[House Hearing, 108 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
IRAQ: WINNING HEARTS AND MINDS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY,
EMERGING THREATS AND INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JUNE 15, 2004
__________
Serial No. 108-233
__________
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
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
96-993 WASHINGTON : 2004
____________________________________________________________________________
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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
NATHAN DEAL, Georgia C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER,
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan Maryland
TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio Columbia
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas JIM COOPER, Tennessee
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota
PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio ------
KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
(Independent)
Melissa Wojciak, Staff Director
David Marin, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director
Rob Borden, Parliamentarian
Teresa Austin, Chief Clerk
Phil Barnett, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel
Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International
Relations
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut, Chairman
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio
DAN BURTON, Indiana DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio TOM LANTOS, California
RON LEWIS, Kentucky BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER,
TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania Maryland
KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
DIANE E. WATSON, California
Ex Officio
TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
Lawrence J. Halloran, Staff Director and Counsel
R. Nicolas Palarino, Senior Policy Analyst
Robert A. Briggs, Clerk
Andrew Su, Minority Professional Staff Member
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on June 15, 2004.................................... 1
Statement of:
Al-Rahim, Rend, Iraqi representative to the United States.... 17
Schlicher, Ambassador Ronald L., Deputy Assistant Secretary,
Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs/Iraq, Department of State;
Peter Rodman, Assistant Secretary of Defense, International
Security Affairs, Office of Secretary of Defense;
Lieutenant General Walter L. Sharp, Director for Strategic
Plans and Policy, Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gordon West,
Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Asia and
the Near East, U.S. Agency for International Development... 43
Shehata, Samer S., Center for Contemporary Arab Studies,
Georgetown University; Richard Galen, former Director,
Strategic Media, Coalition Provisional Authority; and
Danielle Pletka, vice president, Foreign and Defense Policy
Studies, American Enterprise Institute..................... 84
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Al-Rahim, Rend, Iraqi representative to the United States,
prepared statement of...................................... 21
Galen, Richard, former Director, Strategic Media, Coalition
Provisional Authority, prepared statement of............... 113
Kucinich, Hon. Dennis J., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Ohio, prepared statement of................... 7
Pletka, Danielle, vice president, Foreign and Defense Policy
Studies, American Enterprise Institute, prepared statement
of......................................................... 125
Rodman, Peter, Assistant Secretary of Defense, International
Security Affairs, Office of Secretary of Defense, prepared
statement of............................................... 54
Schlicher, Ambassador Ronald L., Deputy Assistant Secretary,
Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs/Iraq, Department of State,
prepared statement of...................................... 47
Sharp, Lieutenant General Walter L., Director for Strategic
Plans and Policy, Joint Chiefs of Staff, prepared statement
of......................................................... 65
Shays, Hon. Christopher, a Representative in Congress from
the State of Connecticut, prepared statement of............ 3
Shehata, Samer S., Center for Contemporary Arab Studies,
Georgetown University, prepared statement of............... 88
West, Gordon, Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator, Bureau
for Asia and the Near East, U.S. Agency for International
Development, prepared statement of......................... 71
IRAQ: WINNING HEARTS AND MINDS
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TUESDAY, JUNE 15, 2004
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats
and International Relations,
Committee on Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2 p.m., in
room 2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher
Shays (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Shays, Turner, Platts, Kucinich,
and Maloney.
Staff present: Lawrence Halloran, staff director and
counsel; R. Nicholas Palarino, senior policy advisor; Robert
Briggs, clerk; Richard Lundberg, detailee; Andrew Su, minority
professional staff member; and Christopher Davis, minority
investigator.
Mr. Shays. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on
National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations
hearing entitled, ``Iraq: Winning Hearts and Minds'' is called
to order.
Almost 1 year after the capture of Saddam Hussein, the hard
lessons of liberation are coming into sharper relief. For many
Iraqis, euphoria over the fall of the tyrant has decayed into
disappointment over the pace of reconstruction. Eagerness to
embrace long suffering suppressed freedoms has become
impatience over half-measures and interim organizations that
look and act more Western than Iraqi. Welcomed liberators are
now viewed in some quarters as resented occupiers. Why?
In the course of five visits to post-Saddam Iraq, my staff
and I asked the same questions. Four of those visits were
sponsored by nongovernment organizations [NGO's], allowing us
to travel outside the military umbrella that can sometimes
shield Members of Congress from useful information not included
in the official briefing slides. Across Iraq, we saw families
and communities celebrating weddings, building schools, and
trying to weave the fabric of civil society from disparate,
often conflicting, ethnic, religious, and political threats. We
also saw a rigid, centralized Coalition Provisional Authority
[CPA] at times succumbing to hubris and condescension in
dealing with the sovereign people it was created to serve. Many
Iraqis noticed.
In that hostile terrain, our accomplishments whither
quickly while our errors are grotesquely magnified. Conveying
American good intentions through the cacophony of competing
tribal, religious, and factional voices requires patience and a
cultural sensitivity that were apparently not part of the
original war plan. So today we ask: What have we learned about
how a newly sovereign Iraq will perceive U.S. words and
actions? How do we reach the Iraqi people?
Our previous oversight of post-war humanitarian assistance
and public diplomacy in Iraq pointed to the need for clarity,
persistence, and humility in that unforgiving, volatile part of
the world. The perceived dissonance between American rhetoric
and actions breeds mistrust at home and in Iraq about why we
are there and how long we will stay. The same lack of strategic
clarity causes others to doubt our will to see the mission
through. And when we forget why we are there, when we forget it
is their revolution not ours, we allow ourselves to be
portrayed as arrogant agents of empire rather than as trustees
of noble ideals.
Today we welcome three panels of most distinguished
witnesses who bring first-hand experience and invaluable
expertise to our continuing oversight of U.S. efforts to reach
the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. We asked for their
insights and analyses of U.S. efforts to secure, stabilize,
rebuild, and foster civil discourse and democracy in post-
Saddam Iraq.
We very much appreciate the participation of Ms. Rend Al-
Rahim, the Iraqi Representative to the United States. Thank you
for being here. She brings a unique perspective to these
important issues. We look forward to her testimony and that of
all of our witnesses.
I will just say before recognizing the ranking member, it
is our custom to swear in all witnesses. But we do make rare
exceptions. In one instance I chickened out, for example, and
could not bring myself to ask Senator Byrd to take the oath.
But in other instances and in deference to protocol, we also do
not administer the oath to international diplomats and
international civil servants who agree to provide information
to this subcommittee. So we will not be swearing in our first
witness. But I cannot tell you how grateful we are that you are
here.
At this time, the Chair would recognize Mr. Kucinich, the
ranking member of this subcommittee. Thank you, Mr. Kucinich.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:]
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Mr. Kucinich. Thank you very much, Chairman Shays, for
holding this hearing.
We are familiar with the fact that the Vice President
predicted back in March 2003 that U.S. forces would be greeted
by Iraqi citizens as their liberators. Instead, recent polls of
the Iraqi people show that 80 percent have negative views of
the United States, and that a majority of Iraqi people want
U.S. military forces to leave immediately. That this data was
gathered prior to the prison abuse scandal and the escalation
of violence against Coalition forces in recent weeks is
instructive.
I believe our military presence in Iraq was, is, and will
continue to be counterproductive, and it endangers the security
of Americans both here and abroad by uniting those and
strengthening those who oppose us. Since the end of major
combat operations was declared on May 1, 2003, the lives of
nearly 700 additional U.S. soldiers have been lost in Iraq,
many of them victims of homemade bombs, which are strategically
placed by the Iraqi roadside to inflict harm on our troops. And
at this moment, I believe we have over 830 who have lost their
lives in this conflict, thousands have been injured, and over
10,000 innocent Iraqis have lost their lives.
It is clear that the United States has underestimated the
level of resistance of the Iraqis. The U.S. Government has
erred in the fixed idea that only Baathists, Al Qaeda, and
criminal groups oppose the U.S. occupation.
Mr. Chairman, without objection, I would like to insert in
the record an article from the June 6, 2004 edition of the
Washington Post. It is entitled, ``The Military: Losing Hearts
and Minds?''
Mr. Shays. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. Kucinich. It is actually written by an Army Reserve
Captain Oscar Estrada, who is serving as a civil affairs team
leader in Iraq. Captain Estrada writes that the good efforts of
American troops are having the opposite effects. He finds that
paying townspeople a dollar to collect a bag of trash is
demeaning to Iraqis, that providing medical care leads to
disappointment and resentment when there is no medicine to heal
the sick, and that buildings and cars are needlessly damaged as
soldiers in Humvees speed through Iraqi cities shooting in all
directions.
I want to say that while I take strong exception to our
presence in Iraq, the men and women who serve this country and
who love this country need to be appreciated. But at the same
time, it is essential that we point out any of the shortcomings
that I believe is the direct result of failed policies.
The bombing of the wedding in Western Iraq near the Syrian
border killed over 40 people, including women and children. The
U.S.' subsequent denial of the incident only inflamed tensions.
The indiscriminate use of force that the United States used in
Fallujah to target the insurgents killed over 800 innocent
civilians, creating a further uproar from people.
This is the real face of the U.S. occupation seen everyday
by the Iraqi people. When combined with the egregious abuses
our military leaders apparently condoned at the prison, it is
no wonder that Iraqi frustration and resistance is mounting.
The question for us now is what, if anything, we can do to earn
the trust of Iraqis and regain moral standing in the world.
Take, for instance, the question of how the United States
should handle the prison torture scandal. What level of
accountability of high ranking officials is required to
demonstrate U.S. contrition? And I am not only talking about
military officials here, Mr. Chairman. Is it enough, as one of
our colleagues has said, that a few low ranking ``bad apples''
are dishonorably discharged? Or will that be seen in Iraq as
scapegoating the responsibility of higher up officials who
authored the policy that resulted in the prison scandal? Does
that responsibility go to the White House, where the White
House counsel penned a memo providing a legal rationale for
freeing the President from the international obligation of
honoring the rights of prisoners?
I think that this hearing is important because it gives
this Congress an opportunity to discuss some of the things that
the chairman raised in his opening statement. We need to see
where this whole effort is going, and we need to determine at
some point, Mr. Chairman, whether it is the purview of this
committee or not, at what time we are going to get out of Iraq
and create international cooperation which will enable the U.S.
troops to be brought home.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Dennis J. Kucinich
follows:]
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Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman. At this time I recognize
the vice chairman of the subcommittee, Mr. Turner. Welcome.
Mr. Turner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Of course, we are all
so appreciative of our chairman's leadership in the issue of
this committee and national security and the issue of the
global war on terror. Specifically in the area of Iraq, though,
our chairman has travelled to Iraq many times and in ways not
like most Members of Congress have gone; in ways where he has
direct contact with the Iraqi people and places himself in a
great deal of risk compared to many of the just fact-finding
missions that even I attended. We know that from our chairman's
efforts to make certain that he is in Iraq and on the ground
and having contact with the Iraqi people in ways that most of
us do not have the opportunity or have not been willing to take
the risk, he brings with him a great deal of information and
insight that we very much appreciate to this topic and to the
committee.
It is interesting, in listening to the issues of mistakes
the United States has made or may have made, it is easy to
criticize a policy by listing a number of mistakes. It is easy
to criticize a policy by listing mistakes without taking the
responsibility for what it would mean if there is inaction.
Whenever I hear the United States criticized for what we have
done and the mistakes that have been made, I always think back
to when Tony Blair came before Congress to receive the
Congressional Medal and he talked about the issue of the war on
terror. He said that ``History would condemn us if we failed to
take action on the war on terror. Along the way we may make
mistakes, but they will forgive us for these mistakes as we
rise to the occasion to make certain that this threat that we
have for the civilized world is addressed.''
One of the things that I think no one questions is that the
U.S.' role and goal in Iraq is for a transition to democracy.
It is important for us to have hearings like this and that the
chairman's leadership in knowing how we should address this
issue, in that we need to know: How is the issue of democracy
being perceived in Iraq? How are we being perceived? How is the
overall goal viewed? What support do we have of the Iraqi
people? And how do we communicate. What are the ways that we
are seeing our actions communicating a message that we do not
want to have conveyed that might undermine our efforts?
Our efforts in this hearing should not be to just list a
litany of mistakes, but to embrace the goal and look at how we
can, through greater information, make certain that we achieve
it, both for us and the Iraqi people. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman very much. I would just
want to say, since I have some real concerns about how we have
done the rebuilding of Iraq, and the extent that we have been
culturally sensitive, and so on, I strongly support our reasons
for being there and am very grateful that we have brave men and
women who have taken on this task. We just want to make sure
that it ends in success.
Representative Al-Rahim, thank you so much for being here.
You, by your testimony, may have tremendous impact on the
success of this mission and the ultimate transformation of
power that happens in a few days. This is not an American
revolution, it is an Iraqi revolution, and on June 30th that
will be very clear. I am certain that Iraq will do certain
things that we may not like. But guess what? It is your
country.
So with that, welcome. You have a statement that I would
like you to feel you can give in its entirety. I would like you
not to feel rushed, so that we have the benefit of what you
would like to say. So I am going to encourage you to give your
statement and not say that it will all be in the record and
just summarize. My only concern is that as you look at me, I
think we should move that water in front of you, get that
microphone in front of you. Let's help out there, somebody.
Thank you, Bob. Welcome.
STATEMENT OF REND AL-RAHIM, IRAQI REPRESENTATIVE TO THE UNITED
STATES
Ms. Al-Rahim. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for
inviting me to testify on this important subject. Having
testified before, I have learned to make a summary of my
statement. In any case, my full statement is rather long; it is
eight pages of single space, and it would be really rather long
to read it all. I have summarized it, but I would welcome any
questions to clarify so that I can get into some issues in
greater detail. So lets work on the summary.
Thank you for inviting me to testify on this important
issue, Mr. Chairman, Congressman. I would like to take this
opportunity to thank the United States and the Coalition forces
for bringing to Iraqis freedom from dictatorship and tyranny.
Ending the murderous regime of Saddam Hussein was, indeed, a
moral victory against evil and we should celebrate that
victory. We should never have any doubts about the rightness of
the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime, even by force.
I also wish to express our deep appreciation for the
sacrifices made by Americans, Coalition members, and hundreds
of Iraqis over the past 14 months. We should honor their
sacrifices and the memory of those who have fallen.
Mr. Chairman, it is important to recognize that the picture
is not all gloomy and dark in Iraq. And I want to make that
statement first and foremost. Iraqis did, indeed, welcome the
Coalition forces as liberators. There have been many successes,
although many challenges also remain. To measure the magnitude
of the achievements and the challenges, it is essential to bear
in mind that the old regime destroyed Iraqi institutions,
society, and the Iraqi economy for 35 long years. We have to
rebuild the country from the ashes left to us by Saddam
Hussein's regime.
Let me list some of the achievements.
First, the economy has made significant progress and there
is thriving trade and entrepreneurship. Somebody called Baghdad
a Boom Town a while ago. And from my own personal experience, I
would concur with that.
Salaries and the standard of living of Iraqis have risen
dramatically.
A free press is flourishing. Civil society institutions are
being formed, and professional associations are, for the first
time, free from the control of government.
Political parties are taking their first steps and
political debate in Iraq is open and lively.
Ministries have resumed their services and are active in
the reconstruction process of their own ministries.
The Iraqi Governing Council in March adopted a Transitional
Administrative Law, a sort of proto-interim constitution, with
a Bill of Rights that is the most progressive in the Middle
East. And I would want to add here that it is not just the
outcome of this law that is significant, but the process that
it entailed, which was a process of debate, of deliberation, of
negotiation of true political horse trading, and of
compromises. I was witness to some of those meetings resulted
in the TAL, as we call it, and it was truly impressive the way
that Iraqi politicians were able to debate.
Since early June, there have been two noteworthy successes.
First of all, a new, well-qualified Iraqi government has been
formed, with the help of the United Nations, which will assume
full sovereignty and authority on June 30th. And second, a
Iraqi delegation went to New York for the very first time and
took part actively in shaping a U.N. resolution on Iraq, and
this resolution has been passed unanimously by the U.N.
Security Council.
These are all significant achievements in the space of 14
months.
At the same time we have faced, and continue to face,
problems. Some of these problems arise from miscalculations in
U.S. policy and failures in implementation. And I strongly feel
that as representative of a country that looks forward to a
long and lasting friendship with the United States, it is
important for all of us to take stock and measure the successes
as well as the failures. We ought to be able to talk to each
other about these things in order to move forward.
I would like to draw attention here to some reports written
by Iraqis prior to March 2003; that is, prior to military
action in Iraq. The first one is a report that was written by a
group of Iraqis in November 2002, under the auspices of the
State Department's project called Future of Iraq Project. The
report is entitled, ``Transition to Democracy,'' in which
Iraqis wrote about how they conceived that transition and their
recommendations for policies during the transition period. I
would also like to refer to my own testimony in the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee on August 2002. And finally, I
would like to refer to a report I wrote when I was still
executive director of the Iraq Foundation. I wrote it in
September 2003, after 5 months in Baghdad, and the report is
entitled, ``Iraq Democracy Report No. 1,'' with the hope that I
would do a No. 2 and 3. But this job intervened.
One of the important issues that we noticed in Iraq is that
there appeared to be multiple conflicting policies within the
CPA, causing confusion and frequent reversals. This confusion
within the CPA became infectious and affected the confidence of
the Iraqi population. It was visible through the U-turns, the
reversals, and Iraqis felt destabilized.
The first and, so to speak, the ``Mother'' of all policy
errors is the declared policy of occupation. Many Iraqis had
urged that the Coalition should be a liberator and a partner of
Iraqis, not an occupying power. It is humiliating to Iraqis. It
goes against their sense of dignity and patriotism. There are
no nice words by which to talk about occupation. Moreover,
occupation has proven to be practically unworkable.
With the collapse of the old regime, the political and
security infrastructure of the country were dismantled and the
logic of occupation allowed the ensuing political and security
vacuum to persist. This was a mistake that still haunts us.
With occupation came the suppression of Iraqi sovereignty.
Another policy decision that Iraqis warned against before
military action. Sovereignty, like occupation, is an emotional
issue that touches on people's dignity and nationhood. But
there is also a very practical issue to the suppression of
sovereignty. The Coalition did not have the resources, the
understanding, or the ability to run the Iraqi state. Iraqis,
as we urged, should have run the Iraqi state and its
institutions. An Iraqi government, with authorities seen by the
people as embodying the power of the state, should have been a
pillar of post-liberation transition. I should add here that it
was indeed with difficulty that the CPA was persuaded to create
a Governing Council of Iraqis rather than the Advisory Council
of Iraqis that they wished to create. Many Iraqis protested
strongly, saying it is the Iraqis who should form the
government and the United States should provide the advice, not
the other way around.
The security situation immediately exposed some of the
contradictions of the occupation. Law and order broke down and
there was little effort by Coalition forces to put a stop to
it; indeed, probably Coalition Forces were unable, did not have
the resources to put a stop in the degeneration of law and
order. Looting, kidnapping, blackmail, and assassinations were
ignored by the Coalition. People had no one to turn to. The
military forces did not have the personnel, the language
skills, the intelligence capacities, or the social
understanding to be an effective police and security force.
Yet, really little attempt was made to mobilize local Iraqi
resources in security and law enforcement. To my knowledge, not
one individual has been captured, indicted, and tried for a
crime of looting, kidnapping, or assassination in Iraq, or
indeed any crime committed against an Iraqi, in the past 14
months.
The message that went to troublemakers in Iraq is that the
coast is clear. The message to ordinary law-abiding citizens
was that the Coalition did not care about their safety, only
about force protection. Now this may not have been the reality,
but I am talking about perceptions and perceptions are
important in attitudes.
Iraqis had high expectations after liberation. Repressed
and deprived of basic necessities for decades, Iraqis were
expecting some dividends from liberation in the form of more
electricity, water, sanitation, personal safety, redress of
grievance, participation in a democratic process. Perhaps these
expectations were unrealistic. Certainly, delivery was short.
Moreover, some sectors of society were disenfranchised as a
result of policy decisions. The incidents in Abu Ghraib
unfortunately compounded the sense of alienation felt by
Iraqis.
Within all this context, public diplomacy and communication
between the Coalition and the people was virtually non-
existent. The local Iraqi television station, as we all know,
was a dismal failure. The Coalition did not exploit the
opportunity or the resources of the press or any other vehicles
to communicate with the people, to tell them what to expect and
what they could not expect, to tell them why electricity was
not available, why water was not available, to tell them that
this was because of terrorist activities and so on. Iraqis
lived in the dark and fed on rumors and urban myths.
In short, the dividends of liberation did not trickle down
to the majority of Iraqi society. Unfortunately, Iraqis did not
have the opportunity to be an active part of their own
liberation, to be part of liberation and part of the transition
process. A feeling of alienation has set in because of a
feeling of a disempowerment and disenfranchisement.
Today there are disturbing voices in the United States
calling for the United States to lower our sights in Iraq. The
voices claim that the U.S. objective should not be
democratization and reform, but only stability. It is a call
that comes out of a sense of panic. But stability can hardly be
a vindication for the sacrifices made by the United States, by
its Coalition partners, and by Iraqis. Stability, of course, is
important. But we have a right through our sacrifices to aim
for a higher goal. We must stay firmly committed to a vision of
democracy in Iraq. This is important for Iraqis and important
for the credibility of the United States in the region.
As we move forward, the paradigm of occupation has to be
abandoned in favor of a paradigm of a true partnership. As we
build our country, Iraqis need the support of the United States
and we need the multinational forces in Iraq to help us until
we can handle security issues on our own. Mr. Chairman, we
cannot do without multinational forces now, and we need
international support in reconstruction and economic recovery.
Failure in Iraq is absolutely not an option. It will plunge
Iraq and the region into anarchy and give victory to
terrorists, extremists, and fanatics. We must succeed, and we
must do it in partnership with the United States and the
international community. Iraqis look forward to a lasting and
firm friendship with the United States based on mutual respect,
shared interests, institutional cooperation, and friendship
amongst our two nations.
Thank you very much. I would be happy to answer questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Al-Rahim follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Thank you very much. I am going to turn to Mr.
Turner in a second to start off. But first I want to say, you
have studied in Great Britain, you have studied in France, and
you are well aware of American frankness. I would love to have
a nice dialog that is very candid. So we are going to ask you
questions that may appear to be aggressive, but from that we
learn, as I think you know. I just want to say whenever I hear
someone say we have lost over 800 Americans, as of June 13, we
have lost 833 Americans. Each one of those lives is precious.
We have 4,704 wounded, and each one of those lives is precious
and many of them have come back without arms, limbs, their
faces have been blown apart. Obviously, each one of those
incidences tears our heart apart. I think your testimony can
help us be more successful, and ultimately, have less deaths,
less wounded, and can move this transition along. So I cannot
wait to have the opportunity to talk with you. But it is Mr.
Turner, then we are going to go to Mrs. Maloney, and then Mr.
Platts, and then I will have my opportunity. I believe in the
10-minute rule, so that is what we are going to do. We have
better dialog that.
You are on, Mr. Turner.
Mr. Turner. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Al-Rahim, for your
honest discussion and for the issues that you brought before
us. Your passion and commitment to the end result of a
democracy for Iraq really shows your interest in a partnership.
And your experience and intellect that you bring in giving a
critical analysis of where we have gone wrong in areas of
communication and approach and ways that we can improve it is
very helpful.
There is no question that whenever you are an invading
military force, that transition from an invading force to one
of partnership is difficult to balance. And in this instance,
there is no question that there was an invasion that occurred.
Second, the issue that we all know of the instability in
Iraq is, in part, contributed by individuals that have entered
Iraq that are not even representative of the Iraqi people that
cause difficulty for both of us as we try to manage both the
safety of our troops and, of course, the safety of the Iraqis.
But the issues that you raise are ones where decisions
could be made for outcomes to be different. I am assuming by
your passionate commitment to success and your description of
these that you do not believe that learning these lessons is
too late and that we still have an opportunity for a
partnership that could result in not only just success for a
transition of democracy, but a positive relationship between
the Iraqi people and the United States.
Ms. Al-Rahim. Congressman, thank you very much. First of
all, I want to affirm that all Iraqis want a partnership with
the United States and they want a friendship with the Untied
States. It is a question of how to remodel the relationship so
that it is not a relationship of occupier and occupied, but of
two equal partners who can work in synergy and in cooperation
to forge a friendship. We need the United States and we do not
feel that we can go it alone by any means. But we also want
this friendship to be a long-term friendship, not just a
friendship while we rebuild the country. We do not see this as
a temporary thing. We want it to be long-lasting and we want it
to be stable. This is why I think it is important to look at
areas of error in order to rectify them.
Mr. Turner. On the issue of democracy, when we talk about
that as being a mutually shared goal and a goal of the Iraqi
people, when we talk about a democracy here, obviously, we are
talking about not just our form of government but really
historically, what goes to the fabric of American society and
the birth of our Nation. When we talk about democracy in Iraq
and that being a goal, in looking at both the period of
oppression for Iraq and also the educational system and the
anti-West communication that had to occur throughout the
system, what do you think the view is of democracy? And is it a
shared concept? Is part of our issue one of communicating what
democracy is, how it works, and really what it brings?
Ms. Al-Rahim. Democracy happens to be the word most used by
Iraqis in their political discussions. Now this does not mean
that all Iraqis mean one thing by democracy, nor does it mean
that they mean the same thing as the United States would mean
by democracy. But I think that there are constant human values
attached to democracy that all nations share that are beyond a
certain country or a certain group of people, and that Iraqis
are as capable of sharing those democratic values as any nation
on Earth and is capable of practicing democracy as any nation.
However, you did point to some serious issues. We had a
period of repression that lasted 35 years. We have an education
system that was corrupted by a dictatorship. And we have a
number of other problems in Iraq that lead me to believe that
democracy is going to have to be built block by block. In any
case, I do not believe democracy is a kit that you take off of
a shelf and assemble in this country or that. It has to be a
process that moves forward and has to grow organically within a
country. It is a series of policies, of principles, of
operational mechanisms and practices that are implemented, the
sum of all of which eventually amount to something recognizable
as democracy.
What frightens me is that if the United States and the rest
of the world forget about democracy in Iraq and say, well, Iraq
is not going to be democratic, it is inherently an undemocratic
society, that Iraqis will also give up on the notion of
democracy. And yes, stability is important, and stability is
important for a democracy to flourish. But we really have made
a good start in this democratic process. We have a free press.
We have a civil society that is very vibrant. We have NGO's
that have started, independent professional associations,
entrepreneurs; all kinds of seeds of democracy. We do not want
those to die. And it is very important for the United States
and for the international community to reinforce and nurture
those seeds rather than say, well, it is hopeless anyway.
Mr. Turner. I think that you certainly have the U.S.
commitment to democracy, and certainly there will always be a
chorus of naysayers. But the basic bedrock of democracy is a
belief in freedom of individual liberty, and that certainly
includes everyone.
I do have one concern about the issue of how a democratic
Iraq is structured. One of the things that struck me while I
was there is that as we went to schools, and we were there as
the school was letting out and the parents came and were
picking up their kids, we were able to have a free flow
discussion about the issues of the school, their community, and
the city of Baghdad. What we do not have here that is an issue
that will have to be addressed in Iraq is that you do have,
even though there will be freedoms in the economy of
entrepreneurialship, you do have a concentrated commodity
economy with oil. You have almost a singular commodity economy,
but I am going to say concentrated in the hopefulness that the
entrepreneurialship that will occur will rise and play a big
role in the economy. That concentrated commodity economy is
going to require some entity to have both control and
disposition of those funds. That is a role that currently you
do not see in like our country or other structured democracies,
is that you see predominantly the government having authority
over tax collection and the disposition of those funds but not
over the issue of a jointly owned commodity. How do you see
that as being an issue of concern and what thoughts do you have
as to how that is addressed?
Ms. Al-Rahim. In fact, Congressman, you do touch on a very
important issue. All the countries, apart from the countries in
Europe, that rely so heavily on oil income have been called the
``renter states.'' In other words, states that do not need to
do anything except collect the revenue from oil. Therefore,
instead of no taxation without representation, it is no
representation without taxation. So, you do not tax them, they
do not have to be represented, and therefore the government is
not accountable. And that is really the problem I think that
you are addressing.
There are some studies that have said that countries that
rely over-heavily on oil, where oil is the monopoly of the
state, have great difficulty in democratizing. Certainly, there
is that risk. I do not think, however, that at this stage we
can anything other than keep oil revenues in the hands of the
government. I think anything else would truly destabilize the
country, partly because of the massive reconstruction effort
that needs to be orchestrated and managed by the government.
However, I would like to point to some historical facts
about Iraq. First of all, Iraq is rich in other respects, not
just oil. We have very good agricultural potential, we have
plenty of water, we have other mineral resources, and we have
an extremely entrepreneurial and highly educated population
that is eager to do things. In the 1950's there was a movement
toward private sector industrialization in Iraq which was very
successful. It was somewhat dropped in the 1960's, revived in
the early 1970's again very successfully. We must place a lot
of emphasis on this private sector because this is how we form
civil society and a middle class that can actually ask for
accountability from its government. This is something that we
need to concentrate on because right now we cannot say
privatize oil.
Mr. Turner. I thank you very much. I will just note than in
the many trips by helicopter for hours to different
communities, I was struck by the endless amount of wheat fields
and the irrigation. And I hope you do not take this the wrong
way, but I said, ``My God, this is a real country. It has more
than oil. It has tremendous potential in other ways.''
At this time the Chair would recognize Mrs. Maloney.
Mrs. Maloney. I thank you for your testimony and really for
your many years of working to promote democracy and respect for
human rights. I am very pleased that you are now in a position
and with the authority to help work toward these changes in
Iraq.
You mentioned in your testimony that critical to the future
success of Iraq is the support of the international community.
I would say, on both sides of the aisle, we could not agree
more. We have had efforts to involve the United Nations more,
the G-7 needs to be involved more, NATO, I would say the Arab
League, and definitely the countries surrounding Iraq that have
a great stake in the stability and future strength of Iraq, and
I would say muslim leaders of other countries, given the fact
that 97 percent of the country is muslim. So my question to
you, are there any other international organizations we should
be reaching out to to help support Iraq? And do you have any
direction on how we could be more successful for the Iraqi
people in securing international support? Now the burden is 97
percent on the United States of America. We would welcome more
resources in any form to help the Iraqi people.
Ms. Al-Rahim. Thank you very much. I believe you have
mentioned all the organizations I can possibly think of-the
United Nations, G-8, NATO, muslim countries, the Organization
of the Islamic Conference, and so on and so forth. The U.N.
resolution which was recently passed I believe on June 8th
really opens the door for many more nations to support Iraqi
reconstruction and the political, physical, and economic
rebuilding of Iraq. Additionally, I believe that the transfer
of all sovereignty and authority to an Iraqi government on June
8th will further make it easier for other countries to help
out.
However, I may be mistaken, but I believe you were thinking
in terms of military support.
Mrs. Maloney. No. All support. Certainly humanitarian,
military, NGO's, financial--support in any form.
Ms. Al-Rahim. Yes. I think with the U.N. resolution and
with the transfer of sovereignty we will be able to solicit
assistance from a much wider range of countries than we have
been up until this moment, and particularly support in
reconstruction, financial support through extinction of debts
to Iraq, of advancing more grants and loans to Iraq. We should
not forget the enormous support that we need in training. This
is a very big and important field and training support should
come for our own military forces, for our security forces, but
also training in technologies, in professions, and so on. There
is a whole array that I think will be forthcoming.
Mrs. Maloney. I hope that you are correct because it would
be very helpful. One of the biggest challenges confronting Iraq
now is security. The American military has worked incredibly
hard to empower and work with the Iraqi police, the border
patrol, the new civilian defense force. But it seems any
country needs security in their borders in order to move
forward with education and all the other things that a country
needs to do to help their people. But security appears to be
the biggest obstacle. Security for the Iraqi people, for anyone
in Iraq, it is very challenging. And your comments on that, I
was deeply disturbed to read reports of Iraqi police stations
being overwhelmed and really taken by rogue militant groups.
This cannot happen in a country. There is no order. And your
comments on what we could do to improve the security, but it is
extremely problematic for your new government if your streets
are not secure. That appears to be the biggest challenge you
have.
Ms. Al-Rahim. It is, in fact, the biggest challenge. The
Iraqi Governing Council has long advocated creating a core
security force of Iraqis who are committed to the new order. I
think one of the problems we have had in creating the current
police force is that we have sacrificed quantity for quality,
both in terms of selecting the people for the police force and
in terms of training. We need to improve the selection process
and the training, and we need to put the police force under
Iraqi leadership so that they feel that they are part of the
process of transition and not outside it. This is going to
contribute to improved security, which we need if we are going
to have elections in January.
Mrs. Maloney. It was my understanding that the Iraqi police
force is under Iraqi leadership. That there is a police chief,
whose life has been threatened several times. That it is under
Iraqi leadership. It appears to be that the problem is they are
not holding the line. It is under Iraqi leadership. But if
someone overwhelmed you, taking over your police station and
taking over the streets, they are not being successful. So from
what I read in the papers, it appears that the structure is
under Iraqi leadership. Sometimes the American military has had
to come in and restore order because the police force has not
been capable of restoring the order. Now, is that because there
is a lack of will in the heart of the people? Why can they not
restore order?
Ms. Al-Rahim. In terms of Iraqi leadership, the Iraqi
Ministry of Interior did not have full authority. The
ministries that continue to function still function under CPA
authority and not under Iraqi authority. The Minister of
Interior has no power to make decisions unilaterally. And I
think this is a structural problem. Hopefully, it will be fixed
by June 30th.
Mrs. Maloney. On June 30th, when the Ministry of the
Interior takes over, has complete authority and then they
control completely the police, the border patrol, the civilian
patrol, what happens if rogue militant groups are then able to
overwhelm the police force of Iraq? Then you would have chaos I
would think.
So it is a tremendous challenge. And, in my opinion, it is
more than a structural problem of who is in charge. All I know
is in New York we have the best and the finest, that is what we
call the police force, and when they go out on the streets they
are not calling the Department of the Interior or the police
chief, they are out there on their own restoring order, making
sure people are protected, and getting the job done, very much
like the American military does. If you are on the front line,
you get the job done; you cannot call central headquarters. And
what is happening, from what I am reading in the papers, is
they are not getting the job done. They are being overwhelmed,
they are scattering, they are not getting the job done. And
when you take over complete power, if they are not able to get
the job done, as an Iraqi citizen I would be extremely
concerned because the safety of my children and my neighbors
would be very much at stake. Maybe that is something we have to
look at.
But one thing that you mentioned in your statement, you
said that many of the Iraqi people, if I quote you correctly,
lived in the dark, that they were fed rumors, they did not
understand the good intentions of how we were trying to restore
the infrastructure, the schools, the electricity. So my
question to you is, how can we, the United States, countries
that come in to help, and the new Iraqi government, use the
tools of public diplomacy in a better way in Iraq and prevent
the people from relying on information that may be from a very
biased source that does not in their goal support the
independence and success of the new Iraqi government? How can
we do a better job in getting that out?
Ms. Al-Rahim. First of all, there has to be a much better
media in Iraq, television particularly, that features Iraqis.
The Iraqi television station or stations have to be content-
rich. They have to focus on the issues and they have to be
utilized to inform people about what is happening, to address
people's concerns, and to be a forum for people to send their
grievances. We have not used any of that, neither through
newspapers, nor television, nor radio. This is going to be a
major responsibility for the new Iraqi government but I think
the United States can help with this. Unfortunately, it is no
longer up to the United States to run--and I do not say
unfortunately--but it really will not be up to the United
States from now on to run Iraqi television and the Iraqi media.
It has to be the new government. But these resources must be
utilized because so far they have done a poor job.
I would like to go back, by the way, to the issue of
security. I mentioned the quantity versus quality. There is an
important issue, and that is it is not just a question of
confronting these militants or terrorists, it is also of
disbanding their cells. That is an intelligence operation and
that has not been done very well by the Coalition. Iraqis will
have to take over that job, and to the extent they succeed in
intelligence, they will succeed in deterring terrorism and
security threats.
Mrs. Maloney. I want to thank you for your testimony. My
time is up. But very briefly, a number of men and women are
serving in Iraq from the district that I represent and they
would like very much to come home. And they would like very
much not to have to go into streets and restore order. They do
not want to do that. They feel they have to do it to restore
the order in the streets to give the new government a chance.
So anything you can do through your government to strengthen
the forces and give them the support is absolutely critical.
Without security, without order, you do not have a country. And
our military, as one Captain told me, he said, ``Carolyn, we do
not want to go into any towns. We want to just be here in
support of the Iraqi people. But if chaos breaks out and
militant hoodlums are taking over the streets, they do not have
any other choice.'' So I just want to plead with you to make
that a high priority of your new government. We all wish you
all the best.
Ms. Al-Rahim. I will certainly relay that. Thank you.
Mr. Shays. Your statement is rich with information and most
of it is very easy for me to accept. Some of it, when I think
about it, I weep internally because I think: If only. When I
was there in April a year ago, I met a gentleman named Mohammed
Abdul Hassan. He had been in an Iranian prison for nearly 15
years, he did not make the swap, and he came back at age 55 to
marry and start a family. I marveled at his tough life, and he
gave me the feeling that his life was not too much different
than a lot of Iraqis. And I got the sense that Iraqis are very
tough people who have known a tremendous amount of suffering.
But he was very eager to get on with his life and he had no
resentments, which was to me very interesting.
I asked him things that we did that troubled him. He told
me, and they were simple things, but they meant a lot to him.
Just even throwing candy on the ground and seeing children pick
it up as if, as he said, they were dogs or chickens. Just even
that was an image that he did not like to see. An individual
soldier extending his hand and a woman going like this, saying
thank you but--what she was saying was we do not shake hands
with strangers, but thank you for honoring me. Things like
that. I learned from some that if an American soldier
humiliates a man in front of his wife, he might as well have
put a dagger in his belly and twisted it.
And I learned, most of all, that you want this to be an
Iraqi revolution, not an American revolution. Now I understand
that, and I understand it because we did not want it to be a
French revolution when we depended on the French to block the
Brits from coming in and prevent them from leaving the ports
during our revolutionary war.
But I will start with the thing that I find most puzzling
about your statement. You say that declaring an occupation
dealt a blow to Iraqi dignity and national pride. You know, I
do not know if we declared that as much as the rest of the
world declared it and we had to acknowledge it. What I would
like you to do is tell me what was the alternative of an
occupation in the first few days and weeks and months. Maybe
you could start by giving me a sense of what you mean.
Ms. Al-Rahim. Mr. Chairman, my understanding is that indeed
the United States did want the legal label of occupation. If I
am mistaken about that, then----
Mr. Shays. Well let us assume it is true. But what I do not
understand quite is it the label that troubled you, or it was
the reality that troubled you? Because I do not know even
without the label if we could have prevented the reality. I
mean, we overthrew a government. We could have just gotten up
and left but that would have been horrendous. Were we to
automatically establish a government right like that? Tell me.
Ms. Al-Rahim. Mr. Chairman, yes. It is my belief, and many
Iraqis share this, that by July when the Iraqi Governing
Council was formed----
Mr. Shays. Last year.
Ms. Al-Rahim. Last July, July 2003, by then it was high
time an Iraqi government, not just an Iraqi Governing Council,
but that an Iraqi government be formed, given authority to run
the country, to run the ministries, and for the Coalition to
remain in Iraq but to take a backseat certainly on political
decisionmaking, on policies, and so on. We certainly needed the
military forces to remain, and we still need them to remain,
but it is the image of a disempowered Iraqi Governing Council
that could not take a single decision and where the head of the
CPA could say I am the ultimate authority in Iraq, I can veto
anything, nobody else has any right to take any decision, we
are the only ones in power.
Mr. Shays. Bottom line, you would have liked to have seen
last July, and you believe it could have been pulled off then,
you would have liked to have seen the transfer of power in a
sense that we are ultimately doing this June 30th.
Ms. Al-Rahim. Yes, indeed, sir.
Mr. Shays. OK.
Ms. Al-Rahim. May I finish?
Mr. Shays. Sure.
Ms. Al-Rahim. I also believe that more people should have
been brought into the political process through an Iraqi
conference or through engaging more political parties and more
political or social sectors from Iraqi society in some kind of
political process, through a national assembly, or through
consultative councils. One of the problems is that many Iraqi
groups, even the limited political bodies that were created,
were not fully representative of the whole richness of Iraqi
society.
Mr. Shays. Behind me is Dr. Nick Palarino, and he helped
organize my five trips in the last year. What we learned very
quickly were things like Iraqis saying to us, ``My father, my
uncle, my cousin is in the army, he is not a bad man. There are
bad people, get them out, but why punish my father?'' Or ``I
have a family member in the government. Why do they have no
future? Why would you do this?'' I had many Iraqis say, ``We
understand why you have to do certain things, but why cannot we
guard the hospitals?'' This was early on. And I remember when
the hotel was first bombed there were 30 Iraqis injured and 6
killed. They did not run away. They tried to prevent the
terrorist and succeeded in preventing the terrorists from
basically imploding the hotel. Were those the things that we
should have been listening to?
Ms. Al-Rahim. Yes. Absolutely, sir. This must have been in
the early period because, in fact, the determination of Iraqis
to deter terrorists in those early periods were really
powerful. All Iraqis wanted to contribute. I referred in my
written statement to the issue of disbanding the Iraqi army and
I called it a hatchet job where laser surgery was required.
What we should have done, indeed I am certainly not in favor of
the Baath Party and I think many people in the Iraqi army had
blood on their hands, however, to simply dismiss both of them,
give them no compensation, no pension, no salary, and no
prospect of getting any job whatsoever, both lost us a lot of
talent and capability and angered a very large number of
Iraqis.
Mr. Shays. Let me just interrupt you there. I was listening
to Ehud Barach, the former Foreign Minister of Israel, in his
analysis of the failures, he said, ``The Baathist Party was not
the Nazi Party. There were bad people. But,'' he said, ``how
did you get your child an education? How did you support your
family? That was one way to succeed in Iraq.'' And so I am just
extending the point that even a Jewish leader was saying to us
what an unfortunate mistake.
Ms. Al-Rahim. I think the thing about the de-Baathification
is it is much more important to take out the culture of the
Baath than just ordinary individual Baathists. And that is what
we should have concentrated on.
Mr. Shays. I want to know if these observations are
observations you agree with. First off, the statistic I have is
that two-thirds of the Iraqi people want us to leave, and two-
thirds of them want us to stay, and they are sticking to it.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Al-Rahim. Yes. Iraqis are schizophrenic about this
particular issue.
Mr. Shays. I understand. So, as my staff says, in that
respect they are ready for democracy. [Laughter.]
Many Iraqis told me--they did not even say it, I felt it,
they were suspicious of us as the government because they never
had a government they could trust. It is almost by definition
that if you are part of government, you cannot be trusted, and
certainly not a foreign power. Does that seem consistent with
what you would feel is out there?
Ms. Al-Rahim. The problem was that there was no government.
Of course, Iraqis distrust government. All nations distrust
government, but perhaps Iraqis distrust government more than
others. The problem, Mr. Chairman, was that there was no
government. The Coalition simply could not substitute an Iraqi
government.
Mr. Shays. Fair enough. I think you have made your point,
and I think it is an excellent point. Another observation that
I had was that they blamed us for the sanctions, not Saddam.
And I had so many Iraqis tell me of loved ones or neighbors
that had been killed in their effort to rebel against Saddam
and blamed us because we had told them to rebel and yet left
the Republican Guard in place. Are those things that seem
consistent with your view, one, that they blame us for the
sanctions, and two, that they blame us for saying rebel against
Saddam?
Ms. Al-Rahim. Yes. I would qualify that, I do not think
this is universal. The important thing is that the Iraqis were
willing to give the United States the benefit of the doubt
after liberation, and that is really important.
Mr. Shays. OK. And then we squandered it.
Let me proceed a little bit longer and then I can go back
to you if you have some questions. Do you have some questions?
OK. Let us go to Mr. Platts.
Mr. Platts. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Al-Rahim, thank
you for your testimony and your clear devotion and dedication
to your fellow Iraqis and the liberation of your nation. I want
to followup on the chairman's question, his initial question
was actually what I was contemplating, is the issue of how
quickly sovereignty should have been turned over to the Iraqis.
By your statement, you believe it should have been and could
have been by July of last year. I think part of the chairman's
efforts here today is to learn from what has happened and how
things maybe could have been done in a different way and
perhaps better way. How would we have gone about, in those 2\1/
2\, maybe 3 months between the initial liberation and the
establishment of a government, how would you suggest we would
have identified who the government would be, who would be in
charge of the ministries? How would the Coalition authority
select those individuals?
Ms. Al-Rahim. Congressman, it was possible to identify a
Governing Council by early July. I am not arguing about the
people. I am saying they were not given any authority.
Mr. Platts. Would you acknowledge that identifying a group
that will be given a position of advisory input, to have some
working relationship, is different than saying you have full
sovereignty and full decisionmaking power over all of Iraq and
all of the citizens?
Ms. Al-Rahim. In the end, the Governing Council was in
limbo. It was neither an advisory body nor was it a rulemaking
authoritative body. In any case, any government that could have
been appointed in July would have had to be an Interim
Government awaiting elections. I do not really see where the
problem is. The CPA identified a Governing Council, it
identified ministers. It is just that they had no authority to
do anything.
Mr. Platts. The process was a little different in the sense
of identifying that Iraqi Governing Council versus the Interim
Government that is now going to assume sovereignty and the
ability to bring in the U.N. and have a broader input to who
the ones given the actual sovereignty will be. It just seems
that ability would have been a little challenged to do it in
2\1/2\ months.
Ms. Al-Rahim. Congressman, the U.N. was already involved.
Sergio DeMello, the representative of Khoffi Anan, was in
Baghdad and was involved in the formation of the Governing
Council. It may be doubtful whether it would have been formed
without his assistance, actually.
Mr. Platts. And I certainly appreciate your position, as
appropriately it should be, that the sooner the Iraqis have
their own sovereignty, the better. It just seems that given the
challenges that we saw especially regarding security in those
initial months and continue to see, the ability to so quickly
say you have complete authority and responsibility and we are
selecting you versus we are going to try to have input. When I
visited Iraq in October and met with a number of the ministers,
they certainly in my personal conversations with them did not
convey that they had no input. In fact, they seemed to have a
very positive working relationship with their Coalition
Provisional Authority counterparts and conveyed to me and to I
think other members of our delegation that they were
appreciative of the input they had in their respective
ministries. And your impression is that they really did not?
Ms. Al-Rahim. They did not have very much influence. They
did not control their budgets. They did not set policies for
their ministries. Now, over time, they did sort of arrest
authority from the CPA. So that by early this year many of the
ministers did have a certain level of autonomy, but certainly
not in October.
I also want to go back to the July timeframe and say that I
lived in Iraq from very early May until November, and in July
the security situation was far, far better than it was in the
fall and later on. Yes, we were having some sabotage activities
and so on, but it was a manageable situation at that time. So
it becomes a question of a chicken and egg story.
Mr. Platts. The final area I wanted to touch on was in your
assessment of what could have been done better in the area of,
as you talked about in your testimony, expectations and
delivery and the disbelief after the liberation occurred,
whether it be electricity, water, other infrastructure related
services that were so behind the times, of how quickly they
were being provided. My understanding from my visit and other
testimony that we have had over the past year is that was due
in part to the lack of investment in the infrastructure by
Saddam and the diversion of his resources to military
capabilities and things.
What would be your assessment of the individuals who were
selected as part of the Iraqi Governing Council in their public
efforts to try to convey realistic expectations of how long it
would take to rebuild? I visited a power plant, what appears to
be technology probably 40 years old, and it is not something
that overnight you can replace. And although perhaps it was the
impression the United States, Great Britain, the other nations
are here and they are just going to fix everything, it would
not be a realistic expectation. So what would be your
assessment of the Iraqi leaders, Governing Council members and
others such as yourself, in trying to get the message out to
the average Iraqi that they are committing their time and
American taxpayers money to rebuild our infrastructure. It will
not happen overnight, to try to lessen those expectations so
they are more realistic and not unrealistic?
Ms. Al-Rahim. First of all, I agree with you that
expectations were unrealistic given the situation. But there
was always ``The man in the moon'' analogy, what journalists
have called it: If the United States can get a man on the moon,
can't it fix the electricity. I also want to acknowledge that
neither Iraqis in the Governing Council nor the Coalition made
enough of an effort through the media and through public
outreach to explain to Iraqis why these expectations were
unrealistic, when such expectations could be met, over what
period of time, and when things went wrong nobody explained to
the average Iraqi why they had gone wrong. We had a power
outage for 24 hours in Baghdad and nobody came on television
afterwards to explain why. This, by the way, was simultaneous
with the brown out in New York and Northeast United States. Of
course, the Iraqis immediately said, ``See, the whole of New
York and Northeast United States browns out, they fix it right
away. We have 24 hours of a blackout, nobody even tells us.''
Mr. Platts. Sort of like being on Amtrak and the train
stops and you do not know what is happening and no one tells
you times 100.
Ms. Al-Rahim. Times 100. And the failure was both CPA and
Iraqi, and I do acknowledge that.
Mr. Platts. And we heard I think an admission by the CPA
when I was there in October that they were not adequately
getting the message out and communicating to the average Iraqi
citizen. One of the kind of heart-wrenching stories I came back
with from our visit was that of the [Arabic name] hospital in
Baghdad and visiting the maternity ward, the ICU, the NIC unit
I call it, and the gratitude of the Iraqi doctor who was
administering the hospital for the technology that the
Coalition had brought in and of our efforts to immunize--I
think now we are up to about 85 percent of Iraqi children are
immunized--and how dramatically different that is than under
the Saddam Hussein regime where, from what he told us, the
formula was purposely poisoned for the Iraqi babies to
purposely escalate the infant mortality rate, I think it was
107 per 1,000. He knew what was done before and how the Iraqi
government was, in essence, killing its own children, how the
Coalition Authority came in and was helping to save the Iraqi
children, and he personally knew that. But, clearly, that
message was not being well conveyed and understood and embraced
by the average Iraqi, by your comments, and that lack of
communication in a broad sense was hurting the effort.
Ms. Al-Rahim. Lack of communication played a big role I
think in Iraqi perceptions and attitudes. And it is very sad.
Mr. Platts. Mr. Chairman, I thank you for the opportunity
to ask questions. And again, Ms. Al-Rahim, I thank you for your
leadership and I certainly wish you and your nation and its
citizens great success as you move forward and assume full
sovereignty and embrace the liberties that you now enjoy.
Ms. Al-Rahim. Thank you.
Mr. Platts. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. Thank you very much. I am going to close up
here. I know we need to get to the second panel. My only
reference to Amtrak and being on a train is I think most
Americans who have been in that experience know how irritating
even that little simple inconvenience can be. You want to get
somewhere, the train is an hour and a half late, you want to
know why it is late, no one tells you why, no one tells you
when you are going to get there. I just can imagine what it
must be for Iraqis.
But let me just tell you expectations on the side. And it
is our own fault because our intelligence was so bad. We
thought all we had to do was protect the infrastructure so that
we could get it operating again, little did we know that it was
30 years old and it was kept together by gum and rubber bands.
It was a shock certainly to Members of Congress to realize that
in order to get things running again we had to provide
everything new. And some of it was a challenge because it was
French-and German-made and we were not getting much interaction
from those two countries. So, lots of expectations I think on
both sides. So, welcome to the world of humanity.
I want to read one statement you said because I think it is
the most frustrating for me because this is where Americans
shine. But it also is important because it seems so obvious.
You write, ``In all spheres of life, Iraqis lived on rumors and
urban myths. It is by now no secret that the television station
established by the Coalition was a failure. Whereas it should
have been extensively used by the Coalition and Iraqi officials
to communicate with people, provide information, address
concerns, and build confidence, the station was instead
virtually content-free.'' I can just tell you, to the extent
Members could get there, and quite often we were discouraged
from going, that is something we kept asking because we had
Iraqis asking us, particularly even the Queen of Jordan, she
said, ``America, the country that communicates better than
anyone else, with all your expertise and you could not do
anything to counter Al-Jazira and you could not communicate
with the Iraqi people.'' So it is one of the grand mysteries of
our failure. And we have witnesses later that can testify. I do
think, though, we have a local station that has gained some
credibility. Is it Al-Iraqiya?
Ms. Al-Rahim. Al-Iraqiya is the failed one. There is a new
one called Al-Hurra which appears to be gathering momentum.
Mr. Shays. Let me just tell you, Al-Iraqiya, I am told, is
listened to by more Iraqis than even Al-Jazira is.
Ms. Al-Rahim. Because most Iraqis do not have satellite.
You do not need satellite for Al-Iraqiya, you need satellite
for Al-Jazira. Anyone who has satellite does not watch Al-
Iraqiya. But most people do not have satellite. In the rural
areas and in the provinces they do not.
Mr. Shays. My biggest criticism, and I would like you to
react to it, and if you are not comfortable, then that is fine,
but the administration had a chance to allow the military to
get Saddam's old regime members to fight the terrorists and
deal with security and make sure our prisons were obviously run
well and properly, and he had the chance to have the State
Department, which is far more culturally sensitive, run the
rebuilding. The administration decided that the chain of
command, and I mean no disrespect to the military, but the
chain of the command would go through the military. I know for
a fact, because I remember having dialog with State Department
last year, they were saying we need Arabic speakers, we need
Iraqi-Americans, and they told us the reactions that would
happen if we did certain things, which we ended up doing. They
predicted so much of this.
What I feel good about is that on June 30th the military
will be in charge of what they do best--and by the way, they
build schools well, they do all those other things well, but we
were asking them to build schools in the daytime and fight the
bad folks at night. We were asking them to work 18 hours a day,
7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. And what I am happy about now
is that we will have an ambassador who will answer to the State
Department. And he has said, and he has made it very clear to
me, he is an ambassador, he is not Mr. Bremer, he is a
representative of our government to interact with the sovereign
government of Iraq.
I will say one other thing that makes me feel good because
I feel the administration gets it. In a conversation with
Condaleeza Rice a week and a half ago with nine Members, for
about an hour and a half she was very fluent, as she is, but
very willing to go wherever the dialog went. In other words,
there was a lot of good interaction. And she said something at
the end that sent shivers up my back. She said, and I thought I
knew where she was going, she said, ``We had years before the
Declaration of Independence to understand democracy and the
idea of minority rights.'' The Declaration of Independence,
1776, Articles of Confederation, the Constitution. Now I
thought she was saying finally, after 13 years, we got it right
with the Constitution. She waited a second, looked every one of
us in the eye, and said, ``And in that Constitution I was only
three-fifths a person.'' Which has to make Americans be a
little more compassionate, a little more understanding that
there may have to be compromises in this new government that we
will not like and that maybe you will not like.
And so let me end with this. What happens if this new
government decides that they do not want a woman
representative? What happens if they decide they do not want
women in the ministry? What happens if this government decides
that girls in school are not going to get the same education as
boys in school? I want to ask you what happens there, and I
know it is a hypothetical, but I am not sure it is going to be
just the way I hope it will be and maybe not the way you hope
it will be. So tell me what you think about that and how we
should react if, in the end, we see a government that simply
has lost many opportunities. Will you say, well, we screwed it
up a year, so you are allowed to do the same thing? Or what
will you say?
Ms. Al-Rahim. Mr. Chairman, first of all, I do not think
that this will happen. Iraqis are very sensitive to women's
rights now. And by the way, women have had a big role in the
Iraqi society, professionally not politically, for many
decades. It is unlikely.
What I would want, if they decide they do not want women
ministers, I would want the right to advocate for women's
rights. Even if a government says, no, we do not want women in
this position, I want the right to lobby and speak freely. And
I hope that the United States will support me in maintaining my
right to speak, not in imposing anything on the government.
I want to commend the civil affairs people in the U.S.
military, and I mentioned them, by the way, in my written
statement, who did a stellar job with local citizens groups and
local councils. I also want to say that, indeed, everybody in
the Coalition worked 18 hours a day, at least, and Ambassador
Bremer worked 36 hours a day.
Mr. Shays. I know that.
Ms. Al-Rahim. It was phenomenal and we were full of
admiration and awe for their energy and for their good will. It
is just that good will was not conveyed in the best way
possible. This is the problem we had. So I really do have a
great admiration and appreciation for the work they did. I also
admire the fact that you went over to Iraq five times, four of
them with an NGO. That is quite a statement.
Mr. Shays. That is the Peace Corps in me.
Ms. Al-Rahim. Well, as the head of an NGO for a long time,
I really appreciate that.
Mr. Shays. Thank you. I will just say to you, you have been
a wonderful witness. I have tremendous love and respect for the
Iraqi people. I pray that your new government will succeed. I
also want to say to you that I consider you extraordinarily
brave and courageous people because I know you put your lives
at risk, you put your families at risk, and we just have
nothing but admiration for you and a great deal of love and
affection. Thank you very much.
Ms. Al-Rahim. Thank you, and same here.
Mr. Shays. With that, we will move to the second panel.
I now call on our second panel. Ambassador Ronald
Schlicher, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Near Eastern
Affairs/Iraq, Department of State; Mr. Peter Rodman, Assistant
Secretary of Defense, International Security Affairs, Office of
Secretary of Defense; Lieutenant General Walter L. Sharp,
Director for Strategic Plans and Policy, Joint Chiefs of Staff;
Mr. Gordon West, Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator, Bureau
for Asia and the Near East, U.S. Agency for International
Development.
Gentlemen, if you would stand, I will swear you in. Let me
ask you if there is anyone else you think you may need to draw
upon, you may ask them to respond to a question, even if we do
not end up doing it, if you would suggest that they stand up
and raise their right hand, that will save us from having to
swear someone in later. You may not be called on but I think it
helps. So if you would raise your right hands, I will swear you
in.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Shays. Note for the record that all of our witnesses
have responded in the affirmative. If we ask anyone else to
come up, we will make sure that the transcriber has their full
name and title.
I want to thank each and every one of you. You honor this
subcommittee with your presence. You have honored America for
years with your service. And we are very grateful to each and
every one of you.
We will go in the order I called you. I believe you are, in
fact, sitting in the order I called you. So, Ambassador, you
have the floor. I would like you to stick to the 5-minutes as
much as you can. I will roll over the clock, but I would like
you to be as close to the 5-minutes as you can. And I would
like you to feel free to speak about anything that happened in
the first panel either now or in response to questions.
STATEMENTS OF AMBASSADOR RONALD L. SCHLICHER, DEPUTY ASSISTANT
SECRETARY, BUREAU OF NEAR EASTERN AFFAIRS/IRAQ, DEPARTMENT OF
STATE; PETER RODMAN, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE,
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS, OFFICE OF SECRETARY OF DEFENSE;
LIEUTENANT GENERAL WALTER L. SHARP, DIRECTOR FOR STRATEGIC
PLANS AND POLICY, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF; GORDON WEST, SENIOR
DEPUTY ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR, BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR
EAST, U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Ambassador Schlicher. Very well. Thank you, sir. Mr.
Chairman, members of the committee, it is my honor today to
report to you on where we stand in the State Department in
terms of being prepared for the upcoming transition to Iraqi
sovereignty on June 30, and in preparing to stand up our new
Mission in Baghdad in a way that helps both us and the Iraqis
meet the challenges that lie ahead. We hope in this discussion
that we will lay out for you kind of the institutional manner
in which we will approach business in the coming period and
give you an idea of where we think the Iraqi Interim Government
starts from as a base in political terms during this crucial
period. Let me thank you in advance for the interest and
support you and the Congress as a whole have afforded to our
personnel, both military and civilian, on the ground in Iraq.
Mr. Chairman, you mentioned Ambassador Negroponte, which
leads me to my first topic of how we are organizing ourselves
in State to better be able to meet the challenge of
transitioning to lead agency on June 30th in managing and
representing our country's interest to a sovereign Iraqi
government. Our first Ambassador to the new Iraq, John
Negroponte, is, of course, eminently well prepared for the
challenges at had. He is one of our most capable and
distinguished diplomats. He is assisted on the ground in
Baghdad by his Deputy Chief of Mission, that is Ambassador Jim
Jeffrey, who was serving as our Ambassador in Albania before he
answered the call to serve in Iraq. Ambassador Jeffrey, by the
way, is already on the ground in Baghdad, leading an advance
team to smooth the transition. Ambassador Negroponte and
Ambassador Jeffrey have put together a superb, very senior new
team that collectively features a very impressive mix of
regional experience, which of course includes language skills
as well, management skills, and technical expertise, because
all of those things are very much going to be needed as we
pursue our interests and help the Iraqis in the period ahead.
This management team will supervise a very large Mission that
will initially total approximately 900 American staff, and 500
locally employed staff. Our security upgrades for our temporary
chancery are proceeding on schedule and will be ready by July
1. We have also chosen a site for a permanent chancery and
would like to come to agreement with the Iraqi government on
the way forward on this project as soon as possible.
In preparing for the transition, there has been a
remarkable effort undertaken by DOD and State, by Ambassador
Frank Ricciardone and General Mick Kicklighter, who led a
combined team to work out how State and DOD will work together
to make the transition and work together in the new post-June
30 context. Thanks to their work, the two agencies have
finalized agreements between each other on respective roles,
missions, resources, responsibilities and authorities so that
we complement and support each other as we move ahead.
Inside State, we are also in the process of reorganizing
ourselves to better handle the challenges posed. Inside the
near East Bureau, we are creating an operation called NEA-I, I,
of course, for Iraq, which will entail my office as
coordinator, a deputy political office, an economic office, a
public diplomacy office, a political-military office, and an
office of a coordinator for assistance in Iraqi reconstruction,
which is headed by Ambassador Robin Raphel. This team in
Washington will be responsible for close coordination on a
constant basis with Ambassador Negroponte's team in Baghdad and
with the interagency here.
This new U.S. team will work in partnership with the new
sovereign Iraqi Interim Government to achieve our shared goals
on security and stability, and improving the delivery of
services, and improving economic opportunity, and, of course,
in ushering in Iraq's first democratic elections no later than
January 2005. The U.N. will also remain an important partner in
the effort to organize those elections.
As the Iraqis begin to exercise their sovereignty, we will
find ourselves in a more standard situation as far as the
manner of conducting bilateral business goes. Instead of
governing and ruling a country as we have been, we will doing
business with a sovereign Iraqi government which will be
looking to make its own decisions. On the diplomatic side of
the house we will be doing business as a country team. I
mention that not as a point of bureaucratic minutia, but
actually because we believe the country team approach is an
approach which achieves a comprehensive view of a given issue
because it has all of the players in our operation around the
table who can offer their perspectives on whether it is an
economic perspective, a cultural sensitivity perspective, a
security perspective, and in that way we come up with a common
approach by which we are able to get the maximum in terms of
pursuing our interest on any given issue.
During the coming period, as you have pointed out, we will
work with the Interim Government and the U.N. to assure free
and fair elections. It is going to be very, very important
during that period that we keep a clear focus on what average
Iraqis and the political class are doing, saying, and thinking
about the momentous events through which they and their country
are passing. In this regard, the new country team will be able
to build on the contacts and outreach established by CPA and
Ambassador Bremer's team over the last 14 months. As someone
who was personally involved in that effort, I can assure you
that it was very difficult after over a decade's absence from
the country, but CPA has made great strides in this regard in
its time in Baghdad and the country team has a solid basis to
build on.
I would note also as well that our efforts to keep in touch
with average Iraqis will be greatly aided by the presence
outside of regional centers in Mosul, Kirkuk, Basra, and
Hillah, and we are also going to embed State Department
officers with military commanders in the field at the division
level. We believe that this range of assets will help
Ambassador Negroponte and our military commanders keep well
abreast of the local context in which they are operating.
Thus, with the establishment of a strong new Mission, with
clear ideas about how we will coordinate the achievement of our
policy and security goals, and with the establishment of the
security partnership with the IIG, which my military colleagues
will no doubt talk about, we are well placed in institutional
terms to meet the challenges before us.
Now let me switch to the Iraqi side and talk about the
political basis on which the new Interim Government begins its
great effort as well. We are hopeful that the preparations that
the Coalition has made over the course of a year will help
assure that the Iraqis are ready to resume sovereignty and move
forward toward democratic elections. Our efforts have been from
the ground up and from the top down.
First, we provided training, advice, equipment, and
facilities to help establish and strengthen local councils,
regional councils, and national governing institutions. As of
our last count, we had 16 Governorate councils, 90 district
councils, 194 city councils, and 445 neighborhood councils. At
the national level, we have already turned over I believe it is
16, I think that is the number today, ministries to direct
Iraqi control and the rest of course will be transferred over
the course of the next 2 weeks. We will continue to offer to
the Iraqis liaison officers to provide technical expertise that
the Iraqis judge is necessary to run their ministries according
to the required standards. Of course, in March we also
supported the Iraqis as they drafted and adopted clearly
defined principles and targets in the TAL, the Transitional
Administrative Law, which will be in effect as of July 1 and
will stay in effect until a constitutionally based government
takes office. On June 1, the former Iraqi Governing Council
adopted with Ambassador Bremer's full support the Annex to the
TAL that reflected the results of extensive conversations by
U.N. Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi with Iraqis from all over the
country.
That brings us to the new Iraqi government and the base on
which it starts its efforts over the next several months. And I
am happy to report to you that government is in place. It is
led by President Ghazi al-Yawer and a strong Cabinet headed by
Prime Minister Allawi. We believe that this government is
particularly notable for its competence, its experience, its
diversity in all terms, politically, professionally,
geographically, and gender terms. Nearly two-thirds of the
ministers have doctorates, and a preponderance of the ministers
are new faces who have not served previously.
It is our impression that, in spite of the terrorist
attacks on Iraqi civil servants, the overall reception of the
Iraqi public to the new government has been very positive. We
hear it in Baghdad, we hear it back here, also regional support
has been very good, all of the neighbors seem to be responding
well, international organizations as well. So with these things
institutionally and on the ground, we feel that we are well
poised to move into the coming period. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ambassador Schlicher follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Thank you. It would seem that we are well poised
and I just hope that we make sure we do not lose this
opportunity. You did go 10 minutes but it was important we hear
from you. Thank you, Ambassador. I understand you have a
meeting at the White House at 4:45.
Ambassador Schlicher. Yes, sir.
Mr. Shays. OK. We will make sure you are not going to be
late.
Mr. Peter Rodman, thank you so much for being here.
Mr. Rodman. Mr. Chairman, I want to commend you for the
contribution and the leadership that you have shown on this
issue for a long period of time, and I want to congratulate you
and the committee for this timely hearing.
We would be remiss not to acknowledge the serious problems
that remain in Iraq, particularly in the security field. But I
welcome this opportunity to discuss what our strategy is and
how we see it unfolding.
There is no doubt in our minds, as the Ambassador in fact
confirmed before, that the overwhelming majority of people of
Iraq still welcome the removal of that regime and consider it a
liberation. They have concerns now about how life is now, and
we share those concerns. But those concerns focus on the
future, not the past. As the Ambassador mentioned, the collapse
of the old regime left a vacuum, and the essence of our
strategy has in fact been to prepare Iraqis and to help Iraqis
fill that vacuum themselves, to build their own institutions--
political, economic, and security institutions. And the next
milestone, of course, in that process is the turnover of
authority on June 30.
In your invitation to me, Mr. Chairman, you listed six
questions. In my prepared statement I have addressed those
specifically, but I want to address one in the brief time I
have right now. The thrust of the question is, what accounts
for the change of attitude among the Iraqis that seems to be
producing this insurgency against the Coalition. With all due
respect, I would say that is maybe not the whole story. It is
not only that a change of attitude may be fueling the violence
against the Coalition; it may equally be that these extremists
are targeting the morale of the population. They are attacking
the economy, they are attacking the political process, they are
attacking Iraqi police. They are doing everything they can to
derail the progress that is being made--to demoralize the
population, to discredit the Coalition.
As political leaders, you understand the phenomenon of
``What have you done for me lately?'' Fourteen months ago, they
considered themselves liberated. So we have two syndromes. We
have the ``man in the moon'' syndrome; we also have the ``what
have you done for me lately?'' syndrome. It is obvious that 14
months after liberation hardships still exist, uncertainties
still exist, and it is only natural to be resentful of the
people in authority, especially if those in authority are
foreign powers exercising the authority of an occupier. So it
is no surprise to me, therefore, when I read opinion polls
showing a lot of people saying ``we want this occupation to
end.'' The fact is, we share that desire and that is why we are
launched on this timetable to hand over sovereign authority
right away.
Now just to elaborate a little bit. I do not accept the
premise that the extremists represent the majority of the
people or represent the aspirations of the people. I think they
are applying a kind of Leninist doctrine of ``the worse the
better.'' The more damage they can do, the more they can
undercut us, no matter what hardship they are imposing on the
people of Iraq--that is what I think is going on.
Most of all, this war is a war against the democratic
political process. It is not just a war against the Coalition;
it is an attempt to derail this democratic political evolution.
We have some evidence of that in the famous letter of Zarqawi,
the terrorist leader who is affiliated with Al-Qaeda, a message
of his that we intercepted a few months ago. He is very candid.
He says, ``I am racing against time,'' because on June 30 when
the Americans have ``stepped back'' and the Iraqis, when their
own cousins and brothers are in charge, ``what excuse'' do I
have anymore? And ``how do you motivate Iraqis to kill their
own brothers and cousins?'' So he knows what our strategy is
and I think his most important goal is to derail it.
So one can ask, what is the measure of success? One measure
of our problem, of course, is the casualties, the terrible
violence that continues. But another metric of success is, is
he succeeding in derailing this political process? And I submit
that the answer is no. And that is what gives me encouragement,
that we have a strategy that is on track. Legitimacy--and we
will have that certainly when an elective government takes
office we hope and expect at the beginning of next year--
legitimacy will be our strongest weapon against the extremists.
So our strategy is not just military. It is partly a
political strategy. In fact, the essence of it I would say is
political. There is a lot of legitimate criticism that I have
heard, including from the Ambassador, about, is our message
getting through? The bottom line, I would say, in measuring the
effectiveness of our message is that we believe the Iraqi
people still have the same objective we have, and I think the
polls indicate that. This democratic evolution is their
objective and it is our objective. The fact that they want to
see the occupation end soon is absolutely natural and
absolutely correct on their part. And we know, as again we have
heard the Ambassador say, that all of the moderate leaders of
Iraq are unanimous in telling us they want the Coalition to
stay. The U.N. resolution shows international support for our
present course, which is the course of the Iraqi people as they
advance toward a sovereign government and a democratic
government.
In other words, we think that June 30th is going to be the
setback for Zarqawi that he is afraid of; even more so, an
elected government at the end of the year. The Iraqi people
know this, I am confident of that, and that again is what gives
me confidence that we are on the right track.
We, in turn, should never forget that we have accomplished
something of historic importance in liberating Iraq. The
success of a democratic Iraq will have wider ramifications
throughout the Middle East, as the President has so often
declared. And so we are embarked on an enterprise of great
moral as well as strategic significance. It is a vital national
commitment that we as a nation need to fulfill. Congress and
the President, I am confident, are united in this task and I am
confident that we will succeed. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Rodman follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Thank you very much. I appreciate it, Mr.
Secretary.
General Sharp, welcome.
General Sharp. Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee, I
would like to thank you for this opportunity to address you on
this important subject today.
Today, Iraqi security personnel, the United States, and 31
Coalition partners are working together to secure, protect, and
establish peace and justice for all Iraqi citizens so that they
may enjoy a future of their own choosing. Establishment of a
safe and secure environment is the single most important
element for improved Iraqi quality of life because it enables
relief efforts, a free political process, economic prosperity,
and social opportunity.
And Iraqi people are stepping forward. More than 220,000
Iraqi citizens have taken positions in the various components
of the Iraqi security forces. Multinational personnel have made
significant progress in recruiting, training, and equipping
Iraqi security forces. This includes about 90,000 in the Iraqi
police service, 18,000 in the department of border enforcement,
35,000 in the Iraqi civil defense corps, 6,000 in the Iraqi
armed forces, and 74,000 in the facilities protection. Based
upon the current training and equipping schedules, we
anticipate that the department of border enforcement, the Iraqi
civil defense corps, and the facilities protection service will
be fully trained and equipped by September of this year, the
Iraqi armed forces by December 2004, and the Iraqi police by
June 2005. By the end of this month, over $3 billion will have
been committed to the Iraqi security forces equipping,
infrastructure, and training.
By June 30, the United States and its Coalition partners
will transition control to a fully sovereign Iraqi Interim
Government. Our responsibilities will not end with the June 30
transition. Multinational forces will remain in Iraq at the
invitation of the Iraqi people and with the authorization of
the United Nations after the Iraqi Interim Government assumes
full responsibilities. These forces, and increasingly Iraqi
forces, will continue to conduct offensive operations to defeat
any remaining anti-Iraqi forces and neutralize destabilizing
influences in Iraq in order to create a secure environment in
which the Iraqi people can build their own future. They will
also continue to organize, train, equip, mentor, and certify
credible and capable Iraqi security forces in order to continue
the transition of responsibility for security from
multinational forces to Iraqi forces. Concurrently, Iraqi and
multinational forces will continue to conduct stability
operations to support the evolving Iraqi government, the
restoration of essential services, and economic development.
All multinational forces will work in close coordination and
consultation with the Iraqi government at all levels.
Sir, if I may divert from my written statement for 1
second. The discussion that we had earlier about the
willingness to become full partners in this effort after June
30, I would like just to read very briefly from the letter that
Secretary Powell sent to the U.N. Security Council which lays
out exactly how we will be partners in doing that. He stated in
that letter, and we fully support this, ``Development of an
effective and cooperative security partnership between the
multinational force and the sovereign government of Iraq is
critical to the stability of Iraq. The commander of the
multinational force will work in partnership with the sovereign
government of Iraq to help improve security while recognizing
and respecting its sovereignty.'' And then it goes on to talk
to the mechanisms by which we will do that coordination and
cooperation.
I am confident that through this partnership we--the
Iraqis, the Coalition, and the United States Armed Forces--will
succeed in establishing a safe and secure environment in Iraq.
Sir, I am happy to take your questions.
[The prepared statement of General Sharp follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Thank you. I am going to do this, if you do not
mind, Mr. West, because I do not want to rush your statement,
and Ambassador Schlicher, I hope we are not letting you go to
the White House so you can go to the White House picnic. I hope
there is more substance.
Ambassador Schlicher. It is real work.
Mr. Shays. OK. I will be there later so I will check you
out.
Ambassador, let me ask you three questions, because we are
going to go vote and you will not be here when we get back. I
want to know what was the worst decision we made. I want to
know the best decision. And I want to know what is the most
important thing we must do in the year to come. So I want to
know the worst decision, the best decision, and what is the
most important thing you think we have to remember in terms of
succeeding, and, obviously, succeeding is also winning the
hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. Can you give me an answer
to those questions?
Ambassador Schlicher. Yes, sir. Let me just take a stab at
it, please. Let me put it in brief context of the big
difficulty that we faced as a Coalition on liberating Iraq and
inheriting the government----
Mr. Shays. Do me a favor--we have a vote and I only have
about 3 minutes--just give me the answer, and then if you want
to qualify it. In other words, I do not want to be unfair to
you, but what is the decision that you think we should regret
the most, the best, and then if we have time I will let you
qualify them, OK?
Ambassador Schlicher. Yes, sir. Based on my 6 months
experience in Iraq where my job was actually to talk to Iraqis
and measure their reactions to things, I think that we could
have done a much better job at the beginning in making clear
that our attitude toward de-Baathification needed to be focused
on criminal behavior and not on mere membership.
Mr. Shays. The bad guys.
Ambassador Schlicher. Yes, sir.
Mr. Shays. OK. What is the best decision we made?
Ambassador Schlicher. I think the best decision that we
have made is a quick transfer to Iraqi sovereignty, the
quickest possible one, which is what we are approaching on June
30. And I think that is the point on which Ambassador Rahim and
I converge.
I think the most important thing as we move forward is
making sure that we use these mechanisms that are being set up
that General Sharp described, make sure that our coordination
with the Iraqi government is as close as it possibly can be and
that the mechanisms on the security side that the General laid
out are also complemented on the economic side with donor
mechanisms. That is what we really have to get right.
And my apologies to Mr. Rodman, General Sharp, and Mr.
West.
Mr. Shays. The subcommittee will stand in recess while we
go vote.
[Recess.]
Mr. Shays. This hearing is called to order.
You have the floor, Mr. West.
Mr. West. Chairman Shays, we thank you very much for this
opportunity to discuss reconstruction programs, lessons
learned, and how we can look forward. I have submitted my
written testimony that describes areas of infrastructure,
governance, economic growth, and health and education wherein
we have been active in cooperation with the CPA. I will not go
into any detail on that. I would like to look forward.
Looking at the eyes of the Interim Government come July
1st, I would propose that what they look out and see, what they
see as their challenges, are our challenges. They will know
that Saddam basically controlled the country by severely
limiting the numbers and the types of institutions, political
and social, that existed in that country in exerting total
control through the Baathist Party, the military, and the
police. That is not a model that is going to be available or
attractive to them on how they exert authority. But the means
by which they can exert authority to both secure the country
and to implement the many great ideas they will have is really
the challenge that we face--how does a new government exert its
authority over the country?
I would say, in many senses, the concept of winning
individual hearts and minds really will not be the challenge
that the Governor, nor we, face. We have seen many cases. It is
not a black and white situation. I will give you an example. We
were working with the First Calvary in Sadr City and Al-
Rasheed. You will see youths who are out in the day helping
clean up garbage and improve their neighborhoods and at night
it will be the same people who are out shooting at our troops.
If you ask them are they grateful for the assistance, they will
say yes. It is confusing. You will see parents who are thrilled
that they have power and electricity and they will be furious
because their daughter comes homes and says I cannot go to
school today, it is unsafe to go through the area. So it is a
mixed picture and I do not think it is going to clear. And I do
not know that it is even the issue. I think the issue will be
to what extent you can, as I say, really govern a country.
I would just like to go over some of the areas. In the area
of governance, a tremendous amount of initiative has been done,
a lot of it I believe under-appreciated, by the work of the CPA
and the military and others at the local and provincial
levels--development of village councils, local councils,
district councils, provincial councils. Democracy is a bottoms
up affair. A lot of that initiative has really formed what I
believe is the future of Iraq, not so much the central
government but the structure of a new society from the bottom
up. That initiative has to be preserved and developed further.
You see the councils are the first people who are being
targeted in many of these towns and villages because they are
the threats to those who are opposed to democracy. We cannot
let that fail. That is a very important part of the new
institution of Iraq.
Other areas. Political party development. It is going to be
very key to how you develop the ability to exert your authority
or to have dialog with those who control the population.
Civil society. The ability to foster groups who are able to
bring together common and differing opinions throughout the
country. We have seen cases of handicapped societies, of
women's groups, of college students, the Iraqis are thrilled to
have the freedom to get together and talk to each other openly
without fear. And that is a very important new emphasis that we
should build on in Iraq.
The ability to build again the police and the military. Not
just the issue of actually the force itself, but the fact that
they are strong and potential institutions that will have a
major impact on stabilizing Iraq.
Tribal leaders and religious leaders. Their role in the
political development. This has been a lot of the focus of
people on the ground already. Those are key areas or
institutions, if you will, to be built on.
In areas like infrastructure, the infrastructure itself is
important, but increasingly the ability for the ministries, the
contractors, local communities to maintain the institutions
surrounding the development of services, both economic services
and others.
Education. Schools and universities we consider very
important. Not only are they institutions that help influence
and shape attitudes, they are also just physically places to
get youths off the street and occupied for a day and believing
they have a future.
Similarly in the economic growth area, jobs themselves are
important, but also there are many institutions that go along
in this area, whether they are banks, larger businesses,
different chambers of commerce, ways to represent private
sector interests.
So we are really looking ourselves at ways that we can
build into our programs more of a focus on how the Iraqis
implement their good ideas, how they do their own security. We
believe these are going to be done largely through
organizations and institutions that are going to need to be a
focus in the future. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. West follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Thank you very much, Mr. West.
What I would like is when I ask a question of any one of
you, I want any of you to feel you can jump in. I would love a
dialog like that. Just for continuity's sake, I would like to
ask you the same question that I asked Ambassador Schlicher;
and that is, I want to know the worst decision we made, and you
do not need to give it too much context, the best decision, and
the most important thing we must do in the year to come.
Mr. Rodman. I will volunteer. For the best and the worst, I
would really cite one decision that was made that had a bad and
positive implication, and that is the way the war was fought.
We made a decision to emphasize speed rather than mass. It
guaranteed the quickness of the result, the thoroughness of the
defeat of Saddam. It helped us avoid a lot of big disasters
that we do not have to worry about--destruction of the oil
fields, a protracted conflict that could have destabilized
other countries. But the downside was that regime collapsed so
quickly and so thoroughly that it left a vacuum that may have
been more than we anticipated. Maybe there is a lesson here
about the nature of totalitarian regimes. What we have been
struggling with ever since then is to fill that vacuum.
Obviously, we want new Iraq institutions to fill that vacuum.
That is precisely what we are doing and what we have to do.
Mr. Shays. I am not going to ask you to answer it now, but
was it a vacuum created because we destroyed their military, or
was it because after destroying it, we said we were not even
willing to reestablish a viable military? But I do not want you
to answer that yet. Tell me the best decision.
Mr. Rodman. Well, it is the same one. I think it was the
right way to fight the war. And again, what we need to do now--
--
Mr. Shays. You sound like Alan Greenspan here. The best
decision was also the worst decision. But I get you. I
understand. What do we need to do?
Mr. Rodman. I think we need to continue the political
process. I would put the priority on that as the key to our
strategy.
Mr. Shays. Can you define ``political process?''
Mr. Rodman. Helping the Iraqis build their institutions,
have those institutions get roots in the society. In other
words, June 30th is crucial.
Mr. Shays. I would say in response to that point that, and
Mr. West, I think you rightfully point out, I was reading in my
briefing that almost 90 percent of the Iraqi communities have
some kind of council representation. Is that an accurate
number, somewhere in that range?
Mr. Rodman. Almost all have elected municipal councils.
Mr. Shays. OK. Exactly. But we are into the 90 percentile.
I think that is something I had not paid enough attention to. I
think that is quite impressive. And I know that a lot of that
was done through the military as well as CPA.
General, the worst, the best?
General Sharp. Yes, sir. The decision, it was not really a
decision, but how we trained the Iraqi police and the security
forces. I think, as General Eaton has said, the concentration
on leadership we needed to focus on earlier than we did. And we
have made those changes now. We have established new academies
that are working at the mid-level and the upper-level
leadership of the police, the ICDC, and the Iraqi army in order
for them, as we start this partnership, to be able to take
leadership roles within Iraq to be able to establish a secure
environment.
Mr. Shays. Let me be clear what you are saying. You are
saying one of the worst decisions was in the beginning how we
trained the Iraqi policy and the quality of the people we were
getting.
General Sharp. I will not say quality of people. I will say
that we worked very hard to bring numbers in, quantity in, very
quickly, and you saw those numbers grow very quickly. We
started training both in the unit level with a short 3-week
course, and then a longer 8-week course. But the concentration
was on the basic level police skills, not on the mid-level
managers or the district chiefs that could take
responsibilities themselves.
Mr. Shays. Best decision?
General Sharp. I think the best decision continues to be
the support of the commanders that we have over in Iraq. I have
made several trips over also, and I think you would agree, if
you ask any commander on the ground, at any level, he is
getting the full support of the Department of Defense, of the
U.S. Government, and Congress. There is not a thing that our
commanders over there have asked for that we have not worked
tirelessly, you have not worked tirelessly, in order to be able
to get it to them.
And then the most important thing I think is the
partnership. We have started this partnership with the Iraqis.
It is not as if on June 30 we are standing up something new. We
have been doing joint patrols with Iraqis within the police,
within the ICDC, and within the armed forces. But we will go to
a new level come June 30. The mechanisms, the coordination
mechanisms that we will establish based upon the U.N. Security
Council resolution and the letters that are attached to that to
have full partnership, to share intelligence even better than
what we are doing now, to be able to work on unity of command
arrangements to be able to get after the security issues, is
the most important thing that we get right and make that a full
partnership.
Mr. Shays. Mr. West?
Mr. West. In terms of reconstruction, I guess if I would
look back and try and change one thing, I would have hoped that
as a government we would have had developed more quickly a
unique and a more unencumbered approach to going at
reconstruction. We have tried to use existing structures of
development, if you will, in very extraordinary situations and
I am not so sure we really had all the tools nor the risk-
adverse nature to do the things that might have worked best--of
getting moneys directly to Iraqi organizations, of doing more
in business and job creation, or governance that did not come
out of the standard toolbox. So, with hindsight, I would have
liked to see a more robust and very specific set of tools to
take on this unique situation.
Mr. Shays. Does that mean you would have wanted to see more
NGO's, like Save the Children, Mercy Corps, and others?
Mr. West. I would have thought that would have been a great
way to go. There are those things we can do right now. I am
thinking more, for instance, when the Eastern Europe and the
former Soviet Union came on the scene in development terms, we
had very, very specific legislation and ideas and concepts and
were unfettered by a lot of the typical bureaucracy, if you
will, to get the job done. And I think this is equally
important and I would have liked to see very, very new ways of
doing business and out of the box thinking that perhaps we did
not do in this case.
Mr. Shays. General Patreaus, one of the many generals who
did this, he did not wait for CPA. He had some money they found
and they just went right into it.
Mr. West. It is a little easier to do when you are not
dealing with appropriated funds.
Mr. Shays. Yes. But next door, we had a hearing on how we
were appropriating funds and the potential speed that
superseded costs, so costs became very high, and so on. I mean,
we have some problems there as well that we are dealing with.
What is the best decision we made?
Mr. West. I think the construct in the areas of
infrastructure. I think a lot of what happened we are going to
see the benefits of in terms of the development of the Iraqi
capacity in contracting, in employment generation. I believe
there has been a very solid basis in the infrastructure area.
Perhaps it has overshadowed some of the other areas, but I
think there is a very solid----
Mr. Shays. I am kind of smiling because the implication is
that it is kind of that the new Iraqi government may get credit
for the infrastructure, the year of trial and tribulation we
have gone through. And maybe that is kind of a good thing. But
the implication is you think we have a pretty good foundation
of infrastructure and they can build on it.
Mr. West. Absolutely.
Mr. Shays. The thing that it is most important for us to
do, Mr. West?
Mr. West. Just repeating what I was emphasizing before, I
believe a focus on Iraqi capacity particularly in an
institutional sense.
Mr. Shays. Mr. Rodman, I had asked a question that I did
not let you answer earlier. Could you just refresh me on your
point.
Mr. Rodman. The best and the worst?
Mr. Shays. Yes.
Mr. Rodman. It was the way we fought the war. It had I
think tremendous advantages and yet the vacuum----
Mr. Shays. That is it, the vacuum.
Mr. Rodman. The army dissolved itself; I would make that
point. More than that we made a decision, these institutions
collapsed and we did not find an army that reported to duty to
take on new assignments from us. It melted away and we were
forced to reconstitute these institutions.
Mr. Shays. With all due respect though, that is the point I
think, thank you for refreshing me, we did not invite them to
come back. We did not say you have laid down your arms, you
have gone, come back now and let us get you reestablished under
new leadership or something. We did not do that.
Mr. Rodman. Well, we reconstituted. We started building a
new army and new police forces. In that process we have hired a
lot of the same people who had that experience. On salaries we
reversed ourselves. I think we made a mistake at the beginning
to just leave these people alone. After a while we realized
that these people deserved some help, so we reversed course.
Mr. Shays. I would have thought that one of you would have
said the worst decision we made was not to establish security
early on. Allowing some Iraqis, and I want to say ``some,''
Iraqis to brutalize their country and other Iraqis saw us stand
and allow that to happen. I would have thought one of you might
have said that. Does that rank up pretty high? I mean it was a
policy decision to not have our military engage the looters.
General Sharp. When we moved in to establish a secure and
safe environment in Iraq it was our responsibility to go after,
and what we focused on was, the people at the time that were
attacking us. As you will recall, the Fedayeen, the Saddam
folks, were continuing to attack us and that is what our
emphasis was to establish security based upon the folks that
were attacking us.
Mr. Shays. But we knew, and it had been predicted, that
there would be a lot of looting. So are you defending the
decision not to protect the infrastructures and allow the
looting to go forward?
General Sharp. I think as our capabilities allowed us, we
stopped that looting.
Mr. Shays. So you think we did not have the capability to
prevent the looting?
General Sharp. I think initially, as we moved in, as you
recall, we moved in so quickly as we went throughout the
country to be able to do that, where we saw looting we stopped
it as quickly as we could.
Mr. Shays. There was implication that the Turkish
government did not fully engage their legislative body to allow
us to come in from the North because of Turkey's interest in
pleasing the French and becoming part of the European Union.
What was the significance of our not being able to come in? And
the reason I am asking is I have been told by some military
folks that had we been able to come from all directions we
might have been able to capture some people instead of allowing
them to kind of just go into the woodwork.
General Sharp. The military significance was that we had to
adjust the plan. I think that General Franks did that very
quickly to be able to move more in toward the South. Would we
have liked to have been able to come in on all fronts?
Absolutely.
Mr. Shays. I have told every one of my constituents that on
a scale of 1 to 10, the removal of the regime was an 11. So I
am not being critical of this amazing and very quick action
which had its pluses and minuses. But what I have been told,
and if it is not a valid argument I want to get it out of my
mind, I was told that had we been able to come from all
directions, we might have been able to capture some of the
armies before they just went into the woodwork. If you do not
think that is true--I do not want to put words in your mouth.
General Sharp. Sir, I do not believe that is true. I
believe that as they saw how quickly we moved, they just
completely dissolved. And you have to remember, just because we
could not come in from Turkey, there were attacks by air across
the country that did a lot of destruction to the armies both in
the North and up Northeast of Baghdad. When we saw them move we
were able to quickly destroy them by air. So I think that
immediate mass effect across the country dissolved them very
quickly. If there would have been another front to be able to
even more quickly do that, I think we would have had the same
effect.
Mr. Shays. All right. A former U.S. advisor in Baghdad, now
with Stanford University, has said, ``If you don't have
security in Iraq, you don't have anything. We have to throw
everything we have, everything, into getting the new Iraqi
forces operating effectively.'' First, I took the position, and
I was thinking later that I really did not have the ability to
agree or disagree with it, and that was the issue of how many
troops we needed. And the argument that you seem to be implying
as well is we did not have the forces to protect the
infrastructure.
General Sharp. Well, I think we did protect a lot of the
infrastructure. There were not any oil fields that were
destroyed, or very, very few that were destroyed. We did not
have massive refugee problems as we went throughout the
country. Again, as Mr. Rodman laid out, I think the forces that
we had we concentrated to move very quickly to Baghdad and it
caused the insurgents to go into the woodwork and then came
back out, and that is the issue we are dealing with now. So I
would disagree that we did not have enough forces to be able to
do it. I mean, how many days did it take us to topple the
regime and to be able to move to Baghdad? Unheard of in
history. We had the forces both on the land and in the air to
be able to do the mission that was given to General Franks.
Mr. Shays. It is funny, I did not think we would go down
this road because I did not think there would be much
disagreement on this. I would like to be just a little more
clear. I was in Basra. I have been in Baghdad. I have seen the
hospitals without not just the windows, without the frames,
without the doors, without anything in them. There was just
total looting and destruction of things that Iraqis would have
considered precious to them, and yet someone looted them. And I
have seen pictures of American soldiers standing by as these
looters went in. So what I am having a hard time understanding
is why you feel that we did provide security. There is not an
Iraqi I know who thinks that security was provided. And it
either was a decision not to provide it, or it was a decision
that we were not capable of providing it. But you are the first
person I have spoken to, General, that has suggested that this
was not a bad thing, that we protected what we had to protect.
So I just have to say that to you. And I am happy to have you
make a comment.
General Sharp. When we moved in and attacked and took out
the regime, you obviously make decisions on what you do first
in order to be able to accomplish your objectives. The phasing
of the attack allowed us to move very quickly to Baghdad so
that we could take the regime down, as we did. Simultaneously
across the country with air attacks and ground attacks, we were
able to take out their combat force so that we were able to
topple the regime very quickly. That was the first phase.
As we moved into the cities then, because of that rapid
movement up North toward Baghdad, as we moved into the cities
the first several days after the war, we did not have forces
that were throughout the country that could stop all of the
looting. But again I would say that I think the ability to be
able to move quickly to be able to take down the regime saved
United States, Coalition, and Iraqi lives because it ended the
major combat operations very quickly. After that was
established, we moved into the different regions that we are in
right now and worked very closely to try to stop any of the
looting at that time. It was a matter of phasing.
Mr. Shays. OK. I will leave it at this. I am the last one
who should judge what your capabilities are, and I knew that
you tried to do everything you were capable of. It just seems
to me that we were not capable of having that security and that
it was very costly in that it sent a message, it seemed to me,
as I have been there these various times and have heard
comments from so many Iraqis, that we were either incapable or
chose not to. In either case, it was very unsettling to the
Iraqis. And I think what I am hearing you say, General, is that
because it was so quick, we could not have done anything
different about it. I think that is your message to me.
I would love, Mr. Rodman, if you have comment in that
regard. I wanted to address the same question to you about ``If
you do not have security in Iraq, you do not have anything. We
have to throw everything we have, everything, into getting new
Iraqi forces operating effectively.''
Mr. Rodman. My judgment of the military circumstances at
the end of the war, my recollections, are the same as General
Sharp's. We put a premium on speed and I think that saved
lives. If we had done it differently and blanketed the country
with lots of troops, it would have been a different kind of war
and we would have paid the price in other ways.
The quote you read I totally agree with. Security is the
precondition for everything else. It is a vicious circle right
now. It is impeding the economic reconstruction that has so
much to do with the Iraqi people's well-being and sense of
well-being. So that is a priority. And as your quote said, we
want to train and prepare and equip Iraqis to fill that vacuum
and build those institutions.
Mr. Shays. OK. Let me just quickly ask all of you, why in
your view did the U.S. authorities disband the Iraqi military?
And I think from your standpoint, General, you think they did
not disband it, they just disappeared. But we made a decision
to disband it. That was a decision. We made a decision to
disband the government, the army, and the police. My question
to you is, why do you think the authorities decided to disband
the Iraqi military?
Let us start with you, Mr. Rodman.
Mr. Rodman. As I said, we found nothing there when we got
there--no institution that we could recover, retrain, reassign.
The units melted away. The officer corps, we were not sure who
was reliable. And I think CPA made a decision to build a new
army and a new police. With respect to the police, I have heard
an additional factor, which is that the Iraqi police in the old
days had a different approach to policing--they were much
better at knocking down doors in the middle of the night than
they were about patrolling the neighborhood. So, too, we really
had to rebuild from the ground up. There were tradeoffs. We did
hire a lot of people, we put a premium on numbers. We have had
to make sure the training and equipping caught up with their
numbers. But we felt we did not have a lot of choice.
In addition, there is a political reason. The Iraqi people
hated that regime. And anything that smacked of, well, we are
going in there, we are just going to take the institutions,
particularly the security institutions, as they are and replace
a few people at the top--that would have had very negative
political ramifications among the Shiites, the Kurds. So for
that reason too, we wanted to reassure the Iraqis that the old
regime was dead and that something new was about to be built.
And, unfortunately, that takes time.
Mr. Shays. General, do you want to speak to this?
General Sharp. I just would like to add to what Mr. Rodman
said as far as the army goes. When you think of the old Iraqi
army, you cannot think of a Western army or an army like ours.
It is absolutely, as you know, sir, totally different, where
the officer corps almost across the board was corrupt and
punished physically many times the enlisted soldiers underneath
them. Virtually no non-commissioned officer corps whatsoever.
It was an army of a dictator and that permeated throughout the
army. And our belief at the time was a lot of it disintegrated
because when the recruits that were forced into the army saw
the opportunity to run home, they took the opportunity to run
home. And to think we would be able to pull those back together
as a unit, it would be very difficult when it would be asking
them to come back to an institution that they only knew of as
one that was corrupt, that they did not get paid correctly,
they were forced to servitude in that organization. So the
tactic that we took, and continue to take, is to start from the
ground level, put a lot of money, a lot of effort into building
up the Iraqi security forces with professionally trained
individuals, as we have been doing really since last summer.
Mr. Shays. Mr. West, I know it is a little out of your
territory, but you do a lot of thinking about this in your
work. So the question about the disbanding the army, the
police, and the government.
Mr. West. I am actually going to take a bye on that one. I
will just say that I think security, you cannot agree any more,
security is the real issue. And just to note, security is more
than just standing up a military and a police force. You cannot
have enough police and military to secure every place, every
time, if there is the intent within the society to undermine
the new government. It is going to take a lot more in terms of
earning the respect and the commitment of the people to make
Iraq work. That is also part of this lessons learned: How do
you build in the issues of security into the breadth of the
programs of reconstruction, not just the police and the
military, because all sorts of factors are going to affect the
security and the ability to govern.
Mr. Shays. Would you speak to the issue of CPA's efforts to
distribute aid and development funds, rebuild infrastructure,
and create a stable economy generating jobs for Iraqis. There
has been concern that the money has not gone out as quickly,
that there have been restraints there that have hampered our
effort to succeed.
Mr. West. There has been a lot of money spent and a lot of
money spent well I believe in Iraq. I am not so sure that the
amount of funds that has gone out the door is a measure of
success or failure. I think in a fiscal sense, in a development
sense, it is just amazing what CPA, military, USAID, and other
organizations have done there. I think there really are a
different set of issues and there are long lines of other
questions in terms of institutions--the military, the lack of
police, other issues. I do not think it is an issue of doing
things more. Eighteen billion dollars is a mind-boggling number
to me in terms of development in anyplace we have ever worked.
The fact that it is taking perhaps a longer time to spend that
amount of money to me has as many up sides as it does down
sides. So I am not of the opinion that slowness in
reconstruction has really been one of the major issues. As a
matter of fact, I believe it is just amazing what the U.S.
Government, broadly, has achieved in Iraq.
Mr. Shays. Before I go to the next panel, I would love each
of you to address the issue of your sense of the success or
failure of this new government. In other words, there was a lot
of criticism that we were moving too quickly. I sense you all
agree that this makes sense. Second, are you optimistic,
moderately optimistic, not quite sure, want to wait 2 months to
see what is going to happen? But if you had to make some
predictions, tell me how you think this new government is going
to work out.
Mr. Rodman. Mr. Chairman, first of all, I think the sooner
the better, for reasons I mentioned before. It is deadly for us
to be in the position of an occupier, and the sooner we can
shed that mantle and put an Iraqi face on events the better off
we are and the better that helps us marginalize the extremists
and empower the good people of Iraq.
Second, I think this is a superb group of people. It is a
balanced ticket. These are representatives of all the moderate
forces, all the regions, the ethnic groups, tribal groups. It
is a well-constructed, broadly representative group of people.
These are the leaders of moderate Iraq and I think they
represent the majority. And even better, I am confident that
they are going to be able to work together. And I agree with
Ambassador Al-Rahim that the Governing Council was a success.
It, too, was a balanced ticket. It included every group and
they stuck together remarkably well in the face of repeated
provocations and attempts by the terrorists to foment civil
war. Those attempts failed. And so here too you see the Kurds,
the Shiites, the Sunni working together. There are
disagreements. The Kurds are making some demands. But this is
political bargaining. This is politics. And they have resolved
similar disputes over the past year with great political skill.
The Iraqis are learning the arts of compromise and co-
existence.
This group of people includes a lot of talented people,
people we were able to see over the course of a year. We could
judge who was good, who was not so good. So we had that year of
experience in helping to pick the people and a very intensive
consultation process that Ambassador Brahimi participated in,
just, again, to see who was broadly representative in the
country. So I think it is a good group of people, talented
people. They are showing cohesion, political skill. They want
us there, so they are going to cooperate with us in the
interests of their own country. We are convinced we can work
with them. And we will treat them with the respect due a
sovereign country. We will behave differently after June 30th.
But this is a group of people that we will be able to work
with. We will respect their judgment. We know that they want us
there so we think any problems that arise are going to be
solvable.
Again, we think the symbolism of this is tremendous. It is
Iraqis running their own country. Secretary Powell made a good
statement the other day that it puts the terrorists in an
impossible position, that they are now attacking their own
people, their own country. So I think we are going to be in a
better position after June 30.
Mr. Shays. I hope we protect them. And I say that because I
think of the police officers in Baghdad who were waiting for
weapons and they did not have them and the terrorists got in
and went from room to room and killed them. It makes you want
to weep, because there were some very good officers being
trained. Thank you for your comment.
General.
General Sharp. Sir, I am very optimistic, and for several
reasons. Let me read one sentence from Prime Minister Allawi's
letter to the U.N. Security Council which I think is really
indicative of both him and the entire Iraqi Interim Government
and the people of Iraq as they move toward free sovereignty.
Mr. Shays. Sure.
General Sharp. ``Their government,'' and he is talking
about the new Iraqi Interim Government, ``is determined to
overcome these forces.'' And he is talking about the forces who
would tear down this government and this country as it move to
new sovereignty, ``and to develop security forces of capable of
providing adequate security for the Iraqi people.'' And
everything that Prime Minister Allawi has said, the Minister of
Defense has said, the Minister of Interior has said, they have
all been very forward leading as to saying this is our job, it
is our responsibility. We need you there to help us, but we
realize it is our responsibility for security. Sending that
signal to the Iraqi people, as you talked earlier, sir, about
the leadership need, it is starting from the top. So I am
optimistic about that.
No. 2, I am very optimistic with what we are doing because
of the lessons learned that we have had on training Iraqi
security forces, all five lines. As you know, we have sent back
in one of our great officers, Lieutenant General Dave Patreaus,
who had great success in the North, he is now in charge,
working with the Iraqis to be able to help train and equip all
of the five Iraqi security forces again. I think that will pay
great dividends as we work in this partnership with Iraqis
after June 30.
And I think the last reason that I am optimistic is because
of the U.N. Security Council resolution. The U.N. Security
Council resolution, as the Ambassador pointed out earlier,
invites member states to come in to help across the board in
Iraq. It mentions specifically helping to protect the United
Nations, critical in their work to be able to get elections
moving so that we can go on the timetable. It invites member
states to come in and help with security across the board. And
this is a hope, but it is a hope that I think our entire U.S.
Government may ask everybody to continue to work hard for, is
to talk to Coalition countries and make them understand the
importance of helping out with this effort in Iraq because it
affects not only Iraq, but the global war on terrorism which
none of us can opt out of, and it is critical that we move
forward.
So for all of those reasons, I am very optimistic that we
are going to move forward and that the Iraqis are going to take
charge and move forward with their country.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
Mr. West, I just learned to my horror that--I mean, I am
grateful that you have a son who is graduating, but I just was
told now. So if you need to leave at this moment not to be
late, I want you to leave. You are the last person I am going
to ask this question and then I will get to the next panel.
Mr. West. I will just finish the comment. Basically, I am
very optimistic about the capacity, the intelligence, and the
commitment of the Iraqis. I think it is going to be messy. I
think neither the world nor the Iraqis have particularly the
timeframe of what all the patience and hard work and sacrifice
it is going to take. So, up close, a lot of times I think it
will be disappointing. But the fact is you do not create a
great democracy in 12 months or 2 years. It is going to take
decades and a lot of hard work. But I am confident that they
are on the right track and the pace of change is just mind-
boggling there. I think a lot of good things are going to
happen and will continue to. So I am an optimist.
Mr. Shays. OK. Thank you, Mr. West. And you should get on
your way. Tell me you are not being late to your son's
graduation or I will feel very guilty. OK.
I just want to ask if any of you want to put anything on
the record before we go to the next panel. Anything else on the
record? OK. Gentlemen, thank you for your service to our
country, and thank you for participating in this hearing. We
appreciate it.
And I thank the third, and final, panel for their patience.
We have Dr. Samer Shehata, Center for Contemporary Arab
Studies, Georgetown University; Mr. Richard Galen, former
director of Strategic Media, Coalition Provisional Authority,
who I think spent 6 months in Iraq; and Ms. Danielle Pletka,
vice president, Foreign and Defense Policy Studies, American
Enterprise Institute.
If you would please come to the table, I will swear you in.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Shays. I have a sense of guilt because I have a good
friend, who is in the very middle, Mr. Rich Galen, testifying.
So now that I have gotten that out in the open. I thank all of
you for being here. I am grateful for all of your work and your
contribution to this hearing. Obviously, Mr. Galen, I am very
grateful that you would have spent 6 months of your life
without your wife and family in Iraq. So thank you for that,
and thank you for now allowing us to have the input of your
knowledge.
So, Dr. Shehata, we will start with you. Thank you so much.
STATEMENTS OF SAMER S. SHEHATA, CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ARAB
STUDIES, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY; RICHARD GALEN, FORMER DIRECTOR,
STRATEGIC MEDIA, COALITION PROVISIONAL AUTHORITY; AND DANIELLE
PLETKA, VICE PRESIDENT, FOREIGN AND DEFENSE POLICY STUDIES,
AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE
Dr. Shehata. Mr. Chairman, I am honored to be here and
delighted to be asked to share my views with you on this
important topic. My remarks today are only a summary of my
longer submitted testimony and address the following questions.
First, what events caused the change in Iraqi attitudes
toward the United States and the CPA from the fall of Saddam's
regime to the present?
Second, and related this, what factors caused the security
environment to deteriorate?
Third, why did Coalition and U.S. Government public
diplomacy efforts fail to influence the Iraqi public?
And finally, and I think maybe I will have an opportunity
to talk about this in the Q&A because I realize I only have a
short period of time here, the overall question of U.S. public
diplomacy in Iraq and the Arab world.
First, it is important to accurately understand Iraqi
reactions to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the U.S.
presence in the country. Although the majority of Iraqis were
delighted to be rid of the Hussein regime, and many were and
are thankful to the United States for accomplishing this,
Iraqis were, from the beginning, ambivalent about a foreign
military presence in the country and/or an American role in
Iraqi politics. The subsequent course of events--a series of
policy mistakes, poor decisions, and the failure to deliver on
promises and meet obligations, as well as high expectations on
the part of many Iraqis--have led to the current troubling
situation with regard to Iraqi hearts and minds.
As a result, it would not be unreasonable to say today that
the war for Iraqi hearts and minds might already be lost. I
apologize for being direct, but only an honest appraisal of the
situation is likely to be of any benefit to you.
The No. 1 issue in Iraq, as we have heard today,
immediately after the war in April 2003 continues to be the No.
1 issue in Iraq today, 14 months later--security. Security is
key, it is foundational to all public diplomacy efforts as well
as post-war reconstruction, investment, commerce, civic
involvement, education, and everyday life. Every element of
Iraqi society is dependent upon the maintenance of security.
And the absence of security acts as a bottleneck on what can be
achieved in all of these fields.
The failure to establish basic law and order is the leading
criticism Iraqis make of the CPA and the occupation. There is
universal agreement across a wide spectrum of Iraqis, from
those favorable to the United States to those critical of
America, from religious as well as secular elements, from
Sunni, Shiite, Kurd, Turkmen, and others, that security is the
main problem facing the country. This is demonstrated by both
public statements as well as the available polling data.
We must precisely understand what is meant by security
however. When Iraqis speak of security they are not primarily
referring to attacks on Coalition forces or the targeting of
U.S. soldiers. They are referring to the safety of ordinary
Iraqis in the pursuit of their everyday affairs. The failure of
the CPA to provide security against car-jackings, kidnappings,
armed robbery, abduction, rape, and other kinds of theft and
banditry, in addition to the insecurity caused by attacks on
Coalition forces, is the primary complaint most Iraqis have of
the occupation. Iraqis simply do not feel safe and many, quite
possibly the majority, hold the CPA and the United States
responsible for this situation. I experienced this myself in
Baghdad last summer.
Let me move to the causes of the present security situation
briefly. The unwillingness or inability of the Coalition forces
to stop the widespread looting following the fall of the regime
was a terrible beginning that produced a feeling that no one
was in charge, encouraged criminal elements, and made the
country's reconstruction exceedingly more difficult as a result
of the pillaging of public utilities and ministries. The
decisions to disband the Iraqi army and police force after the
fall of Baghdad have also contributed to the continuing
security problem in multiple ways.
The disbanding of the army and police produced two negative
consequences: The country was left without the institutions
most capable of maintaining law and order; and second, it
produced thousands of disenfranchised men trained in military
and security operations now without jobs or income, unsure of
their future in the new Iraq, and embittered at the CPA and the
United States.
Insufficient troop presence from the beginning coupled with
the wrong types of forces, arguably, combat soldiers as opposed
to trained peacekeepers and military police, has also
negatively impacted the security situation.
Let me move to the second most important factor in
determining how Iraqis view the CPA and the United States at
the present; and that is the question of public services.
Many in the CPA have worked tirelessly to improve the
situation in Iraq and much has been accomplished. But the fact
remains that, in terms of public services, the overall picture
is mixed. For example, with regard to the telecommunications
sector, there actually has been quite a great deal
accomplished. There are now today more telephone lines in Iraq
than pre-war if we include the newly established cell phone
service, for example, although the land line figure is actually
still below, slightly, the figure that existed before the war.
Though there have been improvements in telecommunications,
electricity remains the greatest obstacle in terms of public
service provision. Electricity is the single most important
public service that directly affects Iraqi opinion of the U.S.
occupation as it has a direct impact on many aspects of daily
life. It is crucial for refrigeration, air conditioning, water
and sewage, lighting, security, effective hospital operations,
commerce, and almost all elements of everyday life in Iraq.
Iraq today has still not reached pre-war levels of electricity.
For some electricity has become the metric for measuring the
CPA's success or lack thereof in terms of delivering public
services.
The DOD estimated pre-war levels of electricity production
in Iraq to be 4,400 megawatts daily. The CPA estimated the 7-
day average of peak electricity production for the week of May
22-28, 2004, to be 3,946 megawatts--still well below pre-war
levels. This corresponds to Iraqi impressions revealed through
polling data. In the USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll administered at
the end of March and the beginning of April, which included
roughly 3,400 Iraqis, 100 percent of Iraqis surveyed said they
``go without electricity for long periods of time.'' This
figure is actually up from 99 percent in 2003.
After security, electricity is the second leading criticism
of the CPA and the occupation among Iraqis. And was said
previously, many Iraqis remain incredulous that the most
powerful country in the world cannot restore electricity to
pre-war levels in Baghdad and elsewhere in the country 1 year
after the war. Some Iraqis, I am sad to say, believe this is a
deliberate policy on the part of the United States. I heard
this myself when I was in Baghdad last summer. The failure to
deliver electricity at pre-war levels 1 year later has
negatively affected Iraqi attitudes toward the United States
and the CPA.
There is not sufficient time here to compare all the levels
of other public services and infrastructure in Iraq before the
war and at present. Many however see these as small matters
which the United States should have solved by now. Both Iraqis
and others do not make evaluations of the present based on the
possibility that things might, and probably will, be much
better 5 years from now. They base their evaluations on what
conditions are like today. Real people experience and think in
days and months. Decades and generations are the timeframes of
historians and academics.
Let me address another very important topic that has not
received much attention today with regard to how Iraqis view
the CPA and the occupation, and that is the question of
unemployment. Accurate employment figures are difficult to
obtain for Iraq. Mass unemployment, however, continues to be a
serious problem and should be viewed, in part, as a security
issue in addition to its importance for Iraqi public opinion.
In addition to fueling frustration and resentment toward the
U.S. occupation, large pools of jobless men could become a
source of potential recruits for the insurgency.
In March, the CPA estimated unemployment at between 25 and
30 percent, while the Economist Intelligence Unit put the
figure closer to 60 percent for the same month. According to
the June 9, 2004 Iraq Index, which is put out by the Brookings
Institution, unemployment is estimated to be between 28 and 45
percent in Iraq.
Let me talk about how many Iraqis--and I will be brief--
experience the U.S. presence. How some Iraqis experience the
U.S. military presence in their country has also negatively
affected many Iraqi hearts and minds. Stories of house raids in
the middle of the night with heavily armed troops kicking down
doors, frightening women and children in the process, circulate
in Iraq and have embittered Iraqis who experience such raids
and who are neither involved in criminal activity or the
insurgency, as well as other Iraqis.
Long, seemingly arbitrary detentions with little or no
information provided to the detainees' families has been a
grievance voiced by many. On some accounts, Iraqis also resent
U.S. military convoys in urban areas and checkpoints. Civilian
casualties, of course, are an altogether different matter.
Iraqis have an overall negative impression of U.S. military
forces according to the various polling data. Recent CPA
polling found that 80 percent of Iraqis have an unfavorable
opinion of U.S. troops. The USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll produced
similar findings.
The impact of house raids, wrongful detention, the
disproportionate use of force, and civilian casualties goes
well beyond the individuals directly involved. Every house raid
on law-abiding families turns an entire street against
Coalition forces, every wrongful detention creates a
neighborhood opposed to the occupation, and every civilian
casualty produces an extended family embittered against the
United States.
The logic of militarily defeating an insurgency with a
foreign army runs counter to the logic of winning the battle
for the hearts and minds of the general population. Counter
insurgency operations necessarily result in urban fighting,
damage to neighborhoods, and civilian casualties. The case of
Fallujah is particularly instructive. Because I have run out of
time, I am not going to go through the case of Fallujah. But
let me just say----
Mr. Shays. I will give you an opportunity in the questions.
Dr. Shehata. OK. In brief, that from the perspective of the
war for the hearts and minds, the events of Fallujah were
disastrous, infuriating most Iraqis, galvanizing opinion
decidedly against the United States, and inflaming anti-
American sentiment. Almost all Iraqis viewed it as unjustified,
collective punishment and the disproportionate use of force,
including our allies in Iraq like the current Prime Minister as
well as Adnan Pechachi and others.
Mr. Shays. Let me do this. I know you have more in your
statement, but let me get to Mr. Galen.
Dr. Shehata. Sure.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Shehata follows:]
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Mr. Shays. I realize I may have erred here as well. You
have been in Iraq since the----
Dr. Shehata. After the war.
Mr. Shays. After the war. Have you as well, Ms. Pletka?
Ms. Pletka. Yes.
Mr. Shays. So thank you all for doing that. That just shows
my bias to a good friend.
Mr. Galen, you have the floor.
Mr. Galen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to begin
this portion with the conclusion of my written testimony, which
is this: We should remember that the last time the United
States was an occupying power was in Japan. We defeated Japan
in 1945. We did not return sovereignty until early 1952--having
signed the Treaty of San Francisco in late 1951. So we occupied
Japan for just under 7 years. Japan was a monolithic society--
one religion, one culture, one history. But Iraq is a multi-
religious, multi-ethnic, and largely tribal in its history.
Japan is a series of islands, easily isolated. Iraq is
surrounded by neighbors who are not particularly thrilled about
a non-theocratic, at least semi-democratic, potential economic
powerhouse building up right next door.
We fought a war of attrition against Japan. A significant
number of Japanese young men who could have continued to fight
had already been killed in the march across the Pacific. Iraq's
military disintegrated in about 3 weeks and, indeed, we pointed
with pride to our precision in military action in keeping enemy
combatant deaths to a minimum.
In just 15 days from today, some 14 months, not 7 years,
after the fall of Saddam, we will be returning sovereignty to
the Iraqi people. And we should take justifiable pride in that
accomplishment and have an optimistic outlook on what the
ripples and echoes of that accomplishment will mean to the
future of the region.
I want to speak for a second, sir, about some of the
heroism that we saw in Iraq, not the least the three of you
sitting in front of me, the chairman having been to Iraq some
five times, at least three times without the cover of a CODEL.
And as I put in my written statement, I have an endearing
memory in my mind of meeting you and I think Dr. Palarino, and
I did not know the gentleman from Virginia, Frank Wolf, outside
the gate of the Green Zone--I know this is incorrect in its
fact, but it is correct in its imagine in my mind--not getting
out of a Humvee surrounded by crew served weapons, but crawling
out of what appeared in my mind to be a 1957 Opel with rusted
bullet holes in it.
Mr. Shays. We were grateful it was dirty.
Mr. Galen. My point exactly. That is certainly heroism and
it is under-recognized I think to go around the country as you
did looking for ground truth, as we like to call it, and coming
up with your own conclusions.
Another hero was here earlier, Ron Schlicher. We sat about
15 feet apart for most of the 6 months that I was in Iraq. I
wrote about this in one of my columns during the explosion in
Fallujah. Ambassador Schlicher and Ambassador Dick Jones went
to Fallujah during the height of the unrest, of the chaos. And
as I wrote, they did not go dressed in bowler hats and in
morning coats. They went in kevlar helmets and in flak jackets.
It was, frankly, one of the bravest things that I saw while I
was there.
The third hero, you pointed to earlier, is the Iraq
Representative to the United States, Ms. Rend Al-Rahim, who at
great personal risk has served her country very well, is
clearly a brilliant spokesperson. I did not agree with
everything she said, but she says it beautifully, she says it
with passion. And as an example of how brave she truly is,
during the time of the TAL negotiations, the Transitional
Administrative Law negotiations, we were, frankly, out of
security people; we just did not have anymore left, everybody
was used up, and Ambassador Bremer's special assistant, a young
man named Brian McCormick, called and asked if I was free for
about an hour, and I said, sure, and he said, ``Would you bring
your gun.'' And to show how brave Ambassador Rahim is, I was
her security detail when we transported her from the Ministry
to Foreign Affairs back into the Green Zone. And if there ever
was an act of heroism, I guarantee you, sir, that was it.
Mr. Shays. No. I think it was ignorance is bliss.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Galen. I just want to make one last point, sir, before
I turn over the microphone. And that is, as we move through
this, it is very difficult, impossible I suspect, to judge how
high a tide will be by looking at one or a few waves as the
tide moves in. It is not until the tide begins to move back out
that we can tell how high it was. I am extraordinarily
optimistic moving forward, having spent time both with the
Americans, with the Coalition people, and with the Iraqis that
these are a people who will not fail, they will not allow it to
fail, their culture will not allow the terrorists to succeed.
And I think if we sit here 1 year from today, we will be very
pleased and maybe even surprised at how much progress will have
been made. Thank you, sir.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Galen follows:]
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Mr. Shays. I would love you, when I come back, to explain
to me, you say, ``their culture will not allow them to fail,''
I would love you to talk more about that.
Ms. Pletka.
Ms. Pletka. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am grateful for
having been invited today. I am going to do my best to stay
under 5 minutes. I think everybody knows the six questions by
heart by now since we have all been through them.
I do want to digress for a second. I was really happy to
hear you, Mr. Galen, saying really hopeful, really positive
things, and recognizing some of the interesting parallels with
our previous experiences during World War II. If you go back
and you look at some of the coverage in the first 5 and even 10
years after World War II, you see a lot of echoes of the kind
of criticism you see right now of the United States in Germany
and Japan. There is a famous series in Life Magazine from 1947
by John Duspasov which I commend to you because it has pretty
much every single complaint that you have heard here only you
have to substitute----
Mr. Shays. Is one of them a headline that says ``Truman
Fails?''
Ms. Pletka. It is remarkable and I think it is important
that we have some historical perspective. Rome was not built in
a day. Democracy is a huge challenge. We have had more than 200
years of practice and we do not always get it perfect. I think
the Iraqis have done pretty well. And the other thing is that
it is enormously tempting to sit in Washington and dump on
people in Baghdad, and I am going to do that in just a moment.
But before I do that, I want to recognize that they are in an
enormously challenging situation. And even for those who make
mistakes that we perceive and criticize, they are serving their
country and they deserve great recognition for that.
And now, now that I have said something positive. We have
made a lot of mistakes. Probably the most fatal mistake that we
made was in not understanding that liberation means liberation.
When you live under someone like Saddam Hussein you want to be
liberated not in order to be turned over to Jerry Bremer. I
think that a lot of Iraqis, and I agree with them, resent that,
and rightly so. In our failure to understand that, we have
frittered away a lot of the political capital that I think we
earned in deposing a horrible dictator.
And if you look at the Interim Government that was just
formed in Iraq to which we will hand sovereignty on June 30, I
ask myself how it is in any way different from a government
that would have been formed more than a year ago, indeed, a day
after the statue of Saddam Hussein fell in the central square.
It is governed by an exile leader with close ties to the United
States and not that much of a constituency within the country,
which is a familiar criticism but it was made of others, and I
do wonder why we needed to wait a year to find him.
We have lost credibility in other ways as well. The CPA,
the Coalition Provisional Authority, has reversed itself on key
decisions, such as de-Baathification; it has abandoned the
Kurds to the political fates recently; the CPA has announced
that we are against Baath terrorists, but then made deals with
them in Fallujah; it authorized the indictment of Muqtada al
Sadr as a murder, but then made deals with him too. I think
that in these reversals, some of which we can debate about, we
have signaled weakness. And terrorists have taken advantage of
those weaknesses.
And that brings me to the question of the security
environment. It is safe to say, and many people have, that
there are a lot of factors that caused the deterioration in the
security environment. But I think that one of our key mistakes,
and one that we continue to make, was the failure of military
authorities to work with and to trust Iraqis. And you could
actually see that even during the period of the invasion when
we did not have Iraqis with our military troops who could have,
in fact, been helpful. We have very little experience in
dealing with Iraq and we could have relied far more heavily on
the expertise of Iraqi allies. Instead, we have played a lone
game. We have also allowed the borders to remain largely open,
and that has allowed in all sorts of, shorthand, bad guys that
are causing us and the Iraqis problems.
On the question of political reform, it is really only fair
to call Iraq a work in progress. The Coalition I do not think
has done enough to build civil society, to empower political
parties, or to educate Iraqis about the building blocks of
democracy. And without those efforts, it is going to be very
difficult for us to help them maintain a stable political
system.
Instead, what we have done is we have relied on known
political quantities, sectarian and tribal leaders, and we have
failed to understand that a lot of those divisions that we
believe are real inside Iraq are much more relics of 30-40
years under totalitarianism. If we allow the United Nations for
the future to impose a proportional representation electoral
system on Iraq, as the U.N. has in fact already announced
earlier this month, I think we are going to further handicap
all but a very few politically savvy Iraqis in Baghdad.
I am going to wrap up quickly and just comment on the
question of how we hand out assistance. As far as the economy
is concerned, it is pretty easy for us to condemn the CPA, and
the contractors, and AID, and the NGO's, but that really does
them a terrible disservice. It is almost impossible to rebuild
a country according to OSHA standards, which is what Congress
demands. And with the kind of oversight, that you rightly
demand, over appropriated funds----
Mr. Shays. Surely you jest. We do not have OSHA in Iraq.
Ms. Pletka. Seriously speaking, if you are willing to put
things together with chewing gum and make them work, they will
work for the necessary period when we are there. And so what if
it all falls apart once we leave? That has been the attitude of
many occupiers and it's irresponsible and we are not doing
that. But that means it costs more and it takes longer. And the
Iraqis are frustrated, and we understand that.
Finally, I just want to address the question of hearts and
minds. I think I have a slightly different take on it than some
of your previous speakers. You asked us: ``Why did the
Coalition and U.S. Government public diplomacy efforts fail to
reach the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people?'' I think that
misses the question of what public diplomacy really is about.
People are not reached through hearts and minds campaigns. They
are reached through deeds. They do not need advertising
campaigns. And that has been one of the biggest flaws in our
public diplomacy.
America has done an unbelievable service for the Iraqi
people. We need to remind everybody that what we did was a
great thing, and to understand that if we keep doing the right
thing, even in the face of great challenges, difficulty, and
criticism, that 1 day Iraq will an invaluable ally to us. And
that is really what winning hearts and minds is about. Thank
you, sir.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Pletka follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Thank you all three for your really excellent
statements. I am going to ask some questions and then I am
going to invite my staff to ask some questions as well. I do
not want to forget about Fallujah, but I would like to ask
first what you all agreed with--in the first and second panel,
tell me what you reacted to that you agreed strongly to, and
what you might have disagreed with. Let us take the disagreed
first. In the first panel the Iraqi Representative, in the next
panel, what was said that you thought I do not buy it, I do not
agree, I think they are wrong?
Dr. Shehata. Well, what struck me, sir, was what we heard
in the previous panel, actually, panel II, about the sufficient
force presence in Iraq or the day after, as it were, and then
the importance of looting. I guess I could not disagree more
with those issues.
Mr. Shays. Yes.
Mr. Galen. Sir, the point on which I would have disagreed
with Ambassador Al-Rahim was on the issue of communications,
which, as it happened, was my job, although not internal to
Iraq.
Mr. Shays. Let me be clear. You were not in charge of the
stations and all that. But this is your expertise.
Mr. Galen. Yes. The fact is that we did not do a good job
in setting up what became Al-Iraqiya, which is to say we asked
an engineering firm to be a creative company and it did not
work and we should not be surprised at that. But we did an
enormous amount of work in getting word out to Iraqis as to
what was going on to the best of our ability. Let me take just
2 seconds to explain this. When I first got there in early
December, when we had the briefings with the Iraqi press corps,
which in the beginning we did separately, we finally got smart
and put them together with the Western press, the Iraqi
reporters were remarkably unsophisticated and they would not
ask why is there no electricity in Basra today. They would ask
why is that army vehicle parked at the end of my block. There
was just a lack of sophistication that over time they got much
better at, with our help, by the way, especially General
Kimmett, who, as the military briefer, spent an enormous amount
of time, and still spends an enormous amount of time, one-on-
one, one-on-two, one-on-three with Iraqi reporters helping them
ask tough questions. So the notion that we completely failed in
driving the message out into the Iraqi society I think is
incorrect, within the bounds of the ability to physically move
around, which was difficult.
Mr. Shays. Before you move on. It is true, though, that we
contracted with an engineering firm and so we lost a whole 7
months, did we not?
Mr. Galen. But that was not the only mechanism. The
Ambassador was correct. The rumor activity in Iraq is fairly
remarkable. Every Thursday--I would get a report from the Iraqi
analyst who looked at the local media everyday--on Thursday
they would report the rumors that they had picked up. Now some
of them they made up just because they had to have something to
say. But over time, the rumors fell into one of three
categories: a) It was the Americans punishing us. I remember
specifically the 24-hour blackout. The rumor was that the
Americans were punishing the Iraqis because power went out in
Cleveland and that was the punishment. So either the Americans
are punishing us for whatever, or it is the Mossad, the Israeli
Intelligence Service, or both.
But the rumor mill is very powerful. And that is a cultural
underpinning not just in Iraq, but throughout the region. It is
very difficult to overcome that. And, frankly, it is not so
different here. Remember 2 years ago when we had those two guys
running around shooting people out of the trunk of their car,
we were all looking for a white panel truck because that was
what they were supposed to have been driving. That was the
rumor that was running around rampant. In fact, it turned out
to be a burgundy sedan.
Ms. Pletka. I was not here for Ambassador Rahim's
presentation. But since she is a very old friend, I am not
going to disagree with her publicly even had I heard what she--
--
Mr. Shays. Let me just tell you one thing she said. She
said we should never have been occupiers; never. And the
implication was that we could do in May or June, I think she
said June, what we are doing 1 year later.
Ms. Pletka. I said something very similar in my statement,
and I agree with her entirely. In fact, if we were willing to
put in an exile government and a bunch of other exiles----
Mr. Shays. I want you to start over again. You spoke so
quickly. Slow down.
Ms. Pletka. I am sorry. It is because I have said it so
many times. If we were willing to put exiles in power, in the
position of Prime Minister, as we did with Ayad Allawi, and had
proposed to do with Adnan Pachachi as President and
subsequently did not, then I think we could have done it a year
ago. And we could have used the political capital that we had
gained in toppling Saddam to give credibility to that
transition in Iraq. Instead, we used up the political capital
in order to give credibility to the Coalition Provisional
Authority and they spent more than a year frittering it away. I
think that it is important to understand that it does not
matter how much good will any person has toward your liberator
if, in fact, that liberator becomes an occupier, he will
eventually be disliked.
May I ask your indulgence. This issue of looting has come
up again and again. I have a very contrarian view about this.
It is desperately unfair for us to sit here and criticize
American troops for failing to take police action to protect
things in Iraq. We need to remember what was stolen. You
commented very accurately about things like window frames,
panes of glass being stolen, and we all remember pictures of
people lugging things like mattresses.
Mr. Shays. There was nothing left in the building. Nothing.
Ms. Pletka. Right. People who steal mattresses are not out
joy riding. People who steal mattresses steal them because they
do not have them, because they have not had anything new or
anything decent in years on end. And to have asked American
troops to take guns to those people and threaten them and
possibly injure them or kill them would have been quite a
challenge, and I think we would have actually lost more hearts
and minds in so doing than in not doing it. So I really think
that this requires a little bit more of a nuanced look.
Mr. Shays. Yes.
Dr. Shehata. Could I say something about that, sir?
Mr. Shays. Sure.
Dr. Shehata. I really could not disagree more. It is not a
question of U.S. soldiers shooting Iraqi civilians running out
of hospitals with medical equipment or mattresses. Clearly, if
there were one, more troops present at the time, that is the
day after, and two, if they would have had the orders to stop
the looting, to stand guard in front of certain places other
than the oil ministries, then this would have been a deterrent.
That is the way these things work. It does not work otherwise.
You do not have to shoot every single person who has the desire
to loot. You only have to create the desire on their part,
change the incentive system, for them not to be able to loot.
So I disagree completely.
Mr. Shays. I would say, Ms. Pletka, I do believe that if
there were one or two instances where the looting was not
successful, I do not think it would have necessarily happened
elsewhere, but I understand your perspective. At the time, I
did not want to see any American shoot any Iraqi. But what is
interesting is we had the State Department warn us this would
happen. They said iraq is going to be no different than Watts,
and they went through. They were oppressed people, much like
folks in Watts felt they were. But there was a warning. We were
told this would happen.
I am happy, Mr. Galen, if you want to make a comment.
Mr. Galen. I would like to just look at it from the other
side, because I wrote a column about----
Mr. Shays. Which side? We have heard two sides. Do you have
a third side?
Mr. Galen. The other side from your side. And that is,
imagine the reaction in the United States had we lost a soldier
or 5 soldiers or 10 soldiers protecting mattresses or window
frames. I think there was a real issue of, on the one hand,
letting this three decades of pent up whatever to blow off,
which some people took advantage of, obviously nobody needed to
steal an icon from a museum, that is clearly just criminal
behavior. But I think that the notion of having a pitched gun
battle involving American soldiers, which was fairly likely
given the number of AK-47s, as you know, that exist on the
street in any city in Iraq, protecting mattresses and window
frames. I think if we go back in time and think that through, I
think we would see that it may have been an insolvable
situation, but I am not sure that we made the wrong decision.
Mr. Shays. What I wonder, though, is are we mixing
cultures? Different people react differently to certain events.
I was led to believe that in Iraqi culture a sense of security
and protection is viewed differently than we would view it.
Mr. Galen. That gets us into that area you wanted to
discuss. I was in Kuwait just a year ago at the behest of the
Kuwaiti government to watch their elections, their brand of
democracy, which is only called democracy because they choose
to call it that. There are 2.1 million inhabitants and 130,000
get to vote. But that is what they do and they seem to be OK
with it.
But more to the point here, I was in a discussion with a
university professor who was adamant about the fact that
stability was more important than freedom, than democracy. That
the notion of having a stable society under a Saddam was better
for the Iraqi people, in his view, than going through the
turmoil of overthrowing Saddam and all the things that you and
your panels have discussed here today. That is I suppose a
legitimate viewpoint from his point of view. I do not think it
is from our point of view because we have fought wars over the
centuries to overthrow stable but unfair governments here and
abroad. But that is part of what we are discussing here today.
Is stability more important than having a society go through
the throes of instability to get themselves to an end state
that over the next, not 3 months or 14 months as it has been,
but over the next 14 or 1,400 years will have proved to be the
right direction taken.
Mr. Shays. Any other comment on this issue?
Dr. Shehata. Well, I would just say that it is not an
either/or question. Also, it is not a question of stability. It
is not about the longevity of a regime and its brutality. It is
about maintaining basic security. Security is a precondition
for freedom. If I am supposedly free to voice my opinions but I
do not have security, then that is worthless. So it is not an
either/or situation. It is simply that security is a
precondition for freedom.
Mr. Shays. Let me ask you, you wanted to talk about
Fallujah, makes some comments? I think you had some questions
on that. I want to just tell you a reaction I had just to start
this process off. First off, with al Sadr, I was told by Mr.
Bremer that a year ago he wanted to deal with this guy when he
had 300, and it did not happen, and then he had thousands. I
had this conflicted view. In one sense, I wanted--talking about
security--I wanted to have our folks get this guy and end his
ability to influence. But I kind of rejoiced in a way that you
all of a sudden saw the Iraqi Council come in to play, the
Kurds were coming in, and they were trying to solve a problem.
They did not solve it the way we wanted it necessarily, I am
not sure quite how we wanted it, but they put restraints on us,
and in the end he is still there. But I felt like there was a
little bit of Iraqi pride that they were given an opportunity
to try to deal with this. And so, I think I was left with the
feeling that, in the end, was a good thing.
So that is my reaction. I want to know what your reaction
is.
Dr. Shehata. Well with regard to Muqtada al Sadr, I am in
complete agreement with you. I think we saw clearly other
Shiite clergy as well as other individuals, prominent Iraqis
try to intervene and try to calm down the situation. I think it
was a mistake to go after Muqtada al Sadr in the way that the
CPA did. I think the reason that this got to this terrible
point was because Muqtada al Sadr was completely, or at least
he felt, he was actually, excluded from the political process.
But what we have seen, and as a good general rule, is the fact
that inclusion generally produces moderation. So, for example,
Muqtada al Sadr quite recently said, just several days ago,
that he accepts the legitimacy of the Interim Government as
long as they work for the ending of the U.S. occupation and
elections. I think that is a very good thing. I think if you
exclude political players, you radicalize them. And that is
dangerous. So what has to be done is inclusion even of those
people who we might disagree with fundamentally.
Mr. Shays. Mr. Galen, given your background in the media,
were you the one who decided to shut down Sadr's paper?
Mr. Galen. No, sir, I was not.
Mr. Shays. Were you consulted?
Mr. Galen. No, sir, I was not. Let me speak to that just
for a second. That al Sadr saying that he accepts this
government has all the import of me saying that I accept this
government. The fact is that al Sadr has been marginalized by
his own activities and by the other Shiites who we were afraid
were no more moderate but in fact have stepped up to the plate,
to use an American phrase, and have begun to assume the mantle
of power and the mantle of democracy and the mantle of
diplomacy.
One of the reasons that al Sadr has been marginalized is
because one, we killed a lot of his militia, which is a good
thing; and two, he did not gain the support of the large number
of Iraqis. I think you can make the conclusion that when he
went into Najaf and the area down there that he expected there
to be a huge outpouring of support for his revolt. And,
frankly, that did not happen. And so, in the end, it proved
that, not what my friend to my right is saying, that we should
have included him in the first place, but that if you do take
radical action when others are trying to build a democracy,
that you will be marginalized.
Going back to your specific question. I asked the question
when we shut down al Sadr's newspaper in Baghdad and then
arrested his lieutenant, I was in Riyadh at the time, when I
got back I asked, who was in the meeting, putting aside the
military part, because I do not know about that, but who was in
the meeting, I asked, that said these are the potential
outcomes from an information standpoint and a communication
standpoint, and based upon those potential outcomes, what does
the CPA and CJTF-7, the military coalition's response going to
be? And I asked that of enough people because I wanted to make
sure that I had the right answer. And the answer was, that
meeting never happened.
Mr. Shays. In other words, I want to be clear, a decision
to close down the paper, and you are asking did anyone think of
what the consequences might be of closing down that paper. Is
that correct?
Mr. Galen. Well, I assume somebody did, but if they did
they did not share it beyond my guess is the three star and
Ambassador rank. That was a problem. Not that we would have
changed the direction, not that we could have influenced it at
all, but I think it was a failing on the part--you are going to
ask later what is the greatest failing, and in my mind the
greatest failing is having a pro council. It runs against my
conservative grain to have centralized planning of any nature.
And I think this is the sort of situation you get yourself into
when you begin to close down the decision process to one or two
people. And then when events spin out of control you find
yourself unable to respond quickly enough because the response
mechanisms are not in place.
Mr. Shays. Ms. Pletka, do you want to respond?
Ms. Pletka. I do not quite know what to respond to. I agree
with a lot of what Mr. Galen said. I think that the
consequences of shutting down the paper were manifest. There
was a decision made to take on Muqtada al Sadr. The reason was,
as far as the paper is concerned, that he was using it to
incite violence against American and allied forces and against
Iraqis with whom he disagreed. The idea that somehow a person
who is excluded from a political process has somehow a right or
that it would be natural for them to turn to violence is really
I think unacceptable. There are plenty of people who are
excluded from the political process in lots of places and they
do not generally kill their opponents as a response. So I think
we need to recognize that Muqtada al Sadr is someone who
embraces terrorism, someone who embraces murder as a political
tool. He is not a part of the political process and he was not
driven to it because he was excluded. We have a long record of
his speeches saying terrible things, exhorting people to
violence long before he was ``excluded.''
Mr. Shays. It would be interesting and the thinking now--my
general reaction was a pretty big mistake to get rid of the
paper because, in essence, it gives it more credibility. But
the proof would be is there a paper now that has replaced it.
In other words, have we made that paper more significant, or
does it simply not exist anymore?
Ms. Pletka. It no longer exists.
Mr. Galen. It no longer exists. And I do not disagree at
all with what you were saying. I was not suggesting that we
should not have shut down the paper.
Ms. Pletka. Oh, no, no.
Mr. Galen. But your point, sir, I think is correct, that
the proof is that no paper, to my knowledge, has arrived to
take its place. Now you could make the case that people are
afraid to start such a paper. But there are a lot of
newspapers, they do not all publish every day, but there is no
shortage of public discourse, at least in Baghdad, in terms of
varying points of view. We do draw the line even in our country
at shouting fire in a movie theater. That does not fall under
free speech.
Mr. Shays. Great observation. I will let the staff ask a
question here. Our subcommittee is doing hearings on the whole
issue of oil for food and the outrage, frankly, of some of our
allies who were involved in allowing Saddam to get $10 billion
out of this process. But what I love is that this story was
outed about the U.N. from the Iraqi press. Our people were not
covering it well, the Europeans were not covering it well, and
the Iraqi press, and even if we determine it was Chalabi and
whatever we think about him, the bottom line is the press got
the story, the press ran with the story, they pointed out 200
names, and the rest is history. So I think that is kind of an
encouraging thing that you actually saw this initiative.
Mr. Galen. And something, sir, that we did not see 7 or 8
months ago. They would not have had the sophistication, they
would not have understood that they were permitted to do that.
Mr. Shays. So you leaked this story?
Mr. Galen. No, no. No. I was in the same briefing as you
were, sir. But the fact is that it is another one of those
hopeful signs that a free Iraqi press, not an al Sadr press,
not a medium that is inciting to violence, but the notion after
three decades--look, independent thought was not a positive
idea in Iraq for three decades. It got you at least some body
parts cutoff or got you killed. And that is one of the things I
was discussing earlier, that as we moved through time a more
sophisticated level of activity on the part of the Iraqi press
led to that whole notion of the oil for food program story,
which, in fact, led to a requirement that every governate go
through all of its paper and preserve all the documents dealing
with oil for food, which probably would not have happened
without, as you say, the Iraqi press bringing it up.
Mr. Halloran. Thank you. We have read the section of your
testimony on Fallujah. I want to center some questions for all
of you on that. It is portrayed as an instance of heavy-handed
military tactics in response to a provocative incident which
then kind of galvanized Iraqi political support and political
debate about a response, which then prompted a U.S. tactical
response in terms of how to deal with the security situation on
the ground, which to some became a whole kind of strategic
shift on how we deal with security in Iraq--that it is an Iraqi
problem, not an American issue or problem. That politically,
when the United States decides security is our No. 1 mission, a
lot of people with a lot of different motives suddenly make it
their No. 1 mission to prevent that, whereas if it is an Iraqi
priority or Iraqi mission, a lot of Iraqis with the same
motives have an interest in making that mission succeed.
So I want to ask all three of you, if Fallujah was a
paradigm shift, as it were, not in its provocation but in its
response and that perception of security?
Dr. Shehata. I am not sure I understood the question,
actually, I am afraid to say.
Ms. Pletka. I would be happy to answer it and then
everybody can disagree with me. I think Fallujah was a paradigm
shift and I think it was a terrible one, actually. I know that
people disagree with that. We made a decision to confront a
problem that we had with insurgents in Fallujah. This was not
just Baathists and Saddam loyalists heavily armed, but also
outside terrorists. And we went in. We were I think moderately
heavy-handed. We did not bring enough troops to bear in the
beginning, but we added additional troops. At a certain moment,
we decided that we should embrace a different model, which is
now being called the Fallujah model. We brought in briefly a
former general in the Revolutionary Guards, General Jasamsela,
another hideous mistake on our part, to head up an Iraqi
brigade.
Yes, everything is quiet right now. But what kind of a
compromise has brought that quiet? The Washington Post had a
very interesting article about this last week that made very
clear that once you go into Fallujah, the terrorists and the
Baathists are in power. Now that means that for the moment they
have decided to remain quiet. What will happen when they decide
they no longer wish to be quiet? Will we have to go back in?
Will there be another compromise? And what kind of compromises
should we make with local warlords, with terrorists, with
Baathist recidivists? I am not sure. But we are opposed to
making those kind of local compromises from place to place in
Afghanistan. And I think we should be opposed to doing it in
Iraq. Either you are someone who is opposed to the government,
you are a terrorist and you must be gotten rid of, or you are
not. But we need to decide which is the model that works. And
for me, we are just delaying the pain by going with this latter
Fallujah model.
Mr. Halloran. Dr. Shehata.
Dr. Shehata. Sure. I think I understand the question now. I
think, clearly, from the perspective of the U.S. military and
how we deal with these kinds of things, Fallujah probably did
signify a paradigm shift. At the same time, we are getting
close to the handover of sovereignty, so this might be,
hopefully will be, a mute question.
I disagree significantly with Ms. Pletka that it was a
moderate use of force. Clearly, in the English press as well as
in the Arabic press, the number of civilian casualties was well
over 600. But it is not important, and this is the key point
that I want to make, how any of us view Fallujah. What is
important is how the Iraqi public viewed Fallujah. And what I
am saying is simply that Fallujah was a crucial moment. It was
at that moment after Fallujah that I started telling my
students that I was afraid that the war had been lost. Because
everyone in Iraq reacted negatively to the way the United
States handled it. For them, it was four contractors were
killed and, as a result, the disproportionate use of force, a
whole city was under siege, a city of 300,000, and over 600
people, many of them civilians actually, and the pictures show
that, killed as a response. So that clearly did a tremendous
amount of damage for how many Iraqis view us and view the
occupation.
I do not know and I am not qualified to say what the
military reaction should have been. But I think it is clear
that it should have been significantly different than that. And
you are right, Iraqis, and Iraqis who think more closely to Ms.
Pletka and all of us here, would probably have an interest in
dealing with the situation in some way. And I think that any
imaginable way that they would have come up, that is, Iraqis of
authority, would have been better than the way that Fallujah
was handled.
Mr. Galen. It was not just a matter of four contractors
being killed. The manner in which they were killed, the manner
in which their bodies were mangled afterwards, and the fact
that what was left of their bodies was hung from a bridge for
all to see was the issue at hand. And I will tell you, I do not
know how angry the Iraqis were afterwards, but as far as the
Coalition civilians and the Coalition military were concerned,
an appropriate response, I will speak for myself, not for
anyone else, would have been to flatten Fallujah, make it into
a parking lot, we would have known it was over when the paint
in the lines dried. That is how angry everybody was about the
horror that had happened. And not just the horror that it
happened, Mr. Chairman, but the fact that there was so little
reaction against that kind of senseless brutality. These were
guys that were protecting a food convoy. They were not out
there gunning down women and children in the street, they were
protecting a food convoy. And it was the lack of any kind of
remorse, other than the very narrow statements that desecrating
a dead body is anti-Islamic, and I am not Islamic so I can only
take that as read. But that I think was the part that
infuriated more people.
This happened, let me just say from a tactical standpoint,
this happened to occur, to use an American basketball phrase,
during a transition. The 82nd Airborne was moving out, there
headquarters had been up in Ramadi, and the 1st Marine
Expeditionary Force was moving in and they were setting up
headquarters much closer to Fallujah. There had been some
disagreement, you may remember, between the marines and the
airborne and the army about how they had handled things in the
Western provinces and there was some reason to suspect that
this may have been the work of agents provocateur just to see
what we had, what do the new guys have. The marines, for their
part, although this is lost in the reporting, the marines held
off for a long time. It was not like the four contractors were
killed and that night we started bombing. The fact is that the
marines held off for many days, maybe a week or so, before they
decided on what the response would be. And their reasoning was
they were trying to get the best possible intelligence so that
when they did go in and kill people, which they were going to
do, that they could kill bad guys with some reasonable
expectation that they were hitting the right targets.
So I disagree with Dr. Shehata that this was an unmeasured
response. It was a very measured response to an act of
brutality that almost belies description.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
Dr. Shehata. Can I just say one small thing about the
question of Fallujah.
Mr. Shays. Sure. This is a very interesting panel. I like
the disagreement, and I agree with both of you. Mr. Greenspan
speaks. [Laughter.]
Dr. Shehata. Certainly, what happened to the four
contractors was horrific and I could not get myself to actually
watch the footage on television. But I think that we have to
understand Fallujah actually in its historical context. So, for
example, if we go back to immediately after the end of the war,
in April 2003, there was an incident which really set us on the
wrong track in Fallujah to begin with, which was the American
soldiers who had taken over the school and there was a
demonstration, from all press accounts a peaceful demonstration
of residents of Fallujah outside in which 13 Fallujans were
killed. So, clearly, from the very beginning there is a context
here that differentiates Fallujah from other parts of the
country as well and it has to be understood if we are to
understand the mutilation of the bodies, which cannot be in any
sense rationalized. And then before the four contractors were
killed----
Mr. Shays. That statement confuses me. Because you say you
have to put in context--I cannot put it in context with
anything. I can put in it context but it is hard for me to.
Dr. Shehata. Sure. What I am saying is not the way that
they were killed but the anti-American feeling in Fallujah,
putting that in context. Not to justify it but just so that we
can understand it. So in April 2003, there were the 13
civilians killed. And then before the incident with the four
contractors, there was a search operation in Fallujah a week or
so before which, it was not intended to end this way, but
resulted in the killing of 15 Fallujans. So if we are to
understand the anti-American feeling in Fallujah, we have to
understand that.
But there was another larger point about what has been
called the Sunni Triangle that I think needs to be made that
possibly would help steer us in a different direction with
regard to the Sunni community. No one understood, it seems,
that the people who had the most to lose and therefore we would
have an interest making them buy-in to the new Iraq were the
Sunnis. I mean, of course, the Shiites have an interest in a
post-Saddam Iraq, and the Kurds it is not clear and so on,
depending on what they get, but the losers in this game were
going to be the Sunnis. And therefore, we should have gone out
of our way to make sure they do not exit the process by
including their leaders, by using money as ammunition in Sunni
areas and so forth just from a strategic point of view.
Ms. Pletka. I am sorry. May I just give one quick word.
First, I agree with you, Mr. Chairman, there is no context; 13
deaths, 20 deaths, 68 deaths, 500 deaths do not really excuse
the mutilation of four civilians. So I do not think there is
much context for that.
But as far as the Sunni Triangle is concerned, I was with
General Patreaus in September of last year and actually
objected a little bit to his strong outreach to the Sunni
community. To suggest that the forces that were in place in the
Sunni Triangle were not reaching out to moderate community
leaders, to tribal leaders, were not spending money wherever
possible does them a terrible injustice. To the contrary, he
used an expression which I disagreed with strongly. He said,
``There can be no losers here.'' For my part, I thought there
should be losers there. But that said, he bent over backward,
as did everybody subordinate to him, to try and find Sunni
leaders and Sunni community members who could be helped, who
could be made part of the process, and who could be empowered
as part of the new Iraq.
Mr. Shays. Thank you. Yes, sir?
Mr. Galen. Mr. Chairman, could I just make one last point
with respect to Fallujah?
Mr. Shays. Sure.
Mr. Galen. This did not get any publicity so I am not sure
anybody knows that it was going on. There was an ongoing effort
that was called the Fallujah Project and it included, oh, I do
not know, I would say 20 fairly senior people and then me
around the CPA and CJTF-7 and we were specifically charged with
looking for projects in Fallujah to which we could bring to
bear civil affairs, cultural affairs, building. There was a big
argument should we build a hospital or should we build another
school. But there was an ongoing and real effort to use
positive influence of money and of civil affairs projects in
Fallujah. We got shot at once when we were over there, because
we had told them we were going to come and meet with them, and
we never went back.
Mr. Shays. Interesting. We are going to conclude. I do want
to know what you think is the worst thing we did, the best
thing we did, and what is the most important thing we need to
do in the months to come. Also, and I wish I had asked the
others, and so I am not going to be able to do some comparison
here, but there are 150 tribes, some obviously more important
than others, there are religious leaders. It is my sense that
we were reaching out to the religious instead of the tribes.
Should we have been reaching out to the tribes? If you have no
opinion, that is OK too.
Dr. Shehata, let me start with you.
Dr. Shehata. Sure. Certainly, there are going to be losers,
and those are the Saddamists. But I think you are right that we
did not reach out enough to tribal leaders. But to be fair, up
until quite recently we did not reach out really to Grand
Ayatoliah Ali Al-Sistani. He was the bad guy, the spoiler. But
nevertheless, I agree with you completely, sir, that tribes
should have been focused on.
In terms of the mistakes, I think insufficient troops the
day after, allowing the looting to spread, disbanding the army
and police, the blanket de-Baathification, the inability to get
basic services, public services, electricity, up and running
again.
Mr. Shays. If you give me a long list of mistakes, you have
to give me a long list of successes.
Dr. Shehata. OK. I think the handover on June 30 is
hopefully going to be a success, and it seems like, as I
mentioned before, and I am thankful that this is the case, that
there is buy-in on the part of many Iraqis. Certainly,
including Lakhdar Brahimi and the United Nations I think was a
wonderful thing and hopefully that will continue. And,
hopefully, we will see more success with the deliverables
because that is what really, as Ms. Pletka said, I agree with
her completely, that is what determines public opinion in
hearts and minds; that is, product, performance, delivery. So
hopefully security and electricity will see some improvements
in the days to come.
Mr. Shays. Was not another success, an obvious one, the
monetary policy, being able to change the currency. There was
no collapse, there were no epidemics. So there were a lot of
things.
Dr. Shehata. Sure. There were all kinds of things that we
thought might happen that did not happen, the million refugees,
for example.
Mr. Shays. But they did not happen in part, though, because
of what we did.
Dr. Shehata. I think that is true. And I think that the
currency conversion and the strength of the Iraqi dinar
actually is another thing that has been surprising. So I put
those among--I mean, there are all kinds of accomplishments and
I go through some of them in my testimony, including some of
the waterwork that has been done by USAID, including the
telecommunications which I mentioned, and so on.
Mr. Shays. OK. Thank you.
Those two questions.
Mr. Galen. First on the tribal issue, sir, I think if you
have the opportunity you might want to bring Ambassador
Schlicher back in just for a chat. That was his brief. He was
responsible for outreach to the governate. And my understanding
from him is they spent a good deal of time dealing with tribal
leaders, not from Baghdad but actually from where it counted,
out in the governate. So you may want to chat with him about
that.
Mr. Shays. Do you think some of the effort to provide these
local government bodies was through the tribal process?
Mr. Galen. Yes. Well they were brought into the process at
the governate level, at what we would call the county level.
That was Ambassador Schlicher's principal role so he might be
the right one to talk to about that.
Mr. Shays. Best and worst?
Mr. Galen. The worst, as I said, is the centralized
decisionmaking process. I am not sure there was a good way out
of that but it certainly did lead to decisions that had to be
made and then had to get unmade because, as we all know, part
of the way of successful decisionmaking is having strong
opposing views that are fully aired and then letting the
decisionmaker choose from those. But when you only have one
person and a very small cadre of people around him, as we did
with Ambassador Bremer, who, by the way, is brilliant and to
the extent that there has been any success, and I think there
has been great success, he gets all the credit. If he is going
to get any of the blame, he has to get the credit because he
literally works 20 hours a day, 7 days a week. But I think from
a policy standpoint having a pro council was a mistake, it did
not work with General Gardner, and I am not sure it was as
successful as it might have been.
Mr. Shays. Best?
Mr. Galen. The best thing, clearly, was the decision last
November to set a date certain, which happens to be June 30,
for the handover.
Mr. Shays. Which was criticized pretty strongly by a lot of
folks.
Mr. Galen. Well, again, that goes back to my earlier
statement, sir, is you do not know how high the tide is going
to get until it goes back out again. But I think as we move
through time we are going to find that rather than having
uncertainty and having new roadblocks and having people like
Mr. Brahimi and the United Nations decide one thing while we
are deciding something else and the French deciding something
else again about what constitutes a time when we could actually
hand over sovereignty, setting a hard date certain and forcing
everybody--I mean everybody in the palace in the Green Zone has
been absolutely focused on that June 30 deadline ever since
November 15th.
Mr. Shays. OK. And you left out one thing. Biggest need in
the months to come?
Mr. Galen. I think the biggest need is for everybody to
step back and give this thing a chance to ripen. This business
of on an hourly basis deciding on whether we are succeeding or
failing is destructive beyond any measure. You cannot do it
that way. We have to let the situation ripen. We have to let
the new government, the Interim Government actually get their
feet on the ground to deal with the ins and outs. The
Transitional Administrative Law is a brilliant document and if
they use that as at least a guideline for how they build the
future of Iraq, it is going to have a huge impact moving
forward through the region.
Mr. Shays. That is a strong word, a ``brilliant'' document.
I am happy to hear you feel that way.
Mr. Galen. Happily, I got to sit in on some of the
negotiations and it was really interesting to watch.
Mr. Shays. Ms. Pletka.
Ms. Pletka. Tribes, yes? It is very important to understand
how Iraq is made up and that it is in many ways a tribal
society, it is a sectarian society, but it is also a very
urbanized, highly educated society. We should reach out to
tribal leaders but we should not have a cartoonish view of how
Iraqis think and feel. Under a dictator when there is no
political freedom, the natural tendency is to turn to your
family members, your village leaders, your tribal leaders, and
your co-religionists, to use a dreadful word, for political
allies. But that is not a natural political or democratic
order. Ideas are what should be what organizes the Iraqi
people, whether it is, if I can start on an extreme, communism-
liberal democracy, different ideas about how to organize
themselves politically, and that should not be based on who my
family looks like, where I go to mosque, or what my great-
great-grandfather's last name was. So I think that is very
important as we look forward.
In terms of our successes and failures, one of our greatest
failures, as I think has been made clear, is in our failure to
trust the Iraqi people to govern themselves, to trust them to
make the mistakes that they needed to make to learn how to be
responsible leaders, to believe in them in the way that
justified their liberation. And so that was a terrible mistake.
And insofar as we continue to denigrate Iraqi leaders, usually
anonymously in the press, I think that we do them a huge
disservice.
Our greatest successes are a reflection on the United
States, and it sounds simplistic to say it, but it is that we
believed that the liberation of 25 million people from tyranny
was something important enough to sacrifice American lives, to
fight for in the international community, and to stick with to
this day even when people continue to snipe at us.
The future. One of the greatest mistakes I think that we
can make, and I alluded to this in my testimony, is if we allow
the imposition of a system of proportional representation on
Iraq for their election process which concentrates power in the
center, in the hands of established political groups. We will
exclude different regions, we will fail to vest all of the
people of Iraq in the political process, and we risk creating a
political system that brought us 50 governments in post-war
Italy and I do not know how many governments but I know they
did not work very well in Israel, the two places that have
proportional representation systems. So I think that will be a
huge mistake and we should be very vigilant as we move forward.
Mr. Shays. Thank you all very much. I really have enjoyed
this panel and I have enjoyed the hearing that we have had
today. I have learned a lot. I was struck by--and I am
reacting, Ms. Pletka, to your comment, because I was trying to
sort out what I felt about Fallujah. Because I happen to agree,
that if we could have acted the way we wanted, we would have
taken the kind of action I think needed to happen. But I
rejoiced in the fact that we were trusting Iraqis to kind of
have their day. And even though I thought they made the wrong
decision, I rejoiced in that we were starting to try to trust
them and they were getting some confidence. So that is why I
said I agreed with both sides. You by your last answer helped
me realize that I did agree with both sides. Bad mistake, but
we trusted them and that was a good thing. Thank you all very
much. Is there any one last statement that needs to be put on
the record? Sometimes that is usually the best. If there is
not, this hearing is closed.
[Whereupon, at 6:30 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned,
to reconvene at the call of the Chair.]
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