 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. And they will look very familiar to anyone who's ever seen an election anywhere in the world. 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. And the moments in diplomacy where your interlocutor slaps the side of his head with his palm of his hand and says oh now I get it, now I understand. That was a great argument, I never thought of that before. Those moments are as rare in diplomacy frankly as they are in life. 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.