 Thank you very much. I want to thank Nancy, I want to thank my former boss, Steve Hadley, Ambassador Taylor, USIP for everything that you do to try to make the world a better place, and in particular for all the very hard, difficult work you do in Iraq. And I associate myself very much with Nancy's remarks. We're determined, as everybody knows, to do all we can to defeat ISIL or Daesh, and we will defeat them. I can talk a little bit about where we are in this campaign, but we're also not just focused on defeating Daesh, we're focused on what comes after Daesh. So before introducing Foreign Minister Joffrey, I'd like to just kind of put in context of why the Foreign Minister is here in Washington, and we're very honored to have him here in our capital city, about what's happening this week. We are bringing together over 40 members of our international coalition in a campaign to defeat Daesh, but look ahead over the next six months. And in many ways, our campaign is now ahead of where we thought it would be at this time. We do check-ins within the coalition every couple months, and we thought, you know, Mosul is going to be a very, very difficult challenge. Mosul, of course, is where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared his phony caliphate two years ago this month. It is where we will put one of the nails into the coffin of that phony caliphate, and we knew we have to get Mosul back. But Mosul is one of the most complex challenges ahead of us. There's about a million people still in Mosul. It's a very diverse city. We have issues of local governance. We have a number of issues of resources to make sure that what comes after Daesh, that the people can return to their homes and have a, and restore life to their streets. This will be one of the most complex challenges imaginable. I'm encouraged because the military side of this campaign is now coming together. The Iraqis just completed a very impressive offensive move. We've got 100 kilometers to capture and liberate. It's called Qiyar airbase, a major airbase just south of Mosul, which is now a major staging area in the process of isolating Daesh inside Mosul. The Iraqi security forces from two years ago this summer, in which they were losing battles, have not lost a battle in over a year. They are showing increasing confidence, increasing professionalism, increasing capacity, and they're liberating towns in Anbar province through the Euphrates Valley, and now moving up the Tigris River Valley and setting the stage for the Mosul campaign. But every time we work with the Iraqis to launch a military offensive, we ask all the very hard questions, a process that goes on for months. What's going to come after the military operation? Who is going to hold the ground? What will the resources be for the humanitarian response? What is the program for stabilization to get people back into their homes? Through the coalition we've established a really innovative program of post-conflict stabilization. We have two funding mechanisms. The first one is called the Funding Facility for Immediate Stabilization, getting people back into their homes as soon as possible, and a second funding facility for expanded enhanced stabilization for the kind of longer term reconstruction. And we've had some real success, and we've had success because of the government that Foreign Minister Joffrey is here representing. The government led by Prime Minister Badi has a governing philosophy of more decentralization, of more empowering local people at the grassroots to take hold of their affairs. So in Tikrit, Tikrit was a city that two years ago, this month, was a scene of massive atrocities. Thousands of young Iraqi military recruits were slaughtered. It was put on YouTube. I was in Iraq at the time speaking with the foreign minister and other Iraqi leaders as they were undergoing this incredibly difficult, horrible, horrific advance of Daesh towards Baghdad. Tikrit was liberated by Iraqi security forces. The entire population had almost been, had almost left the city. And through the work of the Iraqi government, empowering local leaders, getting local Tikritis back into the streets, local police back into the streets, and through the global coalition which contributed tens of millions of dollars for stabilization projects, almost the entire population, 95% of the population returned to the streets of Tikrit. If you look historically of returning populations to their homes after a conflict like this, that is totally unprecedented. We've now had total in Iraq, over 700,000 Iraqis have returned to their homes and areas that had been controlled by Daesh. And the Iraqi security forces have now liberated about 50% of the territory that Daesh had once controlled. The success we're having in Anbar Province in Ramadi, all the way out to Al-Hit, all the way down to Rutba in the Baghdad-Aman corridor, is attributable to the Iraqi security forces which are showing tremendous proficiency, but also organizing and mobilizing local tribal fighters. In Anbar Province, we have about 20,000 local tribal fighters working with Iraqi security forces being paid by the government of Iraq because of the policy of the government of Iraq to empower local people at the grassroots. So Mosul's now upon us, and we're not going to put a timeline on the Mosul campaign, but we will pursue it deliberately and we will check every box to make sure we're doing all we possibly can to prepare. Not everything will go right. This is one of the most complex, difficult things imaginable. But the reason we were all here in Washington this week with over 40 members of the coalition is to make sure we do all we can to support Iraqi partners to get this right. So tomorrow we'll have a pledging conference in which we hope to raise a significant amount of funds to help with the humanitarian response and the stabilization plan. And then on Thursday at the State Department, we'll have a joint ministerial of foreign ministers and defense ministers to come together to talk about the next six months of the campaign. And of course it's not just Iraq. It's a very important work we're doing in Syria. It's the important work we're doing in Libya. And it's the global campaign against Daesh to dry up their foreign fighter networks, their financing networks, and their propaganda networks. But without a strong partner in Iraq, it really is a centerpiece of the campaign. And that is why I want to introduce my good friend, Foreign Minister Joffrey. Again, Foreign Minister Joffrey has been there at every single moment of the last 10 years at very difficult times in which Iraq has gone through. And I saw him this morning and I expressed my deepest condolences, of course, to the horrific attack that Iraq faced in Baghdad in Karadah just about 10 days ago, where 300 very young Iraqis, kind of the spirit of the future of Iraq, was wiped out in this horrible crime by Daesh terrorists. It was a horrible crime, I think it shocked all of us. But having gone back and forth to Iraq now, but every two weeks over the last year or so, we tend to forget what happened just a few months ago where terrorists, the suicide bomber, came into Iraq and blew himself up in a soccer game, a children's soccer game where young kids were getting trophies after winning a soccer game. And not only do they do that, it's on YouTube, everybody can see it, the most horrific, horrible crimes imaginable. In Iraq for month to month, we have sometimes 50 suicide bombers coming into Iraq to blow themselves up and to commit acts of mass murder. And we've, of course, faced Daesh-inspired terrorism here in the United States. We've seen the horrific crimes recently in Istanbul, in Nice. So I think we all have to empathize a little bit with what the Iraqis are going through, these horrible crimes. And you have to imagine if suicide bombers from around the world were coming in to blow up our playgrounds, our churches, our supermarkets, our mosques, because that's what is happening in Iraq. And it's been happening now for years, frankly. But the number of suicide bombers has really began to kick up in 2013 and reached a peak some months ago. So we have to do all we can to support our Iraqi partners, our Iraqi friends, not just to defeat Daesh, but to do the very hard work of what comes after Daesh. Not just the restoration of this, of electricity and getting police back in the streets, but the psychological trauma that the society has gone through, they're really going to need all of our help. And so that I want to welcome Foreign Minister Joffrey. I want to say what a terrific job he's doing as Foreign Minister. As with all of the members of our coalition, we don't always agree on everything. We had a very good meeting this morning to talk about some very difficult issues. But we are a very strong partner of Iraq. We have a strategic framework agreement, a permanent agreement with Iraq, and that will continue. And we couldn't do it without the leadership of people like Foreign Minister Joffrey. So again, I want to welcome you and look forward to your remarks.