[House Hearing, 108 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
WINNING THE PEACE: COALITION EFFORTS TO RESTORE IRAQ
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 8, 2003
__________
Serial No. 108-90
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house
http://www.house.gov/reform
______
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut TOM LANTOS, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN L. MICA, Florida PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
DOUG OSE, California DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
RON LEWIS, Kentucky DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
CHRIS CANNON, Utah DIANE E. WATSON, California
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER,
NATHAN DEAL, Georgia Maryland
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania Columbia
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio JIM COOPER, Tennessee
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas CHRIS BELL, Texas
WILLIAM J. JANKLOW, South Dakota ------
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
(Independent)
Peter Sirh, Staff Director
Melissa Wojciak, Deputy Staff Director
Rob Borden, Parliamentarian
Teresa Austin, Chief Clerk
Philip M. Schiliro, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on October 8, 2003.................................. 1
Statement of:
Brownlee, Les, Acting Secretary of the Army; Philo Dibble,
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of
Near Eastern Affairs; Tom Korologos, senior advisor to
Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, administrator of the
Coalition Provisional Authority; Major General Carl Strock,
U.S. Army, director of operations and infrastructure,
Coalition Provisional Authority; and Bernie Kerik, former
director of the interior, Coalition Provisional Authority.. 14
Haidari, Alaa H., Iraqi-American; Beate Sirota Gordon,
constitutional scholar; and Lamya Alarif, Iraqi-American... 148
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Alarif, Lamya, Iraqi-American, prepared statement of......... 167
Brownlee, Les, Acting Secretary of the Army, prepared
statement of............................................... 17
Burgess, Hon. Michael C., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Texas, prepared statement of.................. 193
Chocola, Hon. Chris, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Indiana, prepared statement of.................... 191
Davis, Chairman Tom, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Virginia:
Letter dated October 6, 2003............................. 182
Prepared statement of.................................... 5
Dibble, Philo, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State,
Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, prepared statement of...... 25
Frelinghuysen, Hon. Rodney P., a Representative in Congress
from the State of New Jersey, prepared statement of........ 140
Gordon, Beate Sirota, constitutional scholar, prepared
statement of............................................... 160
Haidari, Alaa H., Iraqi-American, prepared statement of...... 150
Kerik, Bernie, former director of the interior, Coalition
Provisional Authority, prepared statement of............... 39
Korologos, Tom, senior advisor to Ambassador L. Paul Bremer
III, administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority,
prepared statement of...................................... 30
Maloney, Hon. Carolyn B., a Representative in Congress from
the State of New York, prepared statement of............... 124
Rogers, Hon. Mike, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Michigan, prepared statement of................... 195
Shuster, Hon. Bill, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Pennsylvania, prepared statement of............... 196
Van Hollen, Hon. Chris, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Maryland, followup questions and responses........ 110
Waxman, Hon. Henry A., a Representative in Congress from the
State of California, prepared statement of................. 11
WINNING THE PEACE: COALITION EFFORTS TO RESTORE IRAQ
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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2003
House of Representatives,
Committee on Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:13 a.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Tom Davis of
Virginia (chairman of the committee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Tom Davis of Virginia, Shays, Ose,
Platts, Miller, Murphy, Turner, Carter, Janklow, Blackburn,
Waxman, Maloney, Cummings, Kucinich, Davis of Illinois,
Tierney, Clay, Van Hollen, Sanchez, Ruppersberger, and Norton.
Also present: Shuster, Rogers of Michigan, Shimkus, Walsh,
Sherwood, Kolbe, Tiahrt, Hoekstra, Frelinghuysen, Pomeroy,
Dicks, and Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas.
Staff present: Peter Sirh, staff director; Melissa Wojciak,
deputy staff director; Keith Ausbrook, chief counsel; David
Young and John Hunter, counsels; Robert Borden, counsel/
parliamentarian; Ellen Brown, legislative director and senior
policy director; David Marin, director of communications; John
Cuaderes, senior professional staff member; Teresa Austin,
chief clerk; Brien Beattie, deputy clerk; Jason Chung,
legislative assistant; Corrine Zaccagnini, chief information
officer; Phil Barnett, minority chief counsel; Kristin Amerling
and Michael Yeager, minority deputy chief counsels; Karen
Lightfoot, minority communications director and senior policy
advisor; Anna Laitin, minority communications and policy
assistant; Jeff Baran, minority counsel; Earley Green, minority
chief clerk; Jean Gosa, minority assistant clerk; and Cecelia
Morton, minority office manager.
Chairman Tom Davis. Good morning. A quorum being present,
the Committee on Government Reform will come to order.
I want to welcome everybody to today's hearing on the U.S.
coalition efforts to restore peace, freedom, security, and
dignity to the people of Iraq. On August 24th, I led an 11-
member bipartisan delegation to see firsthand our efforts in
Iraq. Before leaving the United States, I had no real idea of
what to expect on my visit. After all, most press accounts of
our efforts in Iraq were full of gloom and doom. But what we
witnessed was an Iraq of great promise, vibrancy and vitality.
We saw a nation with potential and a people that were enjoying
the fruits of freedom in its infancy. We saw a remarkable
progress throughout the country, whether it was a hospital in
Baghdad or a new police station in Mosul.
We witnessed a busy market in Mosul where one could buy
anything under the sun, including items that were forbidden
under Saddam Hussein's regime, such as satellite dishes, one of
the hottest selling items in the country. We met with newly
elected regional council members--men and women, Kurds, Shiites
and Sunnis--who spoke of embracing democratic values and
representing all of Iraq, not just their own religions, tribes
and home towns.
We also witnessed the greatness of our military; not of
their might, but of their humble actions in assisting a people
in need. Our soldiers are firm in their resolve to stay until
the job is finished. These young men and women are not only
soldiers but also peacekeepers, and when called upon, diplomats
and friends. There is no doubt, we still have a lot of work
ahead of us. Our military is still in harm's way, but, from
what I have seen, we can be successful as long as we remain
steadfast, patient and committed.
The coalition's work is far from over. Iraq is still a work
in progress, and new challenges arise every day. We must
overcome the many security threats that, to this day, continue
to be the greatest challenge to our troops and the
stabilization of Iraq. Rebuilding efforts, although well under
way, and perhaps well ahead of schedule, will not succeed in
the end if we cannot overcome the prevailing threats against
those who are there to help.
While I am confident that we will succeed in ridding Iraq
of elements that want to see the coalition fail, we need to
keep in mind several important lessons, such as: while the
rotation of military forces in Iraq is essential, increasing
the number of military personnel in the area may not be
necessary or advisable to accomplish the mission.
Second, reconstituting a qualified and effective Iraqi
military police force and border protection guard is a key
element to improving overall security in Iraq. The development
of functioning institutions in a secure environment is
essential to Iraq's success. Furthermore, the sooner Iraqis can
take responsibility for their own affairs, the sooner U.S.
forces can come home.
For human intelligence to improve, we need the
participation of Iraqi-Americans who have the skills, the
knowledge and the willingness to assist in the intelligence
gathering and analysis. However, we need to actively recruit,
vet and train these individuals. In order for these people to
be effective, we need to expedite the security clearance
process. Iraqi citizens can provide vital intelligence about
the whereabouts of weapons of mass destruction, but the
coalition forces need the authorization to grant relocation and
protective status to informants and their extended families.
Saddam Hussein misappropriated much of the money loaned to
Iraq for his own personal benefit to the detriment of the Iraqi
people. My colleague, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, has
introduced H.R. 2482, which could greatly benefit the people of
Iraq by canceling Odious Debt in accordance with customary
international law. This is potentially a very wealthy country,
second largest oil reserves in the world, the Fertile Crescent
there between the Tigris and the Euphrates River, the Garden of
Eden, Ancient Mesopotamia, but with a debt structure that is
four times the gross domestic product, no nation can survive
under that structure, so that is obviously going to have be
revisited as this country is succeeding.
While operations in Iraq are still young--we are only 160
days into the rebuilding effort--we have accomplished much. We
are building schools, upgrading hospitals and modernizing the
utilities infrastructure at a pace that surpasses operations we
led after World War II, and we are well ahead of the pace of
our reconstruction efforts in the Balkans.
Still, most of the media accounts of post-war Iraq discuss
rampant chaos and mismanagement. However, according to a public
opinion poll conducted in August by the Zogby Group, more than
two-thirds of those Iraqis who expressed an opinion wanted
coalition troops to remain in Iraq for at least another year,
and 70 percent of Iraqis said they expect their country and
their personal lives to be better in 5 years.
During our visit to Iraq, the delegation visited a site
southwest of Baghdad, in a sector guarded by the U.S. Marines
known as Al-Hillah. One cannot begin to describe this site.
There are no landmarks to identify its location, but we know of
this place because once we overthrew Saddam, the Iraqi people
themselves were our guides. In those early days after we swept
through this area, Iraqis by the dozens came to Al-Hillah to do
something that is hard to put into words: they dug. Yes, many
came to this nondescript place to dig, many with their bare
hands. They dug because it is here that we learned of Saddam's
brutality. Al-Hillah was a killing field. For reasons unknown
except to Saddam and his henchmen, men, women and children were
summarily executed over a span of many days. They were buried,
and the process was repeated time and time again, people buried
on top of one another. This was a scheme designed by a
sociopath bent on crippling the Iraqi people. Now the people
return, most with kitchen utensils and their hands, to find and
dig up remains of loved ones.
Under the protection of coalition forces, Iraqis are
learning what it means to be free. Our role in Iraq has just
begun, and it is a new fight, a fight that is far greater than
simply ridding Iraq of Saddam Hussein. We need time, patience,
and, most of all, the resolve to finish the job we started. The
people of Iraq deserve no less. Our men and women serving in
Iraq want to finish the job, and we need to support them while
the Iraqi people savor freedom and bring stability to a region
that desperately needs it.
Through this hearing, the committee hopes to gain insight
from the on-the-ground experience of the people performing
reconstruction projects in Iraq, as well as the viewpoints of
Iraqi-Americans, scholars and others who have recently observed
the reconstruction process. I also welcome my colleagues, many
of whom are not members of this committee but have traveled to
Iraq and have their own views, emotions and experiences that
they want to share.
With that in mind, we have assembled an impressive group of
witnesses to help us assess our efforts and our progress in
Iraq. We will hear from the Department of Defense and the
Coalition Provisional Authority. We will also receive input
from some distinguished Iraqi-Americans, as well as a
constitutional scholar who will provide us her thoughts
regarding the inclusion of women's rights in the yet-to-be-
determined constitution. I want to thank all our witnesses for
appearing before the committee; I look forward to their
testimony. I also want to acknowledge and welcome the many non-
committee members attending today's hearing.
Due to time constraints, we intend to limit opening
statements, the ranking member and myself. Members will have 5
legislative days to submit opening statements for the record.
All Members will have ample opportunity to give their views and
question today's witnesses. I do intend to recognize committee
members first, followed by the other Members in order of their
appearance.
And, Mr. Waxman, I am going to have to leave in the middle
of the hearing and come back, because we have bills that will
be pending on the floor, but it shouldn't take much time, and I
will yield at that point to another committee member to
preside.
I would now yield to my ranking member, Mr. Waxman, for his
opening statement.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Tom Davis follows:]
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Mr. Waxman. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am very
pleased that you have called this hearing on the important
subject of the restoration efforts in Iraq, and I want to
commend you for traveling there to seek firsthand information.
All of us here share deep appreciation for the efforts of our
military and our civilian employees in Iraq to promote
stability in Iraq and improve the well-being of its citizens.
Congressional oversight is essential to help ensure that
reconstruction is proceeding in a manner that gets results and
makes efficient use of American taxpayers' dollars. My own
oversight efforts began in March, when I wrote the
administration about the multi-billion dollar contract it
entered into with Halliburton on a sole-source basis. Since
then, I have written many other letters seeking basic
information about how taxpayer funds are being spent in Iraq.
This August I sent senior staff to Iraq to gather additional
information as part of the chairman's delegation.
Overall, this has been a frustrating process. Transparency
is the only way to dispel public concern about the lucrative
contracts that the administration has entered into with
Halliburton, Bechtel and other large campaign contributors
operating in Iraq. Yet, with the exception of the Corps of
Engineers, the administration has provided virtually no
meaningful information to Congress, or the public, about how it
has spent taxpayers' dollars in Iraq. For example, in April I
asked the Administrator of AID for basic information about the
contracting process with respect to contracts worth over $1
billion that were limited to only a few handpicked companies.
AID has still not provided copies of the contracts or
information on source selection. Despite a recommendation by
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to allow public scrutiny of a
no-bid sole-source oil field contract with Halliburton
subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, the Defense Department
continues to classify the details of the contract as a national
security secret. The administration still has not responded to
my letter on September 12th, requesting that it explain why the
President's request for an additional $2.1 billion to repair
Iraq's oil infrastructure is over 2.5 times larger than a
detailed estimate prepared just a few months ago by the CPA,
the Corps of Engineers and the Iraqi Ministry of Oil. This
secrecy is simply unacceptable. Two companies alone,
Halliburton and Bechtel, have been given contracts worth over
$3 billion relating to the conflict and reconstruction in Iraq.
Members of Congress and taxpayers who are footing this enormous
bill should know how this money is being spent.
While the administration has declined to respond to basic
requests about its contracts, information I have received from
a variety of sources is painting a disturbing picture. It
appears that big American contractors are receiving too much
money for too little work and too few opportunities are being
afforded Iraqis. Members of the Iraqi Governing Council, for
example, have told my staff that costs to the American
taxpayers could be reduced by 90 percent if the projects were
awarded to Iraqi contractors, rather than to large American
companies. Anecdotal information from innovative field
commanders in Iraq confirms this account.
During the chairman's congressional delegation, the members
and staff met with Major General David Petraeus, the general in
charge of Northern Iraq. General Petraeus said that the U.S.
engineers estimated that it would cost $15 million to bring a
cement plant in Northern Iraq to western production standards.
But because this estimate was substantially higher than funds
available, General Petraeus gave the project to local Iraqis,
who got the cement plant running for just $80,000. Think about
this. General Petraeus reduced the cost to U.S. taxpayers by 99
percent by using local Iraqi contractors instead of Halliburton
or Bechtel.
Many people don't realize this, but the billion dollar
contracts with Bechtel and Halliburton are what is known as
cost-plus contracts. These contracts are structured so that the
bigger, the more complex and the more expensive the project,
the greater the profits for these companies. This is obviously
a good deal for the companies, but is it a good deal for the
taxpayer?
The administration's supplemental request for an additional
$20 billion for reconstruction raises many questions. It
includes numerous proposals for complex, state-of-the-art
Western facilities that almost certainly will have to be
performed by large government contractors under abuse-prone
cost-plus contracts. Of the 115 discreet projects described by
the CPA in the supplemental, fewer than 25 mention employment
opportunities for Iraqis.
I hope that the Army and CPA witnesses here today will be
able to shed light on some of the questions about
reconstruction contracts that remain unanswered to date, and I
encourage the majority on this committee and in the rest of the
Congress to move forward with the minority in conducting
meaningful oversight of the restoration process in Iraq.
Mr. Chairman, I hope this hearing will be a beginning of
that opportunity for oversight. I thank you for holding this
hearing, and I look forward to the testimony of the witnesses.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Henry A. Waxman follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you.
I just want to say, on the cement plant, I remember talking
to General Petraeus about that, and he awarded the contract to
an Iraqi firm, but he never said it would be up to Western
standards. But he did what he could with the money, and I know
firsthand, and our witnesses can talk about this, that we are
trying to give Iraqis as much of that work as we can, because
their economy is a major part of what is happening. But our
witnesses can address that, and we will have ample time to do
questions and answers, so why don't we move to our panel?
Members' written statements will be in the record, and all
of you will have ample time under questions and answers to make
statements.
If you will all rise with me and raise your right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Chairman Tom Davis. Please be seated.
We have the Honorable Les Brownlee, the Acting Secretary of
the Army, former staffer with Senator Warner, and we are happy
to have you here; Philo Dibble, the Principal Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State for the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs; we
have Tom Korologos, senior advisor to Ambassador Paul Bremer;
U.S. Major General Carl Strock, who is the director of
operations and infrastructure of the Coalition Provisional
Authority; and Mr. Bernie Kerik, who is the former Director of
the Interior, Coalition Provisional Authority and former police
chief in New York.
Why don't we start, Secretary Brownlee, with you, and we
will move right down. I think you know the rules. Your entire
statements are in the record. Our Members have a lot of
questions and comments they are going to want to make, and I
won't start with questions, I will start moving down the way.
So welcome. And when the light turns orange, that means 4
minutes are up, and when it is red, 5 minutes. We want to give
you an opportunity to say what you need to say, but your entire
statement is in the record, thank you.
STATEMENTS OF LES BROWNLEE, ACTING SECRETARY OF THE ARMY; PHILO
DIBBLE, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE, BUREAU
OF NEAR EASTERN AFFAIRS; TOM KOROLOGOS, SENIOR ADVISOR TO
AMBASSADOR L. PAUL BREMER III, ADMINISTRATOR OF THE COALITION
PROVISIONAL AUTHORITY; MAJOR GENERAL CARL STROCK, U.S. ARMY,
DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS AND INFRASTRUCTURE, COALITION
PROVISIONAL AUTHORITY; AND BERNIE KERIK, FORMER DIRECTOR OF THE
INTERIOR, COALITION PROVISIONAL AUTHORITY
Secretary Brownlee. Mr. Chairman and distinguished members
of the committee, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before
you today to testify on the tremendous accomplishments of our
soldiers, both active and reserve components, and the great
progress they are making in winning the peace in Iraq. I know
that many of you have just recently returned from Iraq, and on
behalf of the soldiers who are serving our country, let me
begin by expressing gratitude for the exceptional support you
provided to them and their families as well. I am happy to join
you here this morning to talk about the marvelous work our
soldiers are doing and the great progress that is being made
every day in Iraq. I visited Iraq in June and again in late
September, and I am pleased to share with you what I learned.
The insurgency being waged in Iraq includes foreign
fighters and terrorist groups, along with former Ba'athists,
making this the central battlefront in the war on terrorism.
After our lightning ground attack into Baghdad, an overwhelming
military victory by coalition forces, the mission in Iraq now
remains clear: to win the peace. Our soldiers understand this
mission, and their commitment to getting the job done is having
an extraordinarily positive effect on the people of Iraq.
Soldiers are working with the Iraqi people, our coalition
partners and the international community to achieve a better
Iraq for the Iraqis, the region and the world.
During my visits to Iraq, I have witnessed the progress
being made, and I can tell you that things are getting better,
and will continue to get better both for the people of Iraq and
for our men and women serving there. Here are a few of the
great things that are happening: local government councils
exist in over 90 percent of the country and are taking
increasing responsibility for civic administration and
services; our Army divisions are training Iraqi police,
facility protection forces, and civil defense corps to assume
responsibility for local security and law enforcement; our
units are helping getting Iraqi schools running again--in the
Baghdad region alone, we will have 820 schools refurbished by
the end of October. We are continuing to make things safer for
the people of Iraq and our own troops by removing ammunition
caches from around the country. The nation's infrastructure was
badly neglected under the Ba'ath region, and we are helping to
restore and modernize it. For example, we are hiring Iraqis to
help restore the oil industry and power generation, and to
repair roads. These are but a few of the thousands of things
our Army is busy doing for the people of Iraq, and for our own
troops.
Last month soldiers began taking advantage of the R&R leave
program, which allows them to spend 2 weeks away from the
theater during their 12-month tour. Since my last visit to Iraq
in June, we have opened 31 new dining facilities for our
troops, as well as Internet cafes, chapels, and exchanges. Most
soldiers are living in hard structures or climate-controlled
billets so troops returning from patrols can adequately rest
and refit.
In Iraq, the mission for our soldiers continues. They must
attack and eliminate remaining anti-coalition forces and assist
interim governments to deliver basic services to their people.
Our soldiers must simultaneously conduct combat operations and
provide humanitarian assistance, often shifting between these
two in the same day. The administration is aware of our
concerns and requirements. President Bush has asked Congress
for the resources to help fight the war on terror, and they are
addressed in the fiscal year 2004 supplemental. We urge
Congress to assist us by quickly passing this legislation.
Despite remarkable successes, our fight is not over. Our
enemies are committed and believe we lack the resolve to win
the peace in Iraq. I can assure you this is not true. Our
commanders and troops are determined and optimistic, and feel
that we are gaining momentum in the fight. In years to come,
when historians write the story of this critical period, they
will note that in Iraq and around the globe, the unwavering
commitment, courage and compassion of the American soldier led
the way in the fight against terror. By carrying the fight to
the enemy, the Army is destroying terrorism today in its home
nests and spawning grounds, providing protection to the
American people and striking fear in the hearts of our enemies.
In closing, I would like to take this opportunity to thank
this committee for the opportunity to appear today and for your
continued support for the men and women in uniform deployed in
Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world fighting terrorism. I
would like to take this opportunity also to thank all our
soldiers for their service, and their families as well, for the
sacrifices they are all making for our Nation. Mr. Chairman, I
look forward to answering your questions.
[The prepared statement of Secretary Brownlee follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much, Secretary
Brownlee.
Secretary Dibble, thank you for being with us.
Mr. Dibble. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am grateful for the
opportunity to appear before the committee this morning, and I
will keep my remarks brief.
Several senior administration officials, including
Ambassador Bremer of the Coalition Provisional Authority in
Baghdad and Deputy Secretary of State Armitage have testified
in recent days on key issues concerning U.S. policy on Iraq.
Their statements stand alone as the administration's position
on Iraq but I am here to attempt to address any questions you
may have.
It is in the interest of all Americans and, indeed, the
international community, to see peaceful and prosperous
countries across this important region. For far too long Iraq
exported destabilizing waves of violence and terrorism across
its borders and around the world. Iraq now has the potential to
turn the situation around and become a source of stability and
prosperity in the region, around the world and for Americans
here at home.
Meeting our military objectives in Iraq was only the
beginning of reaching that vision, however, not the end. While
it is in our interest to stabilize the situation, we also owe
it to our men and women in uniform, to their courage and
sacrifice, to accomplish the entire mission. In addition, we
need to support our own people who also serve on the front
lines of this fight, providing assistance in what are often
dangerous circumstances and insecure settings.
I would like to continue by paying tribute to my friends
and colleagues throughout Iraq on both military and civilian
sides. They are working extraordinarily hard, at heavy personal
risk, to restore stability and security, reestablish normal
life for Iraqis, and help lay the basis for Iraqis to succeed
in the election of a representative government, and they
deserve all our thanks.
Mr. Chairman, succeeding in this project in all its aspects
is of vital interest to the United States, and we cannot fail.
The task has three main dimensions: security, restoring normal
life for Iraqis and establishing a political process. Each
dimension is related to the others and is a necessary condition
for success. Security is a fundamental requirement for normal
life and for a legitimate political process. Restoration of
normal life meaning access to employment, to health care, to
education, and clean water, among so many other things, is
desirable in itself and underpins security. Finally, a
political process provides confidence to the Iraqi people that
they will soon take on the task of governing themselves. That
confidence, in turn, contributes to security.
These are difficult times, as the situation in Iraq
continues to shift and take shape. With the clarity of
hindsight, however, I believe we will know this Nation had the
courage to take tough decisions to safeguard our future peace
and prosperity at the time when it mattered most. In so doing,
the U.S. Government has the opportunity to help not only our
own people, but also the people of Iraq, the region and around
the world. Success in Iraq, however, is also of vital interest
to the international community. As such, we have sought and
achieved international participation in the coalition. We look
to the United Nations to contribute a substantial expertise and
experience in this connection, and we are aggressively seeking
substantial financial support from the international community
for the reconstruction effort.
This outlines the main elements of our policy on Iraq, and
I would be happy to respond to the committee's questions. Thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Dibble follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Tom Korologos, thanks for being with us.
Mr. Korologos. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, my
name is Tom Korologos. I am a senior counselor to Ambassador L.
Paul Bremer, the Coalition Provisional Authority Special Envoy
in Iraq. My responsibilities include working with three other
senior counselors, the various coalition ministers, and staff,
and also handling visiting congressional delegations as they
come through Iraq; and your group was among them, and I see
other members here on the committee who were there.
When I first got to Baghdad last May, it was a city
burning. We were given earplugs to shut out gunfire so we could
sleep. Today we are living in the midst of a rebirth for this
maligned country that has enjoyed more religious and political
freedom in the past 4 months than in the past 40 years. I have
traveled the country extensively with Ambassador Bremer and
with the Members of Congress, and I have seen firsthand the
successes that have followed the ceasing of these hostilities.
As many of you who visited us this summer know full well,
Baghdad is not a war-ravaged city. Baghdad is a hustling and
bustling city where you can buy everything on the streets from
air conditioners to refrigerators to satellite dishes to shoes.
To be sure, all of us dread hearing about the shootings or
attacks on American soldiers in Iraq, and as Ambassador Bremer
said 2 weeks ago, our day begins 8 hours ahead of yours here,
and we learn about those attacks before you awaken. We deplore
those losses and wish they weren't so.
Mr. Chairman, as you have heard us say time and again, and
as my colleagues on the panel have stated, we have three goals
in Iraq. Our plan from the start has been to restore security,
restore the economy and restore the government. We are making
progress on all three fronts, and those of you from the
committee who joined us know this firsthand. What we have in
Iraq is a rich country which, as the chairman said, is
temporarily poor. It has oil; it has water; it has an
energetic, smart population. It is not unlike California, as a
matter of fact, including problems with the economy and the
government. Let me list a few facts. Schools reopened last
week, as Secretary Brownlee said, and we are luring children
back, where attendance had plummeted 50 percent of the eligible
attendees. We have prepared and distributing 5 million new math
and science text books minus Saddam's ideology. When I first
arrived there, we had 9 mile-long gasoline lines. Today we have
traffic jams. We love traffic jams; they mean that gas is
flowing and people are out working. General Strock will give
you the details of the oil business. The central bank is now
open, providing loans and conducting commerce. In 2 weeks we
are distributing a new currency to the Iraqis. Foreign
investment is poised to come to Iraq. One member of the
Governing Council told me 2 months ago, when Ambassador Bremer
first approached the issue, that if anybody had said the word
foreign investment under the old regime, he would have had his
throat cut. Independent voices are being heard for the first
time in 40 years. We have almost 200 newspapers up and running,
27 TV stations and 26 radio stations functioning.
The coalition, as Secretary Brownlee and General Strock, in
a minute, will tell you, has completed more than 8,000 projects
around the country, refurbishing everything from soccer fields
to health clinics, to roads and bridges throughout the country.
Saddam budgeted $13 million for health care in 2002. We have
allocated $210 million, a 3,200 percent increase. On April 9th
only 30 percent of the hospitals were running; today, all 240
around the country are open; 4 million Iraqi children have
received 22 million doses of vaccine. Prewar, the country was
averaging 4,000 megawatts of power. The demand was 6,000, we
are now around 3,900, closing in on that issue. Oil is pumping:
we are about 1.7 million barrels a day, and hope to get back to
prewar levels, around 3 million.
The Governing Council is up and running. They have just
named 25 various ministers to run the government, and those
ministers probably constitute the most educated cabinet group
in the world, since most of them have Ph.Ds. And as Secretary
Brownlee also said, there are more than 700 democratically
selected district council members. They include Sunnis,
Shiites, Christians, Arabs, and Kurds, with more than 75 women
among them; 90 percent of the Iraqi people are now under local
representative governing councils; 90 percent of the courts are
up and running, and last week I saw they even created the Iraqi
Bar Association.
On and on the list runs, Mr. Chairman, and those of you who
have been there can see those lists as we present them to you.
The lament for those of us enduring 50 and 60 straight days of
100 degree heat--we had a 137 degree day once this summer--of
wearing flak jackets when we leave the compound, we run around
in armored cars when we go downtown, and in talking with about
95 to 98 percent of the Iraqis who support us, our lament comes
from the fact there are good things happening that very few
Americans know anything about. The reporting of those
accomplishments, unfortunately, takes a back seat to the police
blotter-type journalism that fills the front pages of the
American papers.
And as the chairman said, those of you who went to the Al-
Hillah grave site on our trip, I repeat what I said then: I
find the silence on the mass graves deafening. A total of 1.3
million Iraqis are missing from wars and mass murders. Human
rights groups estimate that 300,000 of those are in mass
graves. One mass grave alone holds the bodies of 1,200
children. There are some 35 or 40 mass grave sites all around
Iraq filled with Iraqis who opposed Saddam. If there is any
doubt about our going in there in the first place, come see me,
I will take you down to Al-Hillah for a poignant awakening.
Yes, there are bumps in the road, and, yes, Ambassador Bremer
has made audibles throughout the process. We are going to need
many, many dollars to bring this country back to some semblance
of freedom. And once that happens, the entire Middle East
hopefully will stand up and take notice and some sanity will
come to that part of the world.
Let me close with a couple of points. Everybody wants to
know when our troops are coming home. The troops will start
coming home when Ambassador Bremer comes home and the CPA
succeeds. And when will that be? Let me cite a Rand Corporation
study, which took a look at post-war rebuilding efforts in
Germany, Japan, Kosovo, and Bosnia. The study said of Iraq:
``Staying there does not assume success. Leaving early
guarantees failure.'' Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Korologos follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you. I was feeling pretty
confident until you told me the lawyers were getting organized
over there.
General Strock, thanks for being with us.
General Strock. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am Major General
Carl Strock. I am the Director of Civil Works for the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers. As a soldier and a citizen I would like to
start, as the other members did, by thanking this committee and
the Congress for your continued and unwavering support of our
military as we pursue the global war on terrorism.
Sir, I have recently returned from Iraq after 6 months,
where I served with the Office of Reconstruction and
Humanitarian Assistance and then with the Coalition Provisional
Authority. I held several positions, culminating as deputy
director of operations and infrastructure for Ambassador
Bremer. I was also the Senior Corp of Engineers Officer in Iraq
and had responsibility to ensure that my agency was adequately
and appropriately represented in supporting the effort. We do
that in many ways. We have responsibility for the restoration
of Iraqi oil infrastructure; we are supporting the U.S. Agency
for International Development in the administration of their
large construction contact; we are providing forward engineer
support teams to each of the regional coordinators to assess,
plan, prioritize, and execute projects in their areas; we
provided ministry advisory teams to eight of the ministries of
the Iraqi government; we are supporting the creation of a new
Iraqi army with facilities; we have recently sent a task force
in to assist in the restoration of electrical power. In all, 39
of our 40 districts are represented with about 400 people,
mostly civilians, all volunteers, who are out there on the
front line on a daily basis risking their lives in support of
the Iraqi people and our country.
Sir, we are working in partnership with many, many agencies
and international organizations: the USAID, other departments
from our Government--State, Transportation, Health and Human
Services, Agriculture, Commerce. We are working with
international organizations: UNICEF, UNESCO, UNDP. Non-
governmental organizations: the International Committee for Red
Cross-Red Crescent, CARE and others. We are also working with
the coalition military forces who have been a tremendous
augmentation to the CPA capability to reconstruct
infrastructure, as has been mentioned by the committee.
Sir, most importantly, though, I think it is important to
note that it is the Iraqi people themselves who are really
doing the heavy lifting in this. The ministries and the private
sector there have proven to be competent, committed and
courageous in their support of this effort. We simply could not
do what we have done if the Iraqis had not been involved from
the very beginning.
We came into a situation which is desperate. The
infrastructure of this country has suffered a 30-year insult.
There are many reasons for that. First of all, and
fundamentally, is a neglect of the system; in some cases benign
neglect, in some cases very deliberate neglect on the part of
Saddam's regime. Services under Saddam Hussein were used as a
reward or punishment. You can see a dramatic difference in the
quality of life in Baghdad, where citizens typically enjoy 22
to 24 hours of power a day, and Al-Qud, where they only get 2
hours of power a day. So the infrastructure was built around
those who supported him and were denied to those who did not.
We also suffered war damage but because we made very
careful efforts to limit damage through what we call effects-
based targeting--where you decide what effect you want to
create and do it with minimum impact to the infrastructure--we
were able to keep actual war damage to a minimum, a very
insignificant aspect of the problems we are facing now.
We suffered tremendous looting after the fall of the
regime. Much of this was individual looting by people out for
personal gain, and much of it then turned to a criminal element
of deliberate and structured dismantling of the infrastructure.
There has also been--and I think the largest factor has been--
deliberate sabotage by the former regime loyalists who are
doing everything they can to thwart our efforts and make it
difficult for us to restore some level of normalcy to this
country.
The result of all these things has been almost a total
devastation of this country; not only the physical
infrastructure, but the human infrastructure. Those people who
are committed to maintaining the infrastructure have suffered
dramatically in how they were able to do their jobs, and they
continue to suffer intimidation and coercion as they support
the effort.
The other panel members have already discussed some of the
results, so I won't go into the details of those. One of the
most important, though, that I would mention is the electrical
power restoration, which now exceeds 4,500 megawatts, which is
more than enough to provide for the daily needs of the Iraqi
people. Oil production has now reached the 2 million barrel per
day level, and we are simply now in the process now of
developing the export facilities.
There is much work to be done, a good foundation has been
laid, and, I might add, largely with Iraqi resources
supplemented by our taxpayer' dollars, but resistance
continues. Those within Iraq and outside of Iraq that have an
interest in this outcome are working very hard to counter our
efforts. We are fighting for the will of the Iraqi people and,
to a degree, we are fighting for the will of the American
people. Our soldiers won this war because they had the will to
fight for what they believe in, and I think the Iraqi soldiers
lost because they did not have the will to fight for a corrupt
regime. I firmly believe that they melted away because they
knew that was in the best interest of their country. We must
not disappoint those Iraqi soldiers, and we must not neglect
the sacrifices of our soldiers. We have to continue this
effort. There is no option but to see it through.
As you mentioned, sir, Iraq is an impoverished country with
tremendous potential; vast natural wealth and tremendous human
capital. All they need from us right now is continued support
and substantial assistance in accelerating their return to
normalcy. I am intensely proud that I had the opportunity to
serve this Nation and the people of Iraq, and I thank you for
the opportunity to appear before this committee today.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you, General.
Bernie Kerik, thanks for being with us, chief.
Mr. Kerik. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I too would like to
echo the General's comments in thanking the committee here and
other Members of Congress for coming to Iraq and seeing for
yourself, seeing firsthand what has happened there, what it was
like before, what it is like today, and the great successes we
have had in the CPA.
I am Bernard Kerik. For 4 months I oversaw the Ministry of
Interior as the senior policy advisor to Ambassador Bremer for
the Interior. The Interior houses the police, customs, borders,
immigration, emergency management and fire services for the
entire country.
The Iraqi police service, as they stand today, are unable
to independently maintain law and order and need the assistance
and guidance of the coalition forces to accomplish this task.
They have suffered years of neglect, coupled with a repressive
command structure that prohibited training, proactive
initiative, and stifled attempts toward modernization of the
police. Unless redesigned and redeveloped, the Iraqi police
will not constitute a suitable, viable, supportable, or
sustainable police service for a free Iraq.
Although the police force in Iraq was only a part of the
security apparatus used by Saddam's repressive regime, they are
the only institution which remains somewhat intact following
the conflict. In the opinion of many citizens, the police are
inexplicably linked with a cruel and repressive regime that has
been substantially tainted by their association. Generally seen
as a part of the regime's enforcers, the populace normally
describes the police as corrupt, unprofessional, and
untrustworthy. The police force was a quasi-military
institution heavily steeped in military tactics, doctrine,
discipline, and philosophy, concurrently staffed with active
military personnel who were tightly controlled by Baghdad and
Saddam. Because of this restrictive control, the police
services languished for the last 35 years and now displays the
results of poor standards, inadequate expectations and
performance, absence of understanding and appreciation for
human rights, poor management, and insufficient and inadequate
training.
Following the conflict, most of the police infrastructure
was badly damaged, stolen or destroyed during the cathartic
looting which succeeded the end of hostilities. As the public
order situation has improved, many of the police who fled
coalition forces have returned to work, not only within Baghdad
but across the country, now nearly 40,000 in strength. Their
ability to operate effectively in general was hampered by their
inadequate knowledge of basic police skills such as patrol
techniques, interviewing and crime scene investigation and was
hampered by a lack of equipment.
As a result of the training, oversight and assistance by
the coalition, and their willingness to cooperate with the
coalition, they have demonstrated enormous progress in securing
and stabilizing Iraq in the last several months. Establishing a
sufficient proactive deterrent police presence remains one of
the principal priorities of the Coalition Provisional Authority
and the Iraq police services are presently engaged in extensive
administrative and operational reforms. The thorough vetting of
existing personnel was and is required, along with extensive
retraining of those who survived this process. The recruitment
and screening of new Iraqi police has begun, and the training
of new recruits untainted by the vestiges of the former regime
must be accomplished as soon as possible. This infusion of new
ideas, ideals and expectations will invigorate the police
service, while forcing existing personnel to challenge
paradigms of behavior that have held them hostage throughout
their careers. Complimenting these ideas is the installation of
a proactive and aggressive office of professional standards
that will hold officers accountable to a standardized set of
intentionally accepted policies, rules and regulations that
will guide the police service long after international advising
and police assistance have ended.
The reform of the police is a long-term program that will
require considerable international assistance through financial
in-kind contributions and qualified police personnel to train,
monitor and advise their Iraqi counterparts. As there are too
many accomplishments to mention in the Interior in this
statement, I welcome the opportunity to go over them with you
and other members of the committee at your request. And, again,
thank you for the opportunity to be here.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kerik follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. And I have made an
opening statement.
Tom, let me just ask you one question. I get a lot of
questions from my constituents when I go out; they say, well,
even if everything goes well in Iraq, even if we rebuild this
country, it is taking tremendous resources from America,
minimum of $87 billion, probably well in excess of that,
American lives and American dollars to rebuild Iraq.
Ultimately, is this a good use of our resources, or could they
have been better used to rebuild our own infrastructure and our
own cities, and help our own people?
Mr. Korologos. Mr. Chairman, the $87 billion includes $20.3
billion which is for the coalition; the other piece of it is
for the military side. The short answer is yes, it is in the
national interest of the United States to go in there and
provide stability, create a country in the heart of the Middle
East, which has been in turmoil for 2,000 years, a democratic
state where even today you have the Iranians all nervous over
what is going on in Iraq. My view is that it will stabilize
that whole part of the world.
In addition, the example that we can use historically is
the Marshall Plan. Ambassador Bremer keeps mentioning that in
his testimony as an example of American interest and American
support for a war-torn Europe that has brought us today the
Europe we know. Right after the war, World War II, it was a
shambles, and American generosity went in and created the
stability that we have had in Europe ever since. World War I
ended, and it was the war to end all wars, but it wasn't long
before we had the creation of a Hitler and we had the creation
of a Mussolini, which created even more problems for the world
in World War II. So, yes, it is worth it. And to wipe out a
regime like Saddam Hussein shows other regimes around that,
``Holy cow, these Americans mean business, we better perhaps
shape up.''
Chairman Tom Davis. OK. Thank you very much.
Let me recognize Mr. Kolbe, one of the key appropriators in
this area, and somebody who has taken a leadership role.
Mr. Kolbe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you very much
for holding this hearing and for the opportunity to be here. I
really applaud you for doing this. It is, as we have heard from
the witnesses already in their opening statements, a very
important issue.
Mr. Chairman, as you suggested, because I do chair the
Foreign Operations Subcommittee, I am keenly involved, deeply
involved, in the reconstruction of Iraq. In fact, I was first
there in Kuwait in April, just shortly after the fall of
Baghdad, with our USAID Disaster Action Response Team [DART],
and our Mission Director, Lou Luck, as they prepared to deploy
to Iraq. At that time I had the opportunity to see my good
friend, Chris Shays, a member of this committee, who was there
at that time and made the first entry into Iraq.
Initially, last winter, going back even before that, part
of the U.S. Interagency Team in Washington, USAID was tasked
with getting contractors ready to hit the ground running in
Iraq for various sectors such as reconstruction and governance.
USAID used what they called a ``limited competition system,''
in which the Agency personnel selected particular vendors and
solicited bids. USAID then selected the winners from this
limited competition and the Bechtel contract, of course, for
reconstruction of the infrastructure is probably the best known
of these awards that were made.
Since then we have been arguing to the administration and
USAID that they need to begin efforts now so that the next set
of contracts is awarded through full and open competition; and
I am talking about the $20.3 billion that Tom Korologos just
referred to as the part that is in the supplemental for the
next round of reconstruction. That is on a track, we are moving
rapidly forward with that, but we have no time to lose if we
are going to be prepared to make sure those are awarded on a
competitive basis.
Frankly, there has been some reluctance downtown to do
this, in part, I must say, Mr. Chairman, because the roles and
missions of the U.S. agencies and the Coalition Provisional
Authority have never really been sorted out completely. As
recently as the hearings of our subcommittee 2 weeks ago, it
still was unclear; the administration still hadn't decided who
was going to do what in the Iraqi effort. The regular fiscal
year 2004 bill that passed the Foreign Operations subcommittee
and then the full committee and the House, included a provision
that does require full and open competition, and I am happy to
say, Mr. Chairman, we have been working with you and your staff
very closely to develop language for the Iraq supplemental bill
that we will mark up tomorrow, and I think that we have
agreement on that language.
I really just want to conclude with this comment, and I
can't overstate the importance of this issue. If we are going
to have credibility with the American people, they need to know
that American companies that either they represent or have done
their work through the sweat off the brow of American workers
are going to have a fair shot at securing contracts in the
rebuilding of Iraq. That is what America is about, open
competition, about giving everybody an opportunity; it is about
basic American values and doing the right thing. The
perception, the very perception, Mr. Chairman, that we might
use something other than open competition would really
undercut, I think, the support of the mission of the CPA.
There are some good signs; we have heard some of them here
today, there is no doubt about it. And I think USAID has gotten
the message. They have recently published a request for
proposals for $1.5 billion in additional construction projects.
That is in preparation, and I am glad to see that, for the fact
that this $20.3 billion will be coming. Clearly there are
emergency situations that may require sole-source or other than
fully competitive methods, but I think it is fair to say that
full and open competition ought to be the rule; it is fair and
transparent, and I think it usually results in savings to the
taxpayer as well.
And so, Mr. Chairman, I would thank you again for this
chance to be here. And if there is an opportunity to ask one
question of Mr. Korologos or any of the members of the panel
there, it is, do you feel we are ready to win this next round,
to have true open competition for these contracts?
Mr. Korologos. Mr. Chairman, Ambassador Bremer testified
before the committee and said, yes, indeed, it will be
transparency, it will be open competition, and the process, I
think, has already begun toward that end, yes, sir.
Mr. Kolbe. Thank you. I appreciate that answer. I certainly
hope that will be the case. I will be over there in about 3
weeks, Tom, to visit with you, and we will have a chance to
talk some more about this.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Kolbe, thank you very much.
Mr. Van Hollen.
Mr. Van Hollen. Mr. Pomeroy is here. He had some business
on the floor, so I would ask unanimous consent.
Ms. Norton. Mr. Chairman, are you calling people as to when
they came?
Chairman Tom Davis. I am asking minority staff how they
would like me to recognize them; I am working with them. So I
am letting your leadership call the shots.
Ms. Norton. Well, if the gentleman has to go to the floor,
I would be pleased to let him go now. I was the first member
here.
Chairman Tom Davis. I understand.
The gentleman from North Dakota, Mr. Pomeroy. Thanks for
being here.
Mr. Pomeroy. I thank both of my colleagues. There is a
pension issue on the calendar on the floor now, the Ways and
Means jurisdiction, and I am asked to speak on it, so I do
apologize for going out of order, and I will be brief.
I went to Iraq in August with the House Intelligence
Committee CODEL, led by Pete Hoekstra. I especially appreciated
the work of Tommy K., as we call him, because I have trouble
with that last name, Korologos, in the extraordinary time and
commitment you made to making certain we saw everything that
could be seen. Also very much appreciated the briefing we had
from Commissioner Kerik right in the middle of a very busy time
for you there.
I think it is important for Members coming back to draw a
very clean line of what we saw and what we, therefore, could
learn from firsthand exposure, and what we didn't see, and not
assume by seeing something that we have an expertise in other
areas. In my case, what we saw was extraordinary performance by
the military, absolutely extraordinary. Our troops made me so
very proud about the resolute way they were carrying out their
functions under excruciatingly difficult conditions. It was 133
degrees there one of the days during our trip, and yet there
they were, full field dress, Kevlar vests, helmets, getting the
job done and not complaining a whit. The members of the CODEL
had plenty to say about the conditions, but our military
escorts performed absolutely as one might expect, the highest
conditions of the military. That was reflective, I believe, of
what we saw in true performance right across the board.
We were also very impressed by military leadership. The
division commanders impressed us a great deal. And, in fact,
some of the ad-hoc successes that I believe we have seen in the
country have been achieved by a great deal of initiative and
just flat out creativity of the military division commanders
making the best of what was available to them without
particular guidance from any central planned authority. So for
the military component of it really the highest thoughts
relative to being impressed.
Due to security conditions, we didn't visit with one Iraqi,
not one member of the Provisional Council. That was a
significant flaw to the trip. It left us with just half the
picture. In visiting with Ambassador Bremer, Ambassador
Kennedy, it is still unclear to me the organization running the
reconstruction efforts or the stabilization efforts, whatever
you want to call them. Ambassador Bremer was boxed out by
Ambassador Kennedy, but Ambassador Kennedy was a direct report
not to Ambassador Bremer, but to the Secretary of Defense. It
appeared that the Office of Secretary Defense had a very major
imprint on the reconstruction efforts, but all of that was
shaken up recently, and today's Washington Post reports that
Secretary Rumsfeld did not learn about the new commission being
established in the White House under Condoleeza Rice, the
President's Security Advisor, until he received a memo from
Condoleeza Rice.
This kind of unclarity, lack of certainty about the
structure that I got on the ground in Iraq has only been
amplified by what I have been reading in the paper upon my
return. It just seems to be a very chaotic organizational
structure, and, unfortunately, the resident expertise, in terms
of actual program implementation, residing in the Secretary of
State or the State Department, residing in USAID, do not appear
to have prominent and well defined roles in this part of the
action, and I think that has to happen.
Finally, we really didn't learn about a well-developed
plan. Even going over there, I didn't come back with the sense
that we have a global plan we are operating on. And the money
requested fills neatly into specified priorities on a time line
appropriately sequenced. We learn of ad-hoc successes and now
we have a significant budget request. It doesn't all fit
together in some kind of framework that really makes sense.
Finally, I did come away with significant concern about the
treatment of National Guard troops. They were called up, in
North Dakota's instance, with 5 days notice. When we were
there, General Sanchez said he was anticipating re-deployments
in October, November. Two weeks after our return we learned
that the plan is that the National Guard will remain in-country
until April. That is a deployment away from their families of
15 to 16 months. I believe that is disastrous for their morale;
it is very hurtful to their families; and I am not at all sure
how we are going to keep National Guard recruitment up in light
of this experience, this very experience our National Guard
soldiers are having.
That concludes my impressions. I have a written statement
for the record. Again, my deepest gratitude to the efforts
being made on the ground, it is really heroic. Thank you.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Anyone want to respond? Secretary Brownlee.
Secretary Brownlee. Sir, if I could, when I was there just
a week or so ago, I specifically went and met with some of the
troops of the National Guard who, of course, have had their
mobilizations extended. When we made the decision to keep
everyone there, boots on the ground for 12 months, there were
really three factors involved. One was that the combatant
commanders were very interested in continuity and stability of
the force, and keeping the team together. The second factor was
predictability for those troops, both active and reserve
components. And we also have to look at the resources we have
remaining, both within the active and reserve, for future
rotations. So it all became a matter of trying to balance this,
and all of the troops that I talked to there, from units that
were expecting that their deployments would be shorter, while
they all clearly expressed, as most soldiers do, that what they
would really like to do is go home, they also acknowledged that
they understood their mission and they were perfectly prepared
to conduct it. And we understand this creates hardship for the
reserve components, and I assure you that we continue to look
at this, and we will do everything we can in that regard.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you.
Secretary Brownlee. Thank you, sir.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Sherwood. We are recognizing Members in the order they
came. We are going to try to get to everybody.
Mr. Sherwood. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the
hearing.
I just came back from Iraq, and a lot of the things that
have been said I certainly agree with. My initial impressions
when you fly over were how much water there is, and we don't
understand that in this country. And another initial impression
was how little damage our military did to their housing and
their structures and their infrastructure. You drive down a
street in Baghdad and it looks a lot like Palm Springs in
places; they didn't even blow up or cut down the royal palms.
But there are some things that I think we have to pay attention
to.
Secretary Brownlee, I have to followup. The morale over
there of the regular Army people is sky high, but the
reservists don't feel they are being treated properly. They are
there, they are glad to be there, they are glad to do their
job, but they want to tell you about a million little
indignities that they feel they suffer under, like having to
input their time manually every time to get their hazardous
duty pay. We have a lot of things that we could do in that
regard. What is your comment on that?
Secretary Brownlee. Sir, I agree. One of the things that
has impressed me the most about this, and I am sure you would
agree, is how the forces have acted as a total Army, the
reserve components and the active components. When you go out
there, you can't tell the difference; that is how good they
both are.
Mr. Sherwood. Except when you talk to them.
Secretary Brownlee. And, of course, as I said, most
soldiers in any war would prefer to go home, but, again, I was
impressed by their commitment. I have said before that I think
that what we have here is another greatest generation; the
sacrifices they are making, both financial and otherwise, are
extraordinary. And all of them acknowledge to me that while
they may have difficulties and they, of course, would like to
go home, they understand their commitment, their mission, and
they are prepared to do that. And as I have said before, we are
going to continue to look at each one of these and try to do
the best we can, but we have to respond to the commander's
requirements also, and so we are trying to balance that with
predictability for the families and the resources that we have.
Mr. Sherwood. Sir, you entirely missed my point.
Secretary Brownlee. I am sorry.
Mr. Sherwood. Those folks are willing to do what they have
to do. They don't like to be there an extra 6 months, but they
are going to do it. But they feel they suffer a great deal of
indignity from the regular Army people who don't pay attention,
who don't treat them right. They are so willing to do what they
have to do, and I don't want to belabor this point, but I think
we have some administrative details to work over.
The other thing that was impressive to me was what was
going on in the north and how, when a commander has some
resources and is able to take control of a sector, he can
really get things done. In Baghdad, though, it was impressive
to me. We were at the Al-Durah power plant and is there anybody
here that can tell me what we are going to do with that
monstrosity? We have this huge power plant which doesn't even
have a 50-caliber machine gun hole in it, as near as I can
tell, but where there are four huge turbines. There is one that
is working relatively well, one that is working about 35
percent and the other two are shut down. Now, we didn't cause
this, I understand that, but I think we have a relatively short
window to keep the Iraqi people coming our way before we are
seen as occupiers. What are we doing to get that power plant
going?
General Strock. Yes, sir. We are in fact working in Al-
Durah right now, sir. We have reactivated the U.N. contracts to
rebuild the boilers there and we are rewinding the turbines and
that power plant is going to be brought back in service. But
you are absolutely right, it is antiquated technology and part
of the supplemental is to actually create new generation there,
state-of-the-art generation that is reliable and stable. But
Al-Durah is very definitely one of the key projects we are
working on right now, sir.
Mr. Sherwood. But it was a little surprising to me that
with all our resources we couldn't get that thing cranked up a
little better. I mean, that needs some management. That needs
somebody to go in there and kick ass and take names. It is a
mess.
General Strock. Sir, we have that. The U.S. Agency for
International Development has created a project management team
headed by a Mr. Dick Dumford, who is a power expert, and they
are doing marvelous things. In the last month we have increased
generation in the country by about 1,000 megawatts. Al-Durah is
not yet online, but it will be very shortly. That power plant
was down before the war.
Mr. Sherwood. Yes, I understand.
General Strock. And we will get it back up. And, sir, as
far as security goes, I know that is one of our prime security
objectives and I know that is being well secured by the U.S.
forces there.
Mr. Sherwood. I don't want anything I have said to be
critical of our troops over there they were of the highest
caliber; you just can't understand the commitment. I am trying
to talk about the support from the top. Those young men and
women are the highest caliber people I have ever been around in
my life.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Clay.
Mr. Clay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank you for holding
this hearing and thank the panel of witnesses for being here.
I have not had the pleasure of visiting Iraq, but would
like to know the extent of collateral damage to the Iraqi
infrastructure by the U.S. military. I mean, was there much
damage to hospitals, schools, bridges, and roads during the
war, and are we building or repairing that infrastructure that
was damaged?
Mr. Korologos. Congressman, I can respond by saying smart
bombs work. They knocked down the military targets, they
knocked out the Ba'athist ministries, they knocked out the
palaces where Saddam was thought to be. The infrastructure
troubles occurred for two reasons. First, 30 years of
mismanagement, coupled with sanctions. Saddam used to use them
for political purposes; he would shut down electric plants, he
would shut down mills and textile facilities for political and
ideological reasons. In addition, after our soldiers got close,
the looting began in all of those areas. The population decided
that they were going to take it out on the 30 years of
repression, and they went in and not only looted, but
sabotaged. What can you loot at a power plant? They took away
anything that moved; they took windows out, they took bars off
the windows, and were using those for their own way of
retribution.
So the infrastructure, and those Members that have been to
Baghdad and to Iraq saw firsthand , was not damaged. It is
amazing how little damage was done. And most of the damage that
we are reaping the whirlwind on now, and the power plants, as
General Strock said, and even in the ministries around, the
prisons and what have you, was all done by looters.
Mr. Clay. So you are telling me that most of the damage was
minimal due to the war.
Mr. Korologos. Yes, sir.
General Strock. Could I just add one thing, sir? Our
military now uses a process called effects-based targeting when
we go in with these kind of operations, and that is to
understand the effect you want to create. And sometimes we do
have to attack civil infrastructure to deny power to military
facilities, for example. The easy way to do it is to take out
the power plant; it is big, it is a one-stop shop, and you can
do it quickly. The tough way to do it is to take out the
transmission lines, but they are much easier to repair post-
hostilities. And that is what we targeted, transmission systems
and distribution systems, not the generation systems.
The only exception I would say was the communications
systems of the country. In Iraq, the civil communications and
military communications are one in the same, and while we
protected those and did not attack those early on, we learned
late in the war that we really had to go after them to
accelerate the collapse of the regime. So we did attack the
communications structure, which we are now rebuilding.
Mr. Clay. Did you take out many bridges or roads?
General Strock. Only where it was military necessity, sir,
and those were typically on-the-spot decisions by commanders in
combat.
Mr. Clay. OK. I don't know who can tackle this question,
but recently Senator Kennedy, citing a Congressional Budget
Office report, said that only about $2.5 billion of the $4
billion being spent monthly on the war can be accounted for by
the administration. He goes on in this AP story to say that,
``My belief is that this money is being shuffled all around to
these political leaders in all parts of the world, bribing them
to send in troops.'' And I don't know if I want to use that
strong of a term, but can any of you explain to this committee
and account to this committee for where the other money is
going? If $2.5 billion is going to the troops, where is the
other $1.5 billion going? Can anybody, or is it a national
security consideration?
Mr. Korologos. I am not a budget officer, Congressman,
except to say that we have inspectors general, we have GAO over
there, and OMB even had a representative there. We account for
every dime that is spent. Having said that to you, there were
two funds that we were using. First, we had the vested and
seized assets that Saddam had put in plastic bags and was
trying to take out of the country as he fled. That was Iraqi
money, and the vested assets that we have taken from other
countries that he had in banks, and have used that to restore
Iraqi infrastructure. And what happens with that money is,
money that the coalition presents to the commanders in the
field to go around and repair schools, repair soccer fields,
repair whatever damage has been done, clean up the environment
and garbage-strewn areas. This is called a rollover fund, which
is not appropriated. Mr. Kolbe was there and we showed him some
of those projects, as other members of the committee saw. That
money also is accounted for. It does not go through the regular
appropriation process because it is Iraqi money that we are
using for Iraqis at the discretion of the commanders in the
field and the new ministers that have been formed to say, ``we
need this, we need that;'' and it is a rollover account.
Chairman Tom Davis. OK.
Mr. Clay. I thank you for your answers. It seems like a
pretty fast clock, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Tom Davis. Time flies sometimes. I just want to
make one comment that may help the gentleman. As we drove
through Baghdad and areas that were heavily bombed, how little
damage there was. It was a normal city, up and operating. Once
in a while you would see a pile of debris here or there, and
those were generally military installations or governmental
installations that we had bombed with precision. Nobody wages
conventional war as well as we do. Nobody has ever done it as
well, that is very clear. The problem is, of course, the
aftermath; when we are sitting there in an occupying status, it
becomes a lot more difficult. But conventional war, all of the
predictions we heard about mass casualties, didn't come true;
we did an outstanding job there.
I recognize the gentleman from Kansas, Mr. Tiahrt.
Mr. Tiahrt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also had the
opportunity to go with Mr. Sherwood, Mr. Shimkus and others to
Iraq about a week and a half ago, and I was a little bit
shocked to find out that the country wasn't in chaos like they
were reporting on the news, that the criminals were not
controlling the streets and the lights and water were actually
on. So I was a little bit surprised.
One thing that I did notice is that we have troops over
there who are doing an excellent job, and our generals and
those in charge over there have excellent plans in place, but
there seems to be a lack of interagency support. Now, I am told
that there is good cooperation over in Iraq, but we have people
in our military training border guards. I think the INS
probably has more experience doing that job. We have people in
our military who are training police officers. We probably have
FBI agents that have more experience in those areas. We have
military people teaching them how to become highway patrolmen,
as far as Iraqis are concerned, and I thought we may have some
reservists that have highway patrol experience. But, in
general, we have the military taking on a whole lot of tasks
besides trying to bring peace and security to the country, and
it just seems to make sense to me that we should have more
interagency cooperation, that we should have personnel from
other agencies that have experience along those lines do the
training with the Iraqis, rather than put that burden on an
overloaded work force right now in the military trying to bring
peace to the place. So if you could sort of let me know what
you think, whether there is cooperation, if it is increasing.
Do we have plans to increase it, or are we just going to
tolerate the status quo?
Mr. Kerik. No, sir. We have made a number of requests to
the FBI, to the Department of Homeland Security, and they are
dispatching people from the United States to assist us in
training the Iraqis. On the border and customs side, we will be
getting agents, and we have had agents. In fact, when we put
together the team that stood up and put together the Baghdad
airport, we had U.S. Customs agents come in to train the Iraqis
on the Pisces System and other systems that we would need to
have in place for us to open up the airports at Baghdad and
Basra and in the north. Those programs are continuing. We have
had the military assist us in the area of in-service training,
in transitional training.
We brought back, as you may know by now, nearly 40,000
police officers. There were several more pre-war; many of them,
most of them probably that did not come back didn't come back
because they were violators of human rights; they figured they
would be arrested. Some came back and they were terminated,
fired or retired. Several were members of the Ba'ath party, the
senior levels of the Ba'ath parties, and they were removed.
We have created a 3-week transitional program, and that is
what the military police are assisting in the training of, and
that is to make sure that the people that we have brought back
and reinstated are learning principles of policing in a
democratic society. You know, simplistic things like police
patrol and understanding that an interview and an interrogation
doesn't mean that you hang somebody upside down by your feet
and beat him until he is unconscious. Those things have to be
taught to the people that are on the ground right now and that
is what we are doing with the help of the military.
But as the program continues, and as the President
mentioned last Friday, we are now going to be working with the
Jordanian authorities to train the Iraqis that we are
recruiting to stand up the rest of the police. We need a number
of between 65,000 and 75,000 civil police and probably another
15,000 border and customs officials to secure the civil end of
the country. Those people that have to be trained, recruited
and vetted will be trained in Jordan with the assistance of the
Jordanian police and military; and that program is continuing.
And just one last point. There is an 8-week training
program for the police that will be trained in Jordan, but they
will come back into the country of Iraq and for 6 months they
will have field training officers assigned to them. Those will
probably be people out of the United States and some of the
other 37 countries that are working in Iraq. We now have
Italians, Poles, Spanish, more than 30 countries that we are
working with as a part of that program to train them when they
come back into the country.
Mr. Tiahrt. One of the things that we did while we were in
Iraq was tour the Al-Durah power plant, which was mentioned by
Mr. Sherwood. It is like a 1950's, 1960's old power plant put
in place by the Germans, and they are trying to get it back up
and running; I suppose it is a holdover, because there must be
much more efficient power generating facilities. I know we have
peak power plants in America, we have municipal power plants
that are cheaper, less capital, much more efficient, and we
ought to be looking at that rather than rebuilding this 1950's
technology; that makes about as much sense as flying these old
tankers when we could be flying KC-767 tankers, at least for
the Air Force. So we ought to be thinking about what is the
best technology available, and not being stuck in the past.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mrs. Norton. Thanks for being patient.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think we all agree, when we say, ``turn the country back
to the Iraqis,'' we mean first democracy and then turn over
their own economy to them, and my questions go far less to
contracts for American companies than contracts for Iraqi
companies, particularly since there are numerous press reports
that, now that Iraqi businesspeople are talking to the press
about how they feel shut out of our contracting process, they
complain that they could do the work for many times less than
the work is being done.
Now, I don't know if this involves the ability of our
companies or our own Army Corps of Engineers to translate price
bids as between our companies and their companies. Obviously,
they will underbid us all the time, given the difference in the
economies. But how do you deal with these complaints? How do
you respond to these complaints? They know their country, they
can do the work for a whole lot less than we are doing it and
they are not getting the contracts.
Mr. Kerik. Good morning. I want to talk about the Ministry
of Interior, for example, for one moment. And I have read some
of the things in the newspapers and I have heard some of the
criticism. In the Ministry of Interior in the city of Baghdad,
we stood up 35 police stations in 4 months. Faster than
anything you could have done in the United States, and we did
so with Iraqi contractors.
Ms. Norton. I would like a response to this question. In
other words, are you saying that this is all anecdotal? I want
to know about the ability to translate the price information so
that the Iraqis understand why, for example, we are paying more
than they have bid, because, you know, in this country, if you
bid and you had the lower bid and you don't get the work, then
you think something is crooked. So I am trying to find out
whether or not we have the capacity to make them understand our
bidding process and to translate their bids to meet our system.
Or what is the reason for these reports that are cropping up
everywhere with complaints from Iraqi businessmen? I don't
doubt that you are able to build. I don't doubt that you are
using Iraqi businesspeople. I am asking a more technical
question, about how the bidding process works, when you are
dealing in a foreign country with people with a bidding process
that is very different from the one we use here.
General Strock. Well, ma'am, I can't comment. I am not
aware of any case where bids have been received and it did not
go to the low bidder, unless it was a best value sort of
contract. So I don't know any specifics on that. I do know we
are making great efforts, though, to employ as many Iraqi
companies as we can.
One of our problems early on was the fact that most of the
infrastructure-related companies in Iraq are state-owned
enterprises, and as parts and extensions of the government,
they suffered the same amount of destruction and devastation as
the rest of the economy; and so to even get them to mobilize
and be prepared to come to work was very, very difficult, and
that is getting better and better all the time.
Ms. Norton. Actually, I very much appreciate what you are
doing in trying to deal in a foreign country, trying to get the
work done quickly. Let me suggest this. Among the complaints I
have read, again, these are Iraqis talking to the press, that,
for example, the bidding period is so short, a couple of days,
that they can't possibly deal with that kind of turnaround.
There have been complaints that the information on the
solicitations are inaccurate and misleading. Somebody doing
these solicitations doesn't even understand the country and
understand what needs to be done. There are complaints that
because the bidding process opens and closes so quickly,
probably because you are trying to get the work done quickly,
it looks like a prefix setup, and that you have already chosen.
Now, let me just say something to you. I am on another
subcommittee that has jurisdiction over the GSA. In this
country, the GSA has to do weekly meetings in order to tell
people how to get on the GSA Schedule and how to bid, and what
I want to know is, whether you are doing the job that it will
take to bring Iraqis into the process or if you are just
throwing out a bid and saying, ``we need a response in 2
days.'' How do you expect people to be able to bid, especially
when you look at figures like Bechtel, which has $900 million
in contracts and only $50 million in subs to Iraqis. Part of
the reason may be that we haven't done our job in informing,
teaching, training Iraqis how to use our bid process, so you
just simply go along with whoever looks like he can do it and
gets the work done. So I want to know what you are doing to
bring them into the process so they know how to become a part
of the process you are using.
General Strock. Ma'am, Bechtel Corp. did hold a session for
all Iraqi contractors about 2 months ago to explain the
opportunities and processes to compete. There are some
challenges, many of which are associated with just the lack of
communication in the country, the inability to even know when
there are opportunities presented. So that is definitely a
problem we are working on. I know that when the supplemental
comes through, there is a plan afoot that will have, as part of
the performance specification, the contractor's plan to employ
Iraqis and how they are going to go back doing that, educating
them on the process and then actively soliciting their support.
So we are very aware that this is a problem and we are working
on it.
Ms. Norton. I know my time is up, Mr. Chairman.
I wish you would make the committee aware of how you
inform, in writing, of how you inform contractors that they are
to, in turn, inform Iraqis of how to use this process so that
we have a greater understanding of what you are doing to bring
Iraqis into your own bidding and contract process.
Chairman Tom Davis. That would be helpful to get that
information to us, and we will circulate it to the Members.
Secretary Brownlee. Could I respond for just a moment?
Chairman Tom Davis. Sure.
Secretary Brownlee. The Army is the executive agent to
assist.
Ms. Norton. I can't hear you.
Chairman Tom Davis. Go ahead.
Secretary Brownlee. The Army is the executive agent to
assist Ambassador Bremer's organization with contracting. Could
I please provide for the record how we are doing that and what
we intend to do to try to make sure the process is perceived as
fair and transparent by both United States and Iraqi companies?
Ms. Norton. That would be very useful, I believe. Thank you
very much.
Chairman Tom Davis. That would be helpful. Thank you, Mr.
Secretary.
The gentleman from Connecticut.
Mr. Shays. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I would
like to take the opportunity, first, to thank you for holding
these hearings, thank all of our patriots who are our panel and
thank them very much, and to recognize Dr. Julian Lewis, who is
a member of Parliament, if he would stand, from Great Britain.
We appreciate your great country's help in this effort.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you. Welcome to the committee
room. I hope he enjoys his stay over here in the colonies.
Mr. Shays. In my first visit to Iraq, I met a gentleman in
Unm Qasr, whose name was Mohammad Abdul Hassan. He said, ``you
don't know us and we don't know you.'' And that spoke volumes
to us in this rebuilding effort. Winning the war on a scale of
1 to 10 is an 11; winning the peace, I don't know where it is,
but it is not an 11 or a 10, maybe not even a 9, and we need it
to be up much higher.
I would love to ask you, not because I agree with all of
his criticisms, but because I think you should respond to them,
in the next panel we have Dr. Alaa Haidari, and he basically
expresses gratitude for the United States coming into Iraq--he
is an Iraqi-American--and he then proceeds to be somewhat
critical. I am going to state his criticisms up front and then
have you just respond to them.
One of them is, he said the current council makeup--the
governing counci--simply does not reflect Iraqi reality. He
said, sadly, most of the members of the current council have
neither the support nor the approval of the people in their
respective groups; nor does the current council provide any
representation for many Iraqi provinces, and so on.
In disbanding the army, he said Iraqi police forces must
take over as soon as possible. I think you have spoken somewhat
to that. He said the U.S. administration must accept the fact
that disbanding the Iraqi army and police force was a huge
mistake.
His other point is on ministry employees. He said qualified
Iraqis are more knowledgeable than anyone else in the affairs
of their country, and can quickly determine the steps needed to
rebuild the economy. And he said, except for the top echelons
of Ba'athist leadership, it is essential that employees of the
Iraqi ministry be rehired.
So those were his basic points and I will just end by
saying, when I met with Colonel Buhani, who was the individual
who allowed us to go into Iraq from Kuwait, he said ``you
Americans don't get it. You need to be hiring more Iraqi-
Americans, you need people who speak the language and you need
people who know the culture, and you need people who know the
tribes.'' So I would love you to respond to that.
And just a quick first question to you, Mr. Korologos. Why
should you basically be answerable to Defense? Why shouldn't
you be answerable to State? I have never quite figured that one
out.
Mr. Korologos. Well, the short answer is, because Congress
passed a law creating the supplemental the first time in March,
placing the Coalition Provisional Authority under the
President, reporting through the Secretary of Defense. You saw,
when you were there, Mr. Shays, the co-mingling of the
coalition forces and the coalition Joint Task Force 7, which is
General Sanchez. We are in the same building, we use the same
lunch rooms, we use the same facilities. They are an integral
part of each other's operation. The soldiers and the commanders
out in the field are rebuilding, through their civil affairs
operation, a great deal of the country. The Coalition
Provisional Authority, through creating the general council and
the ministers who are now operating, is creating a governance
side. All of us are working on the security piece, which is a
huge undertaking; and the co-mingling and the putting them
together works a lot better for reporting purposes. There is a
big State Department presence, as you saw.
Mr. Shays. I am sorry, I think you answered the question.
Could you get on to the other points that were made by our
panelist, the second panelists, the quotes that I did? Could
some people respond to those? The issue of the ministries, the
issue of the representation of the council not being true, can
people address that, please?
Mr. Dibble. I can address that, or at least I hope in part.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
Mr. Dibble. With respect to the council not reflecting
reality, in fact, that is true. The council, we have to
remember, is an interim body; it was selected, not elected and
does not perfectly reflect Iraq's population. It was necessary
to get a body in place as soon as possible. A lot of work went
into that; I don't want to minimize that. The council does,
broadly speaking, reflect Iraq's general makeup. It is not
perfect, and I think the coalition, and Ambassador Bremer in
particular, are making an enormous effort from now to reach out
to those parts of the population who believe they may not be
perfectly represented on the council, because at the end of the
day what will represent the Iraqis is an elected government,
not something that has been appointed in any case.
Mr. Shays. Thank you, that is helpful. How about the issue
of the ministries?
Mr. Dibble. We take the point that the people who know how
to run Iraq are probably Iraqis; they know where the keys are,
they know where the supplies are, they know the people, and
they know the language; this is their country, after all. I
think CPA is making an enormous effort to get the ministries up
and running and to bring back those employees who are necessary
to make the ministries run; I think that is a priority. It is
not a high profile priority, but it is definitely happening.
Mr. Shays. I know my time is up, but maybe in the course of
this panel they can address some of those questions that were
raised by the next panel. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
The gentleman from Maryland.
Mr. Van Hollen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I thank all of you for being here today. As you all know,
we have a request of about $20 billion, asking the American
taxpayer to help with construction, reconstruction in Iraq.
That is on top, of course, of billions that have been spent and
billions that probably will be spent in the future. Given that,
I think we would all agree that we would like to share the
financial burden, as much as possible, with our allies and
others in the international community. We have been working,
trying to get a resolution out of the United Nations. The news
today looks bad. I mean, the reports are that it doesn't look
likely that we are going to get a resolution. My question is
this: If we do not get a resolution out of the U.N. Security
Council, what is your prediction as to what kind of support we
are going to get at the upcoming donors' conference in Madrid?
And I would like you to be as specific as possible in terms of
what exactly you anticipate in terms of dollars we'll receive
from other potential donors.
Mr. Dibble. It is very difficult for me to give you
specific numbers because the campaign is now underway to
persuade donors to come to Madrid to pledge significant amounts
of money, both for the coming year and for out-years. The needs
are enormous. The U.N. and the World Bank have either just
released or are about to release their needs assessment. Other
donors will be looking at that and will be looking at specific
areas where they can slide in their contributions. I don't
think we can abandon that effort, obviously, no matter what
happens to the Security Council resolution. We need the
international community up front, we need them with their
checkbooks out, whether we come to some agreement in the
Security Council or not.
Mr. Van Hollen. Would you agree that failure to get a
resolution in the Security Council will make it more difficult
for us to get support?
Mr. Dibble. Yes.
Mr. Van Hollen. Let me ask you this. I mean, we have had
some talk about the current Iraqi Governing Council and whether
it reflects the country. I assume, regardless of exactly how
represented they are, it is our goal to enhance their
credibility rather than to undermine their credibility. Would
that be a fair assumption?
Mr. Dibble. Yes, sir.
Mr. Van Hollen. OK. In light of that, given the fact that
all reports indicate that the Iraqi Governing Council does not
support the addition of Turkish troops, 10,000 Turkish troops,
into the country, will we honor their request if they were to
make that request official?
Mr. Dibble. I don't want to speculate on what may be
happening now between the Governing Council and the CPA on
discussions. What I do understand, however, is that the
expression of opposition to the presence of Turkish or other
foreign troops in Iraq was the opinion of a single member of
the Council attributing that opinion to everybody else too, but
it was not an official act of the Council.
Mr. Van Hollen. Understanding that, if the Council were to
take an official position in opposition to the 10,000 Turkish
troops, would we honor that request, given the fact that
although they are an imperfect reflection of Iraqis, as you
just said, they are, broadly speaking, reflective of the
Iraqis?
Mr. Dibble. The best answer I can give you is that we would
certainly weigh their opinion very heavily against the obvious
military necessity for the additional troops.
Mr. Van Hollen. Well, it seems to me if we are trying to
diminish the view that we are an occupying force that does not
represent the will of the Iraqi people, we should honor the
request of whatever group exists now that has at least some
reflection.
Let me ask you this: Did the United States make any
commitments to Turkey with respect to actions we would take
against the PKK in the event that they were to provide their
forces? And if so, what specific commitments have we made to
the Government of Turkey with respect to the PKK?
Mr. Dibble. I would prefer not to go into specific
commitments in open session. The PKK has been an issue for us
as a terrorist organization for some time, irrespective of any
specific commitments the Government of Turkey may have made to
help on Iraq.
Mr. Van Hollen. Well, let me ask you this. As part of our
agreement with Turkey, do we expect that U.S. forces will be
involved in any military actions against the PKK? Was that part
of our understanding with the Turkish Government?
Mr. Dibble. Sir, I would prefer not to discuss that in open
session.
Mr. Van Hollen. OK. Well, I am going to pursue an answer
with you, then, in closed session, if that is classified.
Mr. Dibble. By all means.
Mr. Van Hollen. Let me just ask one last question, if I
could, Mr. Chairman.
The $9 billion loaned to Turkey that has been held up
pending this question on forces, do you expect that to go
forward? And is my assumption correct that is not part of the
$87 billion; that is in addition to?
Mr. Dibble. I don't know the answer, but I will get it for
you.
Mr. Van Hollen. OK.
If I have a little more time, I would like to ask you, with
respect to Iran, what role you see Iran's Government currently
playing in Iraq? Are they being constructive? Are they
undermining our efforts? What is your assessment of that as of
today?
Mr. Dibble. The role is difficult to assess with any
precision because it is ambiguous. The Iranian Government has
come out with a statement of objectives that are broadly
consistent with ours--stability in Iraq, they have supported
establishment of the governing council--all of which is
positive. However, we also note that there are present in Iraq
elements of the Iranian Government whose purpose is not obvious
to us and who may be positioning themselves to undertake
activities that are not consistent either with our objectives
or the stated objectives of the Iranian Government. So it is
hard to assess with any real precision at this point but we are
watching very carefully.
Mr. Van Hollen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would just like
to say I would like to followup later on some of these
questions that were raised.
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Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Shimkus.
Mr. Shimkus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
allowing us to join with you in this hearing today.
I want to mention a couple of things and I will try to go
quickly. Rick Jenkins, Dave Brown, John Agoglia, Ben Hodges,
Mike Lenington are all classmates of mine from West Point, also
colonels serving in theater. I got a chance to visit with them
all and am very proud of their service. I think they are very
reflective of what the Army and everybody is doing over there.
I just want them to see that I remembered their names and
mentioned them.
I have also been impressed and I would encourage Members to
get over to Iraq. We have had a lot of Members go. I have been
really pleased with the response from a bipartisan group of
Members who have been on the ground, have seen the needs, seen
the progress, and are in essence vocally supporting what the
emergency supplemental is trying to do, especially the $20
billion. The field commanders say this is what we now need to
move forward. I think everything I have read--and hearing
others comments will confirm that. I would encourage Members,
there are going to be a lot of opportunities to go.
The third thing is, I had dinner with four soldiers from
the 101st and I said, ``what one thing do you want me to bring
back.'' One, a female Sergeant E-5 from Chicago said, ``family
has to be with us 100 percent.'' The second one said, a
Sergeant E-5 was concerned about the care that was being given
to an Iraqi friend. He had made a friend, a truck driver, and
this Iraqi was injured and he is just not receiving the care a
soldier would. What a great statement; here this soldier is in
harm's way, he drives in the community and he is concerned
about an Iraqi citizen, a great comment. Another said, ``we are
willing to pay the price.'' They know they are in a tough
environment. The last one said, ``America needs to be
patient.'' You can't turn over things overnight. I want to make
sure I put that out on the record.
The first question kind of goes with my colleague,
Congressman Shays', line of questioning. What would be the
political result if we would move sooner rather than later on
turning power over to the Iraqi people without a developed
constitution and without elections? What party is in the best
position to recover and gain control? Mr. Dibble or Mr.
Korologos.
Mr. Korologos. It is hard to say. First of all, the
religious freedom that has grown as a result of the war and the
new status of the country has created a whole group of
religious groups: the Shiites, the Kurds and what have you. So
I suppose the short answer is that it would probably end up
being a religious decision.
Mr. Shimkus. I was told in theater that even the Ba'athists
still have money squirreled away, they are still organized and
you really risk a return of the Ba'athist regime. I think that
really makes sense.
I also want to turn to one of the other people who will
make comments on the second panel, Beate Sirota Gordon, who has
this line in her testimony, ``When General Whitney, General
MacArthur's favorite advisor, called in about 20 members of the
staff and said, you are now a constitutional assembly and, by
order of General MacArthur, you will draft the new constitution
of Japan in 7 days.'' This kind of goes to the point of where
are we in Iraq. We have to move and get a constitution drafted
and then we have to move to free and fair elections; that will
take time.
The question is, we don't want to push the Iraqis too fast
and push our own constitutional positions on them, although
that is what happened in Japan. We want them to have ownership
but we don't want to wait too long. How do we balance that,
because the key to success here will be a constitution followed
by free and fair elections and then letting the Iraqi people
make their decisions?
Mr. Korologos. Ambassador Bremer has testified and said
that the Iraqi constitution will be written by Iraqis. The
Governing Council has appointed the Constitutional Preparatory
Committee that is going around getting advice and counsel from
these advisory committees throughout the country on what they
may want in the constitution. That process is now underway. We
don't want to put a timetable on it. Will it happen in 3
months? I doubt it. Will it happen in 3 years? No. Somewhere in
the middle of that. Secretary Powell said, and all of us hope,
that it happens sooner rather than later. The sooner the Iraqi
constitution occurs, the sooner you have an election which
means when we turn over the reins of the government to the
Iraqis. That process is underway and I say again, it would be
written by and for Iraqis.
Mr. Shimkus. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for your diligence in
allowing me to join you here today.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Davis.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman,
and let me thank you for calling this hearing. I also want to
thank the witnesses for coming to testify and share with us
this morning.
Let me also express my appreciation to our soldiers and all
of those who are on the ground in Iraq given the highest order
of their service as well as the indefinite situation of what
may very well take place and happen to them while they are
there. So I appreciate all of the efforts being made to try and
reconstitute and rebuild this country.
I want to get back to the line of questioning that has been
started by Delegate Norton relative to contracting which seems
to be very complex, very difficult, hard to understand, and
hard to get at. I can certainly understand the fact that we
need to be on a fast track--that is, things need to move with
some rapidity--and also the complexity of what is needed in
many instances to rebuild what has been torn down or what did
not exist in the first place. Iraqis have expressed concern
about not really understanding how they can get cut in or if
there is an opportunity to do so. I am concerned as to whether
or not, as we deal with this complexity, there is any room for
small businesses? We have developed a concept in this country
that small businesses, women-owned businesses, minority-owned
businesses, ought to have an opportunity to participate in
economic development activity. Although that is not the main
reason for the redevelopment, there ought to be those
opportunities. My question is, what kind of opportunities exist
for small businesses, for minority and for women-owned
businesses to participate in the rebuilding of Iraq?
Mr. Korologos. Congressman, there is in the plan that we
have submitted to Congress a request for a good deal of money
for something called essential services and infrastructure. The
objective is to restore to acceptable standards and try to
create a civil society to provide the foundation from which
Iraqis can rebuild Iraq. In that piece, I guess a month now,
the Central Bank has opened, has already started making small
business loans. They are starting, I think on October 15th, to
distribute the new currency.
This was an economy flat on its back. They had 50-60
percent unemployment before the war. We have made every effort
to startup small businesses. It is our feeling that small
businesses are going to be the basis for the restoration of
this country. From the small businesses, you are going to get
political input and political extensions so they can start
governing themselves. There is a big effort; small business is
a big piece of what we are doing. Today in Iraq, you can walk
or drive down the streets and see, as those Members who have
been there have seen, huge marketplaces that are selling, as I
said in my statement, satellite dishes, shoes, refrigerators,
air conditioners, commodities that had not been available to
the Iraqi people, all of it run by small businesses.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Let us talk about American companies
that might want to try to get a piece of the action that
Bechtel and Halliburton are getting. We have these big umbrella
contracts and they are indefinite in terms of delivery or
indefinite relative to quantity of what they are to provide and
to deliver. Are there any ways to ensure that American small
businesses can interact with the Halliburtons and the Bechtels
of the world and get a piece of these large umbrella contracts?
Mr. Korologos. The answer to that is that Bechtel and the
big umbrella companies have held seminars both in the United
States and in Europe. At one I recall there were 2,500
subcontractors who showed up to get in on the process of how to
do this. Understand something else here: all the contractors
that have come through Iraq and by hopeful guidance from the
Coalition Provisional Authority have been asked to make sure
that Iraqis are put to work on these projects. There was one
contractor, I understand, who wanted to bring in some
Pakistanis to do some labor tasks. That contractor was turned
down and said, no, you must go out and hire Iraqis, even to the
extent that we are paying Iraqis to go dig irrigation ditches,
to go clean up streets, restoring pension plans and what have
you. So the whole effort is aimed at getting people to work. I
understand and you understand that when you build a bridge or
restore something, that project is over and we have to find
something else for them to do after that, but small business
has an input. I will let General Strock comment on the bidding
process that has been made through these contract service
seminars held throughout the United States and Europe in order
to spread the subcontracts around.
General Strock. I can't add much more to that, sir, except
to say it is just standard practice in the Federal acquisition
regulations that we include a component of small business
opportunity. Again, we can provide the specifics of that for
the record of how we are doing that, but I know it is certainly
encouraged. As Mr. Korologos has said, that is a fundamental
aspect of the economic stimulus package that is being discussed
in CPA, how to encourage small business entrepreneurs.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I appreciate your answers and we know that standard
practices do not really work for small businesses and minority-
owned businesses, so I appreciate your answer.
Secretary Brownlee. May I add one thing, sir.
Chairman Tom Davis. Sure.
Secretary Brownlee. There are also efforts within the
Army's divisions to demonstrate innovativeness and ingenuity
and a desire to help. There are efforts within these divisions
to go out and assist in standing up small businesses so they
are capable of bidding for some of these contracts. That is
being done by the Army within their respective areas of
operation.
Mr. Shays [presiding]. The Chair would recognize Mr.
Murphy.
Mr. Murphy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank all of you for your important testimony.
You have helped remind us that there is another point of view,
a reality of what is going on in Iraq, and helped us understand
that economic and social instability breeds vulnerability. Of
course, that is the root of terrorism and how the Taliban and
Al-Qaeda were able to lay such a strong foundation in
Afghanistan after the Soviet Union played cut and run; or how
an effort more focused on punishment than rebuilding after
World War I led us into World War II and gave birth to the
likes of Hitler and Mussolini and others that ended up killing
millions. So we have a lot of work to do.
I want to focus primarily on some of the health issues, if
I may. We have heard that prior to the war, many medical
supplies and humanitarian assistance that was sent to Iraq was
diverted by Saddam Hussein for personal use or some other uses.
We had some testimony that the number of clinics is growing and
improving as well as vaccinations. I wonder if you could give
me a little more detail on pre-and post-war conditions of
hospitals and clinics in Iraq in terms of were they filling
needs before and what is happening now? I am not sure who would
answer that. Perhaps Mr. Korologos.
Mr. Korologos. When the war ended, we fully expected
several things to happen. We expected a food crisis, refugees,
health crisis, the oil fields to be burning, flooding, and none
of those happened. The health crisis was a creation of Saddam
not funding any health projects. Before the war, as I said, he
budgeted $13 million for health care in 2002 which came to
about 50 cents per person. We have struggled and have sent in
more than 9 million tons of health equipment, oxygen, beds, and
what have you. When Ambassador Bremer and I first got there, we
visited hospitals that were horrible. It was open windows,
flies, the sanitary conditions were as grim as you can imagine.
We still take congressional delegations to those same hospitals
and they come back aghast at how bad they are. I hate to say
you should have seen it before we fixed it. They are still way
below any standard that we have all come to know. We are doing
our best to rebuild the hospital structure. They had an
excellent medical operation that existed in Iraq.
One other interesting thing, is Saddam forbade anybody from
attending international conferences so the entire science
community, including doctors, was forbidden from leaving the
country to attend any seminars to find upgrades in medical
treatment. One of the first things Ambassador Bremer did was
open the doors to let this very brilliant medical operation
running this thing under those circumstances to go find out
what is new.
Health care is a big priority and has been. We have opened
all the hospitals, we have opened clinics. The budget we have
requested shows a huge increase in requests for health
facilities. We have asked for clinics, hospitals and what have
you all over the country and I hope we can get them.
Mr. Murphy. Is there an adequate number of positions for
nurses and medical staff in Iraq or is there also a need for
people?
Mr. Korologos. I didn't hear you.
Mr. Murphy. I was wondering if there are adequate numbers
of medical staff and physicians in Iraq? Is there also a need
for people?
Mr. Korologos. I don't know how to answer that. Probably
not, given the conditions I have seen in the hospitals. They
could always use more. There are a lot of NGO's that have come
in to provide assistance. I can't give you a precise answer but
just in observing when you are at these hospitals, the crowds
that are outside, the lack of wheelchairs, the deterioration of
the hospitals, is a horrible thing to observe. One of the first
things we have to do is start building the facilities in which
these doctors can start functioning.
Mr. Murphy. Mr. Chairman, I would like to request that if
we could get more information on such things, I would
appreciate it. I know there have been programs for more
inoculations and vaccines provided, information on some of the
disease risks that continue there and other medical needs. I
certainly think we need to know for future budget reasons but I
also have to think the American people would like to know
because that is something with which we can all identify and
our hearts go out to folks who have been subjected for so many
decades to a medical disaster.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Tierney.
Mr. Tierney. I thank the chairman and thank all of you
gentlemen for your testimony and for the work you are doing.
I think the recent edition of Time pretty much says a lot
about what the American people are thinking. The mission is not
accomplished and how Bush misjudged the risk of fixing Iraq. I
don't think anybody raises issue with the performance of our
troops or the military aspects of winning the battle. The fact
is, there was total misjudgment apparently of what it was going
to take to go in and put this thing on solid footing. On May 1,
2003, clearly the mission was not accomplished. We have had 170
deaths of U.S. soldiers since that date and we have many, many
wounded. To my knowledge, I am not aware that the President has
visited any of these returning wounded soldiers to this
country. We have had two potential Iraqi leaders assassinated.
Sergio deMello of the United Nations has been killed. The oil
flow which this administration told the American people would
be used to fund reconstruction is some days doing less than
one-half of what it was producing pre-war and all the
administration says is that there are challenges greater than
we anticipated. That probably should not be the case and I
don't, Mr. Korologos, do you want to tell us, was there too
much reliance by this administration on Mr. Chalabi or people
like him? How was it that with the intelligence they claimed to
have had and all the information they claimed they knew about
this country pre-entry, that we now hear stories of things that
weren't anticipated?
Mr. Korologos. First of all, Congressman, the President has
visited the troops, the wounded troops here in the hospitals,
so I want to set the record straight on that.
There are problems. The war, quite frankly, and I say this
with careful thought, ended too soon. What I mean by that is,
as we got closer to Baghdad, the Ba'athists and the fedayeen
disappeared and melted into the population. They took their AK-
47s with them and still harbor hope of trying to come back. Our
soldiers are out there on dangerous missions trying to root
them out.
I also must say very quickly that it is in what we call the
Sunni Triangle, which is an area between Tikrit and Baghdad and
over to Ramadi, where most of these problems occurred. That is
about 1 or 2 percent of the country. It is about 1 or 2 or 3
percent of the population that has hope they might return to
their old glory days. The poll the New York Times and the Zogby
people had 10 days ago, 2 weeks ago, showed that there is
support for what we are doing. Those of you who have been there
have seen the population and the children on the streets waving
at our soldiers and waving at us as we go by. Yes, there are
problems. Security issues have arisen. First of all, those
people who are Ba'athists and fedayeen who disappeared into the
population. Second, the 100,000 prisoners that Saddam released
10 days or 2 weeks before we got into Baghdad are all murderers
and thugs; we are trying our darnedest to get them back. There
are no records, no computers, no files on who these people are.
Yes, there were some political prisoners, but most were
criminals and if you can imagine a criminal being put in jail
in Iraq, he must really have been bad. So those guys are out
there doing damage to us. The third element, as the military
will tell you, is the outsiders who seem to be wanting to come
in from Iran and Syria and disrupt and throw oil on troubled
waters. So the security issue is one that has taken a lot of
emphasis and a lot of support from General Sanchez and our
soldiers over there and it is a problem with the Coalition and
it is a problem with the U.N.
Mr. Tierney. I don't think anyone disputes that we have
problems. I think the issue is the failure to plan ahead of
time to do this. I think now, in the face of this $87 billion
request that confronts the American people, apparently we
didn't have a plan going in. What is the plan now, what
happened to the almost $400 billion that we have budgeted in
our regular Department of Defense budget, and the first $69
billion supplemental appropriation? Why do we still hear
stories of people being over there without kevlar vest
protection, some of our equipment still needing repair not from
normal wear and tear that should have not been anticipated but
from things that should have been anticipated in an effort when
you go in on this basis? I think that is what people are having
a hard time getting their arms around. Why should we be looking
at passing an entire $87 billion at this point in time when
there is some evidence that we have existing funding to take us
into next year that clearly we want to know more about what is
happening with internationalizing this effort. Perhaps, Mr.
Dibble, you can tell us. Today's newspapers don't seem very
encouraging, but what is happening on the diplomatic front? Do
we have anybody else that is going to be coming in to help us
out here? What is going on with the international conference in
Madrid that is planned for October? Are any other countries
stepping forward to give us something more than the $1 billion
small amount we hear about?
Mr. Shays. Candice Miller.
Mr. Tierney. My apologies. I would have thought the
Chairman would let you answer.
Mr. Shays. Do you care to answer? I thought it was a
statement. I am sorry.
Mr. Dibble. I can speak in general terms. The conference in
Madrid is scheduled for October 23-24. There has been a meeting
of the core group which is the lead donors for this effort
earlier this week. There is a systematic campaign underway,
diplomatic as well as personal, to ensure that we get as much
as we can as soon as we can, if possible before Madrid to
ensure the burden is adequately spread across boundaries.
Mr. Shays. Ms. Miller.
Ms. Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the
opportunity to ask a question. I certainly appreciate the panel
for coming today. I have listened to your testimony. It is
fascinating to hear what is happening in Iraq.
I think we are at such a pivotal moment in world history,
quite frankly. We have the ability, I think, to either get the
job done or not, to really have a positive impact on what is
happening in the Middle East positively or not, and I think the
question for us is whether or not we actually have the
political will to finish the job, to reconstruct as necessary
and to do what needs to be done there.
I also believe that Al-Qaeda certainly has underestimated
the resolve of the United States. It certainly underestimated
the resolve of George W. Bush. I think they thought that after
September 11, a couple of cruise missiles, we would go back to
our football games or something. They never thought about
Afghanistan, they certainly never considered the possibility of
what has happened in Iraq. As I listened to some of you
gentlemen talk about the Iranians being a little nervous, I am
glad to hear those kinds of things. I think we are having the
desired impact on some of these rogue regimes.
I think it is also important, and it was very interesting
to hear all of you, to continue to point out that the kinds of
problems that are occurring in Iraq, that we are encountering
in Iraq, are not because of collateral damage, because of the
theater there. If you have inadequate underground, inadequate
transmission lines, problems with the water supply, that would
have been there whether we went in or not. It is because of the
Saddam Hussein regime and what happened there.
My question is probably to Mr. Kerik. I listened to you
talk about how you were vetting the various individuals that
you are putting into the Iraqi police force there. I think that
is making certain the ability to police themselves, such a
critical component for any society. But it is also my
understanding that there were several, perhaps two, Republican
Guard units that were not engaged during the war. As you
mentioned, some of these have sort of faded into the country
and a free Iraq to them is a dangerous thing. They are
apparently the ones, certainly some of them, who are causing a
lot of the terrorist problems in their own country, among their
own people. Can we be certain, do you feel comfortable, that
these individuals who have to be quite intelligent individuals
are not infiltrating the police force and that they don't
appear at a later date and manifest themselves with further
problems?
Mr. Kerik. The vetting process we have gone through in Iraq
from the beginning was ordered by Ambassador Bremer. Within the
police force, the police services, customs, immigration and
border services, we took the top three levels of the Ba'ath
Party and eliminated them from the agencies. From that point
on, we tried to identify leaders within the agencies, within
the different departments, that we felt confident were
trustworthy, loyal and had integrity and honor.
Today, the Senior Deputy Minister of Interior is a man by
the name of Ahmed Ibrahim, who before he was appointed by me as
the Senior Deputy Minister, was the chief of operations for
Baghdad and before that, he was the Commandant of the Academy.
In all of those positions, over about a 4-5 month period, we
gained an enormous amount of trust in him beginning with the
fact that he had been arrested by Saddam, been imprisoned for
more than a year, been tortured on a weekly basis, had been
electrocuted, and was adamant about his opposition to the
regime, to Saddam and Saddam's loyalists.
In the time that we have been in Iraq and Ibrahim has been
in charge of the police service, he has put together special
operations units and special enforcement units to go out and
hunt down the Fedayeen Saddam which are Saddam's trained
assassins and killers, to hunt down the former Ba'athists out
there committing attacks against the Coalition. We have found
that if you pick the right Iraqi leaders, they will find the
people they need to get the job done. I will give you one
example before I close.
I told Mr. Ibrahim when he had the Academy that I didn't
want anybody affiliated with the Ba'ath Party or with former
ties to Saddam involved in the Baghdad Police Department. The
next day I came back to the academy where he had his office and
there were about 1,000 Iraqis outside the gates. He was on the
inside with a small staff of people. When I finally got through
the crowd and pushed through the gates and got inside, I said
to him, ``what is going on, what are you doing?'' He said,
``you said no Ba'ath affiliations; they are outside, I will
pick one by one who is going to work for the new Iraqi police
service.'' I think that is the key to our success. Let the
Iraqis do their job. They know who the fedayeen are, they know
who the Ba'athists are, they know who the loyalists are. Pick
the right ones at the top and let them do their job and that is
what we are doing.
Ms. Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman and the lady.
Mrs. Maloney.
Mrs. Maloney. Thank you.
First, I would like to welcome Bernard Kerik, the former
police chief from the city of New York who led us so
brilliantly after September 11. Welcome.
I would like to know how the members of the Governing
Council are being protected? I was deeply concerned when the
woman member was murdered. I have read reports where women
cannot even go out on the streets.
Second, I would like to thank the chairman for including
Mrs. Beate Gordon who I think is one of the world's most
extraordinary women. She single-handedly created civil rights
for Japanese women; she is on the next panel. I personally
believe it would be a disaster beyond words if the women of
Iraq are not included in the constitution with the right to
vote, the right to health care, the right to education. It
would be a tragedy if women's rights were rolled back because
of American invasion.
My most troubling question deals with two articles that
were in the paper today and I ask permission to put them in the
record. It talks about Secretary Rumsfeld not even knowing
about the reorganization of the Iraq reconstruction. He is
supposed to be in charge of the reconstruction. I deeply
believe, Mr. Chairman, that he should come before this
committee before we vote on the $87 billion and the
reconstruction to give us an update.
Mr. Shays. Without objection the articles will be inserted
in the record.
Mrs. Maloney. There has been a lot of talk about contracts.
I have a positive story on contracts. When I was in Iraq, I met
with General Petraeus from the 101st Airborne. He is doing a
remarkable job. He told us this story: he had a contract--he
needed cement to rebuild the houses in the area--and a $15
million contract was given to an American company. He kept
prodding them, prodding them, prodding them to act. They never
acted so he put on a bulletin board the fact that he needed to
build a cement factory, could anyone help him. An Iraqi
businessman came forward, used $80,000 from the confiscated
money from Saddam Hussein and the cement factory is up and
running. So the story shows, I think, brilliant management. He
saved taxpayers money and he employed the Iraqi people so they
are on our side, not fighting us. Another moral of this story
is that you don't have to build the cement factory to American
standards, build it to Iraqi standards; it is working. Let the
Iraqi businessman follow the American model of investing his
profits into making the business bigger and stronger. I am
disturbed by the fact that one sole-source contract to an
American contractor of $900 million, only $50 million is
contracted to the Iraqi people, employing them and saving
taxpayers' dollars.
I want to come back specifically with an issue that I feel
so strongly about that I place the question in writing to the
panel. It concerns the request for rebuilding the oil fields.
According to the supplemental request and the Army Corps of
Engineers, it would cost $1.1 billion to restore the oil
production to prewar levels of 3 million barrels per day. Then
the supplemental asks for twice that and then you include the
$1.4 billion we have already spent. That means we are paying
three times what the final work plan proposed by the Army Corps
of Engineers projected. This shows, I would say, mismanagement,
but I will wait for your answers.
Second, I would like to place in the record page 28 of the
Rehab and Reconstruction for Iraq Coalition Provisional
Authority, and that says, and I question this with great
sincerity, ``The funding will also initiate the development of
new oil and gas fields.'' I believe many Americans would like
to help with reconstruction but I don't think they feel they
need to build new fields in another country when we have so
many problems at home.
Mr. Shays. If the gentlelady would suspend for a second, we
just have 20 seconds left. You have to give him a chance to
answer some questions.
Mrs. Maloney. Very quickly. It said that, ``Funding will
allow commencement of the planned new refinery that will
increase domestic capacity.'' I am for rehabbing but are we
going to invest in new structures, particularly when the Army
Corps of Engineers said it would only cost $1.1 billion and we
are now up to $3.3 billion? I for one would like to go back to
the Petraeus model of doing things cost effectively, saving the
taxpayers money and employing the Iraqi people.
Otherwise, congratulations to the Army for your brilliant
bravery and the fine job you are doing. I met many wonderful
members of the military from the district I represent who are
really putting their lives in harms way every day. The American
people are very proud of them and I am particularly proud of
the work that General Odinaro and General Petraeus are doing.
Mr. Shays. Mr. Janklow, you have the floor.
Mrs. Maloney. Can I say one thing because we don't have
much time. Chris, this is very important. Some of the generals
told me that in creating the domestic centers in Iraq, they are
putting women on those centers. I think that is incredibly
important. I would like a listing from the CPA of all the women
who have been put in positions. I think this is tremendously
important. And second, the point that Senators and Members of
this Congress cannot get the information on the contracts. In
all sincerity, I want to be supportive but we have to have this
information before we vote. We have to know where is the money,
where was it spent. Petraeus gave us the information, the CPA
should be able to give us the information.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney
follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1303.030
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1303.031
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1303.032
Mr. Shays. Mrs. Maloney, hold on for a second. You had 6\1/
2\ minutes and I just wanted to say to you we will have a
second round if you have specific questions, but there was so
much to be said. I am going to go to Mr. Janklow and we can
come back if you have specific questions you want to ask and we
will make sure he answers.
Mr. Waxman. Mr. Chairman, before Mr. Janklow. Mrs. Maloney
asked a couple of questions. Maybe we can see if anybody wants
to respond to her.
Mr. Shays. Just wait a second, please. The way we are going
to do it is, we are going to Mr. Janklow. We will come back to
Mrs. Maloney and she can ask her specific questions and we will
take them up. She will have her time. She had 6\1/2\ minutes to
make a statement.
Mr. Waxman. Mr. Chairman, if I might just----
Mr. Shays. Mr. Waxman, please don't.
Mr. Waxman. Mr. Chairman, I know you like to do what you
like to do, but we do have rules and the rules are that Members
can take 5 minutes to ask questions. They can, within that 5
minutes, ask for responses to the questions. Mrs. Maloney did
ask some questions. I think we ought to give the panel, if they
want to say something in response to some of the questions she
asked, give them an opportunity. If they choose not to, they
don't have to. Mrs. Maloney did ask for things for the record.
Mr. Shays. Thank you. This is what I would prefer and I
think Mrs. Maloney knows me to be a very fair person. She had
6\1/2\ minutes and I would like Mr. Janklow to ask questions.
We will come back to her, she can ask specific questions and we
will take each one. I will be happy to yield her my time in the
second round.
Mr. Janklow.
Mr. Janklow. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
As you folks can see, we try and put tight timeliness on
you in getting stuff done in Iraq and you have to meet it by
the deadline but we have a very difficult time ourselves
meeting our own speech deadlines when it comes to working
within the framework that we have allocated to us.
Back a long time ago when I was a Marine in the 1950's, we
used to say we dealt with scuttlebutt, we dealt with rumor in
ascending order, we dealt with gossip, we dealt with
speculation and if it was really rank, we called it grapevine.
That is what is going on and I am picking up from what Mr.
Sherwood said about the issues vis-a-vis the National Guard and
Reserve versus the full-time military. All of us are getting a
huge amount of correspondence from our constituents who were
called to active duty who feel they may not be getting equal
treatment in terms of rotations and other things. It may not be
the case, but as my mother used to say to me when she sent me
to my room, ``you are going up there not for what you said to
your sister but for the way you said it to your sister.'' I am
wondering is there a better way, Mr. Ambassador, that you can
communicate to those troops as to what the policies and
procedures are? By the time it gets to their families at home
and then gets to us, it is third, fourth or fifth-hand and it
is pretty rank. I guess I am making a statement is what I am
making but do you think there is a better way the military can
pursue the information to their troops in the field so at least
they get the feeling of the reality, that they are being
treated equally because I don't think there is anyone who
really believes you are treating the active forces differently
than the Reserves or National Guard you called up but people
feel they are being treated differently. Do you understand what
I am saying?
Secretary Brownlee. Sir, we have been frustrated by this
too because it seems there would be a discussion of something
and the next thing you know, it is on the Internet and in the
papers.
Mr. Janklow. Let me give you an example, and I am
interrupting you and being rude, but I wrote on behalf of
constituents of mine a letter to the Department of the Army. I
got back June 25 the most sterile generic letter you could
possibly get dealing with rotations, to the point I didn't send
this back to my constituent. I felt all they would do was
become offended by what they felt would probably be
bureaucratic runaround. I will leave a copy of this with you
but the point is, you need to be a little more hands-on in
terms of how you treat people given the fact that they have
been called up a lot over the last 8 or 10 years. It used to be
we called them weekend warriors and if there was a big war,
they would be called up. Now they are called up for Panama, for
Grenada and to work with the Norwegian Air Force on a mission,
they are called over to Bosnia, they are being called up all
the time. They are having to drop the plow, drop the pen, shut
down the cash register and go off to war or a mission and come
home. That is all well and good. It was the Minutemen who saved
us at Concord Ridge but the point I am making is, it is the way
people feel they are being treated as opposed to the way they
are being treated. Can you go to work on a better plan? That is
all I am suggesting.
Secretary Brownlee. I assure you that we are and in fact,
one of the reasons we put down the policy we did of up to 12
months on the ground was because we wanted to establish clearly
what the policy was and try to stop just what you are
discussing, the rumors and those things floating around.
Mr. Janklow. I am switching subjects now but we hear the
tragedy virtually every day or every couple days of more
American troops being wounded or killed in the theater of
operations. I think it would be important for the American
people to know and I wish you would place in the record in the
first 12 months after the peace accord was assigned on the
battleship Missouri, how many American soldiers were killed in
the Pacific? It would be important to know how many American
soldiers were killed or injured in Europe after the Germans
surrendered in World War II. It would be important to know how
many Americans were injured in other theaters of operations. As
a Marine in the 1950's, I can remember Japanese still
surrendering in islands in the Pacific where they held out for
great periods of time. I think it is important that we put
history into perspective, that this is not a friendly place. We
had to go over there and invade it and trying to bring the
peace is incredibly important.
My time has expired, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Secretary Brownlee. Thank you, sir, for your interest.
Chairman Tom Davis [presiding]. Mr. Waxman.
Mr. Waxman. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I do want
the chance to ask some questions. I let others go ahead out of
courtesy to them.
As I indicated earlier in my opening statement, based on
the information I have received from many different sources, I
am concerned that taxpayer money is being wasted in Iraq.
Billion-dollar contracts are going to well-connected companies
like Halliburton and Bechtel when the work could be done much
more cheaply by local Iraqi companies. I want to go through
some examples.
I mentioned earlier, and Mrs. Maloney mentioned, the
general in charge of northern Iraq, General David Petraeus,
told a congressional delegation that included my staff that it
would cost $15 million to bring a cement plant up to working
order. He ended up giving that to local Iraqis to do and it
cost only $80,000. Another example, according to Judge Wael
Abdul Latif, a member of the Iraq Governing Council from Basra,
western contractors charged approximately $25 million to
refurbish 20 police stations in Basra by providing new doors,
windows, paint, and furniture. Latif contends that a qualified
Iraqi company could have done the work for just $5 million. Ms.
Sondul Chapouk, another member of the Iraqi Governing Council
and a civil engineer, described an instance in which the
Coalition Provisional Authority renovated 10 houses in Baghdad
for Council members at a cost of $700,000. Ms. Chapouk believes
an Iraqi firm could have built 10 houses from scratch at that
price and employed more Iraqis in the process. The estimates
from the CPA confirm this point. According to the CPA, when the
work is done by Iraqis, ``cost of construction is one-tenth the
U.S. standard per square foot in general construction.''
Despite the fact that we are overpaying U.S. contractors
like Halliburton and Bechtel, there seems to be almost no
attention being given to restructuring how we are awarding
contracts to take advantage of low-cost Iraqi contractors. The
CPA's justification for the $20 billion supplemental, for
example, contains no discussion about how to restructure these
contracts. General Strock or Mr. Korologos, why aren't you
doing more to reduce costs to the U.S. taxpayers by using local
Iraqi companies?
Mr. Korologos. I am going to yield to General Strock who
does the contracting. The short answer, Mr. Waxman, is that
when we first got in there and found this devastation and found
the economy flat on its back, we had to get started. We had a
security problem, we had to get this country off the ground
quickly and contracting was done as quickly as possible. For
these individual anecdotal events, I don't have any answers
except to say there is a lot of misinformation coming out of
these Iraqi companies. I am not sure they could have done it
for $80,000; I am not a contractor.
Mr. Waxman. This is what they maintain. So your position
is, and it is understandable, that faced with all the chaos,
you turned to the companies with which the Army had contracts,
Bechtel and Halliburton, and asked them to jump in immediately
and do the work. Is that what happened, General Strock?
General Strock. Sir, I think that is essentially correct,
yes. We went into a nation that had no power, no
communications, no water, nothing, and we did not have the
ability to even inform people of opportunities, much less that
they would have the opportunity to mobilize their forces and
come to work. It has been very, very difficult.
Mr. Waxman. I would submit that part of the problem is a
structural one. As long as we are hiring big government
contracts on a ``cost plus'' basis, these contractors have
little incentive to reduce their costs. The more elaborate the
project, the bigger they get paid, the more money they make.
One example of that is, the administration offered points to
Bechtel as an example of a contractor that is using local
Iraqis as subcontractors. Although Bechtel's capital
construction prime contract is currently at $920 million,
Bechtel has said that as of October 1, only $54 million in
subcontracts have been awarded to Iraqi firms. That is 6
percent of this work that is going to Iraqi firms.
I think what we are doing, and I would be interested in
your response, is we are over-relying on large umbrella
contracts with no opportunity for competition on task orders.
We give a contract to Halliburton and it is broad--IDIQ or
indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract. That means
once the contract is awarded, the Government can award task
orders worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars without
any competition. Isn't that the way it is done, General Strock?
General Strock. In essence, I think that is correct, sir.
The reason we go to those kinds of contracts is due to the
great uncertainty. We were not able to definitize the
requirements and do incremental competition for each of those
task orders. In a situation like this, we typically operate in
an indefinite delivery and indefinite quantity mode.
Mr. Waxman. In the case of oil infrastructure work in Iraq,
the Army gave Halliburton a sole source contract with no
competition whatsoever. There is no other company that is
allowed to compete even though there are other corporations on
the ground in Iraq that could do some of the work for less. The
Government task orders to Halliburton are not subject to any
competition and together they are now worth $1.39 billion.
I would submit to you that there are a lot of jobs that
either Halliburton or Bechtel could do but, the way the
situation is set up, they never submit competing bids. Instead,
Halliburton has a monopoly on the oil work, Bechtel has a
monopoly on the reconstruction work. It seems to me if we
either issued smaller contracts with competition or we could
award larger, multiple award contracts, that would mean that
more than one company would be awarded large umbrella contracts
and could compete for individual task orders. That is the
approach favored by OMB because it imposes greater price
competition and results in savings for the taxpayers. Now that
we are moving away from the crisis of war contracting to a more
orderly and predictable process of reconstruction, shouldn't we
think about moving away from these anti-competitive IDIQ
contracts?
General Strock. Sir, in fact, when we determined that the
most practical and appropriate way to fix the oil
infrastructure was to go sole source, at that very moment we
embarked on a competitive process to provide a follow-on
contract. Within this month we should see that competitive
contract for the oil industry being awarded. We recognize that
it is much better to go in an open and competitive way.
Mr. Waxman. Isn't that going to give one contract to the
north and one to the south without competition?
General Strock. It's competed.
Mr. Waxman. But one for the north will be awarded?
General Strock. As I understand, it is one for the north
and one for the south. I haven't been personally involved but I
think that is correct. I think the plan for the supplemental is
that it will be full and open and we will go to multiple
contractors so we can mobilize a much greater portion of our
capability. Certainly the performance measure on that will be
their plans and records for employing local Iraqi companies.
Mr. Waxman. Thank you.
Chairman Tom Davis. As I understand it, Halliburton's role
in Iraq is based on its Brown & Root subsidiary. Brown & Root
holds a very competitive award, one for which they had to
compete with other companies, the LOGCAP Contract, which
provides a wide variety of logistics services to DOD overseas;
I think that came out of Bosnia. They were awarded that, it was
competitively bid. You come into a new country, there is no
economy out there working, it is in shambles, and it sounds
like some Members would like to have gone to a competitive bid
and waited 6 months before we could have capped the oil fields
and done those things. Obviously we couldn't do that, so we
went with a pre-competitively bid contract that in fact was a
legal scheme to do this and now, as soon as we are up and
running, we are going to go out and competitively bid this area
again. Is that basically it?
Secretary Brownlee. Yes, sir. The LOGCAP Contract to which
you referred was competitively bid and awarded to Brown & Root
in December 2001. This is a contract the Army keeps in place so
when there is a contingency, the contractor can respond to
provide logistics, dining facilities and all the things we need
these days when we go on these contingencies.
Chairman Tom Davis. And other companies bid on that at the
time?
Secretary Brownlee. Yes, sir, they did. In fact, another
company had it prior to Brown & Root getting the contract in
December 2001. These are kept in place for the kind of
contingencies you mentioned; that is what we took to war.
Chairman Tom Davis. Let me make one point. When we start to
talk about fees and costs, let us remember that we are working
under rules and regulations. Only costs that are allocable,
specifically allocable under the FAR, the Federal Acquisition
Regulations, are allowable. Other costs and fees, and this is
scrutinized by the Defense Contract Audit Agency, have to be
allowable and reasonable, and only those are reimbursed. It is
not uncommon in these situations that they withhold final
payment to go through the audits to confirm that they are
allowable costs; that is standard procedure. Also, the fees in
this area are not big fees compared to what you get in the
private sector; that is my recollection, and I was a government
contracts attorney for close to 20 years before I came here. Is
that fair?
Secretary Brownlee. Sir, I think that is fair although you
have to understand also, when you are in a combat zone and the
contractor has to be indemnified and all those things,
sometimes the costs go higher than they would if you were just
on normal basis.
Chairman Tom Davis. Of course.
I would be happy to yield, Mr. Waxman.
Mr. Waxman. Thank you.
I thought what you pointed out in this questioning was
helpful to understand how it operates. The point I am trying to
make is, if you have one big contract without specified tasks,
sometimes you can't specify them but sometimes you can, there
is no real competition for the task. So you give a contract to
do north and south, and one competitive contractor will compete
for the monopoly. I would like to see, and I think OMB is
recommending this, if you can settle on some of the tasks and
have price competition for those tasks. That can help us hold
down the price on it rather than give a monopoly to Bechtel for
one purpose and a monopoly for Halliburton for the other or
divide the country north and south and let them compete for a
monopoly for the north.
Chairman Tom Davis. Let me recall my experience. I don't
know what the right vehicle is. I am not close enough to this,
and what Mr. Waxman says may in fact be true, but it may also
be true that we are dealing with a foreign country where people
there have their lives at risk and you are not going to have a
lot of companies move people over there on a contingency that
they might get something. In that case, by that doing large
contracts you have the infrastructure up and operating; it is
competitively bid originally but if you compete each task you
may not get the same kind of commitment and economies of scale
you could get. I don't know the answer, and I think what we are
saying is let us look at this very carefully because obviously
the more competition we get, the more we are able to involve
Iraqis in doing their own work. It is not only a nation
building exercise, it helps their economy as well. I think that
is the point. I don't know what the answer is. Obviously we
need to look at this in some detail.
Mr. Waxman. Just one last point because I think we all want
the same objective. My concern is Halliburton has a sole source
contract to deal with the oil industry and Bechtel has an
exclusive contract to deal with reconstruction. They are just
sitting there with monopolies. That isn't going to produce the
cost savings. We have to figure out some way, if you will
forgive me as a Democrat for lecturing the Republicans, on some
way to get competition and market force where it is possible.
There are times when it is not, that is why we have these
ongoing contracts. But right now we have put ourselves in a
position where we have an ongoing, contractual monopoly with
two major corporations. I don't think it is serving the
taxpayers' interest or the Iraqi reconstruction.
Chairman Tom Davis. Aren't there over a dozen contractors?
There are dozens of contractors over there in Iraq, am I right?
General Strock. There are, but in these particular sectors,
it is Bechtel on the infrastructure and Halliburton in KBR on
the oil. It is our job as the government agency with the
technical capacity to monitor how these funds are spentto not
simply turn the contractor loose with a bag of money. He has to
come in, we write the statements of work, we ensure that cost,
quality and schedule are met, and we demand that only the
necessary things are done. That is the responsibility of our
agency. So the competition occurs up front, ideally. Not so in
the case of the KBR contract, and I think there are good
reasons for not being competitive in that situation, but it is
our responsibility to make sure we get best value for the
taxpayers' dollar.
Chairman Tom Davis. Well, let us get to the nub of this
thing. There are some people who don't like the contractors you
chose because they have had affiliations with people in office.
A senior Senator's husband's company also received a large
contract for work over there, just to make this a bipartisan
bashing, if you will. We haven't been complaining about that.
Factually, we have people making these decisions that aren't in
the political loop at all. These are professional contracting
agents and procurement officials who are doing their job.
You need to understand that there is a lot of scrutiny on
this and there are political ramifications and there are
financial ramifications and I think we need to be aware of
that. So to the extent we can get competition, even on the
small tasks, to the extent we can involve Iraqis, we think that
is a good thing. Is that a fair statement?
General Strock. Absolutely.
Mr. Waxman. No, it is not a fair statement and I take some
exception to it because I thought it was rather personal. I
don't think you ought to question my motivation, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Tom Davis. I didn't.
Mr. Waxman. I am not questioning the contract to
Halliburton.
Chairman Tom Davis. You only mentioned it 20 times.
Mr. Waxman. Or the administration and Vice President
Cheney. I am questioning Halliburton's contract because it was
a sole source, no competition for it.
Chairman Tom Davis. That is not accurate.
Mr. Waxman. Just a minute.
Chairman Tom Davis. They won it. It is my time, Mr. Waxman
and they won this competitively in Bosnia, they beat out other
companies for this, you had an emergency situation and now it
is being competed again.
Mr. Waxman. No, they got a sole source contract to do the
work in Iraq.
Chairman Tom Davis. That was KBR.
Mr. Waxman. Mr. Chairman, may I make a sentence? I know it
is your time and your committee but when you say that I am
motivated because of people being close to the administration,
I want to make it clear that I am motivated because I think the
taxpayers are getting ripped off. If we have a contract where
there was no competition for it, on a cost plus basis, to a
company that has a record of over-charging the taxpayers of
this country. And I will be glad to put into the record of this
committee the background for that statement.
I would rather see, if we are going to have reconstruction
in Iraq, that we try to get competition and not close out the
Iraqi people, not close out other companies, from competing for
some of these tasks. I don't think my motivation ought to be
questioned. As I said, I think we all want the same goal. I am
afraid we are not achieving that goal. I have gone through
instances where I believe we are over-paying and these
contracts end up being goldplated.
I must say, General, the Army does not have a good record,
when you look at Halliburton's history of scrutinizing the
contracts where we have overpaid in the past. We want to work
with you to do better, but by its nature, I think we end up
hurting the taxpayers' best interest in some of these
contracts.
Chairman Tom Davis. Let me say this. I didn't pull this out
of the air. There have been numerous statements by my friend
and others in point of fact linking Halliburton to
administration officials in the same sentences, in the same
press releases, although maybe not today. Let us understand
that there are political ramifications and it is important that
they understand this, Mr. Waxman, because as they make
decisions at the administration level, they should be more
sensitive to those kinds of things and ask for more
competition. That is something we both agree on.
Mr. Waxman. That is one of the reasons why I thought this
administration would have been more sensitive, because of the
connection of the vice president, not to give Halliburton a
sole source contract, with no competition.
Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Waxman, reclaiming my time, the
fact of the matter is, that is not what happened. The fact of
the matter is, and let me just restate this because I think it
is important everyone understands it: Halliburton's role was
based on its Brown & Root subsidiary, and they won a
competitively awarded contract under the previous
administration in Bosnia called LOGCAP to provide a wide
variety of logistical services to DOD overseas. A task order
under that contracting vehicle was used to perform the
contingency planning for extinguishing oil fires and to assess
the damage to the oil fields. Through LOGCAP, Brown & Root
prepositioned people and equipment to be able to provide
emergency response relating to the Iraqi oil system as well as
other needs and services outlined under this contract. As we
have heard today, we are now going forward and are going to
recompete once we have this up and stabilized but there was
nothing there otherwise. We had to move in quickly.
Mr. Waxman, you have had your time.
Mr. Brownlee.
Secretary Brownlee. If I could quickly make three points,
sir. One, the LOGCAP contract was, as you stated, competed.
Two, there was a subsequent contract awarded to restore Iraqi
oil. That is being recompeted, as General Strock said, as we
speak.
Chairman Tom Davis. Correct.
Secretary Brownlee. The third point I would make is, what
normally drives us toward these different kinds of contracts is
the degrees of certainty and uncertainty and the degree of
urgency; sometimes that costs more.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
I think we have another panel waiting and we have a couple
of other questions. If we could be very quick, let us try to do
maybe a question and we will start on your side, Mr. Waxman.
Mr. Waxman. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
On another subject, Mr. Dibble, I recently received a
letter from the Department of State regarding Iraq that I found
confusing. I believe the subject is relevant to the work of
your bureau and I am hoping you may be able to provide some
clarity on the matter. The letter was dated September 25 in
response to a letter of July 21 I sent to the State Department
regarding its December 19, 2002 fact sheet entitled,
``Illustrative Examples of Omissions from the Iraqi Declaration
to the United States Security Council.'' This fact sheet listed
eight key areas where the Bush administration found fault with
Iraq's December 7, 2002 weapons declaration. Under the heading
``Nuclear Weapons,'' the fact sheet stated, ``The Declaration
ignores efforts to purchase uranium from Niger, why is the
Iraqi regime hiding their uranium procurement?''
Since the issuance of that fact sheet, it has become known
that by the time of the December 19 fact sheet itself,
intelligence analysts at the State Department's Bureau of
Intelligence and Research, and at the CIA, had already rejected
evidence that Iraq was attempting to procure uranium from
Niger. I asked the State Department to explain how this
statement could have ended up in the December 19 fact sheet and
who was responsible for creating the fact sheet. The State
Department responded to me that, ``The Public Affairs Bureau
prepared the fact sheet based on information obtained from
other bureaus of the State Department.'' The letter didn't
specify which bureaus provided the information.
My first question to you is about the creation of this
December 19 fact sheet. You are the Deputy Assistant Secretary
of State in the Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.
Did the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs participate in the
creation or review of the fact sheet?
Mr. Dibble. Mr. Waxman, I was not there but I will assert
for the record that I am sure we were, yes.
Mr. Waxman. What would have been the nature of the Bureau's
participation?
Mr. Dibble. I would assume it would have had some sort of
coordinating role.
Mr. Waxman. Would the Bureau have provided information or
recommendations regarding the language about Iraq seeking
uranium in Niger, and if so, could you describe the information
and recommendations?
Mr. Dibble. Probably not.
Mr. Waxman. Probably not. Why not?
Mr. Dibble. I don't know the source of the information, how
the information found its way into the report or the fact sheet
was sourced. I would expect, however, that it would have come
either from the intelligence community or from another bureau
in the State Department, for example, the Non-Proliferation
Bureau.
Mr. Waxman. Can you describe what else you know about who
would have participated in the creation of that December 19
fact sheet?
Mr. Dibble. I know very little. I would speculate that it
was a broad, department-wide effort, led perhaps by the Bureau
of Public Affairs but with input from many other bureaus in the
Department.
Mr. Waxman. The State Department's September 25, 2003
response also asserted that, ``Both the NSC staff and the CIA
were consulted on the fact sheet'' but we know from CIA
Director Tenet's statement that the CIA had discredited the
Niger evidence before the issuance of the December 19 fact
sheet. Further, according to a June 13, 2003 Washington Post
article, CIA officials denied a role in creating the fact
sheet, stating that the CIA raised an objection to the Niger
claim but it came too late to prevent its publication.
I am wondering, Mr. Dibble, whether you can shed any light
on this issue? Could you describe what you know about whether
the CIA was consulted about the fact sheet, when such
consultation occurred and the input the CIA provided with
respect to the Niger statement?
Mr. Dibble. Again, I cannot speak from personal knowledge,
so I cannot say when or exactly what input was provided. I can
only speculate on the basis of experience that when such
products are put together, the CIA and others who may have
relevant information are consulted.
Mr. Waxman. What is a mystery to me is that you said it
might have been the Bureau of Nuclear Non-Proliferation, which
would have been Secretary Bolton. They deny they had any role
in this. Then you indicated it might have been INR but you say
INR wouldn't have had anything to do with it. I am trying to
figure out who had something to do with this?
Mr. Dibble. It is a fair question. I can certainly take it
back. I am speculating myself at this point.
Mr. Waxman. Perhaps you could help us and get some answers
for the record from your colleagues at the State Department?
Mr. Dibble. Certainly.
Mr. Waxman. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Tom Davis. I think that is really outside your
scope.
Ms. Norton, you have been sitting there patiently. I think
we can wrap up with you and let the panel go.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am overdue to give a
presentation so I particularly appreciate your consideration.
I have two questions. One involved the dilemma I am sure
you face. Again this comes from reports that we don't want to
do policy with contracting with former members of the Ba'ath
Party. According to some reports in the press, some of the
Iraqis say they didn't know about that and when informed about
that, this is a quote and I wonder what is your reaction and
how you deal with the dilemma, ``I can't believe that. Saddam
was here for 35 years and to work you had to have contracts
with the government. It was a government-run country.
Otherwise, it was impossible, so why should we be punished.''
How do you deal with the fact that almost anybody who did
business had to do business with this government? That may have
meant like people who join the Communist Party, OK I have my
card and these may be among the most experienced contractors
and yet we don't want to have anything to do with real rogues
from the Ba'ath Party. What is your policy and how do you
ferret out that?
Chairman Tom Davis. That is a good question.
General Strock. It certainly is a dilemma and so many of
the Iraqi people were members of the Ba'ath Party, many for
simple survival as you pointed out, because you have access to
education and other benefits. The de-Ba'athification order that
Ambassador Bremer issued really looked at the upper levels of
the Ba'ath Party, those committed members of the Ba'ath Party
that competed for increased position in the Party. So we try to
make a distinction between those. The de-Ba'athification order
was very rigid in its application but it does leave room for
reconsideration of those people who can clearly demonstrate
they were members of the party strictly for convenience and for
survival. You will find that particularly true in the academic
world where you could not hold a professorship if you were not
a party member; it is a dilemma.
Ms. Norton. With contracting, could you have a contract
with the government without being a member of the Ba'ath Party?
General Strock. I don't know the answer to that.
Ms. Norton. That is what we need to find out. Mr.
Secretary, do you know that?
Secretary Brownlee. No, ma'am, I don't but it is a good
question and I will be happy to take it for the record.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much and I wish you would get
back to the chairman on that.
One more question. Again, there are reports that are coming
up that we know corruption is rampant, we have done lots in our
country because we have corruption here too. We have all kinds
of rules and regulations and disqualification if we find out
what you have been doing. Again, there are reports that
companies demand kickbacks. Here is a quote I would like
clarified, the claim that, ``when American companies hire Iraqi
firms as major contractors, the Iraqi companies then demand a
kickback called the `commission' from smaller firms in exchange
for a piece of the job.'' What do you know about commissions?
What can you tell us about commissions? It may have been the
practice for doing business before. Are commissions part of the
way in which Iraqi firms and subcontractors believe they have
to do business today and what are you doing about it if it is?
General Strock. Ma'am, I heard some peripheral discussions
about a process used under the Saddam regime of a 10-percent
commission that was paid to a government official for issuance
of a contract. That money sort of disappeared and went into
accounts. There is a name for it and I don't recall the name
but it was a common practice apparently under the old regime.
Ms. Norton. So what do you do about it now? Now you are
faced with a culture that said you had to pay a kickback called
a commission what does the Provisional Authority do about it,
what does the provisional government in place do about it? Is
it possible to issue regulations? How do you change the culture
if you just accept that was the way business was done under
Saddam?
General Strock. I think we don't work that way and we make
that clear to the Iraqis.
Ms. Norton. But these are subcontractors. You don't work
that way of course but we are saying, what are you doing about
the fact that it was a part of the culture to demand a
commission from a subcontractor? What are you doing about that
practice?
General Strock. As I said, I am not sure the practice
currently exists.
Ms. Norton. That is part of the problem.
Mr. Secretary, I can't expect the General to know
everything. This is a policy matter.
Secretary Brownlee. I understand.
Ms. Norton. Obviously you have a provisional government in
place that is trying to deal with these pre-Saddam or Saddam
practices. Very serious practice if we are allowing this to be
built into the way we do business too because we see no evil
and do no evil. What can you tell us you can do about the
apparent culture of kickbacks that was a part of the way
subcontractors had to do business with Iraqi contractors under
Saddam?
Secretary Brownlee. Well, I can tell you, as General Strock
was going to tell you, that is not a part of our process, and
if we were aware of it, then we would do what we could to
eliminate it. I will look into it. I was not aware of it. The
kind of kickbacks that you talk about would be considered a
crime in this country and I hope would be considered a crime in
their country under their new democracy.
Ms. Norton. Could I ask that you look into it.
Secretary Brownlee. I will. I would be happy to.
Ms. Norton. And two, because this is very difficult to deal
with. We find it difficult to deal with in this country and in
this country when we are giving contracts to other countries
who have such corrupt practices, it even gets worse, but this
is different. We are remaking this country, we are helping them
to do it the way we think it ought to be done, and the way I
think most of them would believe it ought to be done. I would
like to know from you what it is that you think you can do to
halt this practice, if you find there is such a practice. I
wish you would give that information to the Chair of the
committee.
Mr. Shays [presiding]. Did you want to make a response?
Secretary Brownlee. Just a quick point. We are in the
process now, as Mr. Korologos can tell you, of standing up a
government, standing up a legal system, standing up a justice
system, and what you are describing, as I indicated to you,
would be considered criminal in our country. It still happens
on occasion and we prosecute it. So we will do everything we
can to eliminate it from the system as we know it, as we are
administering it now and also insist that it be a part of their
legal system and they will have to deal with it also.
Ms. Norton. Thank you.
Secretary Brownlee. As far as we are doing now, I will do
what I can to look into it and see if that kind of practice is
existing now as it used to.
Mr. Shays. Mr. Frelinghuysen and then we will go to Mrs.
Maloney and close with me and get to the next panel.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good afternoon. I am Rodney Frelinghuysen. I sit on the
Defense Subcommittee on Appropriations and was part of a group
of 17 Members of Congress who recently returned from Iraq and
had, I think, a very positive experience.
Let me say, Mr. Chairman, I am most impressed by Ambassador
Bremer and his team working in some very difficult
circumstances. He has put together a first class team and they
are doing so much to support the Iraqi people to be free; they
are free but with 100,000 criminals let out by Saddam Hussein
just before he hid himself, those people as well as Ba'athists
and Saddam supporters and terrorists coming in over the border
from Syria, Iran and probably from Saudi Arabia, it is
remarkable what the Bremer team has done to establish security
and provide the Iraqi people with the means to develop
themselves into a first rate economic, freedom-loving
powerhouse in the Middle East.
Let me pay tribute. It is truly an inspiration to see, have
met and all politics is local with some of my New Jersey Army
men and women on the ground. It is a damned shame that a lot of
the good work they are doing there is not being reported. As it
was described to me, after the 1,000 embedded reporters left,
they sort of left the third string of the press corps there.
Most of those people file their report from the Al Rashid Hotel
and they are not reporting on what the Coalition and
Provisional Authority are doing and what a lot of brave Iraqi
leaders are doing, men and women, in provincial capitals and
cities throughout Iraq.
Yes, the Sunni Triangle is a dangerous place for any
soldier or civilian that is helping the country to operate, but
I was most impressed by General Odinero, who actually is a New
Jersey native, and he is on the ground leading in a major way
reconstructing the lives of the Iraqi people who have lived
under incredible oppression for 35 years.
It was said to me, and I think it is an interesting fact,
Mr. Chairman, that 70 percent of the population in Iraq today
has known no other leader than Saddam Hussein. So we have a
long way to go to tell them and show them the road to
democracy. With your permission, I would like to enter into the
record some more formal, perhaps less strong comments, but
certainly cogent comments, with your permission.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Rodney P. Frelinghuysen
follows:]
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Mr. Shays. We will note for the record that you said
different reporters are now there. We also thank the gentleman
for being here and thank him for going to Iraq.
At this time, the Chair will recognize Mrs. Maloney. She
has the floor for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Maloney. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I too had the opportunity to go to Iraq. Progress is being
made. There are still some security problems, challenges, but
as one New York soldier said to me, ``We are fighting for the
greatest gift of all, freedom,'' and I am hopeful we will be
able to achieve it.
I respectfully request that my five prior questions be
responded to in writing and I will get them to you this
afternoon. I would like to build on the questioning of others.
There has been a lot of talk about transparency and contracts.
I think certainly before we vote on the $87 billion, we should
have that transparency, not only in rhetoric but in the reality
of numbers and information.
I was impressed in Iraq how the generals in great detail
could show you how they are spending their money, what they are
doing and where they are going. Yet, when we ask for
information on taxpayer dollars going there, we are not getting
the answers. I think Members of Congress should be able to get
detailed information on the process by which contracts are
being awarded, the scope of specific contract terms, the
details of task orders, and the payments being made to prime
contractors. They have said in the press, they have said in
this panel they are not getting that information. That is not
fair to the people they represent, that they face a vote on $87
billion without having received that information.
Likewise, I would like to request an accounting of all the
confiscated money that our people retrieved from Saddam
Hussein. I truly believe it would be a positive story if other
generals are following the Petraeus model of creatively hiring
Iraqi people to rebuild their own country. I request that. I
have asked for it several times. Again, we should have that
information before we face a vote.
Again, I am concerned about how decisions are made in the
supplemental budget request. I have a document from the CPA or
the Army Corps of Engineers and the Iraqi Oil Ministry that
says it would take $1.1 billion to restore oil to the pre-war
levels of 3 million barrels a day; the supplemental asks for
twice that, and when you combine it with what we have already
spent, then it is three times what the Army Corps of Engineers
in their plan, the agency that was tasked to come forward with
what it would cost and I am concerned about this. How did you
come up with your numbers? If you are not even listening to the
agency tasked to come up with the numbers, then I am concerned.
I know General Strock that you are with the Army Corps of
Engineers and possibly you were consulted but as I said, my
staff met earlier with the Central Army Corps of Engineers here
in Washington and they said they were never consulted or talked
to. Why is the number now three times what they projected?
General Strock. I could perhaps quickly respond and will
provide a more thorough response in writing.
A big part of the additional supplemental was $900 million
for the import of fuels that we did not anticipate we would
need but we have not been able to get the refinery system to
provide those fuels for the internal consumption in Iraq. That
is a big portion of that.
The other part, about $575 million of the supplemental, is
for requirements outside of the Corps of Engineers and Ministry
of Oil work plan that was submitted in July. So those are
longer range and yet very important elements. It is the
development of the oil fields you mentioned and it is also
building the new refinery, things we know we need to get
started on now to put the infrastructure in a position where it
can truly support the needs of the nation.
The rest, about $500 million of the supplemental, really
has to deal with elements of the work plan that require more
investment. Much of that has to do with security, the creation
of rapid response teams to go in once the infrastructure is hit
to reduce the impact of the sabotage by rapidly returning it to
service.
I think there is a fairly detailed accounting of that in
the CPA request that shows those elements which do aggregate to
a good sum of money but there is a good reason for each of
those. In fact, we were consulted throughout the development of
this budget request.
Mrs. Maloney. The Army Corps of Engineers Central said they
were not. As I said, there were several items that appeared not
to be involved in reconstruction. I mentioned them earlier, I
will place them in writing.
My final question is, will we get transparency before the
vote? Will we get an accounting of the contracts? Senators and
members of this panel and others have said they request the
information and it is not given to them. I feel transparency
means facts and figures and documents, not a statement, we are
transparent.
You have a tremendous challenge ahead of you. I would say
peace in the whole region if we are successful in bringing a
democracy there, but it has to be well-managed or you don't
have the faith of the American people and you don't have the
faith of the Iraqi people. It begins with documentation and
management and so far we haven't gotten that.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentlelady.
I am going to recognize myself and then we will let this
panel get on its way.
First, I want to say that I think you realize we could
almost just ask one of you the questions. We have such a fine
group of individuals that I apologize if we haven't utilized
all your expertise. I think, Mr. Kerik, I could spend a day
trying to understand what you encountered. I would like to have
you give me a perspective because I believe you found yourself
interacting with a lot of Iraqis. I want to know if you feel
the comment made to me way back in April by Mohammed Abdul
Hassan Inemkassa was still a problem today and that was, ``you
don't know us and we don't know you.''
One, do you think they are getting to know us? Do you think
they are getting to know us in a right way, the Iraqis? Two,
are we getting to know them? Is there interaction or are we
finding ourselves in the palaces having to do our work not able
to interact in a way that would be helpful? Maybe you could
respond to that?
Mr. Kerik. I can speak from the perspective of dealing with
the police, dealing with customs and borders and a lot dealing
in the local communities in and throughout Baghdad. I travel
throughout Baghdad on a daily basis and when you listen to the
press and they talk about lawlessness and looting and chaos in
the streets, I am proud to say from my last probably 30 days, I
just about ate dinner out every night in Baghdad at a
restaurant or a hotel. The shops are open, the markets are open
and it is not really what I have read about and what I have
seen since I have been back.
Do we know them and do they know us? We are getting to know
them better, they are getting to know us much better. In
dealing with the police, I think initially they were skeptical.
I think history between us, they thought initially we were
going to come in and would leave. I think as time has gone on,
they have begun to trust us, they have learned to trust us and
I have seen that with the police but I have also seen it a lot
with the Iraqi people.
That has helped us when it comes to information to fight
the fedayeen and the Ba'ath Party. Initially, no one would come
forward with information concerning terrorism, concerning
attacks, concerning weapons. As time has gone on and we saw a
major surge in information flow after the two sons of Saddam
were killed. For every day that Saddam doesn't pop his head out
of the ground and take over the country, that information flow
is growing and is growing by the people in Iraq and it is
growing internally in the police.
The police today overwhelmingly want to bring back a new
country. They are working extremely hard. The police in Baghdad
are working on retraining their own people. They are extremely
happy with their new equipment, with their new weapons. As you
know, we had a difficult time initially getting uniforms,
getting weapons. When we talk about contracts and contractors,
we used as many Iraqis as possible but initially, we just
couldn't get a lot of this stuff in Iraq with the local
vendors, so we had to go where we had to go to get it done and
get it done quick. It is moving along and it is moving along
much better at a much faster rate than anyone would have
imagined. As I said earlier, think this way; in 4 months we
went from zero precincts or zero stations in Baghdad to 35.
There is no way you could have done that anywhere in this
entire country in 4 months. It just couldn't happen. We stood
up 35 police stations, 400 cars, 3,000 radios and I can go on
and on but that is a result of this relationship.
I will share with you one last thing. It is rather
frustrating to sit here and listen to a lot of the criticism
based on press and media reports. I will share with you a
comment that was made to me by the Senior Deputy Minister of
Interior just a few days ago. I told him I was going to see the
President on Friday and he said, ``please tell the President to
stop the complaining. The people in the United States have to
stop complaining, the politicians have to stop complaining. You
are making friends of our enemies.'' I said, ``what do you mean
by that? He said, ``the fedayeen and the Ba'athists, today they
can watch television, they have satellite dishes, they can see
things today they have never seen before. They see that
criticism, they hear it. In their minds, they are winning. In
their minds, them attacking our people, them attacking the
police, them attacking the Coalition, they are winning, they
are doing a good job. That criticism is hurting us.''
Mr. Shays. I just want to say you said they are winning,
that is what they think.
Mr. Kerik. That is what they think.
Mr. Shays. Based on what they see?
Mr. Kerik. Based on what they see and I think it is hurting
us.
Mr. Shays. I would like to ask you, General, if you feel
that our troops are getting the opportunity to interact with
Iraqis or are they having to be very distant? I want to also
ask you, I had so many Iraqis tell me that they did not like
seeing Americans killed and it hurt them, but they said, why
can't we stand guard over a hospital? Why does it have to be an
American? What skill would prevent them from having that
opportunity? If you could speak to both issues, the interaction
of our troops and the guarding of places like hospitals.
General Strock. Sir, perhaps the Secretary could talk more
about the interaction of troops. Most of my attention was as a
member of CPA and I was not out on the streets with the troops
a lot but as I did have occasion, I thought it was a developing
relationship and one that I think our troops are forming a bond
with the Iraqi people. They know why they are there and they
are serving the Iraqi people just like they are serving our
people.
We are in fact trying to transfer the responsibility for
security of places like hospitals to the Iraqis by facility
protection services by the police forces. That is an ongoing
effort of ours to relieve our troops from that responsibility.
That is very much happening.
Mr. Secretary, perhaps you would like to comment?
Secretary Brownlee. My experience is based on my visits
there on two occasions and talking to all the soldiers I could
and their commanders. Some of the frustrations they mention are
that they do have contact with the Iraqi people and there may
be an incident and they are out there with the Iraqi people and
there may be 35 or 40 Iraqis coming to try to help them and
pointing out areas where something might have happened or might
happen but the press reports will go find one disgruntled Iraqi
and that turns out to be the story. Our soldiers are even
frustrated by that. They do have contact with them, they are
out in the streets on a daily basis running patrols and doing
the security things they do. Hopefully it will continue to grow
and get even better.
Mr. Shays. Before we end this panel, is there any comment
any of you wants to put on the record before we get to our next
panel? May I say parenthetically, the chairman of this
committee is on the floor of the House now and wanted me to let
you know that is why he is not here right now.
Secretary Brownlee. You talked about turning things over to
the Iraqis and of course all of our division commanders are
busy and I think all of us see that as a way to replace troop
strength there is to replace it with Iraqis.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
I would conclude by saying to you that I have known
Ambassador Bremer the entire time I have been in Congress and I
am very proud of the work that he and his people are doing,
very proud of what our military is doing and very grateful,
Tom, that you are there to help. He is blessed to have you help
him. You have a difficult job, we thank you. I am absolutely
certain that Republicans and Democrats alike share that sense
of gratitude to all of you. Thank you.
We are going to get to our next panel. We have Mr. Alaa H.
Haidari, an Iraqi-American from the chairman's district; Dr.
Lamya Alarif, an Iraqi-American from the chairman's district as
well; and Ms. Beate Sirota Gordon from the great district in
Manhattan of Congresswoman Maloney; she is our Constitutional
scholar.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Shays. It is an honor to have you here. I have been
looking forward to this panel and we will start with Mr. Alaa
Haidari. You will start with your testimony, sir.
STATEMENTS OF ALAA H. HAIDARI, IRAQI-AMERICAN; BEATE SIROTA
GORDON, CONSTITUTIONAL SCHOLAR; AND LAMYA ALARIF, IRAQI-
AMERICAN
Mr. Haidari. I would like to thank all of you for giving me
the opportunity to speak to you about the situation in Iraq.
First of all, I would like to say that ridding Iraq of Saddam
Hussein and his regime was the best thing the United States
could do for the Iraqi people, regardless of any controversies
about how Saddam was removed from power. Second, this
administration is putting forth a tremendous effort in
rebuilding Iraq and establishing a normal life for the Iraqi
people. In spite of this huge effort, we still have a difficult
road ahead of us because we don't have a clear and
comprehensive plan. Allow me to put out a few issues which will
help us and can be accomplished in a 6-month period.
First, the current governing council does not reflect the
Iraqi population. Also, it does not have a representative for
many Iraqi provinces which have more than 1 million people in
each of them. So, we need to revise and enhance this current
council structure.
The second issue is the disbanding of the Iraqi Army. We
must accept the fact that disbanding the Iraqi Army and police
forces was a huge mistake. Police forces played a vital part in
keeping law and order. Most of the soldiers and policemen were
against Saddam Hussein. Bringing them back will allow the U.S.
military to move the bases outside of the cities and this will
keep U.S. soldiers out of harm's way.
The third issue is the economic situation. The Iraqi
economic situation today is horrendous. Power, drinking water,
health care, education and infrastructure, almost everything
has been destroyed and there are millions of unemployed Iraqis.
Reconstruction and economic revival must be top priorities. I
think it is necessary for the United States to initiate a
Marshall Plan-style program with funds of $100 billion over the
next 4 years. Much of this money should be financed by
neighboring oil producer states such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait,
Qatar, and the Emirates. I am surprised that this has not
happened yet. Also, we must encourage investment by American
business with cooperation with OPEC and the Import/Export Bank.
The fourth issue is ministry employees. Qualified Iraqi
people are capable of managing their own affairs and we should
let them do so. They are more knowledgeable than anyone else in
the affairs of their own country. Ex-employees of Iraqi
ministries should definitely be rehired and the U.S.
administration can oversee their work.
The fifth issue is the local governments. Each of the 18
provinces must choose a Governor and a governing council. This
will build confidence and a better relationship between the
U.S. administration and different groups in Iraq. It will also
relieve some of the burden of the U.S. administration in
Baghdad.
In summary, there are five things that must be done in
Iraq. One, revise and enhance the Governing Council; two,
rehire the Iraqi soldiers and policemen who were not a part of
the Saddam regime; three, bring back Iraqi employees of the
ministries except those who were loyal to Saddam Hussein; four,
organize the administration of all 18 Iraqi provinces; and
fifth, revive the Iraqi economy with a Marshall-style plan by
using money from neighboring oil producing states for Iraq.
These countries have the money and it is for their well being
and for the stability of the region. Thank you very much for
the time. I would be happy to answer any of your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Haidari follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Thank you very much.
Our next witness will be introduced by her Representative.
Mrs. Maloney. Thank you so much and I want to thank
Chairman Davis and you, Acting Chairman Shays, for including in
our panel one of the most extraordinary women I would say in
the world although she is often non-recognized, Beate Gordon.
Her story is groundbreaking and important because she single-
handedly created civil rights for Japanese women. I hope we
will be able to create civil rights for the Iraqi women and the
Afghani women.
She was born in Vienna, grew up in Tokyo and became fluent
in the Japanese language. Just before World War II she came to
America to attend Mills College. Because of her fluency in
Japanese, she was hired by the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence
Service during the war to listen to and interpret radio
broadcasts from Japan. At that time, she was 1 of 66 Caucasians
who could speak Japanese. This is a thing you raised, Mr.
Chairman, many times in Iraq that we need more people who speak
Arabic, not only here in the United States but in Iraq working
with the Iraqi people and with our people there. She became the
American counterpart to the notorious Tokyo Rose, writing radio
scripts each day.
Following the war she returned to Japan and worked for the
Supreme Commander, General MacArthur. She became one of the
drafters of the 1947 Japanese Constitution, the only woman at
the table, and she wrote a book about her experiences. She was
assigned to draft the section of the constitution relating to
women's rights. At the time, Japanese women had no say in
marriage, divorce, education, property, or inheritance rights.
The provisions she drafted gave Japanese women fundamental
constitutional rights that literally changed their lives and
the society. She ultimately worked for the Japan Society and
the Asian Society in New York and I believe in her presence
today she will have very important insights because of her
experience in Japan. She originally drafted 25 provisions
guaranteeing civil and social welfare rights for women. Only
one of these provisions made it into the constitution. She was
told the rest would be adopted by the government, the
bureaucrats. Fifty years later, not one of her other provisions
made it into law. Her experience shows that if women's rights
are not expressly spelled out in the constitution now, the
civil authority in Iraq cannot be counted on to adopt these
rights later in legislation.
I thank her for the role she played in guaranteeing rights
for women in Japan and I earnestly hope that the drafters will
be as successful as she was as they draft the new constitution
for human rights for all people in Iraq. Thank you for your
life service, Ms. Gordon.
Mr. Shays. That was a lovely introduction. My only regret
is that the chairman is not here to introduce our other two
witnesses. It is wonderful to have you here. You have the
floor.
Ms. Gordon. Thank you so much, Representative Maloney, for
your wonderful words. I am honored to have been invited by you
to talk about my work as a drafter of the women's rights of the
Japanese Constitution, and how that might apply to Iraq. In the
last 4 years, I have testified about these rights in both
Houses of the Japanese Diet.
Since Japanese women had no rights at all under the
constitution before World War II, I drafted 25 separate
provisions. Only one survived, as Representative Maloney said,
and I will read that to you now. ``Marriage shall be based only
on the mutual consent of both sexes and it shall be maintained
through mutual cooperation with equal rights of husband and
wife as a basis. With regard to choice of spouse, property
rights, inheritance, choice of domicile, divorce, and other
matters pertaining to marriage and the family, laws shall be
created from the standpoint of individual dignity and the
essential equality of the sexes.'' I also collaborated on
Article XIV which in part reads, ``All the people are equal
under the law and there shall be no discrimination in
political, economic or social relations because of race, creed,
sex, social status or family origin.''
In 1946, I was working for the Government Section of
General Headquarters in Tokyo. On February 4, 1946, General
Whitney, called in about 20 of his staff members for a top
secret meeting. He said, ``You are now a constitutional
assembly and by order of General MacArthur you will draft the
new constitution of Japan.'' He also said the task had to be
accomplished in 7 days.
I was in the Political Affairs Division which was ordered
to write the chapter on civil rights. My division chief
assigned the article of Women's Rights to me because I was a
woman. I immediately researched many of the world's then
existing constitutions and compiled detailed women's rights
articles including specific social welfare rights for women and
children. When I presented my draft to the Chief of the
Steering Committee, Colonel Kades, he said, ``Beate, you have
given the women more rights than are in the U.S.
Constitution.'' I replied, ``That is not difficult since the
U.S. Constitution does not even mention the word woman.''
Eventually, the social welfare rights in my draft were
eliminated because the Steering Committee felt they were not
appropriate for a constitution but belonged in the civil code.
I argued that the Japanese bureaucrats would never write such
laws into the civil code. Colonel Kades said, ``Don't worry, we
will be here for a long time and we will see to it that they
get in.'' Unfortunately, this did not turn out to be so. Fifty-
six years after the constitution was promulgated, social
welfare rights for women have not entered the Japanese civil
code.
When I lecture in Japan, I am always told, ``If only your
social welfare rights had been in the constitution, how much
struggling we would have avoided.'' It took 1\1/2\ years
between the drafting of the constitution and its adoption. Now,
Japanese women are exercising the constitutional rights they
received as a result of American participation in preparing the
post-war constitution. Japanese women participate in central
and local governments, as legislative representatives, mayors
and Governors. Women have held positions as Speaker of the
House, chairman of a political party and Supreme Court justice.
Women are also prominent in the media as reporters, talk show
hosts, documentary filmmakers and editors. Women practice law.
One woman is even the CEO of the largest publishing firm in
Japan. The one field where Japanese women have not made enough
progress is in the corporate world but they are trying very
hard.
Although conditions in Iraq are quite different from the
conditions in Japan in 1946, certain lessons can be learned.
Women who have been suppressed all over the world for many
centuries must be made equal with men in any real democracy.
Women everywhere are peace loving, interested in social issues,
in education for their children and in living a useful life.
Women all over the world are demanding equality. I think that
Japanese women who have gone through the miseries of war, the
deprivation of housing and food, the reconstruction of
devastated cities and the institution of a new constitution are
in a unique position to serve as models and advisors to the
women in Iraq. I am sure they will urge the women of Iraq to
make sure their new constitution includes not only fundamental
rights but also social welfare rights. May the United States
help them in this noble cause as it did so successfully in
Japan.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Gordon follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Thank you very much, Ms. Gordon. As I look at
you, I think you must be an imposter to tell me that somehow
you were involved in legislation in the 1940's.
Dr. Alarif.
Ms. Alarif. Thank you. I will read my summary in the
interest of brevity.
I wish to thank the office of Congressman Davis for giving
me the opportunity to appear before this distinguished
committee to share some observations and reflections on the
events of post-war Iraq from the perspective of an American who
was born in Iraq. The mere fact that I am appearing before you
in this public forum is a sign of significant accomplishment
directly resulting from the fall of Saddam Hussein. Prior to
this time, I would have had serious concerns for the safety of
my family had I taken such a public position on any matter
relating to Iraq.
Many questions were posed by Congressman Maloney and by
Congressman Shays on some things that are happening in Iraq. I
hope some of them might be answered during my testimony. I hope
you will forgive me for diverting the conversation into a
little bit more of a historical perspective of the social and
forces that have shaped the political destiny of Iraq and they
continue to do so. These are contradictory, religious, ethnic
and social factors which can be grouped into four groups.
One we are all very familiar with, the religious and ethnic
diversities. The second is the traditional tribal conservative
value system. This has played and continues to play a very
divisive influence on Iraqi politics. The third is the ever
growing middle class which was the unifying factor among all
these political factions and finally, there is the working
classes. A combination of the various wars that were initiated
by Saddam and the crippling effects of the embargo effectively
gave Saddam Hussein a free hand in eliminating any and all
opposition to his party and his politics. Therefore, the Iraqi
people could not overthrow him and needed the help of outside
power like the United States and its allies.
My humble observations as to the situation in Iraq in
winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people are as
follows. I agree with my esteemed colleague and several of the
members of the administration that the reconstitution of the
Iraqi army should reduce the need for more American troops. The
use of a reconstituted Iraqi military can serve multiple
purposes. One is to relieve the CPA troops from various
security details; two is to have additional military support
without having to ask other countries for it; three is to put
an Iraqi face on the various operations among the civilian
population; and fourth is to provide some gainful employment
for those soldiers who have been laid off. I would say it would
be anyone below the rank of major, a lower ranking officer.
We are talking about winning the hearts and minds. Wherever
possible, alternative methods should be sought to reduce the
direct contact between the Coalition military forces and the
Iraqi civilian population. Since this is a long term
association, it is better to set a pattern of peaceful
coexistence such as removing some of the intimidating hardware,
and that can happen over time, slowly, so as to restore normal
civilian life.
In traditional tribal areas, much of the violence, I feel,
is caused by cultural misunderstanding of the conservative
norms. I would put a special effort into friendly persuasion
and cultural understanding and dialog.
The final point of my presentation touches upon what my
colleague said earlier and that is, there has been an undue
emphasis on quotas and ethnic and sectarian differences in
Iraq. We all know that Saddam used those differences
effectively. Therefore, we should try to avoid that. Most Iraqi
families I wish to emphasize are ethnically and religiously
mixed. There are millions of Sunnis who have never supported
Saddam; they are the silent majority. I don't like to mention
Mr. Hussein's name too much but he feared the Sunni leaders
because they posed the most direct threat to his rule. Other
than his immediate tribe, 90 percent I would say of the Sunnis
were oppressed like every other sector in that country. They
did not support his regime. This group included or happened to
include the middle class technocrats, the bureaucrats and those
who have been the engine driving the country for years.
Therefore, we need to be more inclusive of that group and open
dialog with them.
At this juncture, I will add a few factors that might shed
some light on your questions, Congresswoman Maloney. A law was
promulgated and established in 1959 after the first Iraqi
Republic giving women equal rights, social and political rights
with men. That law was promptly abolished by the Ba'athist
regime. During that period, women enjoyed equal inheritance,
rights in divorce and so forth. That law was enjoyed for 3\1/2\
years. After the Ba'athist regime, it was abolished. You can
imagine what an uproar that created among the religious clerics
but this was a secular government, the first Iraqi Republic.
There was an unsuccessful attempt by the first Iraqi
Republic to establish democracy, so a constitution, a secular
permanent constitution was written. It took a year to write it,
by the minds of the Justice Department at that time. It was
finished after about a year by 1963 but unfortunately was
abolished and not adopted when the Ba'athist coup came, so that
was out too. Also just something everyone should know or
perhaps you are aware that Iraqis have always had free access
to education, medical care and have no income tax, although all
of them do pay social security.
In conclusion, I have tried to condense a lot of
information with a historical perspective. However, I have
provided a bit more detail in my written testimony. I believe
that Iraq has a good chance of being helped through its
rebuilding process. I am optimistic for the future because all
the ingredients are now in place for success.
Thank you for your time.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Alarif follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. Thank you all.
I apologize for missing the first three speakers, I was on
the floor managing a bill that came out of the committee--the
chairman had to do that.
I am going to start the questioning with Ms. Blackburn.
Thank you very much.
Ms. Blackburn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to say thank
you to each of you for taking your time to come and to talk
with us and be before us today, looking at Iraq and the
reconstruction efforts and your moving forward and having a
healthy, productive, viable country is so very, very important
to us.
Dr. Alarif, I enjoyed your comments very much and
appreciate those. I have a constituent who is an Iraqi-American
physician and he is currently back in Iraq and working with the
Coalition partners in rebuilding the medical training
facilities and the programs that will train nurses and doctors.
Some of the correspondence that I have had with him is that if
anyone doubts that we have made an impression, they need to be
here. If anyone doubts that Saddam Hussein had or used or
exposed his people to chemical weapons, they need to be here
and see some of the children that are suffering from leukemia
and other diseases. I think he holds the position that many of
us do that Saddam Hussein himself may have been the biggest
weapon of mass destruction. I would like you to talk just
another brief moment if you will about the medical care
delivery systems and how quickly you see all of that coming
back up to what you would consider to be par.
Ms. Alarif. Please forgive me if I keep looking at the
historical perspective because I think there was much achieved
in Iraq in the 1960's in the pre-Saddam era. Therefore, I don't
know how bad it is right now but I can tell you how good it was
before. Iraq was considered the most advanced Middle Eastern
country in terms of medical care. It had the best medical
schools, had the best doctors, had enough doctors and Ph.D.s
per capita than some of the western countries who had more per
capita. Of course all of that I imagine, thank God I had not
seen the mess he had created. So I think the basis is there.
The Iraqi people are highly sophisticated and educated. I just
don't see those ones on the street. I just see some young
rabble rousers but most of the Iraqi people are easier to work
with than any other country in the Middle East. You have an
excellent cadre of people, of scientists, of medical
professionals but they just haven't had the support they should
have had from Saddam.
As far as the leukemia, I have heard that. I have not seen
it but I have heard that from our relatives and it is
frightening. I don't know what he was doing there. Nobody knows
what he was doing there and what he did to the population but
we do know there is an increased frequency of susceptibility to
leukemia and other malignancies that were not there, especially
among children.
Ms. Blackburn. Thank you.
I certainly appreciated the work this constituent has
relayed he is doing. As I said, he is Iraqi by birth, an Iraqi-
trained physician, left there in 1991, came to the United
States, received his citizenship, has worked and lived in my
district, has a wonderful family and now he is back there to
help his people and to share the excitement that I know all of
you share and have with the opportunities for freedom.
That leads to my next question. Ms. Gordon, I have been so
intrigued with what I see as a fabulous opportunity for the
Iraqi people as they move forward with writing their
constitution. I appreciated your comments on that. To me it is
a little bit miraculous to look at the fact that we are 160
days into this process and it seems they are moving forward
really rather quickly, with a governing council in place, with
the 25 heads of different ministries in place. I would like to
see if you could speak for just a moment as to what you think
the timeframe will be for completing a constitution and then
moving that to ratification by the people and moving from that
to election of their officers. Do you think we are looking at a
5-year period, a 3-year period or what would be your thoughts
on that?
Ms. Gordon. In Japan, it took a year and a half from the
beginning to the end but I think it was a much easier task. I
have a feeling that in Iraq it will probably take longer.
Ms. Blackburn. Dr. Alarif, do you have some comment you
would like to share with me?
Ms. Alarif. I agree with her in the fact that, academically
speaking, that is appropriate. But in reality, as I said, we
have had maybe two constitutions. One was the monarchy
constitution and then it was redone as I said earlier by the
first Iraqi Republic, and this was done by professionals, the
Justice Department, Court of Appeals, all the judges. This was
a functioning government with highly educated people. They
wrote a secular constitution that could serve as a base for
perhaps the new constitution. I don't know where that
constitution is, I am sure there are some copies somewhere that
the Ba'athists have hidden in Iraq, but that addressed a lot of
the questions at that time. It could be updated to the present
because it was highly secular and it was opposed by the clerics
and the religious groups, so it must have contained something
quite good for women.
Ms. Blackburn. Thank you, Dr. Alarif.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mrs. Maloney.
Mrs. Maloney. Thank you so much and I thank all of the
panelists. I want to publicly thank you, Mr. Chairman, for
including Ms. Beate Gordon at my request to testify. She has
brought important insights. Dr. Alarif, your historical
perspective is tremendously helpful and I would really like to
organize a meeting with the Women's Caucus for you to come and
share your insights. I think it would really be very, very
important.
I can't underscore, particularly after reading Ms. Gordon's
book, how important it is to get these rights in the
constitution because even in America you can't get rights into
the Constitution; it is very hard. The document is tremendously
important and I was very concerned about a news report, and I
am going to find that article and send it to you, about a
Gallup poll that was taken in Iraq which I found disturbing. It
said that the Iraqis didn't want the women to have as much
freedom as they had under Saddam Hussein. I found that hard to
believe but I am very concerned about the constitution because
it would be a tremendous travesty if the women do not, at the
very least, hold on to the rights they had in the constitutions
that were written in 1963 and whatever you said, 1958. When I
was there, I met many educated doctors, teachers--women--who
were very involved in rebuilding their country and actually
very much a part of the fabric of it.
I just want to know, do you think there will be difficulty
in drafting the constitution? I understand there will be a
number of women on the constitutional committee, getting these
rights in the constitution--the right to vote, the right for
medical care, the right for education, the rights that Ms.
Gordon outlined in her testimony? Do you think there will be
any problem?
Ms. Alarif. It is a little different. We are addressing two
different things. I will explain myself in 1 second very
briefly. In Iraq, in that culture, especially in Iraq, women
have always had rights guaranteed under whatever things but
they were not all specifically equal. They had the right of
inheritance. A woman my age--I am not young, but my mother is
in her late 80's and was a teacher--her classmates were
doctors, judges. Show me what country that at 85, has these
people. So they had that right but they did not have social
rights such as the divorce. These have to do with religious
sharia--divorce, inheritance, we have one for women, two for
men, it is guaranteed. You get an inheritance but it is not
equal. Therefore, I see only a problem if the religious clerics
start objecting to the fact that this is against this and so
forth. It has to be a completely secular, social welfare for
women.
As far as rights are concerned, I am appalled to be honest
with you as to the condition of women under his regime. I don't
want to mention his name continuously, under the old regime of
Saddam Hussein versus the first Iraqi Republic, even the second
Iraqi Republic. By the way, we are going to be on the fifth
Iraqi Republic now. In the 1960's and 1970's, women had a lot
more rights and even in the 1950's, we began to have these
rights only to be reversed by Saddam by adopting this so-called
phoney religious overtone which he never believed in anyway but
it served its political purpose. So he abolished that.
Mrs. Maloney. I have a few seconds left. In this book by
John Dower, ``Embracing Defeat,'' which really goes through the
Japanese experience in writing their constitution and building
their country, Ms. Gordon you are treated very positively in
this book with your role in the constitution. They talk about a
peace clause that they placed in the constitution and this was
about the defense of the country. I would like Ms. Gordon to
respond to it and also Dr. Alarif, you were saying we need to
employ and build the army, you said to protect the people, to
protect the streets and so forth. In our structure, that would
be the police. The police protect the government building, the
police protect the people. Why would you want the army instead
of the police to have this function because the army sometimes
has a vision of invading others or whatever. Ms. Gordon, could
you briefly talk about the peace clause and its importance?
Ms. Gordon. It is a very short paragraph in chapter two of
the constitution of Japan. It is called ``Renunciation of
War'': ``Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on
justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as
a sovereign right of the Nation and the threat or use of force
as means of settling international disputes. In order to
accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea and
air forces as well as other war potential will never be
maintained. The right of the belligerence of the state will not
be recognized.''
It is true that the Japanese have built a defense force
because it doesn't say here that you can't defend yourself. It
doesn't specifically say you can defend yourself but it doesn't
say that you can't. So they have built a defense force.
However, in these 56 years since the constitution has been
active, no Japanese soldier has been sent outside of Japan, no
Japanese soldier has killed another soldier, neither has any
Japanese soldier been killed. Not many countries can say that.
Costa Rica also has a constitution in which an army is not
permitted. They don't have an aggressive army. They also don't
have a defensive army. I think that is one of the great things
about this constitution, that it leads to peace if other
countries in the world would also have such clauses that are
against war. The interesting thing is that it was the women in
Japan who mostly supported this clause of peace and they have
kept on being behind it even though the government right now is
trying to change the constitution, especially this Article IX.
They want to participate in peacekeeping forces for the U.N.
and they want to be ``a normal nation.'' It is very sad to
think that the ability to make war is normal. I don't know what
will happen but in the meantime, I think 65 percent of the
women have come out against any amendments to the constitution,
especially not to the renunciation of war. I think very few
people know about this. I am so glad Representative Maloney
asked about it because very few people in general in the United
States know about this clause. I think it is something to think
about.
Ms. Alarif. Do you want me to address your question?
Chairman Tom Davis. Sure, go ahead.
Ms. Alarif. The reason I have given in my written testimony
a brief history of the Iraqi Army is it never belonged to
Saddam. He did not organize the Iraqi Army. The Iraqi Army was
organized in 1921 by a British mandate. It became the most
highly respected and educated group of people that came in
there; its history is very rich. I don't know what Saddam did
to the army but I don't think most of them, the rank and file,
were loyal to him.
Mrs. Maloney. My specific question was why the army and not
the police force for protection of people which in our
structure. As you know, the police protect our people, protect
our buildings. The army is the army.
Ms. Alarif. Well, because of the historical role that the
army played versus the police. Police in Iraq--psychologically,
the Iraqis don't like their police because they were always
used as spies, as intelligence agents and it is a psychological
turnoff. So when they see a policeman, there is no respect. But
the army has always been on the side of the people, so they
always liked to see an army man. They trust them more.
Mrs. Maloney. Thank you.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Haidari, can you tell us how we can get the Shias to
help us with the old Ba'athist regime, turning in these people
and breaking their underground network?
Mr. Haidari. I think to fix the situation in Iraq we need
to talk about Iraqi total people, not one group. If we talk
about one group, that will be very dangerous for us in the
future in Iraq. As I see it, the Governing Council, we need to
extend it to enhance it, put people who have mandates from
their groups to make a big influence. I will give you a simple
example. In the Sunni Triangle, we have five new members in the
Iraqi Sunni, a five-member Sunni in the Iraq Council. Where is
there a role in the Sunni Triangle? There is no role. We didn't
find it. How to convince the area. I can't see anything. You
can't see anything. We need people who make influence in their
roles not only Shiite or only Sunni, no, that is not enough. We
have five Sunni now in the Council. There is no influence in
the Sunni area. We have 13 Shiite, some of them have some
influence but also there are a lot of Shiite who have good
influence outside the Council. These people are not against the
United States. The people who are not in that Council, are not
against the United States but we need to open nice dialog with
them.
About the Army, Shiite and Kurd in general against the army
because they believed Army is Sunni organization. From 1921
until 1963, you can't find high rank in the Iraqi Army from
Kurd, from Iraqi Turk, from Arabic Sunni but it is very, very
few people Shiite with high rank. From 1963 until 2003, the
most of the high ranks in the Iraqi military, the Iraqi Army
are Arabic Sunni. So now when we want to rebuild the Iraqi Army
to help United States, we need at last 300,000 Iraqi soldiers,
soldiers, all of them, against Saddam Hussein. I will not say
most, I say all of them. That means it is not right to disband
the army, all the soldiers against Saddam Hussein. High ranks
avoided them but lower ranks keep them to help us. In Iraq
there was school and high school, high college for officers and
high officers. This school started in 1930's, so we need to
depend also on the army.
Chairman Tom Davis. Let me ask everybody, what can we do to
try to get more Iraqis maybe to go back and help us with
translations and intelligence gathering? We actually have a
shortage of people that can do that kind of communication right
now. We would have to have proper screening. Is there anything
we can do, any signals we can send to American Iraqis that may
want to help us in that? Let me start with Dr. Alarif.
Ms. Alarif. I will comment on one thing he said because I
basically agree with Mr. Haidari, except I will just correct
you once and that is that General Qasim was a Shiite.
We basically are in agreement about the Iraqi Army and I
did suggest earlier that we do use the lower ranking officers,
so that is an agreement. To galvanize the Iraqi-Americans, what
you need are some basically on the ground going with the
soldiers, translating. So you can't have Ph.D.s doing that for
you. You perhaps need to look at where the Iraqis are
concentrated, maybe around the Detroit area, I don't know where
they are, northern Virginia, put out some kind of a feeler that
we would like them to participate in this for ``x'' amount of
time and you may be surprised. But they do have to go through
the screening mechanism and all that. I am sure in your
district, for example, in northern Virginia, there are a lot of
Arabs and Iraqis, but mostly we need Iraqis.
Chairman Tom Davis. The Governor of one of the provinces
over there who was just elected had been in the PTA with me at
Belvedere Elementary School. He had gone back to Iraq and was
elected Governor of his province. Mrs. Maloney was there with
me when we had a reunion. We are seeing some of that, but I
think more of that would be helpful. When we talked to military
leaders, they thought that would be helpful as well.
Ms. Alarif. Absolutely.
Chairman Tom Davis. A lot of people came here because of
Saddam and the fact that they were being oppressed. We could
use their help. So we need to figure a way to do our best
recruitment on that. I think that can help our cause.
Ms. Alarif. Absolutely.
Chairman Tom Davis. Ms. Gordon.
Ms. Gordon. May I comment on what Mr. Haidari said?
Chairman Tom Davis. Of course. Please.
Ms. Gordon. Because in Japan, I think General MacArthur had
very much the same idea of using the Japanese in various phases
of the society and what we had was a political purge. We also
had an economic purge. It was a little bit like the
``denazification'' program in Germany. As you said, the higher-
ups in the army maybe should not be used but the people lower
down. That is exactly what we did in general; we had lists of
who had been in what kind of militaristic group, who had been
an ultra, ultra conservative, etc., and the Japanese Government
provided that for us. If anybody was going to be elected to
parliament or a high official in the army or whatever, they
would have to be scrutinized according to that list that we and
the Japanese Government together had formed. So there were many
people later on who were brought back into government or
brought into the army who had not been on the correct side but
they were on a lower level. They did not have the power of the
higher level and it worked very well in Japan.
Chairman Tom Davis. Let me ask, it seems that much of the
Ba'ath Party, instead of fighting us in the north, took off
their uniforms and went back into the population. Their
strategy seems to be to become terrorists, take out as many
Americans or whoever else they can to get publicity and
hopefully Americans will dissipate, America will give up, go
home and they can come back into power. It seems to me that is
their strategy. They are not winning strategic victories by
what they are doing but they are hopeful they can have an
effect back here and discourage us from pulling out early and
they have a shot to come back into power. What is your
analysis? When I say that, is that a fair analysis?
Ms. Alarif. You know, the Ba'athists have now had two shots
at Iraq and they've messed it up both times. This last time was
a total disaster for the people. After what the Iraqis have
seen right now, I think we are making too much of an issue of
these people; I think they are just going to die a natural
death.
Chairman Tom Davis. But the problem is that is where the
disturbances are. If you didn't have that, it would be a much
different situation.
Ms. Alarif. I understand, but if you look at Iraq's
history, there have been several revolutions. Whenever there is
a new revolution, and let us assume this was like a revolution
but from the outside, it takes time to purge the old regime. So
La Regime Marcienne has to be gone but you can't kill
everybody, so eventually, once the leaders are gone and for me,
for all intents and purposes right now, I see just discontented
people who are without work and losing power. There are not
that many of them. They should be rounded up at some point and
isolated. I think with the passage of time, I don't think
really they're lethal. They are lethal to the persons who get
killed but they are not that lethal in terms of numbers, let us
put it this way. During revolutions, as I said in the past,
there have been more killings.
Chairman Tom Davis. I understand, but from an American
perspective, it is lethal. If you remember what one sniper did
to the Washington area last year, here you have literally 1,000
snipers sitting around and it is having a very chilly effect on
Americans' perception of this war. We have to take them out as
quickly as we can, and we can't do it without cooperation from
the Iraqi people.
Ms. Alarif. I basically stated here how you can get the
cooperation of the Iraqis--by including them all, by getting
cultural understanding. They come around, they really do come
around. I think they are so tired of those wars and Saddam and
his problems and they need to live a normal life. I think by
inclusiveness and making life more normal for the civilian
population, you may be seeing it now, I think. I don't know. I
haven't been to Iraq but I think things are a lot better now
than they were before, aren't they?
Chairman Tom Davis. Right.
Ms. Alarif. So perhaps.
Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Haidari.
Mr. Haidari. I believe there are two ways to eliminate
Saddam's party. First, we need to open investigation. We will
not know Saddam's loyal followers, about 10,000, not more. We
need to depend on the Iraqi people to know them. How? By
investigation. Let the Iraqi people come to this kind of office
and give us their names, give us their history and then we can
find them or Iraqi people will help us to find them; this is
one way.
Another way, we want to build a good relationship with the
Iraqi people. Iraqi people should be our eyes in all areas. If
we can build a good relationship, we can eliminate Saddam and
his party. Until now we didn't build that well. I give you the
best example. Shiite suffered from Saddam a lot, massacres the
best example, and until now they don't help us well. They are
watching the situation. We need to deal with them to attract
them to our side. If we do that, we eliminate Ba'ath. Ba'ath is
not a problem, Ba'ath is a small group, I know them. I don't
read about them in book, I know them. We can eliminate them
very easily but we need to depend on Iraqi people. When? How?
This is the question.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Janklow.
Mr. Janklow. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Gordon, if I could ask, when did the occupation by the
Allies end in Japan? Do you remember?
Ms. Gordon. When did it?
Mr. Janklow. When did the occupation by the Allies end in
Japan?
Ms. Gordon. As you know it started in 1945 and it ended in
1952.
Mr. Janklow. So it was really 7 years after the surrender
of the Japanese regime that finally our soldiers left Japan as
an occupying force?
Ms. Gordon. Right.
Mr. Janklow. I lived in Germany in 1948, 1949 and 1950 and
my father was part of the army of occupation in Germany. The
point I am making is, we become pretty frustrated in America
when we haven't solved all these problems in 6 months after the
invasion of Iraq when in reality, it takes a while to write a
constitution, assemble a provisional government, unless we are
going to write it for them. We can write a constitution for
people but if they are going to write a constitution, it takes
a while. Then they have to go through a process of debate--it
isn't like ours gets changed very often after an awful lot of
debate and discussion--and then they get around to elections.
The point I am trying to make is, these things take time; Iraq
wasn't just waiting there to throw off the yoke and rise up and
do all of these functions.
Mr. Haidari, let me ask you, as I read your resume, you
were a member of the Ba'athist Party. As a matter of fact, you
were part of the regional command wing at one time. So when you
speak about the Ba'ath Party, you obviously speak from very
personal knowledge, am I correct?
Mr. Haidari. Yes.
Mr. Janklow. When did you decide you weren't a member of
the Ba'ath Party, that you no longer believed in their ideals
or goals? While you are thinking, go ahead, Ms. Alarif. Do you
have a response to that?
Ms. Alarif. I have never been a member of the Ba'ath Party.
Mr. Janklow. I was talking to Mr. Haidari.
Mr. Haidari. I was a friend for Ba'ath in 1958.
Mr. Janklow. It says in your resume, ``In 1962, I became a
member of the Regional Command Wing of the Ba'ath Party.''
Mr. Haidari. Yes. In 1959, we left Ba'ath Party as original
member but in 1962, I was in the top of the responsibility.
Mr. Janklow. If I could ask you two gentlemen and also the
lady, the three of you of Iraqi heritage, are we doing anything
right in Iraq? Is our country doing anything right, in your
opinion? Yes?
Ms. Alarif. Yes, many things right.
Mr. Janklow. Could you elaborate a little, please?
Ms. Alarif. First of all, as I said earlier, the fact that
Iraq is actually for the first time in its life--and they have
been trying for 50 years now to be free--they are free. The
Iraqis are free. As I said earlier, I am a testament when I am
talking. I have never done this in my entire life. I have been
in the States since 1957 and I have never done this, my family
would have been shot.
Second, Iraq has longed to be a modern Iraq. It is the
cradle of civilization but it has remained in the dark ages. It
has not come into the industrial age. It has longed to belong
to the 21st century and America is bringing it to the 21st
century.
Mr. Janklow. Mr. Haidari.
Mr. Haidari. The most important thing we did in Iraq, we
have rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein.
Mr. Janklow. Are we doing anything else?
Mr. Haidari. This is the most important thing. How can we
invest this truth? We have good balance in Iraq.
Mr. Janklow. If I can personalize this for a moment, have
you gone back to Iraq since the war has been over?
Mr. Haidari. Yes. I went in June. I stayed there 3 nights,
4 nights and came back.
Mr. Janklow. Do you consult with our Government on what
they should be doing?
Mr. Haidari. I have a long talk with our Government people.
I talk with them about many things but now I have been talking
for 2 years.
Mr. Janklow. How long do you think it should take to write
a new constitution for Iraq?
Mr. Haidari. A new constitution? First, how will we do the
constitution? Not only the constitution, now I think we are not
in correct way to put this constitution. We appoint people for
that and Iraqi people are not support this direction. Some of
them support, others don't support.
Mr. Janklow. My time is up but I notice from your testimony
that you do say the Iraqi people don't support the provisional
council that has been appointed. How should we select one and
how long should it take to select the appropriate council to
help draft the constitution for Iraq? I understand you suggest
who should be included but how should they be selected and how
long should that take?
Mr. Haidari. It doesn't need more than 6 months, I believe,
enough to make everything stable in Iraq, 6 months, not more. I
don't want to say to cancel it, extend it, enhance it. We can
choose a lot of people to make this council stronger, make good
influence on Iraqi people.
Mr. Janklow. In other words, the basic council is OK, it
needs to be enlarged?
Mr. Haidari. I would not say OK, I said some of the members
are OK, some of them are not OK from point of view of Iraqi
people. Some of them are OK, some of them are not OK.
Mr. Janklow. Isn't that the way democracy works, some are
OK, some are not OK?
Mr. Haidari. When you want to choose, especially in these
days, the people choose this guy or that guy, they are free to
do what they want, but we want to appoint some people to help
us in our plan in Iraq, I think we have to look for the good
people who can help us and be a good influence on the Iraqi
people. Now we need to understand this concept.
Mr. Janklow. All of you emphasize that we must do something
about the former police and the former military. Clearly the
history in most countries, be it Japan, Germany or Panama, it
doesn't make any difference, there is a long history of
bringing the protecting forces back into play after some of the
leadership and the troublemakers are eliminated or removed, not
eliminated in the physical sense but removed from the
possibility of being involved in control. My question is, the
former police commissioner from New York testified today that
they have 40,000 policemen employed back in Iraq. Is that a
good start?
Mr. Haidari. In Iraq, we need policemen and soldiers, at
least 300,000.
Mr. Janklow. You need 300,000 for a nation of 26 million?
Mr. Haidari. We need them to help our administration and
Iraqi people to reach the peace inside Iraq. I prefer in my
opinion if we let our army be outside of the Iraqi cities. We
don't want to see our army to have any conflict with the Iraqi
people. We have army in Iraq, not policemen, so we want to
depend on Iraqi police, not American soldiers. That is much
better to us. Also, it is much better to us than asking Turkey
and we have some differences now in Iraq about asking Turkey
army to come to Iraq. Let us depend on Iraqi army.
Mr. Janklow. Dr. Alarif, you say the Iraqi people don't
like the police, so have the army do it. He says, they don't
like the army, have the police do it.
Ms. Alarif. No, no, he didn't say that, his English----
Mr. Janklow. He said the Army should not be in the cities.
Mr. Haidari. The American Army.
Ms. Alarif. The American Army.
Mr. Janklow. I apologize. I thought you meant the Iraqi
army.
Mr. Haidari. The American Army should not be in the cities.
Ms. Alarif. We are in agreement.
Mr. Haidari. Also, we don't need to invite Turkey army to
come to Iraq. We want to depend on Iraqi army.
Mr. Janklow. We agree with that.
Chairman Tom Davis. I think we agree with that. Thank you
very much. This has been very, very helpful to the committee as
we move forward.
I want to ask unanimous consent to put into the record a
letter from Gary Sinise, a Tony and Emmy Award-winner and
Academy Award nominee; he wrote the committee. Also, an article
from Vanity Fair by Mr. Hitchens on the situation that I think
will be helpful for the record. Without objection, these will
be put into the record.
[The information referred to follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Any other questions from committee
members?
[No response.]
Chairman Tom Davis. Let me thank this panel. It has been
very helpful to us in our deliberations. We appreciate your
staying with us through the afternoon and being here to answer
our questions. Your total testimony will be made a part of the
record.
Thank you all very much.
The meeting is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 2:37 p.m., the committee was adjourned, to
reconvene at the call of the Chair.]
[The prepared statements of Hon. Chris Chocola, Hon.
Michael C. Burgess, Hon. Mike Rogers, Hon. Bill Shuster, and
additional information submitted for the hearing record
follow:]
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