[House Hearing, 109 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 109-97]
U.S. MILITARY TRANSITION TEAMS IN IRAQ
__________
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
DECEMBER 7, 2006
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TONGRESS.#13
HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
32-990 PDF WASHINGTON DC: 2007
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Washington, DC 20402-0001
One Hundred Ninth Congress
DUNCAN HUNTER, California, Chairman
CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania IKE SKELTON, Missouri
JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina
JIM SAXTON, New Jersey SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York LANE EVANS, Illinois
TERRY EVERETT, Alabama GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi
ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii
MAC THORNBERRY, Texas MARTY MEEHAN, Massachusetts
JOHN N. HOSTETTLER, Indiana SILVESTRE REYES, Texas
WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina VIC SNYDER, Arkansas
JIM RYUN, Kansas ADAM SMITH, Washington
JIM GIBBONS, Nevada LORETTA SANCHEZ, California
ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina
KEN CALVERT, California ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California
ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey
W. TODD AKIN, Missouri SUSAN A. DAVIS, California
J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island
JEFF MILLER, Florida STEVE ISRAEL, New York
JOE WILSON, South Carolina RICK LARSEN, Washington
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey JIM COOPER, Tennessee
JEB BRADLEY, New Hampshire JIM MARSHALL, Georgia
MICHAEL TURNER, Ohio KENDRICK B. MEEK, Florida
JOHN KLINE, Minnesota MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan TIM RYAN, Ohio
MIKE ROGERS, Alabama MARK E. UDALL, Colorado
TRENT FRANKS, Arizona G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania CYNTHIA McKINNEY, Georgia
THELMA DRAKE, Virginia DAN BOREN, Oklahoma
JOE SCHWARZ, Michigan
CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington
MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas
GEOFF DAVIS, Kentucky
BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California
Robert L. Simmons, Staff Director
Stephanie Sanok, Professional Staff Member
Mark Lewis, Professional Staff Member
Regina J. Burgess, Research Assistant
C O N T E N T S
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CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2007
Page
Hearing:
Thursday, December 7, 2006, U.S. Military Transition Teams in
Iraq........................................................... 1
Appendix:
Thursday, December 7, 2006....................................... 45
----------
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2006
U.S. MILITARY TRANSITION TEAMS IN IRAQ
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Weldon, Hon. Curt, a Representative from Pennsylvania, Committee
on Armed Services.............................................. 1
Skelton, Hon. Ike, a Representative from Missouri, Ranking
Member, Committee on Armed Services............................ 6
WITNESSES
Flynn, Maj. Gen. George J., Commanding General, Training and
Education Command, U.S. Marine Corps........................... 8
Ham, Maj. Gen. Carter F., Commander, 1st Infantry Division, Fort
Riley, U.S. Army............................................... 9
Lovelace, Lt. Gen. James J., Jr., Deputy Chief of Staff, G3, U.S.
Army........................................................... 10
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Flynn, Maj. Gen. George J.................................... 54
Ham, Maj. Gen. Carter F...................................... 59
Lovelace, Lt. Gen. James J., Jr.............................. 62
Skelton, Hon. Ike............................................ 49
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Questions and Answers Submitted for the Record:
Mr. Langevin................................................. 71
Mr. Taylor................................................... 71
U.S. MILITARY TRANSITION TEAMS IN IRAQ
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC, Thursday, December 7, 2006.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:11 a.m., in room
2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Curt Weldon
presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CURT WELDON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
PENNSYLVANIA, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
Mr. Weldon. The full committee hearing will come to order,
and I have the honor on my last hearing of chairing at least
the opening of this hearing on behalf of Chairman Hunter, who
is on his way here, and with the approval of my good friend and
ranking member, Mr. Skelton, I would like to make some opening
comments.
I guess there is only one thing more embarrassing to a
politician in Congress than getting your American Association
of Retired Persons (AARP) membership card when you turn 50, and
that is being presented this packet from the United States
Association of Former Members of Congress. Because it finally
sinks in--and you all will have to go through this one day. It
finally sinks in that you are now a former Member, and so I
have my card.
I will not be able to fight you for parking spaces except
in the horseshoe, but I will be able to come on the House floor
and hassle you because I am not going to be a lobbyist, and I
have no intention of lobbying because that is not my forte, but
I will be around to be with my good friends.
And so I wanted to make a few comments after 20 years, now
as a former Member--soon to be--of the importance of this
committee and the work that I have seen done for 20 years in a
bipartisan manner.
First of all, Chairman Hunter has been absolutely
outstanding. There has been no individual more dedicated to the
individual soldier and his or her welfare than Duncan Hunter:
everything from making sure that we were doing the proper
response on uparming Humvees, traveling over the theater,
assigning staff to go out and meet with industry leaders.
Duncan left no stone unturned. He is a tireless advocate
for the warfighter and making sure that our soldiers, sailors,
Marines, and airmen have the best equipment, the best training
and the best technology that money can provide; and I guess
that comes from both his combat experience and the experience
of his sons. And it is going to be a sad loss when Duncan
leaves the chairmanship for the ranking membership, but we have
a good and decent and fair man coming in in January.
Perhaps no one do I have a higher respect for in terms of
issues involving this committee than Ike Skelton. When I came
and sat down there in the first row and used to look up here at
these gray-haired, old men and think to myself--actually, Pat
Schroeder was here, too, so there were women here--I did not
think I would ever make it to the day to get up on the top row.
But Ike was one of those people you could always look to to do
the right and straight thing for what was important for our
troops.
Ike's leadership on education and training issues is one
that will go down in the history books. He has done more
unseen, behind-the-scenes work for the education, the training,
and the professionalism of our troops than, I think, any other
one single Member of Congress in the history of the Nation.
And so, Ike, you are going to be an outstanding Chair. I
wish I could serve under you and with you, but I will be here
in spirit.
For my other members, I have varying degrees of thoughts.
Some of them are my best friends. I cannot tell you all of the
stories of Solomon Ortiz and Silvestre Reyes and Roscoe
Bartlett and the rest of my training partners because it would
be X-rated--no, I am only teasing--but from the first meeting
with Qadhafi in the tent in Libya, and for the first time in 40
years where we had a chance to break ground and open the door
for what is now a normalized relationship to our meetings with
the North Koreans on two occasions where Condoleezza Rice did
everything she could to stop us.
But you know what? In the end, the Constitution prevailed,
and Condoleezza Rice lost because this body has the ultimate
responsibility of checks and balances, and no Secretary of
State or no Secretary of Defense, regardless of Democrat or
Republican, has the ability to silence and muzzle the people's
body; and even though she pulled the rug on the first plane, we
got that plane because Colin Powell and Andy Card overruled
her.
She won the second battle, but when they wanted my vote for
the Medicare resolution, they understood that I was absolutely
incensed. I would not talk to them because they denied this
Congress the appropriate role of trying to support the
Administration while bringing peace to the Korean peninsula.
And, God willing, I will be going back to North Korea within
the next two months to continue that dialogue, again supporting
our President's policies.
What I have seen most about this committee is the fact that
we have to continue the process of checks and balances, and it
does not matter whether you have a Democrat President or a
Republican President. The bureaucracies in both parties seek to
do the same thing in forwarding the will of the Congress; and
we have a responsibility--and you who will be here next year
have a responsibility--to do what we have done so proudly for
the past 20 years that I have been here.
In the next quarter the V-22, the first unit of Marines,
goes into combat. That program would not be here if it were not
for this Congress because the Secretary of Defense and leaders
at the time cancelled the program that the Marines said was
absolutely essential. Well, three months from now, that unit
will be in combat, and our V-22s will be in action, protecting
our Marines.
The Predator would not be armed because it was this
Congress, not the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or not
Special Operations and the Air Force; it was this committee
that required and mandated that the Predator be armed because
of what we saw as the future.
Our readiness would not have been what it was if Ortiz and
Reyes had not joined in a whirlwind tour where we did 15 states
and 24 military bases in 4 days. They said it could not be
done, but we did it to highlight not the admiral's quarters or
the general's lunchrooms, but to showcase the barracks where
the soldiers were taking showers with raw sewage floating
around their feet, where there were schools with asbestos
peeling off of the walls for the children of the kids--for the
children of the people in armed services. The spoiling of the
concrete on the runways that threatened the safety of our
aircraft, the problems with housing and maintenance and
readiness and that 15-state tour with 24 bases helped to allow
us to increase readiness funding by $5 billion in that 1 year.
The President is given the credit for the work on missile
defense. It was not President Bush. It was this committee that
in 1998, two years before he was elected, passed H.R. 4, with
my good friend John Spratt as a lead cosponsor with 35 other
Democrats. We passed that bill in the House with a veto-proof
margin in spite of the President's objections. That was in
1998, and this committee was again the leadership.
It was this committee in the leadership of the China
technology scandal. They did not steal our technology; we gave
it away as a wholesale auctioning-off. And as a member of the
Cox Committee, I saw all of the classified evidence of how that
took place; and that is why our vote was nine to zero. But our
security was severely harmed by the transfer of that technology
to China in the mid-1990's even though the administration tried
to hide it by arresting Wen Ho Lee and then nine months later
releasing him.
The Arrow program for Israel would not be in existence
today if it were not for this committee's standing up and
funding Arrow as opposed to the Libyan fighter when Duncan
Hunter and I first did that letter 20 years ago.
The privatization of housing was instigated by this
committee. The personnel issues that give our military the
quality of life they have today in their pay and benefits were
largely instigated by this committee.
The Cooperative Threat Reduction program was maintained
because of bipartisan support of this committee.
Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) would not be the issue it is and
will be for the next 15 years without the efforts of this
committee, as well as nuclear strategy concerns; and we would
not have been transferring that technology to our first
responders if we had not passed my resolution back in 1998
crediting the Gilmore Commission, which issued three reports
before 9/11. The 9/11 Commission takes all the credit, but 40
percent of their recommendations had already been made by the
Gilmore Commission before 9/11 ever happened.
The thermal imagers that our soldiers and military use
today are now being used by firefighters in every firehouse and
station in America. The transfer of technology continues. And
it was this committee that traveled to Vienna to negotiate the
framework to end the Kosovo War. It was Neil Abercrombie who
led the effort on the Democrats' side and convinced Madeleine
Albright, when we returned, and Strobe Talbott, that there was
a way to stop the bombing and get Milosevic out of power.
It was this committee, along with Jim Ryun of Kansas and
Jim Saxton of New Jersey who joined me and six other Members of
Congress--five Democrats and five Republicans--to lay the
foundation for the G-8 countries to reach the agreement and to
bring back the three prisoners of war (POW) that we were
offered, but refused to go to Belgrade to pick up, because the
Speaker and the State Department had asked us not to travel to
Belgrade, and we abided by their wishes.
And it was this committee, as I said, who opened the door
to Libya and has continued with three successful trips,
including a major conference a year ago with 29 other countries
to bring Libya into the family of nations.
It was this committee who had consistently reached out to
try to achieve peace as opposed to having to send our
warfighters into harm's way, but I want to also say that this
committee has met with consistent challenges by administrations
of both parties.
Some would say that my problems this year were partly
caused by me pushing the envelope. In fact, National Journal, I
guess, summed it up best when they put me on their front cover,
and they called me the ``Troublemaker'' in the last week of
September. I guess that is my legacy in Congress; I am the
troublemaker. But you know what? I would not have it any other
way.
I was happy to see Lieutenant Colonel Tony Shaffer when he
came to me and told me that we had identified key cells of al
Qaeda two years before 9/11 ever happened. The Defense
Intelligence Agency destroyed Tony Shaffer's career even though
he is a Bronze Star recipient. The only vindication for me, for
Tony Shaffer--and you were all here for that hearing--is when
CIA trashed him when they issued their report in mid-September,
publicly releasing it before they even briefed us on the
committee, saying Tony Shaffer was not worthy of having a
security clearance.
But on November 4th, two days before our reelection,
Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer was brought back onto active
duty. His security clearance has been restored, and he is now
commanding a unit in operation today in Iraq.
Isn't it amazing how, in the end, the truth prevails? This
dedicated career military officer, trashed by the Defense
Intelligence Agency, politically trashed by the acting
inspector general, is now back on active duty; and his
counterpart, who ran Able Danger, is now commanding the La
Salle, our destroyer at sea, where Scott Philpott is doing
great work on behalf of our Nation.
What was their only crime? They told the truth. They told
the truth that our government did not want to hear about--
evidence that we had--just like the government did not want to
hear back in 1999 from this committee, that we needed to have
an interoperable data collaboration system two years before 9/
11. The CIA refused it. Today, it is called the ``NCTC
Operational.''
I would challenge this committee and my good friend Ike
Skelton in the future to make sure that we continue the
aggressive oversight role. It was in 2004 that we--in 2003 that
we first told the CIA, Solomon Ortiz and I, that Muqtada al-
Sadr was being funded by the Iranians with $70 million, and the
CIA did not want to hear it. No one knew the name ``Muqtada al-
Sadr'' back then--today, it is a household name--just like they
did not want to hear about Iran cooperating with North Korea,
their nuclear program and the other acts of destabilizing Iraq.
Today, it is all fact, and it is the reason why the election
was so decisive this past November. This committee, again, was
in the forefront of those issues.
Mr. Incoming Chairman, I have a challenge for you because I
think the ultimate vindication is yet to come for this
committee. There was a book released last week, written by an
award-winning journalist by the name of Peter Lance. I would
encourage you all to get a copy of it. It is 670-pages long.
Peter Lance is an award winner. He received five Emmys when he
worked for ABC News and a Robert F. Kennedy award for
journalism, and in his extensive documentation--it took five
years--he tells the story that nobody wanted the American
people to hear, that the man that Patrick Fitzgerald called in
1997, and I quote, ``the most dangerous man I have ever met; we
cannot let this man on the street'' was at one and the same
time an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), an
agent for the CIA, who joined our military and was transferred
to our Special Warfare Command J.F. Kennedy School at Fort
Bragg, North Carolina.
So now we have the information out that no one wanted to
hear, the fact that we had him on our payroll in the military,
a guy that Patrick Fitzgerald has said was the most dangerous
man in the world, who today is locked up in a Colorado prison
where the Justice Department will not allow anyone to talk to
him, who was at one and the same time an agent for al Qaeda and
bin Laden while he was working within the military of our
government, training our Special Operations officers at Fort
Bragg, a command officer getting access to classified
information he should never have had.
It is all here, and it is all documented in the 670-page
report that is going to shake this country to its roots. And,
you know, when we had that hearing on Able Danger and the
staffers did not want those charts to come out because they
said, ``Show us the beef! Show us the beef!'' It was not about
Mohamed Atta alone, and I said that then; it was about Ali
Mohamed. If you go back and check the charts--and I have those
1999 charts, and one of them is in the book--Ali Mohamed is on
every chart, and he is linked into bin Laden.
So the man who was working in our Special Forces Command
training school at Fort Bragg, the man who was an informant for
the FBI, the man who was an informant for the CIA while working
for bin Laden, who is now in jail in Colorado and who Patrick
Fitzgerald has called the most dangerous man that he has ever
met, is now in jail in Colorado. I do not think he has ever had
a trial. When Peter Lance tried to interview him, both times he
was refused, and the response, which is in a letter in this
book, says, ``We think it will present security concerns for
the country.''
This committee needs to continue to play the aggressive
oversight role. As troubling as it is, that is the
responsibility in the checks and balances of this country that
this committee has to be the champion of.
I am proud to leave this committee and the great members,
outstanding members, who have always done the right thing; and
I am proud, in the 12 years I served as subcommittee chairman,
we never had one vote in any subcommittee that I chaired where
a Democrat had to offer an amendment, not one. Marty, when you
were Chair or a ranking member, Silvestre, when you were,
Solomon, when you were, and John, when you were, not one split
vote.
That is the way this committee needs to operate, in a
bipartisan manner that lets the Executive Branch understand
that we will do what it takes to get the truth out and to
confront those issues that need to be addressed even if they
fly in the face of what is politically correct in the
conventional wisdom that some would have us believe.
So, with that, I am happy to be here until my good friend
arrives, and I will now turn to my distinguished ranking
member, Mr. Skelton.
STATEMENT OF HON. IKE SKELTON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM MISSOURI,
RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
Mr. Skelton. Curt, thank you for your excellent comments.
We thank you for them. There is a Scottish song that is to the
tune of ``When Johnny Comes Marching Home,'' and the title of
it is ``Johnny, I hardly got to know you.''
Curt, thank you for your passion, your knowledge, your
persistence, what you have meant to this committee. You have
been a polestar for all of us. I just cannot thank you enough,
but most of all, I know everyone joins me in saying thank you
for your friendship through the years. It has been solid and
sincere.
As sailors would say, we wish you fair winds and following
seas, and God bless you.
Mr. Weldon. I thank the distinguished ranking member, and I
would be remiss if I did not mention our staff on both sides of
the aisle. We have the best staff in the Congress. They work
well together. We rely on each other; there is no level of
distrust. It is openness and candor, and that is the hallmark
of the Armed Services Committee.
I want to especially thank Doug Roach, who has been my lead
staffer. He has been to some crazy places. If I asked any of
you where Kalmykia was, you would say, ``I have no idea.''
Well, Doug can tell you where Kalmykia is because it was our
stop on the way to Beslan.
But, Doug, you have been an outstanding professional.
I want to thank my personal staff and put it on the
record--Russ Caso, a former Navy person who is my chief of
staff; John Tomaszewski; Sarah Beatty; Chris Phelen; Margaret
Lemmerman; and Yevgeny Bendersky--fantastic, hard-working
individuals.
And, with that, I have done enough of my swan song.
So now we will turn to the business at hand, which is
standing up robust, capable Iraqi forces as our top goal of the
coalition of the Iraqi Government; and today, we have a
distinguished panel of our transition team--Major General
George Flynn from the Marine Corps, Commanding General,
Training and Education Command; from the Army, Major General
Carter Ham, Commanding General, 1st Infantry Division; and from
the Army, Lieutenant General James Lovelace, Deputy Chief of
Staff, G-3.
In a meeting with President Bush this week, Duncan and our
colleagues talked about his getting more Iraqi battalions in
the hotspot areas on an accelerated basis for the combat
operations experience, to test their capabilities and to gain
confidence. Too many Iraqi forces are in relatively calm areas.
Only about 35 to 114 Iraqi combat battalions operate in
notoriously violent areas such as Baghdad and the Anbar
Province, while over 30 other units are in quieter areas that
experience 2 or fewer attacks each day.
To ensure that Iraqi Security Forces are positioned for
success and can benefit from much-needed combat experience,
Coalition forces must help Iraqis develop key skills and
capabilities. Military transition teams are advising the Iraqis
on the unfamiliar challenges of counterinsurgency operations.
They are also serving as a useful conduit to logistic support,
intelligence information and combat support such as heavy
artillery and air support the Coalition forces can provide.
If we get the transition team piece right, the effort to
produce capable, battle-tested Iraqi forces stands a greater
chance of success. So the focus of today's hearing is the
manning, training and equipping of these teams, and it comes at
a time of renewed emphasis by the services--U.S. Central
Command and the Multi-national Force-Iraq.
Many experts share the belief that these Transition Teams
are pivotal. The Army, to its credit, has met the demand for
hundreds of Transition Teams. The dedication of an entire
infantry division to train teams underscores the Army's
emphasis on this effort.
The Marine Corps continues to shoulder its fair share of
this mission.
In testimony before this committee last month, General
Abizaid of Central Command signaled his intent to expand the
size and capabilities of the teams, and the Iraq Study Group
recently recommended increasing the number of U.S. trainers in
Iraq to 10,000 or even 20,000.
During his confirmation hearing earlier this week, incoming
Secretary of Defense Gates asked a crucial question, and I
quote, ``If our focus is on training and bringing up the Iraqi
army, do we have enough trainers to do that job in Iraq?'' end
quote.
So the question before the committee today is just that:
How many transition teams are required, how many personnel, and
what skills do they need, and what training should they
receive? This hearing comes at a good time to take stock of how
the transition teams have evolved over the last two years and
to reevaluate how best to organize this endeavor in the future.
Recent media reports indicate that some team members feel
that they are not receiving or providing the most relevant
training or the right equipment. I hope the committee will hear
how we can help you to strengthen the ability of the advisors
to better train and secure Iraq's security forces. Only when we
can successfully conclude such efforts can we be sure that the
departure of American forces from the Iraq nation will not
result in massive instability and violence.
Before we turn to our witnesses, I, again, turn to
recognize our good friend and ranking member, the gentleman
from Missouri, Mr. Skelton.
Mr. Skelton. Mr. Chairman, thank you, and I ask for
unanimous consent to put my statement in the record at this
point.
Mr. Weldon. Without objection.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Skelton can be found in the
Appendix on page 49.]
Mr. Skelton. I will be very brief. However, I would hope
the witnesses would help answer the question, ``Should Iraqi
unit performance be considered a reflection of the training
teams' proficiency?''
You know, I really worry about the situation in Iraq. Time
marches on. I think time is of the essence, and here we are
three and a half years into this effort, and we are now looking
at doing a better job at training their forces. Where have we
been for the last three and a half plus years?
I also think the linchpin of the efforts in Iraq are the
Maliki government's getting its act together and making
substantial progress swiftly, working with you hand in hand
swiftly. If not, we Americans and our Coalition partners are
feeding a dead horse.
Would you help enlighten us today, gentlemen? Because it is
dire and serious. Thank you.
The Chairman [presiding]. I thank the gentleman.
Gentlemen, thank you for being with us this morning, and
General Flynn, the floor is yours, sir.
STATEMENT OF MAJ. GEN. GEORGE J. FLYNN, COMMANDING GENERAL,
TRAINING AND EDUCATION COMMAND, U.S. MARINE CORPS
General Flynn. Chairman Hunter, Representative Skelton, and
distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you today to report on the Marine
Corps' efforts to train transition teams for Operation Iraqi
Freedom and Enduring Freedom. Before I begin, I would like to
thank the committee for your sustained support of our men and
women in uniform, especially for those in harm's way.
I have submitted a written statement that outlines the
Marine Corps' approach to Transition Team training, and I would
ask that it be included in the record.
The Chairman. General Flynn, absolutely, and without
objection, all written statements will be taken into the
record, so feel free to summarize in the best way possible.
General Flynn. Yes, sir. I would like to now highlight
briefly some of the key aspects of our approach.
Our transition teams advise, train and mentor Iraqi and
Afghani security forces and provide access to Coalition
capabilities such as fires, logistics, engineer, medevac, and
intelligence operations. In order to do this, we assign quality
Marines with the right skills and background to succeed. Our
team members have the leadership, the combat skills and
occupational specialty to live, work, operate, and fight with
their Iraqi and Afghani counterparts.
The key challenge we face in manning these teams is that
there is no specific forcestructure for these mission
requirements, and therefore, the teams must be manned from our
existing personnel structure. They are all leaders in high-
demand specialties. As with all Marine Corps training, our
Transition Team training is standards based. It is designed to
capitalize on every Marine's being first as riflemen as well as
taking advantage of our institutional understanding of the
combined arms approach--the power of the Marine Air-Ground Task
Force. The end state of our training is team members with
cultural and language skills who have the ability to train and
advise in all six battlefield functions and all lines of
operations to include kinetic actions to eliminate insurgents
and nonkinetic actions for engagement with the local populace
and civilian leaders.
Our transition team training is guided by our predeployment
training guidance, and it is realistic with role players and
live fire throughout. Just like our unit predeployment
training, we use a building-block approach that is based on
mission-essential tasks with assessment and feedback provided
to operational commanders prior to deployment. Transition team
training begins at home stations with individual skills and
combat operation/environment training, and in the majority of
cases, it moves to one of our training centers for mission-
execution training.
Last, our transition team training is evolutionary. It is
constantly being modified as the result of lessons learned and
changes in the assigned mission and operating environment. In
the future, our intent is to provide even more standardized
training at our training centers. We currently have a revised
training plan which we will be testing in January that should
enhance the training currently being provided today.
I look forward to your questions.
The Chairman. Thank you, General Flynn.
[The prepared statement of General Flynn can be found in
the Appendix on page 54.]
The Chairman. And General Ham and General Lovelace, do you
have statements at this time? General Ham?
STATEMENT OF MAJ. GEN. CARTER F. HAM, COMMANDER, 1ST INFANTRY
DIVISION, FORT RILEY, U.S. ARMY
General Ham. Sir, if I may, Mr. Chairman and Congressman
Skelton and members, again, thanks for this opportunity to come
talk with you about how we are conducting transition team
training at Fort Riley, Kansas.
In June of 2006, the Army, Air Force, and Navy consolidated
transition team training at Fort Riley in order to standardize
the training and economize on the use of resources. Through
December of this year, 50 teams--about 500 personnel--will have
trained and deployed to Iraq from Fort Riley, and we have an
additional 1,400 currently in training at the base now.
The transition team training prepares teams to advise,
teach, mentor Iraqi and Afghanistan security forces. Each team
trains at Fort Riley for about 60 days. We train soldiers from
the active Army, from the Army Reserve, from the National
Guard, as well as sailors and airmen.
Training consists of individual skills as well as cultural
training advisor skills and collective tasks. Throughout the
training period, each team member receives over 40 hours of
formal classroom language instruction conducted by Defense
Language Institute instructors. We train--we are currently
training Dari for Afghanistan and an Iraqi dialect of Arabic in
our training base. In addition to the formal classroom
instruction, we exercise language skills in all of the
vignettes and the training environments that the teams
encounter each day.
The training, as General Flynn mentioned, is modified
frequently to meet the constantly changing conditions in
theater. Recent changes include updating the training of
improvised explosive device tactics, the recent introduction of
countersniper training and the adaptation of tactics,
techniques, and procedures developed by teams that are now in
country.
In the coming year, the 1st Infantry Division will train
approximately 6,000 officers and noncommissioned officers. They
will train teams of varying sizes and missions ranging from the
11-person standard battalion transition team to teams as
diverse as garrison support units that help Iraqi and Afghan
forces establish and operate their own bases. Currently, the
1st Infantry Division headquarters and the leadership of two
combat brigades are dedicated to training these teams.
About 75 percent of the trainers operating at Fort Riley
have recent combat experience. In addition, we expect, as the
teams rotate back at the completion of their mission, that a
number of them will stay at Fort Riley to become part of the
training cadre to ensure we are continually refreshing and
updating the experience base. In addition to all of that, one
of the assistant division commanders of the 1st Division,
Brigadier General Dana Pittard, is forward-deployed in Iraq and
is dual-hatted as the commander of the Iraq Assistance Group.
The training at Fort Riley is vital to our missions in Iraq
and Afghanistan, and the soldiers of the 1st Infantry Division
are dedicated to fully supporting the combatant commander's
mission requirements.
I look forward to your questions and dialogue, and I would
welcome members or your staff to come see us at Fort Riley to
gain firsthand experience as to how we are conducting the
training.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. General Ham, thank you.
[The prepared statement of General Ham can be found in the
Appendix on page 59.]
The Chairman. General Lovelace.
STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. JAMES J. LOVELACE, JR., DEPUTY CHIEF OF
STAFF, G3, U.S. ARMY
General Lovelace. Sir, very quickly, Chairman Hunter,
Congressman Skelton, distinguished Members of Congress, first
off, on behalf of the Secretary of the Army, Dr. Harvey, and on
behalf of the Chief of Staff, General Schoomaker, I just want
to say thanks. Thanks for your support. Thanks for the passion
that Congressman Weldon talks about. It makes a difference. Our
troops realize it, and day in and day out they realize your
support for this very critical mission, this critical mission
and the larger mission in whole that they are accomplishing in
theater.
I am here today--I am the G3; I am in charge of operations.
There is not very much I do not touch.
The institution of the United States Army, its resources,
its leaders are all dedicated to this mission that we are
talking about today. They are fully behind it. That is why we
have dedicated a pretty sizable amount of resources here to
ensure that our soldiers get what they need and not only what
they have now, but in the future.
We welcome this opportunity. There is a lot of mess out
there, and it does a disservice when they talk about the
quality of the leader in place that is in question. These are
young men and women who raised their right hands and dedicated
themselves to the oath of office to protect and defend the
Constitution of the United States, to well and faithfully do
their duties.
They are reading in the paper these kinds of things that
talk about who they are or how good they are not. These are
great young men and women, and I think we have a great program
offer, and I reiterate the opportunity to come out to either
Twentynine Palms or out to Fort Riley, Kansas.
And to Congressman Skelton's point, I think we are
accomplishing the mission. We are getting our job done. It is
maybe taking a little bit longer than people want, but these
great young men and women in the breach each day are doing what
is required of the combatant commander in theater.
So I look forward to your questions.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, General.
[The prepared statement of General Lovelace can be found in
the Appendix on page 62.]
The Chairman. And gentlemen, thank you for being with us.
The Study Group's recommendations and their discussion of the
transition teams and also the initiatives that are coming out
of the Pentagon and all the discussions, to some degree--
peripherally or in central part--refer to the Transition Teams
and their importance to the stand-up of the Iraqi military upon
which everything depends in terms of the security apparatus in
Iraq. Let me ask you a couple of basic questions.
If you are an Iraqi battalion, what do you have right now
in terms of U.S. personnel, transitional personnel or advisory
personnel, in your companies? If you are an infantry battalion
or an armored battalion, what do you have embedded presently in
the companies down to the company platoon level? What have you
got?
General Lovelace, can you pull that microphone up a little
bit?
General Lovelace. I will sit closer to it, sir. Is that all
right?
The Chairman. Okay.
General Lovelace. Sir, the team composition, and it is in
the written testimony, basically is about 10 to 15 people. The
lowest that the teams go down to is to battalion level. They
will have about 10 or so people in that formation who then work
with that entire battalion--all right?--but not every battalion
might necessarily merit--meaning, by that, because of their
level of readiness--might or might not have a battalion team
with it, and that is the status of play.
I do not have a specific number right now of battalions
that are covered, and I will be happy to get it for you.
[The information referred to is classified and retained in
the committee files.]
The Chairman. Okay.
What have you got if you are an Iraqi battalion? Let us
presume you are in the Sunni Triangle or in Baghdad; you are
making some contact with the adversary; you have got your
companies deployed.
With respect to the American presence, the American advisor
presence, I take it you have got the team then in battalion
headquarters, and that team has, among other things, the
ability to call in direct fire/artillery fire to provide for
medevac assistance; and I presume that means you have got
choppers available for medevac. You have got some logistics and
communications advice. What will you have?
General Flynn, can you give us an idea of what an Iraqi
battalion will have today in terms of the American presence on
the ground with them?
General Flynn. Sir, the teams that we are training that go
with the Iraqi battalions are normally 11-man teams, and the
composition is usually 2 infantry men, usually a relatively
senior captain or a senior major and also a senior enlisted,
and they also have a fires individual, somebody who is skilled
in the art of calling in fires, both an officer and enlisted.
We have logisticians, again an officer/enlisted breakdown. We
also have two intelligence individuals and also a communicator
and a corpsman.
The other piece, sir, is a mission essential function (MEF)
list right now in-house. Those teams are being boosted up to
about 20 individuals to provide some of the drivers and
additional communicators, but that is not part of the training
package right now. We are not training a 20-man team leaving
Continental United States (CONUS). We are training an 11-man
team, and then they get augmented when they get in theater,
sir.
The Chairman. Okay. So there is a difference between this
concept of having this team that is basically an advisory team,
and also--it also gives you some leverage in terms of medevac
and direct fire with battalion and the concept that is inherent
in Special Forces where you have people that are cross-trained
in disciplines of communications, weapons, et cetera, who
actually train the indigenous personnel themselves.
So this is essentially the training team you are talking
about which, for practical purposes, it is an advisory team for
the battalion leadership, and it does not go down to the lower
levels, and it provides those leverages in those certain places
like bringing in direct fire, medevac, et cetera.
Is that a general description of what they do?
General Flynn. Sir, these advisors do train, though. They
mentor. And also by their presence, sir, they are setting a
personal example by being there, but they just do not sit there
and advise. They also have skill sets to be trainers and to
teach some of these skills, sir. The logistician would teach
how to do tactical logistics as well as enabling it, so I think
they have a dual role.
The Chairman. Okay. Gentlemen, do you gentlemen have
personal experience watching the teams that are present in Iraq
work with the Iraqi military? Have you been on the ground with
them there?
General Ham. Yes, sir, I have.
The Chairman. Give us your assessment of how effectively
they work.
General Ham. Sir, quite obviously, the performance of the
Iraqi units is across the spectrum, but the teams, in addition
to their advising and mentoring role, do participate. They go
with the units when they are with the Iraqi units, as they are
conducting operations, so that they can bring to bear those
effects that may be needed whether it is fires or air ambulance
or other support, so they are out with the--they are out with
the units, conducting operations.
The Chairman. Okay. I have got a few other questions, but
let us move down the line here to the distinguished gentleman
from Missouri, Mr. Skelton.
Mr. Skelton. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
General Lovelace, to your knowledge, when did we begin
training Iraqi troops?
General Lovelace. Sir, the training of the Iraqi soldiers
started almost immediately in 2003. It was done at a very small
level, and in or around the summer time frame is when they
disbanded the military and began to stand it back up.
They started with a very humble beginning of about two
battalions; therefore, it was handled internally by forces
being in theater. And so, as we walked our way forward into
2004, as the size of the Iraqi security force began to grow, we
moved from what was a national guard into an actual active
force of the Iraqi security force, and the numbers began to
grow.
It was previously handled inside the Army specifically. I
would have to defer to the Marine Corps here how they did it,
but when we had Pete Chiarelli who had command of the 1st
Cavalry and then the 1st Infantry Division.
Sir, then what happened was that they were handling that
mission essentially internally. Only then when it became a
little bit more visible, which was some extensive request for
forces by General Casey that was codified in February of 2005,
did then it become very visible as far as the external
commitment that I think we are talking about today.
So that is a quick Reader's Digest rundown, sir, if that is
helpful.
Mr. Skelton. General, how many Iraqi forces are fully
trained and capable of sustaining themselves today?
General Lovelace. Sir, let me do this. I probably have the
information with me.
I do not have that specific----
Mr. Skelton. Could you give me your best judgment?
General Lovelace. Sir, right now, they have--when you are
talking about Iraqi forces, I am assuming that you are talking
about the police and the army.
Mr. Skelton. I am talking about those that can operate on
their own and go after the insurgents or the sectarian violence
or whoever is out there.
General Lovelace. Sir, there are about 80-plus battalions
at this time who are able to operate in the lead.
Mr. Skelton. How many are there all together in the
training program today?
General Lovelace. Sir, when we have got it, I will get
right back with you.
Mr. Skelton. Well, can you tell us before the end of the
hearing?
General Lovelace. Oh, yes, sir. I am saying somebody behind
me is going to hand me the answers.
Mr. Skelton. One last question.
Generally, should the Iraqi unit performance be considered
a reflection of the training team's proficiency?
General Lovelace. Sir, I am taking a while just to think
about how to answer that. I mean, it is a lot----
Mr. Skelton. Just tell the truth. That will work.
General Lovelace. Sir, that is what I am about to do.
Sir, any job----
Mr. Skelton. I have Fort Leonard Wood in my district.
General Lovelace. I am sorry, sir?
Mr. Skelton. I have Fort Leonard Wood in the 4th District
of Missouri, and the product that those drill sergeants put out
is a reflection as to how good those drill sergeants are. You
will agree with that?
General Lovelace. Sir----
Mr. Skelton. Let me ask you again.
Should an Iraqi unit's performance be considered a
reflection of the training team's proficiency?
General Lovelace. Sir, I think that the training team is
trained and equipped, and what they are capable of doing in
some measure is a reflection of the capability of the
transition teams. That is correct.
Mr. Skelton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Abercrombie. Excuse me.
Mr. Skelton, I did not realize you were going to give up. I
am a little confused here. The gentleman said that he was going
to give you an answer on these numbers. What the hell----
Mr. Skelton. He will in a few moments.
Mr. Abercrombie. He said a few moments. That was a few
moments. You have got somebody right there. They are writing
numbers down there. We do not even know what we are talking
about.
Mr. Skelton. Has someone given them to you yet, General?
General Lovelace. Sir, nobody has given me numbers yet, no.
The Chairman. When the General gets the numbers that the
gentleman from Missouri requested, we will give him every
opportunity to----
Mr. Skelton. Just raise your hand, all right?
General Lovelace. Sir, I will. I am not trying to keep any
information from anybody. I mean, I just do not have it----
The Chairman. General, get closer to the mike. We cannot
hear you.
Mr. Skelton. Just raise your hand when you get the numbers,
please.
The Chairman. Okay. The gentleman will provide that when he
receives it.
The gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Hostettler, is recognized,
and I think the gentleman from Pennsylvania wanted to ask him
to yield for one brief second here for a clarification.
Mr. Weldon. I thank my colleague.
Yes, Mr. Reyes is not here. I was going to make this in the
opening statement, but Mr. Reyes' integrity has been impugned
by a retired CIA station chief from Paris by the name of
William Murray, who was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as
saying that Mr. Reyes was at a meeting with Mr. Ghorbanifar.
That is a blatant, outrageous, unequivocal lie.
This is the second time that Mr. Murray has been out there
trying to cover his own failures as a CIA station chief in
Paris. It is absolutely wrong that we would allow the Wall
Street Journal to impugn the integrity of Mr. Reyes with an
absolute, total, complete, unadulterated lie; and I would ask
the follow-on Congress to investigate Mr. Murray's ties of
whether he has contracts with the CIA now and remove him if
that is the case. He should not be allowed to get away with
impugning the integrity of Mr. Reyes.
Thank you.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman.
And continuing this line of questioning, Mr. Hostettler, do
you have any questions you would like to ask?
Mr. Hostettler. No questions.
The Chairman. The gentleman from South Carolina, Mr.
Spratt.
Mr. Spratt. Thank you very much for your testimony.
About a year ago, a little bit longer perhaps, we were
given the formulation that our troops would be stood down as
their troops were stood up, and the charts we were shown for
the development of about 135 battalions would have led one to
believe that somewhere toward the end of this calendar year
most of their troops would be stood up at least to the first
phase of operational capability.
It does not seem like we are tracking those expectations in
two respects. Number one, we have only got 80 battalions which
can be called ready at the first phase of operational
capability; and number two, it appears that they are not truly
autonomous, and there are some significant missing elements,
particularly in the area of combat support and combat service.
What is it going to take to get the Iraqi army up to the
levels that we deem to be sufficient in terms of equipment,
personnel, commitment on our part and time?
General Lovelace. Sir, I am not sure what information
specifically you received. I know that the strategy is that as
we build the capacity for the Iraqi security force, then we
would begin to reduce the size of the footprint. That is still
the strategy. The buildup of the Iraqi forces, you know, that
was in theater as recently as August--as to their plan, they
are generally on schedule.
Now, they do have a change in that they are adding in about
another 31,000 soldiers at the request of the prime minister,
and so--but you are right, as far as the intent here, as far as
the reduction in the footprint, that has not occurred.
To your point about the equipment, sir, the equipment is
coming in generally as fast as it can.
Mr. Spratt. Do we have a process for determining equipment
that we would otherwise leave behind that can be refurbished
and brought to utility for these Iraqi troops to inherit from
us?
General Lovelace. Sir, they go through a foreign military
sales program no different than what any other country would.
Mr. Spratt. Oh, okay.
General Lovelace. So that is how they secure it.
As far as leaving behind equipment, U.S. equipment, if it
is appropriate and it is excess and in accordance with the
law--and the law only allows us to render any equipment which
is in excess. And so, right now, we do not have--we have some,
and that equipment which is in excess we have then conveyed to
the Iraqi forces, sir.
Mr. Spratt. Let me ask you along a different line of
questioning because time is limited, are you concerned as we
shift to this role of fewer Americans involved in direct combat
and more involved in advisory capacities that our advisors
themselves could be in danger, that if we could find ourselves
with units on the ground, this could be Beirut all over again?
Do you have units that are not sufficient to protect
themselves if they were subject to some kind of attack; or they
might be in a hostile situation and might find themselves
embedded with a unit, and somebody within that unit would--that
those could be critically dangerous situations, too?
Does that concern you, and if so, how do we handle that
problem?
General Flynn. Sir--I will take a shot at that, sir.
I think the key part is to making sure that we train them
correctly and we man them correctly, and they have the right
equipment not only for their own force's protection but to be
able to be effective advisors in training.
So it is a high-risk assignment, sir. In many ways, these
individuals are out there alone and unafraid. It just speaks to
the quality of the men and women who are in uniform, and it is
our responsibility to make sure, before we send them out the
door, that they have all the skills necessary to survive on the
battlefield and to execute their mission, but the mission does
come with risks, sir, and the best we can do is to train them
the best we can to mitigate that risk.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman. Folks, we have about 5
minutes left on a 15-minute vote.
General Lovelace. Real quick, just one addendum. Sir, one
of the other important pieces is, that is why then we equip
that force clearly with communications so that it has that life
line back to a QRF, Quick Reaction Force. That is a very
mindful piece because nowhere that the Iraqis are, are they not
then close by some kind of U.S. force that can react and
provide that kind of Quick Reaction Force, sir, so that is
another quick addendum piece of information.
The Chairman. Thank the gentleman.
We will resume in about ten minutes. We have one vote,
folks, with about five minutes left.
[Recess.]
The Chairman. Okay, folks, we will come back to the hearing
here. And the gentleman, I think it was on the gentleman from
Connecticut, Mr. Simmons, a great veteran of Vietnam in both
Army status and with one of our great intelligence agencies,
and a guy with a lot of insight into this process. And I have
to say, Rob Simmons has been a guy who has been pushing the
idea of embedded teams and using that as an important tool for
the standup of the Iraqi armed forces.
So, Rob, you told me you wanted to talk to these gentlemen,
here they are.
Mr. Simmons. Thank you Mr. Chairman and I thank you very
much for tolerating my repeated comments about the importance
of embedded advisers, especially at this time in our
involvement in Iraq. And I thank you for holding this hearing
on just this subject. And I thank General Ham for taking my
call a few months ago, a cold call to see how things were going
out in Fort Riley because I am a believer in what you folks are
doing. I served in Vietnam for two and a half years as an
adviser. I was with Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV)
in the military, and then I was private first class (PFC) with
MACV Civil Operations Rural Development and Support (CORDS)
with the Central Intelligence Agency.
I was embedded. I spoke the language. I lived off the
economy in the culture with a counterpart as part of a very
small team. And I am reminded when I look at my dog tags that
there are two Buddhist symbols or medallions on the dog tags
that were given to me by Vietnamese Buddhists to keep me safe
because one of the issues always is, if you are embedded as an
adviser, are your host country troops going to take care of
you? Are you just going to become another kind of a target? And
my experience was, I provided logistics. I supported--I
provided training resources, intel, certain types of what you
call coalition services. And they very much wanted to keep me
alive and keep me healthy because I could help them perform the
task. And I fit in. I didn't run off to my military base every
night. I slept and ate and worked with the people that I was
embedded with.
So I think it is a winner. And I think it is a winner
especially now. And I point out for the record that the Iraq
study report says in the executive summary, the Iraqi
government should accelerate resuming responsibility for Iraq's
security. While the process is underway, the U.S. should
significantly increase the number of U.S. military personnel,
including combat troops embedded in and supporting Iraqi army
units. It is right in the book that just came out this week. It
is something I have been advocating for a long time.
Recommendation 44: The most highly qualified U.S. officers and
military personnel should be assigned to embedded teams, and
the U.S. military should establish suitable career-enhancing
incentives for these officers and personnel.
Now, in your testimony, you indicated that 18 percent of
two Fort Leavenworth classes of officers decided to go this
route, which is good, but I don't think it is the good enough.
And I guess my question to the witnesses would be, does
the--for you, General Ham, does the first division have what it
needs to accomplish the training task of 6,000 of these highly
skilled senior personnel hopefully with at least one combat
tour? And I understand that only 50 percent now have prior
redeployment experience. And I think that is a weakness.
Do we have the people we need? Can we keep the teams in
scale? You don't want them too big. If they are too big, they
don't work. If they are too small, they are ineffective and at
risk. So you have to keep them in a proper scale. And my
experience is one good adviser is worth more than five mediocre
advisors. So scale and quality of personnel is really
important.
And then for General Lovelace, is this a career-enhancing
assignment? A lot of people referred to me as going native.
``He went native. He is up in the boonies, up in the country.
He is speaking a funny language. He is eating funny food. He is
not part of the mainstream.''
Are your career military officers and senior non-
commissioned officers (NCO) going to be rewarded for this
assignment? Or this is going to be sort of something that you
do, but it is not going to be really career enhancing? It has
to be career enhancing.
And finally, to the committee, have we planned a
Congressional Delegation (CODEL) out to Fort Riley to see how
they are doing. Those are my questions, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Before they answer it, let me just tell you,
I think we have our first volunteer on that CODEL, and in case,
you didn't know it----
Mr. Simmons. He better hurry up and do it before the end of
the year.
The Chairman. In case you didn't know it, you are leading
it, and which day of the week would you like to take off next
week?
Mr. Simmons. How about tomorrow night?
The Chairman. Okay, you got it.
We handled that one.
Gentlemen, you want to answer those questions?
General Lovelace. I will start off here. Just some
interesting statistics here. You talk about, sir, whether it is
career enhancing to have been an adviser. It is kind of
interesting. Let me trace back here very quickly for the past
15 years, General Reimer, former Chief of Staff of the Army has
a Combat Infantryman's Badge (CIB). Former Chief of Staff of
the Army, General Sullivan, has a CIB. And then General Boomer
also has a CIB.
Those leaders are not infantry. Two of them are artillery,
and one of them is armor. They got those in Vietnam because
they were advisers just like yourself, sir.
So when you talk about whether the Army accepts and rewards
and incentivizes, those are three leaders right there who rose
to the pinnacle of the senior leadership inside the United
States Army. And so I think that is a little bit of a
reflection, and it is a little bit of facts.
So the other thing is that, you know, when we say 18
percent, we didn't offer that up as if that is just an end all,
be all. It was a representation of what is the best and the
brightest of who are the most recently schooled individuals of
a professional education system who have come in right from
that opportunity to move into what are these very important
assignments. And that is all we were trying to do with it.
These are leader rich organizations. I am not sure
everybody understands the personnel management of this: 10
percent of the captains in the United States Army--it takes 10
percent of the captains who are signal corps to fill out these
formations.
It takes 10 percent of the captains in the inventory to
fill out what are military intelligence.
It takes 10 percent of the captains in the inventory of the
United States Army to handle the logistics.
It is just under for artillery, under 10 percent, and it is
about 5 percent of the infantry. That just gives you an issue
of the magnitude of what Human Resources Command (HRC) has to
do. And then you have to weigh this in with the fact that, you
know, we have to manage this also by dwell, individual dwell,
because all of a sudden, an individual comes out; you want to
give them some time back. You want to give them some time, so
they can be professionally developed, have an opportunity to be
with their family.
So we are balancing all these things. And so that is why I
think, sir, if you could leave tomorrow night, it would be
great. I don't care what Carter Ham has to do on the weekend.
But it would be great to have people come out because what you
can see is the power of the institution in the United States
Army that has gotten behind this thing for which people are
volunteering.
I guess the last piece, sir, is that the Secretary of the
Army and the Chief of Staff of the Army, we are embracing
leaders that are not only skilled in warfighting, but we call
them pentathletes. I am not sure you have all heard the Chief
and the Secretary use that word or not. But it is about being a
pentathlete. In other words, they are multi-skilled
individuals. They are not just skilled and able to handle
warfare; they are able to handle also nonkinetic solutions like
they are having to embrace now.
And so that is the broadening of the aperture and the skill
sets that we want to now have to manage and manifest itself
across the United States army.
The Marines have already embraced this.
And I wish Mr. Skelton was here, because I think what is
absolutely imperative, this foundation, rock solid foundation,
for both our noncommissioned officers and our officers, is the
education system. That is what makes our Army so great. We have
the best noncommissioned officers in the world. And it is
because they matriculate through a system of professional
development. The officer corps does it also. And we will stack
our leaders up--just like the Marines will--against anybody
else in the world. And that is what gives them this opportunity
to be agile and address the challenges out there. Longwinded
answer, sir, but thanks for asking.
Mr. Simmons. I appreciate that.
And General Ham.
General Ham. First, Congressman Simmons, you are indeed
welcome.
Mr. Chairman, whenever you would like to send someone,
either Members or staff, out to Fort Riley out to see us, we
would welcome that. And whatever schedule works for you works
for us.
You asked, sir, if we have the resources to conduct the
training, and I will tell you that, thanks to the committee and
for my own Department of the Army, we do have the resources to
execute this mission. The most important resource is the
leadership officer and noncommissioned officer leadership of a
division headquarters and of two combat brigades that are
dedicated to this. They are very, very capable of executing
this mission.
Key among the resources to execute this training are
linguists and foreign-language-speaking role players. And we
need, specifically, Iraqi dialect, Arabic role players and Dari
for the Afghan piece of our training as well. That is probably
the toughest resource to get. Those are scarce, scarce
supplies. But we so far have been able to do that to the
requisite standard.
One resource that we are trying to get that we don't
presently have is to get actual Iraqi and actual Afghan leaders
to come participate in the training with us.
Now, obviously, those, the key leaders, the kinds of
leaders that we would like to have at Fort Riley are exactly
the kinds of leaders that are fully engaged inside Iraq and
Afghanistan. But we are trying to find some way to get real--to
get serving Iraqi and Afghan leaders to come talk to our teams
as they are going through the training. We think that is
important.
Sir, you also asked about the experience based. It is,
about 50 percent of the individuals going through training have
prior deployment experience.
I would say, though, that is less important to me than the
individual previous deployment experience is to make sure that
each team has the requisite degree of experience resident in
that team. It is not necessary that all 11 members of a
battalion team have previous experience, as long as enough of
them do that they can share that experience, and we endeavor,
with the human resources command as they build those teams, to
ensure that is the case.
General Flynn. Representative Simmons, I would like to add
one thing about whether this is good for a Marine's career.
Marines traditionally have valued combat as a key part of how
you are measured amongst your peers. And I think one of the key
indications that we are seeing right now is, as we are doing
advisers more than one rotation now, as we are seeing former
battalion commanders going into the higher level of being
brigade or division advisers, and likewise we are seeing
individuals who are majors, who are getting out command-
screened to be battalion commanders. So the proof is there.
We went back when we set up our adviser program, the
first--our training program--and the first thing we did is, we
went back to some of the legends of the Corps who had done this
in Vietnam, individuals like Colonel Ripley, Colonel Turley;
and Colonel Boomer and said, okay, how should we do this? What
were your lessons learned so we can do it right?
So the experience is valued. I tell you this, from running
a training and education program, I love getting these guys
back and putting them in the training and education
establishment because they spread their knowledge and they
spread their experience. And because of that, we rise--we raise
up the quality of the whole force that way.
Mr. Simmons. I want to conclude, Mr. Chairman, by saying,
our soldiers did a magnificent job in defeating a conventional
force quickly and efficiently. And our soldiers have done a
magnificent job of providing security in Iraq to stand up a
provisional government, to conduct three elections, and to
stand up a permanent government.
I think we are doing a great job now of--I think we have
the possibility of doing a great job now of moving from a
strictly security role to a robust advisory role, security to
advisory. And I think that is entirely appropriate. And I think
the time is right for that. The time is right. The time wasn't
good two or three years ago for this kind of a program. But I
think the time is right for this program.
I have every reason to believe that our military, that I
consider to be the best in the world and certainly the best
I've seen in my 37 years of service, is ready to take this on,
and I wish you all the best. Thank you for your testimony.
General Lovelace. Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman and I thank the
gentleman for his great service on the committee, as well as
the gentleman from Colorado here, Mr. Hefley, and the gentleman
from Pennsylvania, Mr. Weldon, who spoke a few minutes ago.
And as a--I would just say that I think you probably, as an
adviser in the U.S. military and in a combat operation, and
your voice and your experience should be one that we look to in
the days ahead with respect to this issue. Very critical issue
for us.
The gentleman from Texas, distinguished gentleman who has
spent a lot of time in the combat theaters, Mr. Ortiz.
Mr. Ortiz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know we have been in
this war for too long, three and a half years. I know its
history about what happened in the beginning, 2003. The Iraqi
army was disbanded in 2003.
Was that a mistake that we made? And was this mistake that
we made, in my opinion and the opinions of other people, by
disbanding it, was this made by our civilian authorities like
Paul Bremer who was there, or was this made by the military?
General Lovelace. Sir, I accept your question, I am not in
a position to answer--I don't have the knowledge, I mean, this
is a policy issue. Things were made--decisions were made in
theater. I was not there at the time.
So, I apologize. I am not personally able to address your
question.
Mr. Ortiz. And the reason I ask is, because we hope that if
this was a mistake, that we do not make this mistake again.
This is why this is very, very important at least to me.
But how many of the old Iraqi personnel are now fighting
coalition forces or now with the insurgents? I am pretty sure
that when you take somebody prisoner or detain somebody, you
ask, you question them.
Do we have this information as to how many of the old army
are now fighting our coalition forces?
General Flynn. Sir, I just say one thing on that. I don't
think we have that information. And but the other part I say, I
think one of the things that goes back to the issue raised on
disbanding the Army, one of the key rules that we have learned
in counter insurgencies over the years is, never create more
enemies than you already have. And that is one key part of it.
So I think part of the answer to your question probably
lies in that, is you need all of the friends you can get in
counter insurgency. And one of the ways you can get there is by
assigning quality advisers to that because that shows a
commitment to raising that capability. So that is how I would
answer your question, sir.
Mr. Ortiz. Now talking about advisers, I was going through
some of the statements, and I understand that they go through
35- to 40-day training. In your opinion, do you think this is
sufficient training? And the advisers who are embedded with the
troops, have they been deployed before? Have they seen action
in Iraq?
General Flynn. Sir, as I said in my opening statement, the
training is standards based. We in the Marine Corps, very
similar to how the Army does it, we use a building block
approach. To say specifically there is a time limit on that, on
how we do it, no, because the end product when you go through
your final block of training is an assessment of how well you
can do your mission.
If you fail that mission--if you fail that mission
assessment, we don't deploy you. We put you through remediation
to make sure that you are ready to do deploy. It is exactly the
same procedures we follow with our units. If a battalion, when
it goes through its predeployment training failed its
assessment, we don't deploy, and they have to go through
remediation. And they have to then go back to the Operating
Force Commander who is responsible for their deployment and to
make sure that they have corrected all their shortcomings.
So it is a standard based program. And the key part on
where we do our final 30 days of training is, that is really
the mission execution rehearsal. The block one and block two
training could take a lot longer than that which are the
individual skills training as well as training in the operating
environment.
Mr. Ortiz. Because what I see, I think you embed anywhere
from 10 to 15 to 20, and the list that I saw, they are mostly
senior, either lieutenant colonels, majors, sergeants. When
they are embedded, what is the casualty rate of those that are
embedded with the troops? With Iraqis?
General Lovelace. Sir, if I could and what I like to do
is--I don't have the casualty rates. We will--matter of fact,
one of the things we watch very carefully, I think it relates
to the risk question that was asked earlier, about the level of
risk and the dangerousness of the mission, that is one of the
things that we follow very carefully to make sure that those
individuals are not being targeted; you know, there is not any
trend on this. I don't have the casualty rates, but we will
take it for the record and get you that information.
Sir, if I could, to follow in reference to the training,
and especially with Congressman Skelton here who has championed
and been a real standard bearer across all the services,
reference, professional development, the leader training and
all that goes on, you know, talk about these days, whether it
is 65 days--it is about 60 days now worth of training.
The issue is that that is placed on top of a foundation of
what is experience, education and training that has gone out
through that individual, that leader's career. And that is what
it is built on top of it. So it is just not that one period or
moment in time. While we see it that way, it is a level of
professional development and experience and training that has
gone on. So I offer that up to keep it in a perspective because
we do focus on--what we tend to do inside the service ourselves
is focus on a very narrow window in time.
Mr. Ortiz. See, and the reason I asked about the casualty
rate, because you don't know who they are going to be embedded
with. They could turn against our own soldiers. And to me, this
is why this is very important. The casualty rate of those that
are embedded. Can we trust the guys that they are going to be
working with? And I know that seems to be a problem, but I
know, Mr. Chairman, my time has run out.
The Chairman. My friend from Texas, we will get that
casualty rate for the embedded personnel to date. We will try
to get that for you today. I think that is an important
statistic to get.
General Flynn. Yes, sir, I will give it to my manpower
folks, sir.
General Lovelace. Mr. Skelton, I do have an answer to his
questions.
The Chairman. I was going to say, Mr. Skelton has, as an
answer and he had a few comments, too.
General Lovelace. Sir, the question that you asked me was
the numbers of units that are in the lead. There is a total of
ten divisions in the Iraqi security force at this time. Right
now, there are six division headquarters, 27 brigades and 88
battalions in the lead. That is 88 of what are about 140
battalions that are in the armed forces.
Mr. Skelton. Thank you. One quick comment, General, we all
know whether it is insurgency, counter insurgency, force on
force, the side that always wins is the side that has the will
to win.
And I know there is no measurement as to whether those that
you are training have the will to win or not.
But do you have any judgment from talking to your trainers
and to your people in the field that are working with the
Iraqis as to whether they have the gut-wrenching feeling, will
to win?
General Ham. Sir, I will take a shot at that. In my
discussions, very frequently, with the commander of the Iraq
Assistance Group, who is in Iraq and spends time with these
teams, while there certainly are exceptions, generally the
feedback from the teams is that the attitude of their
counterparts, of the commander, the Iraqi counterparts with
whom they are working, is very positive.
They are--they, the Iraqi commanders, are concerned about
their own capabilities. They are concerned about whether or not
they will be fully supported by their government. They have
lots of concerns. But they understand the role that they must
play in order to provide for stability inside their own
country.
So I think, generally, the teams would report that the
feedback from the Iraqi counterparts is quite positive.
The Chairman. Thank the gentleman.
The gentleman from Minnesota, Mr. Kline.
Mr. Kline. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you very much for being here. I have two questions I
want to get out, so I will ask them quickly and I am looking
for a quick answer, particularly the first one.
You are putting together teams, and the numbers vary. The
composition varies. And so the first question is, do you, the
Marine Corps, or you, the Army, do you have a formal request, a
requirement from the Central Command (CENTCOM) commander or the
commander of the Multi-National Force Iraq for these teams,
something in writing?
General Flynn. Sir, the way we source the teams, they are
already a result of a request for forces, or an RFF, which
delineates the mission for the team as well as the composition
to include both the specialties and the rank structure. So it
is done by a request for force.
Mr. Kline. From whom?
General Flynn. From the theater commanders.
Mr. Kline. General Lovelace?
General Lovelace. Sir, the same, and they also prescribe
training, the training standards and the program construction
that we train back in the States, and we complement what they
do in theater.
Mr. Kline. So that, since that request for forces,
apparently you both have the same one; the team should then
look the same, is that right? We have had--I am sorry, but
General Flynn, you gave an answer; sometimes it is 11; maybe it
is 20; sometimes there are drivers----
General Flynn. Sir, that is being done independently in the
multinational force. They have been adding up. They have been
adding some additional support personnel to the teams. But the
basic structure of the team is 11, which is the same.
Mr. Kline. Thank you. We had the opportunity to chat a
little bit during the break, so to speak. Unfortunately, I left
before I heard the complete answer to Mr. Skelton's question,
and I would like to get back to that, the question being, is
the performance of the Iraqi--and I may miss this a little bit,
Mr. Skelton, but is the performance of the Iraqi battalion, the
army battalion, is that a direct reflection on the competence
and capability of the embedded team?
If you would just take the remaining 2 minutes and 48
seconds, either one of you, and talk about what that
relationship is and how that would work?
General Lovelace. I will start off. My hesitation was to
make sure I understood the question, and I apologize,
Congressman Skelton.
Whether the performance of the Iraqi forces, my opinion, is
not a reflection of the capability, competence and performance.
There are too many other variables that go into this, one.
Second is that one of the questions that you all are
interested in is the assessment done on the readiness of the
unit. It is done dually, and it is done that way for a reason.
It is done dually up the Iraqi chain of command, and it is
done up the U.S. side through the U.S. from the battalion to
the brigade to the division. And it is reconciled. And so
therefore what you want is you want someone who can talk and
assess independently because they have to now be able to now
truthfully say what they are exactly capable of doing.
And I know having--although this is one year removed, after
having talked to J.R. Vines, who had been the commander prior
to General Chiarelli, this is a big emphasis on their
assessment, independent assessment, of the U.S. of the
capability of the Iraqi security force. You want that. And so
therefore what you--if that is the case, then what you don't
want is that a thought in the transition team that they own the
performance of--you want them to coach, teach and mentor to
make them better, but don't own them and accept it is your
responsibility if they did not succeed.
Mr. Kline. If I could just interrupt for a second. This is
a point that we were discussing earlier. It seems to me that
what you don't want is a tight marrying of the performance of
that Iraqi battalion with the progress reports, if you will,
the efficiency reports of those embedded teams. So that team
commander has got to be able through his U.S. chain of command
to say, this battalion really needs work, it is not doing well,
and not have that report reflect adversely on his own chances
for promotion.
General Lovelace. No, sir. That is exactly right, sir. You
helped me say it much better. Thank you.
Mr. Kline. I have been thinking about it. Thank you.
And incredibly, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman.
And the gentleman from Arkansas, Dr. Snyder.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
having this hearing. I know of your continued interested in
this issue, Mr. Chairman, but I think that the whole committee
and the Congress and the American people will have an ongoing
interest in this topic. And I expected that this hearing today
was just going to set the beginning for what will be a very
vigorous ongoing look and oversight over the next several
years.
General Lovelace, at the conclusion of your opening
statement today, you demonstrated the admirable quality of
defending your troops against public criticism. And I assume
you are referring to a couple of press articles that we saw
today. And I appreciate your comments.
On the other hand, I think it is really important that we
fully and publicly air any kind of shortcomings that we may see
because we want this thing to be successful as best it can be.
To me it seems like step one is we have to have the right
troops, and you can have certainly an excellent person in their
military occupational specialty that may not just not be a good
trainer, they may not just be a good teacher, they may just not
have the personality, as Mr. Simmons was talking about, to go
native. They may just not have that temperament. That is part
of your job to sort that out.
The second component of that is to have the right training.
And so, for example, when I hear like 40 days of, or 40 hours
of language training, we are really not kidding anybody here.
Basically you are doing greetings and which way to the bunker
and which way to the bathroom. That is as far as we are going
to get with these languages.
I have some years ago made the comment that we ought to
start language training in boot camp when we actually have a
captive audience and just declare this platoon as Dari and that
platoon as Arabic and have that training stick with people as
they go through.
But the third component is--you have the right troops and
the right training--is you have to set them up with the right
opportunity for success. And again, this has been part of this
discussion of safety. If we start doing this swapping out,
pulling back all the--a lot of our U.S. troops, we could have
these folks isolated out there unintentionally and may perhaps
set them up for danger. Or it may be that the units they are
embedded with really are the kind of units, some of them, that
there is no chance for success. All those kind of things, the
issue whole issue of which way is Iraq going.
So I think what this committee is about is trying to do
everything we can to help you, and at times that may be having
very public discussions about, well, it turns out we have some
wrong people in there, or it turns out we have to do a better
job of training in this capacity.
I have some specific questions I will go into now.
The Center for Army Lessons Learned, and they did a report
on their advisers in Iraq, came out with what they thought was
the skills set necessary, and it seemed to some viewers that it
is very close to the Special Forces. And so my question is
should we just be focusing on what has already occurred in the
Congress, of dramatically increasing the number of Special
Forces with the idea they all become these kind of trainers? Is
that another way to get at this?
General Lovelace. Sir, the Special Forces' core competency
is foreign internal defense. In the past, the conventional
forces have also been used, and just like we did in Vietnam, we
have used it to advise, and they have done quite well.
And so, sir, if I could, because I think it is important,
one of the things that we do do, we get information from what
we are not doing as well as we need to do, and we bring that
back into the force. And Carter can talk about that.
But we also do things that we want to sustain. And all in
all, the better than 2,400 young men and women that we have
that are doing this in general are doing a good job. That was
my somewhat defensiveness about--because perhaps, you know--and
very small samples of N, N equals two or three, we might see
things that are going wrong. And so----
Dr. Snyder. I think these are very wonderful young men and
women that are doing these things.
General Lovelace. To get to your question, what we also
have is a growing level of maturity and experience inside the
conventional force that we don't want to have lost either.
And so I am not saying we are catching up in the
conventional side with the Special Forces, because those are
very selective, hand-picked, they go through quite a regimen to
provide. But on the other hand I think we have a strategy that
with time can be effective.
Dr. Snyder. General Ham, you refer to numbers 10 to 50. Do
they all train together as a unit?
General Ham. They do, sir. When they come to Fort Riley,
they come from disparate locations, but they are formed as a
team at Fort Riley and go through that together.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My time is up.
Mr. Saxton [presiding]. Let me follow up on Mr. Snyder's
question for a minute. A few weeks ago the Ranking Member Mr.
Skelton pointed out a book that talked a lot about insurgencies
and counterinsurgencies, the nature of insurgencies and the
difficulties in carrying out the counterinsurgency. And I must
say that as I read the book, I thought a lot about the Iraqi
soldiers and the Iraqi battalions that we are putting together
to try to have them carry out the role of counterinsurgency.
And so today's hearing is very meaningful from the perspective
of those of us who have tried to understand how this process
works.
And let me just ask you this. The folks that are training
the American soldiers that you are training to be embedded with
Iraqi units obviously possess some pretty unique skills, and
that is good, and we thank you for everything that you have
done to help develop those skills.
But I am curious about your impressions of how the
interface takes place with the folks that we are training also
in Iraq. I guess my questions start with wondering about the
nature of the Iraqi society and the effect that it has on the
individuals who become Iraqi soldiers. We know that part of the
process is showing up at the recruiting center. And we know
about the recruiting centers because we have seen that they are
oftentimes targets of improvised explosive devices (IED) and
folks that want--insurgents who want to inhibit the process of
our counterinsurgency.
We know that there is a training process. Most of us who
have been to Iraq have seen that training take place with Iraqi
soldiers on one or more occasions. Early on it was fairly
rudimentary training, and as we saw the latter stages of the
latter opportunities that we have had to see the training, it
looks a whole lot different than it did in the beginning, and
that is a good thing. And some of us have even seen some
operational capabilities of the Iraqi soldiers.
So I guess my--what I would like you to do, and I think
this is very important for all of us on the committee to
understand this, and it is important for the American people to
understand this as well, give us your impression of the Iraqi
units. What motivates them; what societal elements there are
that may motivate or inhibit them? And how are they doing
generally?
General Ham. Sir, the feedback that we have gotten from the
early deploying transition teams was that the number one task
that they thought that they needed additional training on was
cultural awareness, and specifically in Iraq, so that we could
better prepare them to cope with the conditions that they would
encounter being embedded with an Iraqi unit. And, of course, it
is quite a different culture than our own. And in preparing our
officers and noncommissioned officers for that environment, we
have spent--we have repeatedly added additional training to
make sure that they are prepared for that, to understand the
nature of the tribal construct, to understand the influence of
Islam through all of Iraqi life.
So we do spend considerable effort to make sure that they
are doing it. They are different than us. This is something
that we try to make sure the advisors understand. We are not
trying to build a mirror image of the American Army in Iraq.
Mr. Saxton. Let me ask you this. You say that we have had
to make some changes in the way we train our folks because some
of the things that they found when we got there we didn't
anticipate. Give us some examples of some things that you had
to change because we found some things that were different from
what we expected.
General Ham. Sir, we focus heavily now in the training to
make sure that the teams, for example, understand the hierarchy
of a tribe. So there may be a sheikh there who is not in any
official position inside an area in which their unit is
operating, but yet he wields significant influence. The same
for an imam at one of the mosques. So that is a little
different from the American culture.
They have to understand that the soldiers, that the
commanders that are serving in the Iraqi Army are influenced by
others that may not be necessarily in official positions. And
we have to be aware of that, attuned to that, so that we can
help that Iraqi commander make good choices.
So it is those kinds of awareness opportunities that we try
to embed in not only our formal classroom instruction, but more
importantly in the training vignettes that we conduct
throughout the 60-day model.
Mr. Saxton. General Lovelace, do you have anything for us?
General Lovelace. The other thing I was going to ask was
General Ham to sort of a follow-on piece, because you had
talked about the skill sets would be, sir--to have General Ham
address some of the--when people do not have the skill sets
that Dr. Snyder was talking about, we do attrit them from the
course. They do not make it into theater. And so I think that
is a reconciliation to address the point that you are talking
about.
General Ham. The good news is our attrition rate through
training has been about four percent. It has been quite low.
And the largest reason for attrition through training has been
medical. I think that is a testament to something General
Lovelace mentioned earlier, and that is the ability of the
officers and noncommissioned officers, in the case of Fort
Riley, Army, Air Force, and Navy. They are so good because the
education systems in the services are good that they come with
a skill set that allows them to assimilate these new
capabilities and be successful as advisers.
General Flynn. One thing we have learned in lessons learned
in this is the importance when you pick advisers is they have
to be patient. You know, we have a lot of type A personalities,
surprisingly, in the Marines, and you have to teach a little
bit of patience.
The other part is a realization that personal relations
trump all other metrics in dealing with them.
And last, sir, I would say that as we have trained
advisers, we come back and we have a systematic approach where
they have lessons learned so that we can change the way we are
doing things to make it better.
General Lovelace. One quick last point on this is that we,
throughout the force, basic training right on up to senior
levels inside the noncommissioned officer education system and
in the officer professional development system, we are now
laying a foundation for cultural awareness.
You know, we were an army that focused essentially two
places in the world. Basically it was in Europe, and then it
was in Korea. And so we have shed that. And now we have people
that are looking at and then well beyond. And these are people
who are trying to learn, and right now we might be focused a
little bit on Iraq and Afghanistan, but rightfully so, because
that is a very critical region for our national security. And
it captures the kinds of things we have all been talking about
here, so----
Mr. Saxton. Thank you.
Mrs. Davis.
Ms. Davis of California. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank
you all for being here and for your extraordinary service. I
think some of the issues that we discussed are ones that were
very much on my mind. And one of the articles that Mr.--I am
going to say this wrong--Mr. Krepinevich wrote some time ago
did focus on this and some of the issues that have arisen over
the course of time, and I wonder if you could just address
them.
Partly you have talked about the fact that the ability to
promote individuals who take on this task is more recognized
today than it was, I think, perhaps a year ago. That that has
changed.
But one of the other issues that was addressed is to take
away from the adviser some of the responsibilities, be it
paperwork, whatever it is, that sort of burdens sometimes our
people out in the field so that they really are freed up to do
a different task. And if you could address that.
But also the ability of them to work with their Iraqi
counterparts so that they can ferret out corruption within the
units, and that they can then hopefully be able to still enable
people to do what they really want them to do.
How does that affect their work in the units? And how are
we training them to work with that issue particularly and
perhaps to take some of that burden away?
The other thing I would just like you to address is our
training of police officers and border agents and whether or
not that is also within this effort with training advisers as
well as.
General Flynn. Ma'am, a couple of things. One of the things
that helps with the training now is now we are starting to see
advisers come back who now have conducted training. And that is
one of the things that are--those skill sets have been able to
evaluate somebody to root out those things that are bad in the
unit that you are in just based on the experience.
We do have a training responsibility. We train--this year
we were responsible for training 10 border transition teams and
4 national police transition teams. So in addition to the
military transition teams, we are training the others, and that
one of the things we are doing currently right now, for
example, on the border transition teams out on the west coast,
we have had them work with the border patrol to learn how the
border patrol does border operations. So we try to go out and
take advantage of skill sets that already exist so that we can
help in the training.
And one of the things when our--when we are working on----
Ms. Davis of California. Excuse me, are any of our border
agents going over to Iraq then and actually being embedded, as
well or our police officers?
General Flynn. Ma'am, I wouldn't know the answer to that
question. I am not sure about that at all.
But when we do our training in January, our new revised
training, the mission exercise will be focused on what type of
team you are going to be. So we will be able to evaluate that
necessity. And again, this is part of the process of always
making the training better. You know, we are never declaring
that we got it right. We also always have to make it better.
Ms. Davis of California. Freeing folks of the kind of
paperwork that has always been required, is that something we
have been able to work through and do a better job at?
General Flynn. I haven't heard of anybody being burdened
with paperwork. I don't think they think Marines can do
paperwork. Maybe that is the problem.
Ms. Davis of California. In reflecting on the police task
as well, we know that in the communities this has been a far
greater need in some areas than even in training the military.
Is it appropriate--have you found that it is appropriate for us
to be using the military to train their police, and where have
you seen that there are problems with this, whether it is in
the approach, how we apply the science, whatever that may be?
General Lovelace. Let me do this. If I could capture a
couple of quick points. The Krepinevich article. We have been
engaging with him because from our perspective, from the Army's
perspective, he is using dated information, one, and he is
looking at a point in time when in February all of a sudden we
are asked to have in theater 60 days later formations, large
numbers, that begin to populate and then embed inside of the
Iraqi security force.
And so basically what happened then was--is that we did a
small amount of training here in the States. Theater said they
would do the preponderance of training in theater. That was the
handshake. That was the agreement. And so from about the time
that we got the mission until they showed up in theater, it was
less than 90 days.
I think that is pretty admirable to react to a combatant
commander. Was it perfect? No. Is it better the month after
that? Yes. And each month it has gotten better.
And so I see these articles, and I take issue with them.
One of the kids that went over there in May 2005 was my
executive officer. He volunteered. This is a successful brigade
commander, combat veteran. And so when Dr. Snyder asked with a
little bit of emotion, I can get behind here with a little bit
of emotion, because I see it. I can touch it. Under the G-3
itself we pushed about 14 kids who raised their hands who
wanted to go over out of the Pentagon. Now, that might have
been incentive now for them to try to get out is to go
because--but----
Ms. Davis of California. Are they having any extended tours
beyond what might be expected?
General Lovelace. I think the point is good because that is
why when we invite people to go to Fort Riley, one of the
reasons we have focused on the post--I know we are running
over. This is an important point.
Why we focus on Fort Riley is because we allowed that force
and the management of it, as you then came back, you came back
to Fort Riley, and then what you are going to be allowed to do
was you were going to allow to impart what you had learned on
those units that were going on over next. It just makes good
sense. And so that is why I think we have a great story to
tell.
I know the Marines have a great story to tell. I would love
for you all to come see us.
But the police--real quickly, because I did make a trip
into theater, a couple this past year, one of the focuses was
on this is the year of the police. So there has been a huge
focus, because what they want to do in the strategy is to allow
the communities now and the community base to have the Iraqi
police be in charge, or the Iraqi military be less visible.
And, you know, we have young men and women, great young--we
have a military police who have great skills. They take care of
the law enforcement, the kinds of things that then are relevant
and just what we want the Iraqi police to be like. What better
examples of the young men and women that we put into these
formations than to model themselves after the young men and
women who are in uniform? So the skill sets pretty much
overlap, ma'am.
Ms. Davis of California. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Saxton. Thank you.
Mr. Wilson.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, Generals, thank you very much for being here today. I
am very appreciative of your troops and what they have meant to
helping protect the American people, and I am particularly
pleased with the military transition teams as you all have
reviewed, their courage and their effectiveness.
And, General Ham, the 1st Infantry Division, I know
firsthand of your ability to train and work not only with
foreign troops, but the South Carolina Army National Guard. We
are very grateful that the 218th Mechanized Infantry has been
trained for years, and cotraining for the preparation of their
deployment to Afghanistan soon, and I want to thank you for
that.
I do share with Congressman Ortiz concern about the level
of risk of our team members who will be with the Iraqi units.
And it has been something I have learned about the interpreters
who also accompany the troops and their ability to assist with
breaking the language barrier and also the cultural barriers.
Could you tell us about the interpreters, and are they
available? And how many are available?
General Ham. Yes, sir, I could.
During the training, as I mentioned, the teams do get some
language training, but as Congressman Snyder indicated, it is
very rudimentary. We get to a capability where they can have a
simple conversation with their counterpart or with someone that
they meet. But we advise the teams that when they go into
formal discussions, operational discussions, with their
counterparts, they must do so through their interpreter. And
each team does have an interpreter, and we train on that and
practice on that.
We have contracted language speakers in the training base
who perform that mission, because using an interpreter is in
and of itself a skill set which the teams must have. So we
focus hard on that through the conduct of training.
Mr. Wilson. And I learned of that, and one of my sons
served for a year in Iraq, and he was always impressed with the
dedication of the interpreters, their courage, their insight,
and how they certainly have helped and enhanced the security of
our troops. And so I appreciate very much your bringing that--
explaining to us the significance of interpreters.
Another concern that I have had--and I am very pleased that
there are now 88 combat battalions in the lead of the Iraqi
Army. The level of equipment with the transition teams working
with troops, do we feel that they have proper equipment to meet
the challenge of the terrorists?
General Ham. Sir, I am confident that the teams--if you are
talking about the teams having the equipment they need,
absolutely.
Mr. Wilson. The teams and the Iraqi forces.
General Lovelace. First off, the teams do have what they
need. That is a priority fill of equipment for those units
going into the theater. They get up-armored Humvees, they get
the electronic countermeasures, et cetera, radios. It has to
be. They are alone and unafraid out there, so they have to get
the right stuff. The soldiers are equipped with the latest in a
rapid equipping initiative that we have. You all have seen that
on the soldiers that are over there, so they do have.
On the Iraqi forces, sir, in preparation, the only comment
I could render at this time is I know they are equipped to
about 85 percent of what they need. That is the little bit I
know right now.
Mr. Wilson. So it wouldn't be inhibiting to them as to
their resourcefulness because they don't feel like they have
proper equipment.
General Lovelace. Roger, sir.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you very much.
Mr. Saxton. Thank you.
Mr. Taylor.
Mr. Taylor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank you gentlemen for being here and for your
service to our country.
I am curious--and this question is based on some training
exercises that we have had with other countries. I have always
been curious if we track how long these people we train stay in
that nation's service. Colombia came to mind where it seemed
like every time I was going down there, you know, we were
training guys up, and in some instances it turned out they went
over to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) or
the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) after our
Nation had spent a good deal of money to train them up.
So my question is what is the length of service of an Iraqi
now? The people that we are training, are they conscripts? Are
they volunteers? Where do they fall in the officer/enlisted
pecking order? And is there any effort to track them to see if
we are just not training soldiers for al Sadr's army?
General Lovelace. Let me tell you what I know, sir, and I
will have to take for the record as far as how we track. I
don't know in general, because I thought that was the first
part of your question was in general how we track.
I know that in some cases that we do some schools. I know
specifically that--I am very familiar with we do track the
careers of individuals. But I have to get back with you as far
as the army.
As far as the length of service, sir, they are a volunteer
force. They have no--and I guess it is really kind of a
reflection of their will to fight is that they are standing in
line to enlist in the armed forces. I think that is a
reinforcement because what we give them is hope. They can see
tomorrow because we give them hope. And I think that is what
bolsters not only their will to serve, but their will to fight.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
beginning on page 71.]
Mr. Taylor. If I may, more to that point, I know that, for
example, when people apply for Special Forces training within
our Army, they make a commitment to serve a while longer. When
people apply for our nuclear schools in the Navy, they make a
commitment to serve a lot longer because we are investing so
much in them. This I would think would be sought after in that
same way as those two specialties within our forces.
So the question is is there any commitment that comes on
the part of the Iraqi to get this kind of training? And if
there is, who tracks it?
General Lovelace. Sir, can I take it for the record?
Mr. Taylor. Yes, sir. Please.
General Lovelace. I can't answer.
Mr. Taylor. So no one has tracked the retention; no one has
tracked whether these guys immediately take their training, go
over to other side----
General Lovelace. Sir, I didn't say nobody was. All I said
was I don't have that information. I am sure that probably
somebody in theater is tracking those kinds of statistics, but
right back at the Department of the Army, sir, I don't.
Mr. Taylor. Thank you, gentlemen.
With the time I have remaining--I can hardly yield to the
gentleman from Arkansas, can I? But if you could get it for the
record, I would be very much interested in that.
[The information referred to is classified and retained in
the committee files.]
Mr. Taylor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Mr. Taylor.
And next will be Dr. Schwarz.
Dr. Schwarz. I have no questions.
Mr. Wilson. Mr. Langevin.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, gentlemen, thank you for your service and for your
testimony here today.
I would like to start by following up, looking a little
more in detail at the question--the answer you gave to Mr.
Skelton's question with respect to the number of Iraqi combat
battalions who are actually combat-ready and what capacity they
are serving in.
General Lovelace, you responded by saying there are
approximately 80 Iraqi combat battalions that are operating in
the lead, yet in the lead doesn't mean the highest level of
readiness. In the lead actually means working operating with
some U.S. assistance as opposed to operating completely
independently of U.S. assistance.
Can you more specifically tell us of those 80 that are
operating that are combat-ready, you said they are in the lead,
how many are actually operating independently?
General Lovelace. Sir, I will have to turn to the people
who have the books behind me and see if I could--if I could
give you a wait out and see what I have with me today. Some of
those are absolutely working independently, some are not, and I
will make sure I get you that information. If I can't get that
before I leave, then I will take it for the record, sir.
[The information referred to is classified and retained in
the committee files.]
Mr. Langevin. I appreciate that, because obviously that is
key to us finally, once and for all, being able to transition
security operations to the Iraqis, and I think we all need to
know how many are actually operating independently.
And on that point, on the scale of one to four used for
Iraqi Security Force readiness assessments, what are the
biggest challenges right now preventing units from moving to--
from a two rating, where they are operating in the lead with
assistance, to a level one, where they are operating completely
independently?
General Lovelace. Sir, again, the questions are things that
theater would track here. I do not have that--we do not have
that information. I apologize. We can seek to get it from
theater and take it for the record, but that is a theater
question.
Mr. Langevin. You don't know the biggest challenges right
now that are preventing us from moving from a level two to a
level one?
General Lovelace. No, sir.
Mr. Langevin. If you could get those for the record, those
are important things to know.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
beginning on page 71.]
Mr. Langevin. General, are you tracking--with respect to
the number of facilities, our units that we have doing the
training, is our operation there sophisticated enough where we
are actually tracking metrics so that we know which facilities
or which units are having the most success in actually training
and transitioning and moving the Iraqi forces through the
various levels of training, and perhaps being able to learn
from those units that are doing the best in terms of training
and those that are lagging?
General Flynn. Sir, I can answer that a little bit. I know
that the adviser teams report up through the chain of command
on their readiness assessments. That is one of the functions of
an adviser is to do that assessment and to provide that up to
the chain of command. And in the case of the majority of the
Marine Corps' military transition teams, they report that
assessment information through the operational chain. It goes
through Multi-National Force West, and then it goes up to the
Iraqi Advisory Group. And from there, you know, I am sure that
is where the lessons learned are and all the information is
kept.
But, again, I don't have access to that information, but I
can tell you that that is how we do the assessment process. It
is done by the chain of command, and it is done through the
operational chain, and we do take the lessons learned. That is
one part that is very active.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you. And while I still have some time,
hand in hand with the training and making sure that the Iraqi
Security Forces are operating at maximum level and are
successful in being able to provide security for Iraq, only the
training is going to be, obviously, having the right equipment,
and to what degree are the Iraqi Security Forces sufficiently
equipped so that they are operating at a superior level to the
insurgents who are attacking them? Because I have heard, and I
know members of the committee have heard, that the Iraqi
Security Forces are conducting operations in very light-armored
vehicles, pickup trucks and the like, and do not have the
heavy-armored vehicles that will put them in a superior
position over the insurgents.
Can you address that?
General Flynn. Sir, again, I would have to pass on that
one. That is best up to the operational commanders to address
because I do not have visibility on that from my role on this.
General Lovelace. Sir, just to reiterate a point--I know
you have heard this--they have about 85 percent of their
equipment. They do have some up-armored Humvees. They do not
have, you know, the thousands that we have, but they do have
some up-armored Humvees.
Sir, if I could come back to your question a little bit,
the only thing I would say is--you know, what is the difference
between going from a level two to a level one? Some of it is
just time. It is just the increase and the opportunities. Not
every battalion is going to--I mean, you will understand this.
Not every battalion is going to progress at the same rate, and
so some of it is just time and patience to give them an
opportunity, because the will is there, the experience, and
they do want to win, so----
Mr. Langevin. Thank you.
Mr. Wilson [presiding]. Thank you, General Lovelace, and at
this time, Mr. Marshall of Georgia.
Mr. Marshall. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
One of the struggles that we have had in Iraq is that our
force is largely conventional. It is an unconventional fight.
We were very successful at the conventional part of it. That
was predictable, it lasted three weeks, and then it was fairly
predictable that there would be a gradual deterioration, and
then we would be in this awkward position of having a
conventional force in a foreign country, constrained by our
rules, and it is appropriate that we be constrained that way,
and consequently, we have a very difficult time obtaining
security and peace as it gradually worsened.
My impression is that we are largely, our embeds--which I
think is a great way to head, and I have argued for it for some
time. I have also argued that we do not need more soldiers over
there, we probably need fewer. But the embeds, it seems to me,
are principally geared toward training a conventional force. We
put uniforms on them. They all look alike. I guess we are
teaching them to march in formation--I mean, just things like
that--and yet, that conventional force has the same challenge
we have, which is an unconventional one; it is a
counterinsurgency. And so I am wondering what thoughts we have
had about that kind of dilemma, you know, training this force
for a counterinsurgency, for a policing action, and are we
doing that?
I guess I have a second question, and I would like each of
you--you know, please do not say, I do not have that
information right here, because it is just calling for your
opinion. If we went and talked with those who are embedded with
Iraqi forces, who have had experience working with the Iraqi
forces, and we asked them whether or not the Iraqi--``In your
opinion,'' you know, ``Officer, Sergeant''--you name it--``will
Iraqi forces be ready to take over security of the country in
about 15 months from now,'' what would their answer be?
So those two questions. The nature of our training, are we
just creating the same image that we have of ourselves and
consequently setting up a conventional force for some real
challenges? They have got advantages that we do not have. They
speak the language; they can drink the water without getting
sick; you know, they can sleep there; they can mix in with the
population as long as we do not force them into uniforms and
Humvees and, you know, those sorts of things. That is one
question.
The second question is what do you think those guys would
say about the Iraqi forces being ready to do this in 15 months?
General Lovelace. Sir, I will talk first.
The answer to your first question is I would not say that
just because we are putting them in uniform, that now they are
a conventional force. When you look at the fact that the 3rd
Infantry Division went in in 10/2003, went into Baghdad, that
force came back about 15 months later, it was more than a--it
was more than a high-intensity force. It was a--it had become--
it began to be a full-spectrum force, a force that was able to
handle high intensity to include a counterinsurgency.
When the 4th Infantry Division came back--and now they are
just leaving, the 101st the same way, the 1st Cavalry that is
going in now, the 25th Division--those units that are going
back into the conflict are going back in with greater skill
sets to be able to address a counterinsurgency. Those kinds of
skill sets are being imparted on the force that they are
working with because these transition teams--the training of
the Iraqi Security Forces does not rest just narrowly in the
transition teams. They are both internal and external teams,
and like with General Flynn, we also inside the Army provide
more forces to help train the Iraqi force than just those teams
themselves, all right?
And so I think that what is not seen necessarily is this
broadening of--the broadening of the training and education
that goes on. They have their own human intelligence (HUMINT)
teams. That is something that we in the Army got rid of a long
time ago. It became a vestigial function. Yet we now are now
regrasping it, and we are building a capability very rapidly.
They have it already resident in their force and are taking
advantage of it, and that is a skill that you look for
especially in a counterinsurgency.
So, sir, what I would offer is, while we might be putting
uniforms on them, they are still operating and understanding
how to operate in a counterinsurgency, and for all the reasons
that you just said----
Mr. Marshall. Let me interrupt. I suspect that the other
witnesses are going to be relieved of the responsibility of
answering the first question.
Could each of you very briefly--because I am about out of
time--very briefly, what is your opinion, 15 months, if the
embeds were asked will they be ready to do this in 15 months?
General Lovelace. Sir, the answer to 15 months--I mean, I
do not know. The embeds would say this?
Mr. Marshall. Yes.
General Lovelace. That the Iraqi Security Force eventually
will be able to stand up, and----
Mr. Marshall. Eventually. Fifteen months?
General Lovelace. Sir, I do not--you are giving me----
General Flynn. Sir, my honest answer to that is the enemy
gets a vote in this, so I say it is event-driven rather than
time-driven. So every action we take is going to have a
reaction, and I think you have to take a look at it as event-
driven, and, again, we are not the only one driving the train
here.
General Ham. Sir, I would say the key factor for the Iraqi
Security Forces would be the full support of their government.
If they have got that, that will be the key move forward.
And if I may, sir, just really quickly on the
counterinsurgency training, we spend a lot of time with the
instructors, the trainers, cycling through the
Counterinsurgency Academy that General Petraeus and his staff
run in Fort Leavenworth. We do counterinsurgency training for
the teams, and the Iraqis run their own counterinsurgency
training inside Iraq for the Iraqi leaders. So there is clear
recognition that this is a different kind of fight and,
increasingly inside Iraq, effort to train--to make sure the
leaders understand the nature of the conflict in which they
find themselves.
Mr. Marshall. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you.
Mr. Cooper of Tennessee.
Mr. Cooper. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
For anyone listening to this hearing, they are going to be
wondering why the war is going so badly if our training is
going relatively well. The Iraq Study Commission report is out
today, and if you read pages six through nine, the report
conveys quite a different impression of the training activities
than the one we have heard of today.
They say, ``Point, units lack leadership. Point, units lack
equipment,'' and they point out that our entire appropriation
for Iraqi forces is $3 billion, or less than we spend on our
own troops every two weeks in Iraq. It goes on to say that
units lack personnel, and it says, ``Units lack logistics and
support,'' but other than that, everything is fine, and then it
says that the police forces are doing even worse. But let me
dwell on the personnel section for a second because I am
wondering if essentially we have asked you to train the
untrainable.
It says here that Iraqi soldiers are on leave one week a
month so that they can visit their families and take them their
pay. Soldiers are paid in cash because there is no banking
system. Soldiers are given leave liberally and face no
penalties for absence without leave (AWOL). Unit readiness
rates are low, often at 50 percent or less. So it sounds like
the Iraqi forces can kind of come and go at will if there is no
penalty for being AWOL.
How do you help troops like that? That is a culture that is
so different than anything we are accustomed to that I am
worried that we have asked you to do an impossible job, and I
appreciate your valor and energy in approaching it, but when I
read in General Lovelace's testimony that they are working to
reward our embeds, and that one idea is we are working to
provide incentives or a choice of assignment after their embed
assignment, is that a sufficient incentive for us to attract
troops to what may be the most dangerous assignment going?
There is an article today in the Financial Times that says,
``The position is only going to become more hazardous.'' So I
am just worried there is a disconnect here. You are working
hard. You are trying to make it work. You have been given,
possibly, an impossible assignment. The Iraq Study Group says,
you know, it is a disaster that is not waiting to happen; it is
already happening.
How do you train troops who can come and go at will? My
colleague's question, Mr. Taylor, he wondered whether we were
effectively training militia members because, when they are
gone, we do not know if they have, in fact, joined up with the
enemy. You just disclosed to my colleague, Mr. Marshall that we
do not apparently even track--or at least the numbers aren't at
our fingertips, you know--absentee rates, where these folks
are. It just sounds like it is in chaos, and the President's
main strategy was stand up the Iraqis, and then we will stand
down. Now the Iraq Study Group is saying stand them up, or we
will leave.
What is going on here? We surely have better answers than
this from our great Pentagon, and I worry, as I say, that it is
the fault not of our troops and generals like you, but of the
civilian leadership who have asked you to do a possibly
impossible job. Comments.
General Flynn. Sir, I will take one shot at that.
In my personal opinion, we are undertaking, I think, one of
the largest scales--larger-scale foreign internal defense
operations that we have ever done in our Nation's history, and
it is not--it does not just have a military solution. Part of
foreign internal defense is also the operations of civilian
agencies as well as military agencies. What we are here today
for--I come from the Training and Education Command, and you
were right, sir. We do a very good job of training our U.S.
military advisors, and I think they do a good job of training
the forces that they have been assigned to train, but it is a
difficult problem.
It is much more than a military solution, and, you know, I
think the men and women who we have doing this job are doing
their part, and we are getting--we train them well, and they
are prepared to execute their mission. But again, it is more
than just the military aspect, there are other parts of it, and
I do not feel that, you know, I have all of the details on that
to give you the full answer to the question that you are
asking.
General Lovelace. Sir, I want to--this is not meant to be a
flippant answer, but from what you just described, it could
have described the Continental Army of this country over 200
years ago. I mean, that is what it was. I mean, this was people
who fought and had to go home and tend to crops. I mean--and
those are the conditions under which we are asking. This is an
army that does not have a personnel system. It does not have a
pay system. It is a country that does not have checks to bank,
and so we have to accept those conditions and work within them.
I do not know what the answers are, but I know what the
missions are that have been given us, and we were asked whether
we thought we could be successful. Yes, the enemy does get a
vote, and I realize there are some cultural differences here
that we have to understand and accept and work within, but is
there one at the end of the road that we can see success? We
think there is.
Mr. Cooper. But, General, in the Continental Army, we
weren't worried that our soldiers were leaving to go fight for
the British for a couple of weeks and then come back to our
forces, and we weren't worried, you know, about a number of
other things like--it is, I think, a false analogy.
You need to tell us, you know, if you have been given an
impossible job, because some marvelous generals have led this
training effort. General Petraeus is one of the finest to ever
put on a uniform. He is a gentleman who is a fine, patriotic
American, but in reading this 3-1/2 years into the war about 50
percent or less readiness rates, how many years will it take?
Mr. Marshall's question, you know, can we guarantee, you
know, the probability of--capability in 15 months? There is no
assurance here. There is no--where is the traction?
General Ham, I didn't want to interrupt you if you were
reaching for the button.
General Ham. Sir, I was just going to say one thing.
I think, appropriately, the initial focus of the training
and advisory mission was at the combat unit level, recognizing
that logistics and sustainment and other systems are necessary
for the formation and function of a good military. We are now
building and embedding advisory teams at the highest levels of
both the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Interior to
help them build those kinds of systems so that you do not have
to have a system where the soldiers have to go home, you know,
a week out of every three to take their--to take pay home. But
building those kinds of systems, an institutional army,
building the institutional basis for the Ministry of Interior
clearly will take some time, but we are, in fact, building the
advisory teams and deploying the advisory teams to help the
Iraqis build those systems.
Mr. Cooper. I see that my time has expired. I thank the
indulgence of the Chairman.
Mr. Wilson. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Cooper.
Ms. Bordallo of Guam.
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and good
afternoon, gentlemen.
As you know, I represent Guam, and our island has a proud--
a very proud national guard equipped with many skills from
their civilian lives. Because of my particular passion and
faith in the broad skills of the national guard personnel, I am
puzzled by the fact that the military transition teams are
utilizing only active duty personnel. It seems to me that
national guardsmen bring an especially valuable skill set to
serve as embedded officers because of their skills.
Have you considered requesting particular types, active or
reserve forces, for the mission, and can you comment on why we
are focusing on only active duty forces for this mission? I
guess whichever one of you would like to----
General Flynn. Ma'am, I know on our transition teams we use
both active and reserve forces.
Ms. Bordallo. So you will be including them?
General Flynn. We have in the past, yes, ma'am.
Ms. Bordallo. Very good. All right.
My second one----
General Ham. Ma'am, we do in the Army as well. We have
significant participation by Army Reserve and Army National
Guard as members of the transition teams. It is not active duty
only.
Ms. Bordallo. Very good. Thank you.
My second question, Major General Ham: You command a
traditional infantry division, and you have been given a task
to train and prepare these teams, but you have not been told to
transform your division from a traditional division to a
dedicated military transition team (MiTT) organization that
will endure.
Do you think that we should consider converting at least
one Army division into an enduring, full-time and dedicated
organization for training MiTT teams and for having these teams
as permanent, organized elements of the unit; in other words, a
conventional Special Operations unit, you might say?
Why are we treating the need for training and organizing
MiTT teams as a momentary requirement when all conventional
wisdom indicates that future warfare will look like Iraq? And
when the Army has finally embraced its role in Phase four
peacekeeping and nation-building operations, do you believe the
need for these teams will endure beyond Iraq?
General Lovelace. It is me. Although you would like for him
to answer, I----
Ms. Bordallo. Yes, General Lovelace.
General Lovelace. General Ham can answer it any way he
wants. I am going to answer for the Army, ma'am.
The pursuit of the 1st Infantry Division is a--we gave them
a mission, and we gave the power of a post and an institution.
We do not have on the backside an end-of-mission statement. He
does not know, nor do the follow-on commanders know, when that
will stop, and so what we wanted to do was embrace this.
We have to now get after and analyze exactly what we want
to have as an enduring aspect of this, and so it is not where
we have not embraced it for the long term. We now have a
solution set that allows us to now understand what now it needs
to be, what kind of structure we might need to have inside the
Army. We have the Special Forces, who have done the foreign
internal defense admirably, and it is their forte, but we also
have grown from that experience, and it has been a very
meaningful experience inside the conventional force.
And so I think that it is premature to say that we have
not--I would say that we are--and I would think that you would
want us to be as deliberate as we are in getting to some kind
of final end state, and now I will let Carter answer.
General Ham. Yes. I would say that the 1st Infantry
Division is now specifically tailored for this mission. If you
look at my division headquarters, it is not like any other
division headquarters in the Army. It is tailored for this
mission. Those functions that are necessary for full-spectrum
operations are not all--not wholly resident, but we have other
additions. For example, we have Special Forces officers and
noncommissioned officers as part of our headquarters, not
normally found in a division, but because of this unique
mission, we have that. Similarly, the brigades that are
conducting this training have been specifically organized for
this mission.
Ms. Bordallo. So then you feel it should endure?
General Ham. I will defer to General Lovelace. I know the
mission that--I feel comfortable that the mission that I have
matches the organization of my unit for now.
General Lovelace. Ma'am, whether we keep it at the 1st
Infantry Division or not, I already know that we have every
intention of modulizing his headquarters and the formations
there at Fort Riley, Kansas, and so at some point we now have
to understand institutionally where we will do this and how we
want to embrace it for all of the reasons that you just
indicated, because, as we are looking at this, we have to now--
just like I was speaking earlier, we talked about how we are
trying to mature, develop the force, the leader skill sets. You
know, what we want to do is be able to train on one of those
skill sets that units need to bring into a force at the Phase
four and five levels. Right.
Ms. Bordallo. Well, I thank you very much for your answers,
and I do feel, with the state of affairs the way they are in
the world today, we should have an enduring force. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Ms. Bordallo.
And we have a second round, and, Mrs. Davis, if you have
any further questions.
Ms. Davis of California. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We have been at this for a while, and I think that we are
doing a better job, as you described, in trying to train the
advisors, but I still am kind of grappling with what is so
different, and how can we say that greater effort is
necessarily going to yield the kind of results that we are
looking for right now? Is it numbers? Is it the escalation of
training of our own advisors that is going to make that
difference? Clearly they have been in there doing, you know, a
remarkable job already. What is really different?
General Ham. I will try first.
I think there are a couple of factors, ma'am, that are at
play. We are better now at the training of advisors and the
preparation of advisors than we were at the start. We
understand this; we understand this better, and as we gain
experience, we are doing it. More importantly, the Iraqi units,
I think, are, over time, gaining experience, and it really is
their performance that will make the difference. This is
experience that sometimes only time can bring.
So I think we would all wish it to be faster, but we must
also be careful not to make it so fast that we put units in
harm's way before they are ready. But from my standpoint, we
are continually improving the preparation and the training of
those who will have this advisory mission, and I think that
will help make a difference.
General Lovelace. Ma'am, if I could, it is interesting as
you ask the question, because we can put a unit together. We
can take a unit and mobilize it from the reserves or a unit
like in the Army and build a module formation and one year
later deploy it, but the foundation for that is the wealth of
experience in those leaders. It is the investments that you all
have supported us in making in the soldiers, in the leaders,
the experience, the training and all. That is the foundation.
That foundation is not resident in this force that we are
trying to now bring forth, and we have had some starts and
stops. I mean--and we started off on a very humble beginning,
like I said earlier, of about two battalions, and now this
thing is moving. It is gaining momentum.
That is why Mr. Marshall's question is very good. When is
it? I do not know to put a time on it, but I know that we are
moving this in the right direction toward success because the
foundation is being laid. Not only are we training these units
to be able to handle the full spectrum; specifically in this
case, we are training them to be counterinsurgency forces. They
are not being trained in order to now be able to be used beyond
its own boundaries. We are also developing a Noncommissioned
Officer Corps. We are trying to develop its own NCO Corps. We
are trying to develop a military academy.
So we are trying to lay the institutional pieces that are
going to now continue to get it above a threshold level of
existence, and so that is why Carter says time is patience, and
it is hard right now to be patient. And so I think it gets a
little bit--at your question a little bit, so----
Ms. Davis of California. Do you see that effort beyond the
military as well? I mean, that has got to be frustrating to
feel that so much of this burden is on you.
General Lovelace. Sure, I do.
Ms. Davis of California. And where do you see that
specifically where folks have stepped up to the plate and
provided the other kinds of support that you need?
General Lovelace. Right now everybody is--you know what the
equation is--diplomatic information, military and economic--and
right now, the large ``M'' in here, military, is what is
looming, and the diplomatic and the economic and the
information clearly have to catch up with us. And so--but that
is understood, and so--and that interagency
``sequentialization'' is what you are getting at. I mean, that
is really what you are talking about, and that is what is
necessary in order to have the long-term success.
When Carter talks about the government, I mean we are
mentoring the government, whether it is in the Interior or in
the Department of the Ministry of Defense. All of those
agencies are going to set the conditions so that the military
can be successful, but even the government, it has only been
minted for about two years now, you know, and it is going
through the rights of passage. And so----
Ms. Davis of California. I appreciate that.
Thank you all.
Mr. Saxton [presiding]. Mr. Skelton and then Mr. Marshall.
Mr. Skelton. General you were speaking about the Government
of Iraq. Is the government fully supporting this effort? It
sounds to me like you gave a qualified comment a moment ago.
General Lovelace. Sir, I am not sure--I am not sure exactly
what comment you are referring to. The way I----
Mr. Skelton. Well, is the government fully supporting this
effort, or is it kind of supporting this effort?
General Lovelace. Sir, all I was referring to--I was not
qualifying the support as given the military.
All I was saying is that in all of these ministries, as
they are standing up, understanding what their responsibilities
are and the maturity of their roles and missions and the
development of what their vision is, that that will begin to
set. As it codifies, it will start to set the conditions that
will help this. And so that is why I was only saying, as we
have gone through the transitional phases of the government and
now have a government in being, it is embraced to set the
conditions that we are talking about, sir.
Mr. Skelton. I am glad Mr. Cooper, a moment ago, corrected
you on comparing this group with the American Revolutionary
Minuteman. I think you were comparing apples and oranges, and
not that I am a great historian, but I think it would behoove
you to take a look at the comparison. I think you will agree
with Mr. Cooper and me.
General Lovelace. Sir, I am not an historian either. I was
only trying to reference----
Mr. Skelton. General, I think every military person should
be an historian, and I am dead serious. I will let it go at
that, sir. I have one last question.
The bottom line is are they winning? What proof is there
that these people who are being trained and graduate from our
training are winning on the battlefield?
General Lovelace. Sir, that is a question that--and I will
speak for the three of us. I mean, I would love to be able to
answer that question for you. That is a question that really
has to be asked of the people who are using and deploying those
forces in theater, and I apologize for not being able to answer
that question, sir, to your satisfaction.
Mr. Skelton. That is the bottom line--when are you not--and
if these folks are incapable of winning, we in Congress should
know about it. The American people should know about it because
this is serious business.
Well, thank you very much, gentlemen.
Mr. Saxton. We want to thank you for being here this
morning. We have been at this for almost three hours, and so we
thank you for your forthcoming answers and for your indulgence,
and we look forward to seeing you again real soon. Thank you.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:56 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
December 7, 2006
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. TAYLOR
Mr. Taylor. If I may, more to that point, I know that, for example,
when people apply for Special Forces training within our Army, they
make a commitment to serve a while longer. When people apply for our
nuclear schools in the Navy, they make a commitment to serve a lot
longer because we are investing so much in them. This I would think
would be sought after in that same way as those two specialties within
our forces.
So the question is is there any commitment that comes on the part
of the Iraqi to get this kind of training? And if there is, who tracks
it?
General Lovelace. The Iraqi Army is an all-volunteer force.
Enlistments are for 3 years. The approximate personnel breakdown is:
7.5% officers; 19.l5% NCOs; and 73% enlisted soldiers.
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. LANGEVIN
Mr. Langevin. On the scale of one to four for Iraqi Security Force
readiness assessments, what are the biggest challenges right now
preventing units from moving to--from a two rating, where they are
operating in the lead with assistance, to a level one, where they are
operating completely independently?
General Lovelace. Logistics and leadership are the biggest
challenges facing Iraqi Army units.