 My name is Michael Nagata. I'm a retired Army lieutenant general, spent my career in special operations forces. Today I work in the defense sector as a strategic advisor. The reason I'm here today is because of the multiple years I spent dealing with the problems that came from the invasion of Iraq, the efforts to stabilize the country, and ultimately having to deal with the rise of two extraordinarily powerful terrorist groups, the first version being al-Qaeda in Iraq during the coalition occupation of the country, and then several years later having to go back to Iraq as the commander of special operations forces in the Middle East to deal with the monster that had followed al-Qaeda in the Iraq that we today call the Islamic State. The beginning of my experiences in Iraq started in 2005. I had been doing a tour of duty in the Pentagon, but then went on to command a special operations task force that worked for General Stanley McChrystal and he ordered basically the entire command to go to Iraq because he believed that Iraq had become an emergency in 2005 and the principal reason was the emergence of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Even though we had militarily defeated the Iraqi army, it had unfortunately led to the emergence of this incredibly powerful terrorist group in Iraq that was at least in my own memory bringing the coalition and Iraqi military and security forces to a grinding halt because of their constant relentless attacks on the Iraqi population, the brand-new Iraqi government, and Iraq was on the verge of collapse and that began about two and a half years of my own activity as well as my command's activity in Iraq to try to defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq. The battle against ISIS is not over. I do not expect the battle with ISIS to be over for at least a decade. The Islamic State, which is unfortunately the progeny of its originator, al-Qaeda in Iraq, is today in my judgment not only the most powerful terrorist group in the world, it is also the most widespread terrorist group in the world. It has a very effective operational presence arranging all the way from West Africa to South Asia. I do not expect what Americans would call sufficient or adequate peace or stability in Iraq for another generation. Fortunately, the country has managed to hold together ever since the removal of substantial coalition forces in 2011, but it is a riven country. The animosity, the violence and the political toxicity that still exists between the central government and Baghdad, the Sunni Arabs in the western part of the country and the Kurdish factions in the north are very dangerous, very long-lasting, very substantial, and these problems run so deep that it will take at least a generation to bring that to something that I think Americans would consider a sufficiently stable political environment.