internally along the way. we've sought and been granted

relief from participation in some of the servicewide joint ago decision -- acquisition processes which have been applied to special operations programs so vice chairman of the joint chiefs who runs some of this process, relieved us of those where the acquisition project is programmed is a special operations peculiar program. we do operate under those same laws and policies and reporting requirements. we've got a ways to go. in terms of continuing to scrape the barnacles off but i think we're making progress in that regard and we'll certainly continue to report to you how that is going. but i'm encouraged by what we've seen here just in the last few months. with respect to the d.o.d., the i.g. report, that was not an acquisition contracting issue,

that was a contract that we left with a single provider of many services to the special operations community. they modified equipment, they maintain equipment, they repair equipment and refurbish it and store equipment for us. they do build sort of small items for us, design and build those. it's a comprehensive set of activities that they perform for us. and the d.o.d. i.g. will look into that which we appreciate, highlighted three findings. two of which we concurred mostly with and have taken several internal actions to resolve and working with them hopefully to their satisfaction. the third one actually had to

do with a potential anti-deficiency act vials which it was our responsibility to conduct a preliminary review. it identified that there -- that the finding had some merit, there is the potential after an a.d.a. violation so this week my comp volumer initiated a federal investigation into that finding it. we have nine months to report the results of that investigation. we have 90 days to respond formally to the release of the final i.g. report. >> ok. one more question. my colleagues, anything else? just for a moment as lodge as we have you here, it would be interesting to have your take on afghanistan and pakistan and the various situation there.

this is something the general highlighted in his comments the day before yesterday in front of the senate talking about the balance between confronting the enemy and being able to track down the terrorists that threaten us and at the same time protecting against civilian casualties and taking a more classic counter insurgency approach and agree with general crystal we need the afghan people on our side and the two greatest threats of being on our side is number one the civilian casualty issue both real and in some cases i think generated by taliban propaganda but we need to get better at countering that propaganda and getting our own message out but also a is very, very real concern and the other issue is the efficacy of the african government which the people of african stan government do not believe in and -- afghanistan government do not believe in and the best

is to go local because the afghan people are more ikely to trust their local tribes and work with their governments than wind up with whatever a national government looks like, not to say we shouldn't make the national government there better as well. but balancing that going forward, how do you see the best approach to striking that balance. and the second question with regard to pakistan, this issue affects pakistan as well. in fact, there was a summary of that saying that the strikes, the drone strikes are actually fairly well thought of in the fattah because the people who live there who have been dealing with these psychopaths in their communities is in pakistan itself and where the people see this as a threat to their sovereignty and less likely to be supportive of us. but pakistan needs to learn

counterinsurgency. i won't go through the litany of challenges there. you know them well. but we need to be able to help them while at the same time we have a limited roll to play. their sovereignty is very important, incredibly tornt to getting support for their government that we do not have too heavy of a hand there. i guess my two questions at the end of that are what can we do to better help pakistan get to the counterinsurgency level they need to get at because as successful they've been in swat, it's been a heavy-handed conventional approach that's created two or three million refugees even though it's driven back the taliban. how do you see us striking the balance in afghanistan between fighting the people we need to fight and stopping the number of civilian casualties? >> well, sir, i think you said it better than i could and certainly support everything the general mccrystal said in his confirmation hearing a couple of days ago.

if i could go to pakistan first. >> let's. >> i think that we can't help pakistan more than they want to be helped. and one of the filters on sort of their willingness to be helped is how the pakistan military is perceived within pakistan. it is the strongest element of pakistan historically and is the element of government upon which the people depend. i think we have to be very careful in if recognizing that we can't take actions to cause the military to be to the pakistani people to be an extension of ours. we can only help them in a way that truly helps them and they are much more expert in that than we are. so i think the best thing we can do is develop who --

relationships and help the pakistani people understand our interest is theirs and that our commitment is long term, commitment for the good of pakistan and the stability of the region. but it will require us to work very carefully and very wisely with the pakistan government, with the pakistan military and the frontier corps. regarding afghanistan, i would highlight that afghanistan is a uniquely complex environment, counterinsurgency in afghanistan is very different than it has been anywhere else where we have operated. it is really a village by village, valley by valley counterinsurgency. one of the things i'm finding myself saying more often is presence without value is perceived as occupation. and in afghanistan in

particular, occupation is resisted as -- it's simply their culture to resist outsiders and they pride themselves on a long history of resisting outside influence. much of afghanistan has not felt the presence that the impact of a central government in kabul, ever. and as you said, i think a large part of our goal there is to encourage the people who are now a deciding where their allegiance will be, is urging -- it's causing them to decide to place their bet with a legitimate government, whatever level that is, whether it's legitimate tribal, local, regional or a federal government.

it will come down to ultimately where they place their bet. and in the absence of metrics, it will be our sense of where the people are beginning to place their bets that will lead us to understand whether or not our efforts are successful in the lands of afghanistan. that will require a careful approach. it will require a small footprint as we can get away with in the places we go with the capability of security considerations as part of that. it will require, i believe, a shift towards -- more of a shift towards true local regional knowledge, however that is obtained. we have to get beyond generalizations in afghanistan into true, deep knowledge of tribal relationships, family

histories, the nuances of the terrain and weather and how this affects how business is done, how many is made, how their world operates. if we are to be predictable in our affects, i think an awful large part of what we've got to develop is an ability to be -- i don't mean predictable but accurate in our predictions of our affects. we've got to have a better sense of the impact of our behavior as we put our plans together to work in the remote regions of afghanistan. i thinks this is a long-term commitment for us in order to build that depth of knowledge and then allow it to have the impact in the places where that

needs to occur. this will not be people deciding whether or not where our allegiance is but will have to be convincing them over a long period of time they're better off placing their bet with the local division of governments, that with the illegal power players in the region. >> i thought of one more. shifting to africa for the moment. recently the codel in portions of africa and got a brief on aqim and the surrounding area there of algeria, and we know there is activity of violent extremist groups there. al qaeda has set up a franchise, most present in algeria but also in vast areas of molly martania which are largely unpopulated but know

there is some activity. we have some presence in different places, not a great deal. how concerned are you about that area, and is that an area where we need greater coverage, at least in terms of the huge, vast open spaces out there, is stuff going on. we don't have a lot of coverage so we don't know exactly, is that something we should be really concerned about or not? >> i think we should understand that as pressure is applied as it was in iraq and now afghanistan and as the pakistanis are applying pressure in pakistan that this will not necessarily end the activity, it will shift some of the sanctuaries to other places and i think that in these large expanses of what are often called undergoverned regions simply because the governments

don't have the capacity to govern in some of the places w then we've got to find ways of having a better understanding of what what's happening there. i.s.r. would be one of those possibilities. >> certainly. thank you very much. my colleagues have some more questions. i wanted to say our skeet has many roles but one of them we consider to be most important is being cooperative as special with the special operations demand is doing and couldn't ask for a better partner than we have in you as a commander there and look forward to continuing that relationship. we look forward to working with you. and with that we are adjourned. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009]

>> president barack obama called for a new beginning with the 1.5 million muslims today and his remarks are next on c-span. after that the supreme court court nominee sonia sotomayor visits capital hill to meet with senators and later the obama administration's nominee to oversee tarp testifies before a senate committee. coming up on tomorrow morning's "washington journal" david makovsky and foukara of al jazeera television will talk about president obama's middle

east trip. after that cease sigh connolly of the -- ceci connolly will discuss the health care plans in legislation. it begins every morning at 7:00 eastern. later in the morning we'll get an update on the may employment numbers. live coverage from the joint economic committee begins at 9:30 eastern on c-span 2. >> president obama delivered a speech at cairo university in egypt and called for a two-state solution in the middle east, a unified effort against so-called violent extremism and greater freedom and equality for women in the region. the speech was broadcast worldwide. it's about an hour. >> ladies and gentlemen, the president of the united states.

>> thank you. thank you. thank you very much. thank you very much. thank you very much. please. >> thank you. thank you. thank you so much. good afternoon. i am honored to be in the timeless city of cairo and to be hosted by two remarkable institutions. for over 1,000 years, you've stood as a beacon of islamic

learning and over a century cairo university has been a source of egypt's advancement. and today we -- and together we represent the harmony between tradition and progress. i'm grateful for your hospitality and the hospitality of the people of egypt and am also proud to carry with me the goodwill of the american people in keeping peace for muslim communities in my country. [speaking muslim] [applause] >> we meet at a time of great tension between the united states and muslims around the world. tension rooted in historical

forces that go beyond any current policy debate. the relationship between islam and the west include centuries of co-existence and cooperation, but also conflict and religion wars. more recently, tension has been fed by colonialism, the rights and opportunities to many muslims. and a cold war in which muslim majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. moreover, the sweeping change brought by globalization led many muslims to view the west as hostile to the traditions of islam. violent extremists have exploited these tensions in a small but potent minority of muslims. the attacks of september 11,

2009, and the continued efforts of these extremists to engage in violence against civilians has led some in my country to view it as hostile to america and other countries but also human rights. all this has bred more fear and more mistrust. so long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, those who promote conflicts average the cooperation that can help all our people achieve justice and prosperity. and this cycle of suspicion and discord must end. i've come here to cairo to seek a new beginning between the united states and muslims around the world. one based on mutual