[House Hearing, 109 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
IRAQ: DEMOCRACY OR CIVIL WAR?
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY,
EMERGING THREATS, AND INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 11, 2006
__________
Serial No. 109-247
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/
index.html
http://www.house.gov/reform
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
DAN BURTON, Indiana TOM LANTOS, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN L. MICA, Florida PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
CHRIS CANNON, Utah WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee DIANE E. WATSON, California
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
DARRELL E. ISSA, California LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
JON C. PORTER, Nevada C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland
KENNY MARCHANT, Texas BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
PATRICK T. McHENRY, North Carolina Columbia
CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania ------
VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio (Independent)
BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California
David Marin, Staff Director
Lawrence Halloran, Deputy Staff Director
Benjamin Chance, Chief Clerk
Phil Barnett, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel
Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International
Relations
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut, Chairman
KENNY MARCHANT, Texas DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
DAN BURTON, Indiana TOM LANTOS, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
JON C. PORTER, Nevada BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania
Ex Officio
TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
R. Nicholas Palarino, Staff Director and Counsel
Robert A. Briggs, Clerk
Andrew Su, Minority Professional Staff Member
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on September 11, 2006............................... 1
Statement of:
Edelman, Ambassador Eric S., Under Secretary of Defense for
Policy, Department of Defense; and Rear Admiral William D.
Sullivan, Vice Director for Strategic Plans and Policy,
Joint Chiefs of Staff...................................... 17
Edelman, Ambassador Eric S............................... 17
Sullivan, Rear Admiral William D......................... 25
Nash, William, Major General Retired, U.S. Army, senior
fellow for conflict prevention, and director of the Center
for Prevention Action Council on Foreign Relations; Bruce
Hoffman, professor, Security Studies Program, School of
Foreign Service, Georgetown University; and Alan King,
former Commanding Officer, 422nd Civil Affairs Battalion
Operation, IRAQI Freedom, advisor for Tribal Affairs,
Coalition Provisional Authority............................ 63
Hoffman, Bruce........................................... 74
King, Alan............................................... 91
Nash, William............................................ 63
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Edelman, Ambassador Eric S., Under Secretary of Defense for
Policy, Department of Defense, prepared statement of....... 20
Hoffman, Bruce, professor, Security Studies Program, School
of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, prepared
statement of............................................... 78
King, Alan, former Commanding Officer, 422nd Civil Affairs
Battalion Operation, IRAQI Freedom, advisor for Tribal
Affairs, Coalition Provisional Authority, prepared
statement of............................................... 93
Kucinich, Hon. Dennis J., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Ohio, prepared statement of................... 9
Nash, William, Major General Retired, U.S. Army, senior
fellow for conflict prevention, and director of the Center
for Prevention Action Council on Foreign Relations,
prepared statement of...................................... 67
Porter, Hon. Jon C. Porter, a Representative in Congress from
the State of Nevada, prepared statement of................. 130
Shays, Hon. Christopher, a Representative in Congress from
the State of Connecticut, prepared statement of............ 3
Sullivan, Rear Admiral William D., Vice Director for
Strategic Plans and Policy, Joint Chiefs of Staff, prepared
statement of............................................... 27
IRAQ: DEMOCRACY OR CIVIL WAR?
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MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2006
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging
Threats, and International Relations,
Committee on Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher
Shays (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Shays, Kucinich and Van Hollen.
Staff present: R. Nicholas Palarino, Ph.D., staff director;
Kaleb Redden, PMI; Robert A. Briggs, analyst; Robert Kelley,
chief counsel; Jeff Baran, minority counsel; Andrew Su,
minority professional staff member; and Jean Gosa, minority
assistant clerk.
Mr. Shays. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on
National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations
hearing entitled, ``Iraq: Democracy or Civil War?'' is called
to order.
This is an extremely important topic, and thus we want the
record to be complete, so this hearing will continue over 3
days today, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We will hear from 13
witnesses on 5 panels. Today and Wednesday we will recess, not
adjourn, at the start of each reconvening session. Members then
present will have the opportunity to make opening statements.
In all other respects, we will proceed as usual without
prejudice to the rights and privileges of any Member.
Today marks the 5-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks
on our country. On that fateful day, the World Trade Center,
the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania became epicenters of a
seismic event still generating shocks across our Nation and
around the world. It is fitting we begin today by observing a
moment of silence in recognition of those lost and the
suffering of the loved ones they left behind. And so I would
like to ask our panel, our guests, and the Members to stand for
a moment of silence.
[Moment of silence.]
Mr. Shays. Five years after September 11th, our Nation is
engaged in a global war against what the 9/11 Commission called
Islamic extremists, and in one of those operational theaters we
are meeting fierce resistance. The conflict in Iraq finds
United States and Coalition forces up against increasing
insurgent, sectarian and terrorist violence.
Thomas Friedman of the New York Times has supported the
U.S. objective to foster progressive democracy in the Middle
East. Bluntly stated, ``it is now obvious that we are not
midwifing democracy in Iraq. We are babysitting a civil war.''
While some may take issue with Mr. Friedman's choice of words,
the broad contours of his point are clear. The violence in Iraq
continues, if not increases. The new Iraqi leadership has not
yet shown the political will to confront it, and efforts to
promote peace and democracy are stalled.
Iraqi security forces are truly improving and growing in
number, but they face an uphill battle if Iraqi politicians are
not willing to confront the militias and make peace among
themselves.
With their country teetering toward chaos and political
differences impeding progress, Iraqi leaders took a 1-month
vacation. When their Parliament, the Council of
Representatives, returned to session last week, more than one-
third was not in attendance.
Let me be clear. I have and I continue to be a strong
supporter of our cause in Iraq. I believe it is a noble effort.
We have no choice but to win. But we must go where the truth
leads us, wherever it leads us. During this week in three
separate hearings, our committee will determine security force
levels; prospects for national reconciliation; and the
consequences of leaving Iraq immediately, later but still
prematurely, or when Iraqis are capable of taking over for
Coalition forces.
At today's session we are focusing on the numbers of Iraqi
security forces required to secure their own country. The
answer to this question is critical to the Iraqi people and to
Americans here at home.
We will hear first today from Ambassador Eric Edelman,
Under Secretary of Defense for Policy at the Department of
Defense; and Rear Admiral William Sullivan, Vice Director for
Strategic Plans and Policies representing the Joint Chiefs of
Staff.
During panel two we will hear from retired U.S. Army Major
General William Nash, senior fellow and director of the Center
for Preventative Action at the Counsel on Foreign Relations;
Dr. Bruce Hoffman, an expert on insurgencies and terrorism
previously at RAND Corp. and currently professor of strategic
studies as Georgetown University; and Mr. Alan King, who
commanded a U.S. Army civil affairs battalion in Iraq and was
advisor for tribal affairs to U.S. authorities in Iraq.
We thank all of our witnesses for their participation.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Shays. At this time the Chair would recognize Mr.
Kucinich and thank him for his presence, and then we will go to
our colleague from Maryland.
Mr. Kucinich. I thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and
while I think it is very important that we hold these hearings,
I want to caution about having a hearing about Iraq on
September 11th, because one of the problems that this country
has suffered from in the last few years has been the conflation
of September 11th with Iraq. The administration now, this
administration, that has led us into a war blaming or trying to
connect Iraq with September 11th has now itself been confronted
with widespread public opinion that insists that everything
they told us wasn't so. I don't know that it is particularly
productive to have a hearing on Iraq on September 11th, but we
are here, and we will proceed.
I also think that we have some new information that has
come up in today's Washington Post that would require, I would
hope, this committee to proceed with questions of individuals
quoted in a story that said the prospects for securing the
country's western Anbar Province are dim, and there is almost
nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and
social situation. One Army officer described as saying we
haven't been defeated militarily, but we have been defeated
politically. There is a report saying there is no function in
the Iraqi Government institution in the Anbar Province, leaving
a vacuum that has been filled by al Qaeda; another that
describes Anbar beyond repair. Another report says the United
States has lost at Anbar, that military operations has faced a
stalemate, local governments in the province have collapsed,
leaving central government with no presence.
I mean, I don't know what we are going to talk about today,
but it seems that would be a pretty good place to start.
Nevertheless, I want to thank the Chair for the hearing. These
oversight hearings have been long overdue. Five years after the
national tragedy of the terrorist attacks on September 11th,
and more than 3 years after the White House and the Pentagon
decided to invade Iraq in 2003, more Americans have thrown away
those rose-colored glasses distributed by the White House and
the Pentagon and discovered the disturbing truth underneath. We
are not greeted as liberators, but, instead, Iraq's occupiers.
There is a war of national liberation going on in Iraq
right now, and its goal is to liberate Iraq from Americans.
Meanwhile, the factions in the struggle are vying for power.
That is the civil war. The situation is grim. Iraq is heading
toward an even deepening civil war, and it may be too late for
anyone to keep Iraq from tearing itself apart. Contrary to what
the White House claims, neither Iraqis or Americans are safer
now than they were a few years ago. Violence has skyrocketed,
and each day more American troops are put in harm's way,
targets of insurgents and deadly IED explosive bombs.
More than 2,600 American troops have been lost in the
course of military operations in Iraq. The number of attacks
initiated by the insurgents have continued steadily upwards. In
spite of a rising numbers of Iraqi police, and in spite of
prolonged occupation, in spite of increasing number of IEDs
that are detected and disarmed, there is a rising number of
deadly IED attacks, each recent month deadlier than the last.
The average number of daily attacks by insurgents has steadily
risen. In the past 3 months, the daily attack rate hasn't
fallen below 90.
Now, the Vice President would look at those observations
and say, oh, this doesn't serve America's purpose to talk about
it. But this Vice President has had difficulty confronting the
truth, and he's been one of those who led this country into a
war based on falsehoods, statements that he should be held
legally accountable for.
Now, if Iraqis--whether it is a vicious cycle of death
squad execution-style killings carried out by militia groups or
the skyrocketing number of kidnappings, bombs and sectarian
violence which occur daily, 120 Iraqis are dying every day.
Baghdad's coroner reports that tens of thousands of murders are
occurring each month. Is that right? Is that right? Iraqis are
not as safe as they were 3 years ago. Between 100,000 and
200,000 innocent Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S.
invasion. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are internally
displaced, afraid to leave their homes at night, and
distrustful of the still ethnically segregated and very green
Iraqi police force. The unemployment rate is estimated to be
between 25 and 40 percent, and the Iraqi Government Ministry
places the number at 48 percent.
Now, is it any wonder that despite what the Vice President
and Deputy Secretary of Defense told this Congress and the
country, we were not, in fact, greeted as liberators? Or is
there any wonder in some Iraqis' eyes, Saddam's regime is
beginning to look like the good old days?
Last week a coalition of 320 tribal leaders demanded the
release of Saddam Hussein and possibly reinstated to the post
of President. They are not a majority, but consider what public
opinion polling shows in Iraq. Forty-seven percent approve of
attacks on Americans. Iraq is, unfortunately for the Iraqis and
American soldiers who are ordered to be there, a hopeless and
deadly tragedy created by an elective U.S. war and by our
elected government.
It was clear to me as it was to many other Members of
Congress from the outset that the Bush administration's real
goal was not democracy building. It was an arrogant, costly and
immoral exercise to win an election at home and flex American
military muscle abroad. And I also personally think that it may
have had something to do with oil.
Now, Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th. Saddam had
no ties to al Qaeda. Iraq did not pose a meaningful threat to
the United States or its allies. What do we have today? Iraq a
breeding ground for terrorists. The occupation of Iraq is a
major, perhaps crippling drain on U.S. military. We went into
Iraq looking for many WMDs, but instead all we got were IEDs.
And I wonder, is the Bush White House trying to repeat this
bait-and-switch strategy now in Iran? Consider the parallels.
In late 2002, the President identified a dangerous Middle
Eastern regime whose leaders were intent on possessing weapons
of mass destruction including nuclear weapons, and his regime
supported terrorists. In 2002, the administration emphasized
the magnitude and imminence of the threat even though
intelligence agencies put the threat years into the future.
Sounds a lot like 2006, doesn't it?
In 2002, the administration went to the United Nations to
make its case against Iraq. Sounds a lot what the
administration is doing in 2006, doesn't it?
In 2002, prior to receiving authorization to use military
force, the administration launched Operation Southern Focus, a
bombing campaign against Iraq's air defenses, and here we are
in 2006, prior to receiving authorization, U.S. military
personnel are already deployed inside and around Iran preparing
the battlefield by gathering targeting information, targeting
intelligence, recruiting local fighters according to
independent reports published in the New Yorker magazine and
the Guardian.
According to independent results published in Newsweek, ABC
News and GQ magazine, the United States has been planning and
is now recruiting members of MEK to conduct lethal operations
and destabilizing operations inside Iran.
Do these reports mean that DOD has already begun hostile
actions against Iran, as was the case prior to the Iraq war?
Has the administration already taken the decision to attack
Iran, and is Congress and the American public now coming under
the influence of an orchestrated campaign to take this country
into military conflict again, as was the case prior to the
midterm elections of 2002? Has the President and Secretary of
Defense's recent speeches mentioned Iran in intending to
prepare Congress and the American public for war against Iran?
I don't know, but the news reports merit this
subcommittee's aggressive investigation. These are precisely
the sort of questions this committee is designed to pose, and
DOD is the agency with the answers. But get this: The
Department of Defense failed to show up for a classified
briefing, which was initiated at my insistence on these
questions in June. Here we are nearly 3 months later. All the
subcommittee has been able to get is a promise from DOD that
they'll eventually get a response in writing to the
subcommittee. This administration has long misled Congress and
the American people, but now they are deluding themselves if
they think Iraq is making progress.
With another possible war in the offing against Iran, this
is indeed a grim time for America and all of the world. It is a
dishonor, too, for the victims of the September 11th disaster.
The war in Iraq and possible war in Iran are deadly
distractions to apprehend the perpetrators of September 11th
and prevent a recurrence.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding these hearings. Thanks
to all of the witnesses that are appearing before the
subcommittee.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
[Note.--The Select Committee on Intelligence report
entitled, ``Postwar Findings About IRAQ's WMD Programs and
Links to Terrorism and How They Compare With Prewar
Assessments,'' may be found in subcommittee files.]
[The prepared statement of Hon. Dennis J. Kucinich
follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Shays. Mr. Van Hollen.
Mr. Van Hollen. I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
hearing, and thank you to Congressman Kucinich and to the
witnesses who are here today.
We gather here on a solemn occasion, the 5th anniversary of
the attacks of September 11, 2001, and I do think it is
important to go back to that day to remember where those
attacks came from, because this hearing is focused on Iraq, but
we all know that the attacks of September 11th had nothing to
do with Iraq, had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein. And, in
fact, just Friday a Select Senate Intelligence Committee report
from the Republican-controlled Senate was released saying there
had never been any collaboration between Saddam Hussein and al
Qaeda. So it is important to put that to rest as we begin this
hearing.
The attacks 5 years ago today came out of Afghanistan, a
failed state, where after the Soviet Union withdrew, the United
States lost interest, the Taliban Government was able to take
root, and in that state of affairs al Qaeda was able to plant
itself and flourish.
And the United States did exactly the right thing in the
aftermath of those attacks. It took quick action, and it took
action with the support of the world. The NATO Alliance fully
backed it, invoked the article of the NATO Charter saying an
attack on one is an attack on all. The U.N. General Assembly
unanimously passed a resolution condemning the attacks on the
United States and rallying behind the United States in our
fight on terrorism.
And here we are 5 years later where the world is no longer
by our side, our country is divided in many ways, and we have
not finished the job in Afghanistan, not by a long shot. We
know that there has been a resurgence of Taliban activity in
southern Afghanistan. General Maples, the head of the DIA,
testified before the Senate this year that he had seen a rise
in escalation of violence. We see it now in reading the
newspapers and following what is going on there every day.
And yet at this time we have actually reduced the number of
American forces in southern Afghanistan. We have disbanded the
one unit at the CIA that had the specific mission of going
after al Qaeda. We now know that the opium harvest in
Afghanistan is at an all-time historical high.
And we also know that the Pakistani Government has now
entered into a cease-fire nonaggression pact with those in the
tribal areas in Waziristan where the Taliban are essentially
assembled, and which does provide a fertile ground for al Qaeda
to continue to plot and continue to plan to attack the United
States and its allies. And just in today's Washington Post,
Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist, writes that if you go up
to Waziristan these days, it is now a fully operational al
Qaeda base area offering a wide range of services, facilities
and military and explosive training. For extremists around the
world planning attacks, Waziristan is now a regional magnet. In
the past 6 months, 1,000 Uzbeks escaping the crackdown in
Uzbekistan after last year's massacre by the government
security forces in the town of Andajan have found sanctuary
with al Qaeda, and others are coming.
The point of the fact is here we are 5 years after the
attacks upon our country, and yet we have not completed the
mission. We all remember the President's statement aboard the
USS Abraham Lincoln in May 2003 with the big banner, Mission
Accomplished, and yet here we are today 5 years after the
attacks on this country from Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. They
are still at large, the Taliban is regaining its strength, and
we have not completed the mission.
So I hope as we talk today about Iraq, we recognize that we
did as a Nation take our eye off the ball. We are bogged down
in Iraq. It is a mess in Iraq, and yet we never completed the
job against al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. That is work we have
yet to do.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
For the purposes of clarifying the record, Mr. Kucinich.
Mr. Kucinich. For the purposes of clarifying the record, I
made a statement relative to the number of murders that are
occurring each month according to Baghdad's coroners, and I
want to correct the record to say there are--based on
information that I have asked for, that the coroners are
reporting that over 1,000 murders are occurring each month.
That is corrected to say over 1,000 murders are occurring each
month.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentlemen.
At this time the Chair would recognize--introduce our
panelists. We have Eric Edelman, Under Secretary of Defense for
Policy; and Rear Admiral Sullivan, Vice Director for Strategic
Plans and Policies, of Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Gentlemen, as you know, we swear in our witnesses. So I
invite you to rise, and I will swear you in.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Shays. I note for the record our witnesses have
responded in the affirmative. Thank you. Please be seated.
We are going to start with you first, Ambassador, but this
is what I would like to be fairly clear on before you start. We
are going to invite you to speak. The clock will be on for 5
minutes, and we're going to roll it over for another 5 minutes.
Frankly, given the size of the Members here and the fact that
our panels are fairly small, I want you to make your statements
as long as it takes. We will then do 10-minute questions, and
we will do a second round. We may even do a third round.
So the bottom line to this, there will be no rushing. There
will be no interrupting of witnesses. Just be able to have as
much time as we need, and I would just like to request as a 19-
year veteran of this committee that we have total and complete
candor; that we are just honest with ourselves about what we
are asking, what we are answering, and from that only good can
come. So that's my request to everyone who would participate
today.
Ambassador, thank you for being here. Thank you for all
your good work.
STATEMENTS OF AMBASSADOR ERIC S. EDELMAN, UNDER SECRETARY OF
DEFENSE FOR POLICY, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE; AND REAR ADMIRAL
WILLIAM D. SULLIVAN, VICE DIRECTOR FOR STRATEGIC PLANS AND
POLICY, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF
STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR ERIC S. EDELMAN
Ambassador Edelman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Mr.
Kucinich and Mr. Van Hollen. I am pleased to appear before the
subcommittee today at your request, Mr. Chairman, to discuss
Iraq, and I am joined, as you noted, by Rear Admiral William
Sullivan, the Vice Director of Plans and Policy on the joint
staff. We will be providing testimony on whether the Iraqis can
assume full internal security responsibilities.
As has been noted by several of the Members, the terrible
events of 5 years ago mark this somber day. The terrorist
attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania serve as a
daily reminder of the type of enemy we are fighting.
The main fronts against this enemy are currently in Iraq
and Afghanistan. Our soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and
coastguardsmen are doing a superb job fighting the enemy and
laying the foundation in Iraq and Afghanistan to help remove
the radical ideology that spawns terrorism.
A peaceful, united Iraq constitutionally ordered to
democratic principles will undermine the insistence of radical
Islamists that Islam and democracy are incompatible. It will
also challenge the legitimacy of theocratic ideologies and the
dead end of national socialists' theories of governance. Iraq
is the fulcrum for all of this.
The military component of our national strategy in Iraq is
to fight terrorists and to train Iraqi security forces. Our
goal is for the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own
security and be an ally on the war on terror. As laid out in
the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq, our goal is an Iraq
with a constitutional, representative government that respects
civil rights and has security forces sufficient to maintain
domestic order and keep Iraq from becoming a safe haven for
terrorists.
Iraqi security forces continue to improve and become more
effective and on a firm path for self-sufficiency. Our success
in training and equipping over 294,000 Iraqi Army and Police
personnel has hastened Iraqi assumption of responsibility for
their own security. As the Iraqis take control of their
country, we continue to hand over forward operating bases to
them. The U.S. military is on track to finish the initial
training of the currently projected Iraqi forces this December,
although the increase recently proposed by Prime Minister
Maliki may lengthen the time somewhat.
You have asked the question when we can expect Iraqi
security forces in taking the lead in securing territory and
population. As of the end of July, there are 5 Iraqi division
headquarters, 26 Iraq brigade headquarters and 85 Iraqi
battalions as well as several Iraqi National Police battalions
operating in the lead across Iraq.
Six months ago there were just 2 divisions, 10 brigades and
43 battalions in the lead. Every day Iraqi security forces take
more responsibility for parts of Baghdad and other areas
throughout the country. Currently over 65 percent of Iraq,
including the major population centers, are under the Iraqi
Army lead.
Iraq achieved a historic milestone on July 16, 2006, with
the transfer of security responsibility in Muthanna Province
from MNF-I to the Provincial Governor and civilian-controlled
Iraqi Police Service. Muthanna is the first of Iraq's 18
provinces to be transitioned to provincial Iraqi control, which
represents the successful development of Iraq's capability to
govern and protect itself as a sovereign and democratic nation.
We expect to hand over Dhi-Qar soon and several more provinces
by year's end.
Iraqis still face the challenges they have struggled with
for the last few years: lack of experience, logistic
shortfalls, effective vetting, governing capacity, and changing
enemy tactics, among other things. One thing I believe that the
Iraqis do have is will. Iraqi Deputy President Abdel Mahdi said
recently that the lines to enlist for the Iraqi security forces
are still long. The Iraqis clearly want to win their fight for
democracy.
Conditions on the ground, not arbitrary timelines, will
determine our success in Iraq. The newly formed Joint Committee
to Achieve Iraqi Security Self-Reliance is composed of the
Iraqi Prime Minister, Iraqi National Security Advisor, the
Minister of State For National Security Affairs, the Ministers
of Defense and Interior, the Director of the Iraqi National
Intelligence Service, the U.S. Ambassador, the U.K. Ambassador,
and Commanding General and Deputy Commanding General of
Multinational Forces, Iraq.
The committee will develop a conditions-based roadmap for
full transition of security responsibility to the Iraqi
security forces. The roadmap will consist of recommended
conditions intended to lead to the eventual and gradual
withdrawal of multinational forces from Iraq.
As with the overall war on terror, there are some serious
and significant challenges that we must overcome in Iraq. The
last several months has seen a rise in violence specifically
around Baghdad, although since late July there has been a small
reduction. Coalition and Iraqi forces are adjusting their
tactics to deal with the rise of this violence. On July 27th,
the Secretary of Defense extended the deployment of 3,700
troops to Iraq to help counter the increased violence. Prime
Minister Maliki also pledged an additional 4,000 Iraqi troops.
The Baghdad campaign is a critical test, and we have had
some initial success. This success now needs to be followed up
by the Iraqis with civil projects and civil services. Military
commanders and the U.S. Embassy have encouraged the Iraqis to
take this sort of action.
During his recent visit to Washington, Prime Minister
Maliki made it clear that he does not want American troops to
leave Iraq until his government can protect the Iraqi people.
As President Bush has said, conditions on the ground and the
advice of military professionals will dictate the number and
disposition of the U.S. forces in Iraq. The United States will
stay on the offensive and continue to support and train Iraqis
so they can develop the skills necessary to defend their
country. Sectarian violence is leading some groups to see U.S.
forces as a reassuring and stabilizing factor especially now;
for example, the successes in Baghdad mentioned earlier.
There is no denying that conditions that could lead to
civil war exist. Sustained enthosectarian violence is perhaps
the greatest threat to security instability in Iraq today.
Militias and other extragovernmental armed organizations are a
major factor in the continuing violence. However, during his
visit to Washington in late August, Deputy President al-Mahdi
said that Iraq is not in a civil war, nor did--nor, he said,
will it be. He further noted that all groups in the country are
committed to the unity of the country. He said Iraqis
understand the dangers of a civil war, and we agree.
Today the situation is that, one, there is a national
government that includes leaders of all communities; and, two,
the Iraqi security forces are intact and growing. We can stem
the violence by continuing to provide sufficient U.S. presence
while Iraqi security institutions develop. At the same time, we
will promote wider engagement using nonmilitary elements of the
national government and continue reconstruction at the local
level to secure popular support.
Every day the men and women of the U.S. military protect
not only the United States, but also our allies from our
adversaries. They provide the backbone that enables Afghanistan
and Iraq to have hope for the future. Our involvement in
Afghanistan, Iraq and other places in the world is essential to
our fight against terrorism. The men and women of our Armed
Forces will not falter in this duty.
Mr. Chairman, that concludes my statement, and I would
request that it be entered into the permanent record.
[The prepared statement of Ambassador Edelman follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Shays. You remind me of a task of that I'm supposed to
remember. But bad staff work here. I ask unanimous consent that
all members of the subcommittee be permitted to place an
opening statement in the record, and the record will remain
open for 3 days for that purpose. And without objection, so
ordered.
I ask further unanimous consent that all witnesses be
permitted to include their written statements in the record.
Without objection, so ordered.
Your statement was read, and anything that you would like
to provide in addition to that will be part of the record. I
thank you for a statement that is a good launching for the
questions that I have. So thank you very much.
Admiral, thank you for being here, and we look forward to
your testimony as well.
STATEMENT OF WILLIAM D. SULLIVAN
Admiral Sullivan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Representative
Kucinich, Representative Van Hollen. Thank you for the
opportunity and your concern for the Nation's security and the
opportunity to testify before you this morning. I appreciate
your support of the men and women of our Armed Forces who,
around the world, in every climate, and often far from home and
family, are serving our Nation.
From a military standpoint, our goal remains an Iraqi
Government that transitions to security self-reliance where all
Iraqis unite against violence, and where the Government of Iraq
provides security, law and order and is a legitimate authority.
The Iraqi security forces are on track and continue to make
significant strides, as mentioned in Ambassador Edelman's
opening comments, toward this goal.
To highlight a recent major milestone, in the first week of
September, the Ministry of Defense and the joint headquarters
assumed operational control of the Iraqi Ground Forces Command,
Iraqi Navy and Iraqi Air Force. The Iraqi Ground Forces Command
assumed operational control of the 8th Iraqi Army Division,
demonstrating the increased capability of the Iraqi Army to
assume control of security tasks. Future transfers will be
gradual, but the Government of Iraq will dictate when the Iraqi
Ground Forces Command is ready to assume more control.
To reiterate the current status of Iraqi security forces,
the Iraqi Army now includes 5 division headquarters, 26
brigades, and 85 battalions in the lead for security operation
across Iraq. All 28 Iraqi National Police battalions, in
conjunction with 118,000 Iraqi Police service officers, are
executing daily security operations.
As the Government of Iraq and Iraqi security forces mature,
the capability exists to expand the current 325,000-man
security force structure. Plans are being developed by the
Government of Iraq to add up to 31,000 security forces to
address future capability needs.
In addition to providing security, the Iraqi Army and
Police are also assisting in humanitarian efforts and other
local civic actions, providing security for essential service
construction projects, repairing local schools, and engaging in
projects to improve local area appearance and pride. The
highlight of current security operations is focused on the
nation's capital, Baghdad.
Operation Together Forward is an Iraqi-planned and -led
operation to ensure the security of Baghdad against attacks
designed to uproot democracy and derail Iraq's commitment to
progress. These operations are designed to reduce the level of
murders, kidnappings, assassinations, terrorism and sectarian
violence in specific areas of Baghdad, and to reinforce the
Iraqi Government's control.
Our joint operations continue to make progress, and we are
cautiously optimistic and encouraged by the early indicators.
More time will provide a better assessment. This operation will
take not weeks, but months.
Let me address the question of setting a timetable for
withdrawal. In the military judgment of our commander, a
precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would have severe negative
consequences. A withdrawal could increase sectarian strife,
possibly embolden terrorists and other factions, and also
encourage already unhelpful neighbors like Iran.
It is also our assessment that fixed timetables for
withdrawal of Coalition forces are not productive. We
understand and concur with the need to keep the Iraqi
Government motivated to quickly address many of the complex
economic and political issues that are contributing to the
violence. However, confidence that we as a Nation are committed
to succeed with the Iraqis, even when Coalition forces are no
longer necessary, is key to enable political accommodation
among many of the factions. The enemy, which includes al Qaeda
and certain armed militia groups, should not know of our plans.
There are many ways to sustain pressure on the Iraqis to solve
their political and economic issues. A timetable is not the
best option and, in our judgment, would be counterproductive.
The U.S. military does not underestimate the challenges that we
face in Iran.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to personally thank you for your
enduring commitment to our Armed Forces as evidenced by your 14
trips to the Iraqi theater of operation. I also offer my thanks
to the committee as a whole for the continuous support of our
Armed Forces.
In closing, Mr. Chairman, Representative Kucinich,
Representative Van Hollen, thank you for allowing me to testify
before you this morning, and I look forward to your questions.
Mr. Shays. I thank you very, much Admiral.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Sullivan follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Let me say there are three Members. I would
usually start off. Sometimes I usually go last. What I'll do is
I will have Mr. Kucinich go first when he gets back here, and
then I'll go, and then I'll go to my colleague from Maryland.
And I just want to say that it is my hope that we can learn
from this hearing information that helps guide us to understand
what it is going to take to transfer power to the Iraqis, and
that is obviously the goal of this hearing, but obviously other
things will come up as well.
Mr. Kucinich, you are free to ask any questions you want.
You have the floor.
Mr. Kucinich. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
To both Ambassador Edelman and to the rear admiral, have
either of you read the report in today's Washington Post about
the situation--headline: Situation Called Dire in West Iraq?
Ambassador Edelman. Congressman Kucinich, yes, I have read
both the Washington Post article and the classified document
which it appears to refer to.
Admiral Sullivan. As have I, both articles.
Mr. Kucinich. Would you agree or disagree with the article
which says that prospects for securing the country's western
Anbar Province are dim, Mr. Edelman?
Ambassador Edelman. Well, I want to be a bit careful what I
say in open hearing, Mr. Kucinich, because the document
underlying the Washington Post article is a classified
document. I would say that like any operational assessment, it
is a snapshot in time. I think it should not be generalized
beyond the situation in Anbar to which it refers.
I think it is clear to all of us who have been involved in
this issue for a while that Anbar has been the epicenter of the
insurgency for some time; that a purely military solution to
any insurgency is not possible, it needs a political solution
as well. We have had successful operations in Fallujah that
have continued to provide some measure of security there. We
have ongoing operations in Ramadi. We have a PRT that's been
set up in Anbar precisely because General Casey believes that
the political dimension, social dimension, as well as the
kinetic military dimension are required to succeed there. And I
think it highlights the--the article highlights the importance
potentially of provincial elections in the future to enable a
local government empowered by the residents of Anbar to take
responsibility for many of those issues that they have to take
responsibility for ultimately.
Mr. Kucinich. Is there a functioning Iraqi Government
institution in Anbar?
Ambassador Edelman. Well, I think, again, Secretary
Rumsfeld has said that he is hoping to have before the Congress
goes out in September an opportunity for an operation intel
hearing in a classified session where I think we could go in to
perhaps some more detail.
I think clearly the capacity of the Iraqi Government to
establish itself not just in Baghdad, but throughout the
country, is an important challenge that they face, and it is a
challenge to defeating this insurgency.
Mr. Kucinich. Has local governments collapsed in Anbar?
Ambassador Edelman. I don't know that I could make a
judgment to that effect. I would have to get back to--we can
get back to you with a better assessment of that than I can
give at this moment.
Mr. Kucinich. Has a vacuum in Anbar been filled by al
Qaeda?
Ambassador Edelman. Al Qaeda in Iraq has had a presence in
Anbar since the very beginning of the insurgency. And I think
it is fair so say that there have been a number of forces in
the province, including a number of tribal forces, who have
reacted to that and have attacked Anbar or attacked al Qaeda in
Iraq themselves and have begun to reach out and work with the
Iraqi Government to try and curtail the influence of al Qaeda
in Iraq.
Mr. Kucinich. How many Iraqi provinces are there?
Ambassador Edelman. Eighteen.
Mr. Kucinich. How many of those provinces have been turned
over to Iraqis?
Ambassador Edelman. We have turned over so far one province
to the Iraqis for them to take the lead for security. We hope
to turn over a second in the future.
Mr. Kucinich. Isn't it true that General Casey has
predicted that all responsibility for Iraqi security will be
turned over in 12 to 18 months?
Ambassador Edelman. I think we would hope that over the
next 12 to 18 months, we can turn over increasing
responsibility, but as we've said, that judgment will have to
be made on the basis of conditions on the ground at the time
and as a result of the work of the joint committee on turning
over Iraqi security responsibilities.
Mr. Kucinich. Would you agree with the prediction that says
all responsibility for Iraqi security will be turned over in 12
to 18 months?
Ambassador Edelman. I don't know that I would feel
comfortable in making a prediction at this point in time,
because the enemy gets a vote in this, and we will have to see
what happens.
Mr. Kucinich. Is it true that the Anbar Province accounts
for about 30 percent of Iraq's land mass?
Ambassador Edelman. It is a very large mass, but not all of
it is populated.
Mr. Kucinich. Here's a map of Iraq that I actually brought
down from my office door where it's been since the invasion was
discussed, and if you look at Anbar Province, you have a pretty
substantial area here which is bordered by Jordan and Syria.
And what I am wondering here is what would you call this
province, a key province?
Ambassador Edelman. It is a key province in order to defeat
the insurgency, but Iraq right now has, in addition to the
insurgency, other very serious security problems having to do
with ethnosectarian violence, with criminal activity, militia
activity. So it is one of many, many problems we have to deal
with there, and the Iraqi Government and the security forces
need to.
I mean, Anbar, while it has a large proportion of the
geographic space, is actually, as I said, very sparsely
populated. I believe it is less than 5 percent of the
population of Iraq.
Mr. Kucinich. Would you agree that a report which would say
that Anbar is beyond repair would have significance for this
administration's long-term strategies for Iraq?
Ambassador Edelman. I am not sure that is what the report
says. Again, I want to be careful because it is a classified
document. I don't want to be quoting from it in an open hearing
because it is an operational assessment, and I don't think from
the point of view of continuing the fight in Anbar it is
productive to discuss it in the public hearing.
Mr. Kucinich. Wouldn't it be of interest to the parents of
American soldiers who are being sent to fight that they would
know that a report existed that said that a province was beyond
repair, and the thing couldn't be won military? Wouldn't that
be of interest, Mr. Edelman?
Ambassador Edelman. It is an important report. We have
taken it very seriously. We are in contact with our colleagues
out in the multinational force, Iraq, to get the commander's
assessment, because this is an operational assessment by one
very good intel officer. It is a snapshot in time, as I said,
and I don't know that one can extrapolate certainly beyond
Anbar Province from it. And even with regard to Anbar, it makes
the statement that we all agree with, which is that there has
never been a purely military solution to the insurgency in
Anbar. It's always been a situation that would require both
political, economic, social and other efforts, as is the case
in all counterinsurgency.
Mr. Kucinich. Do you think this Congress and this committee
is entitled to information relating to the conduct of the war
as to whether or not any of the conditions merit the United
States' continued presence there?
Ambassador Edelman. Absolutely.
Mr. Kucinich. Do you think that this report should be
available publicly to the Congress since elements of it have
been published in the Washington Post?
Ambassador Edelman. As I said, the Secretary has said he
would like to schedule an ops intel briefing for the Members of
the Congress, and I think that would be the appropriate time to
take up that report.
Mr. Kucinich. Mr. Chairman, there is like a scam that comes
out of this White House. They release information, or
information is released through the media, and then when
Congress wants to ask further questions, they say, oh, it is
classified. I mean, this is one of the reasons I didn't go to
the classified briefings, because you read about it on the
front page of a major newspaper, and then you are told, well,
you can't talk about it because it is classified.
What a bunch of baloney. You have people's lives at stake
here, Ambassador, and I am just wondering when you are going to
come back to the Congress and be forthcoming about what the
real situation is. I mean, I appreciate your nuanced reply
here, but that is not adequate enough because there are lives
on the line here.
Ambassador Edelman. Congressman, essentially I agree with
you that the Congress is entitled to information about this. We
are here today to try and provide you with as much information
as we can. But this--I think an operational assessment of a
very hot zone in the battlefield is not necessarily something
that ought to be discussed in the public session when the
enemy, you know, is clearly following the discussion.
Mr. Kucinich. Here's your testimony. You said conditions on
the ground--Mr. Chairman, this is what we are here for, right?
You said conditions on the ground, not arbitrary time lines,
will determine our success in Iraq. I want to read that again
so everybody understands the implications of this. Conditions
on the ground, not arbitrary time lines, will determine our
success in Iraq.
So if you have a report that says that conditions on the
ground are deteriorating to the point of where there is nothing
that is to be won, and then you have that report essentially
suppressed as classified, and then you have offered to the
general public some rosy determination that says that, well, we
are going the stay there 12 months, 18 months, they got 1
province of 18 under control----
Ambassador Edelman. Congressman, I take issue with the
notion that the report has been repressed. On the contrary, a
lot of----
Mr. Kucinich. You won't offer it to this committee right
now, will you?
Ambassador Edelman. It is a classified document. A lot of
us have been looking at it very closely.
Mr. Kucinich. Well, the dead bodies that are coming back to
this country aren't classified, OK, but they are there based on
fighting presumably because this administration put them there.
They are there because they are told that America is going to
win this. Well, you know what? We have the front page of the
Washington Post. I didn't make this up. It was in the paper
today. You read it.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman. And----
Ambassador Edelman. If I might, Mr. Shays, I would like to
reply to the very last point.
I agree that it is not a good thing for classified
documents to be leaked. I think it is important to be able to
discuss this in the appropriate settings, and I think we are
prepared to do that.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman. I yield to myself now for
10 minutes, and to thank both of you again for being here.
I am going to preface my comments that will give you a
sense of where I am coming from based on my first-time
questioning and my second or third if we go to third round.
I go every 3 to 4 months, and I was there with staff in
April 2003. People in Iraq were euphoric, and if we had made
progress from that point, I think we probably wouldn't be there
in any great number today. It's my opinion we took a huge
nosedive, and I can see it happening as I would go 3 months
later and then 3 months after that. Iraqis were horrified that
we allowed the looting. Frankly, they thought it showed
incredible disrespect to their country that we didn't attempt
to stop it. And I understand the motivation. We didn't want to
have a conflict with citizens right away. But it was a huge
mistake.
The disbanding of the army, the police and the border
patrol to this day boggles my mind. We basically left a nation
of 26 million people with no police, and then we said to
150,000 Coalition forces, give or take, that they would be the
security for a nation of 26 million people. We speak English.
They speak Arabic.
It would be, for me, to think of New York State and to
think of New York State with Iraqis coming in saying there will
be no police in any part of New York State, no police in New
York City, no subway police, no security whatsoever. Now, New
York is one-third the size of the United States--excuse me, of
Iraq, and it has 10--excuse me, it has 19 million people as
opposed to 26 million. Imagine all of New York State with no
police.
What is obvious to me is there would be things that happen
like gangs roving the streets; banks not able to provide
security, so hiring separate guards to protect their
transactions. I mean, I can just keep going, and you get the
gist of where I am coming from.
So for me to then think, well, 150,000 troops who speak
English are going to provide the security makes me have a lack
of confidence, one, in making the decisions that we made; and,
two, a lack of confidence in the numbers that were provided to
us.
I saw a huge progress from June 2004 when we transferred
power to the Iraqis and gave the government an Iraqi face, and
Iraqis started to make decisions, and we brought the State
Department in to do the Nation building and relationship, and
we kept DOD more focused on the defense part. I saw 18 months
of progress, but I saw 18 months of progress because I saw
deadlines.
There was a requirement that Iraq in January 2005 elect a
government. I was there for those elections, one of the most
thrilling moments of my life, and to somehow suggest that
Iraqis can't take to democracy blows me away because they took
to democracy. They were so proud of what they had accomplished,
and 110,000 Iraqis were able to put that together with the help
of the United Nations, which did a very positive role, and a
lot of organizations that came to help the Iraqis.
We saw a deadline for this new government to establish a
commission to write the Constitution. There was a deadline to
complete the Constitution. There was a deadline to ratify this
Constitution in a public site to which 79 percent voted
affirmatively for this new Constitution. And there was a
deadline to elect a government under this new Constitution.
All had deadlines, and during that time there was
significant success in training particularly the army, and we
saw very competent Iraqis risk their lives, give up their
lives, queue in line to join the police and the army and be
blown up. And we tell them, get away; don't queue up so far. We
allowed them to come in, and we protected the 500 we were going
to interview, but the rest stayed on the other side of the gate
knowing they could be blown up, and they still stayed there.
But then when I saw this new government elected, I was
euphoric in January as this new government had been elected in
December. But we waited 4\1/2\ months, and nothing happened for
4\1/2\ months. You had al-Jaafari, and then we went to Maliki.
True, we had some sophistication. The Iraqi minority was able
to veto the choice of the majority. That was a real success. It
is a sophistication that I think deserves credit.
But then we saw a new government take over, and I was there
6 weeks after they had been in power, and I thought, what have
you done? What decisions have you made? Why haven't you
basically let loose your army to clean up the militia? And I am
not seeing the political will to do that. Where is the
political will? Not the will of the military, but the political
will.
And then I go back 6 weeks later, they've been in office 3
months, and I see nothing happen except Sistani, the cleric,
say, come home, politicians. Come home. Stop traveling. Come
home and do your job. When I ask military people, Americans,
and I ask our State Department people, does this government
have the political will, they look me in the face and say, we
are not sure.
So where I come from is they need deadlines, a deadline for
provincial elections, a deadline for reconciliation, a deadline
to establish their Constitution. And when I talked to them
about it, they said, we don't want deadlines. We moved too
quickly last year.
Well, with all due respect, they need deadlines, and what I
hope eventually to get out of these hearings is I want to know
real numbers that tell me real things. So I have used a lot of
my time to just explain that, but it is what I need to know,
and when I come back in more depth, we will get into this.
But I want to know first off why is it that if we had the
optimal number of troops of 150- Coalition forces, and we have
now built up to 294,000 Iraqi-trained and -equipped, why is it
that 150,000 troops isn't enough, or is the right number? Why
is that the case? And your answer will then help lead me to the
followup questions that I want to ask. I am going to start with
you, Admiral.
Admiral Sullivan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As we have said all along, the conditions on the ground
will determine when we can reduce our troop levels in the
country. It is true that going back to earlier strategies, the
earlier campaign plans, there were projections for when we
might be available to begin reducing those troops on the
ground. However, as the security environment has changed and
become more complex, the commanders on the ground have made the
judgment that they cannot afford to draw down our own troop
levels while the Iraqis are still building up theirs.
So I understand your point, sir, and I understand where you
are coming from, but the conditions have not permitted the
withdrawal of our forces like we would have liked to have seen.
Mr. Shays. So what I am hearing you say when you say the
conditions on the ground, in other words, it's more violent,
it's more dangerous, there are greater numbers of killings.
Things have gotten worse, so we need more people; is that
basically your answer?
Admiral Sullivan. What I said, sir, is that the environment
has changed. We have gone from a primarily Sunni-led insurgency
a year ago to the sectarian violence which we are now seeing
largely, we think, sparked by the mosque attack in February. So
the environment has evolved, and we have had to continually
adapt our tactics and our strategies to address that
environment.
Mr. Shays. And also violence between Shia and Shia.
Admiral Sullivan. Exactly. And what I would also add, sir,
is Iraqi's security forces, as we buildup their numbers, they
need to gain the experience, they need to build leaders, and
all of that takes time. And we are also focusing on developing
their capabilities to sustain themselves with logistics, with
command-and-control capability and so forth. All of this takes
time. So just the raw numbers of Iraqi security forces that
have been trained and equipped and fielded doesn't yield the
complete answer.
Mr. Shays. Why did we determine that Iraqis only need
225,000, and how did we determine the mix? For instance, right
now there are 129,000 defense forces, 165,000 Ministry of
Interior forces, which includes about 115,000 police. You have
border patrol. You also have the national police. How do we
determine that--first, let me say of the 325,000, how many of
them are going to be police or going to be military?
Admiral Sullivan. The military will be just a little over
137,000. About 137,5- will be in the army, air force and navy.
Mr. Shays. OK. I'm just going to express the concern that I
can't imagine how 137,000 will ever allow us to bring troops
home in any great number. And isn't it true that of the
137,000, most of them--very few of them would be pilots on C-
130's or pilots for helicopters, correct?
Admiral Sullivan. That's right. It is a very small air
force. It is projected to be about 1,600 personnel.
Mr. Shays. So that would suggest to me--I'll give my time
to my colleague from Maryland Mr. Van Hollen. I will be raising
questions in my second round as to how you will help me sort
out how we get to this number, and why this number is going to
enable us to leave. So I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Van Hollen, you have the floor.
Mr. Van Hollen. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you very much for your testimony and your service to
our country.
I want to just sketch out a little bit up front, and then I
have a number of questions.
We talked earlier about how the attacks of September 11th
were launched from al Qaeda in Afghanistan. We then decided at
some point to go into Iraq. It had nothing to do with the
September 11th attacks, Iraq didn't. Saddam Hussein didn't. And
in going to Iraq, we, in my view, did take the lid off
Pandora's box, and we unleashed a lot of forces in Iraq,
historical forces, forces that existed between different
sectarian groups within the country.
If you go back and look at some of the statements made by
Mr. Cheney when he was Secretary of Defense during the first--
the Persian Gulf war, he lays out pretty clearly what a mess we
might get into if we go into Baghdad, and he lays that out
that's the reason we didn't go into Baghdad.
But we went into Iraq now. We took the lid off. And I think
if you go back and look at the analyses made by a lot of very
knowledgeable people at the CIA and others at the time, they
predicted that this could end up being a great unraveling in
Iraq. In many ways, we know Iraq is an artificial construct put
together by Western powers. After the end of World War I and
maybe like Yugoslavia, when the glue that was holding together
disappears, comes undone, and we compounded that problem by
many of the mistakes we made. Whether it would have happened
anyway, I don't know, but certainly, the fact that we disbanded
the Iraqi military and sent a lot of Sunnis home with their
guns and with a sense that they had no place in the future of
Iraq created big problems. The fact that we didn't have more
troops on the ground compounded the problem. Many other--many
other mistakes, and Iraq became a magnet for foreign fighters.
Al Qaeda, having really, certainly had no collaboration with
Saddam Hussein, maybe a couple of places out in the mountains
where they couldn't have been gotten to by Saddam Hussein up in
the Kurdish area, but al Qaeda has become a significant
presence in Iraq and has created a base of operations there
that we continue to fight to this day. It unleashed the
insurgency. I think we all know now that the vice president's
statement more than a year ago that the insurgency was in,
``its last throws,'' was just dead wrong. In fact, the recent
report that came out of the Pentagon, a report that was
required by Congress, specifically says that the insurgency
remains potent. And on top of that, now we have a budding civil
war or civil war, all depends on who you ask. The fact of the
matter is, thousands of people are being killed, and the
Pentagon report just released says the situation's getting
worse, not better.
Now, in all of this, I guess I would agree with the
statement that's been made by General Casey and you here at the
witness table here today and others that are in this mess, we
really need some kind of political solution to the insurgency.
I am not necessarily as hopeful as you gentlemen that we're
going to be able to get that kind of political solution, but
certainly, if we want to reduce the violence, we need that kind
of political solution.
So I guess my question to you this morning is, what really
realistically are the prospects of getting such a solution? We
know just last week, for example, the Shiites in the Parliament
were pushing hard for the legislation to essentially create an
autonomous region in the south. The Sunnis in the Parliament
have resisted that, and they said, hey, hold on a minute, you
know, when we got together to support, however reluctantly, the
constitution you all promised us that we would be able to
revisit certain provisions in the constitution. Well, rather
than revisiting those provisions, it seems the opposite is
happening, that the Shia members of Parliament are moving ahead
to create an autonomous region.
So let me ask you this question: Are we in a position now
where we're struggling against the odds to put--to hold Iraq
together? Or are we now working to put it back together? In
other words, have the different groups within Iraq--the Shia,
the Sunni, the Kurds--have they made decisions really? And when
I say that, obviously, there's differences of opinion among
every--members of all the groups, but have majorities among
each of those groups essentially made the decision that their
future is not in a united Iraq but their future is in something
much closer to a divided Iraq which may at best have a very,
very weak central government?
Ambassador Edelman. Congressman Van Hollen, let me pull
back a little bit and try to take into account both some of the
comments you raise about Afghanistan in your opening statement
as well as Iraq, because I think the structure of these
hearings in one sense may be a bit unfortunate, which is to say
that the hearing on Friday about the consequences of the United
States perhaps departing Iraq too soon ought to maybe have been
the first hearing because I think that really frames the
backdrop.
In Afghanistan, we are seeing a shift in tactics by the
Taliban insurgency in part, and I think people tend to forget
this because we're a bit of an amnesiac culture as a nation,
and people barely remember what happened last week much less
last month or a couple of years ago, but we've gone from a
situation where there has never been an elected government in
Afghanistan in any real degree to a situation where we had a
constitution, a president and a parliament elected, and that
parliament is now meeting. I met on Friday with a chairman of
the Internal Security Committee and of the Defense Committee,
and they are trying to struggle with the problems that country
races.
In Iraq, I think Chairman Shays made a very cogent and
articulate statement of the progress that we have seen on the
political side leading up to the elections in December. It's
clear that there are forces in the region more broadly who
don't want to see that kind of future for the region, and they
are fighting back. And that is the backdrop against which all
of this is taking place.
On your question, I think if you look at the poll data that
I've seen, a poll taken earlier this summer showed that 94
percent of Iraqis favored the idea of some kind of national
unity government, and I think something in the high 70's
supported specifically this government, the Maliki government.
When you talk to Iraqi political leaders, most of them will
tell you they do not want to see the country fragment and break
up. And in my experience, I have to say I think we tend--and I
think you were quite good at pointing out, Congressman Van
Hollen, that there are differences within these national
communities. But when you meet with Iraqis themselves, the kind
of categorization that we provide, sort of triptych of Kurd,
Shia, Sunni-Arab begins to break down when you ask people, you
know, what their background is. So, for instance, when Vice
President Abdel Mahdi was visiting with us. He had several
members of his delegation with him, and they were quite frankly
talking about the fact that one was a Shia married to a
Catholic, one was a Shia married to a Sunni, one was a Sunni
married to a Kurd, one was a Shia married to a Sunni. You know,
how are their children going to characterize themselves? I
think we tend to make these divisions, which are divisions that
certain extreme elements in every community would like to play
on the dominant view of the people in that respective ethnic or
sectarian community, and I think we do that a bit at our peril.
If you asked General Chiarelli who was both in the Balkans and
now is the Corps commander in Iraq, he would tell you that
although we've seen displaced persons, and some people have
mentioned that earlier in the hearing. What you don't see right
now is attacks on property that's been vacated by people or
efforts by people to occupy that property which is something
you did see in the Balkans. So even with regard to the
hardening of the sectarian identities that you mentioned and
the analogy to the Balkans, I think there are some important
differences to bear in mind.
Mr. Van Hollen. Mr. Chairman, if I could followup, let me
just--I think it is--it's a tragedy what's happening in Iraq
because I think you're absolutely right. There are so many
examples of Sunni, Shia, Kurds having lived in many cases side
by side in parts of the country, but we all can see what's
going on right now.
We saw the most recent Pentagon report. The fact of the
matter is, sectarian violence is spiraling out of control.
Thousands of Iraqis are being killed. You have Shia militia.
You have Sunni militia. You have death squads that are
blindfolding and shooting people in Iraq. We've seen a
migration within Iraq now; people moving out of the areas of
the areas--Sunnis moving out of the more Shia areas of Baghdad
into the more Sunni areas. You are seeing that going on every
day. It appears that as time goes on, the country is becoming
more fragmented as the different things that held that country
together, some partly through brute force, some through other
factors, have disappeared.
And I guess--let me just go back to my earlier question
with respect to the steps that are being taken by the Shia in
the Parliament. Are they not pushing for an autonomous region,
No. 1? We could also focus on the fact that the Kurdish militia
from day one essentially said, we're not going to give up our
weapons. I mean, the Kurds have been subjected to persecution
in Iraq for a long, long period of time. The Peshmerga was
never going to give up its militia and will not until this day.
So you're saying, Peshmerga, you can keep your militia; other
guys, Shia, you have to give up your militia. They say, that's
not going to happen. You had a referendum up in the Kurdish
area in the Kyrgyzstan part of Iraq over a year ago where over
90 percent of the people said that they would like to be part
of an independent Kyrgyzstan. Are you familiar with that
referendum that took place?
Ambassador Edelman. Yes, I am.
Mr. Van Hollen. How do you account for that in what you
just told me? Over 90 percent of the people in the Kurdish
region said they want to be independent. I understand full well
that the leaders in the green zone and the government are
talking about a united Iraq. That would be terrific. I mean,
that would be the solution we'd all want to see. The question
is whether reality, whether the situation on the ground tells
us that there's much--there's much more hope for keeping that
together, and I guess my question to you and I'll end with this
is, for example, how does--where do you see the constitutional
negotiations going? I mean they were supposed to begin at the
end of August. They're not going anywhere. Everyone says from
the field, we need a political solution. What is the political
solution that's going--what is it going to be that is going to
help hold Iraq together rather than allow it to continue to
fall apart or that will put it back together?
Ambassador Edelman. Well, you have a number of questions in
there, Congressman Van Hollen. Let me try to unpack them a
little bit. You're certainly correct, and as Ambassador, or as
Admiral Sullivan noted, that the--I am not sure whether that
was a promotion or demotion I just gave you by calling you
Ambassador, Bill. But the violence has shifted, the nature of
the violence has shifted from primarily insurgency to ethno-
sectarian violence. That has largely come about if you look
back historically at the pattern and the numbers of attacks in
the wake of the bombing of the Golden Dome Mosque in Samarra at
the end of February. It's clearly been part of the ongoing
strategy of al Qaeda in Iraq and like-minded groups to provoke
an ethnic civil war in Iraq in the hope of driving coalition
forces out of the country. And being the first step to the
creation of a caliphate as they would like to see it. So the--
but what we've seen, the things that you describe and are very
real, and we describe them of course in the 9010 report which
you cited. That's a different thing from saying that's where
the majority of folks want to see the country go. The
discussion about a nine-province Shia subregion as part of the
discussion of federalism is going on. It's been proposed by the
SCIRI party. It's not clear that all Shia agree with it.
There's clearly, as has been mentioned earlier in a hearing,
some push back from some Sunni political leaders. There is
supposed to be, under the constitution, a discussion of
federalism later on, and that will have to be worked out
ultimately by Iraqis. I'll come back perhaps later on to
comment about what the chairman started with, which was the
question of deadlines of one sort or another in the political
process and the progress he saw from June 2004 until the
election in December 2005, and there are some things I think
that can be said about that. But the point is, this is a
process Iraqis are going to have to work through themselves,
and we will try and be helpful in that political discussion.
But, again, I think it's a mistake to see all elements of
the community as united. You mention the Kurdish referendum at
the time of the election. That was a nonbinding vote. It didn't
have any legal status I think, as you know, Congressman Van
Hollen and as you said, the president of united Iraq is a Kurd.
The deputy prime minister, Barham Salih, is a Kurd. The foreign
minister of the country, Hoshyar Zebari, is a Kurd. And they
see their future and the best future for the residents of
northern Iraq and of the Kurdish regional government as being
part of a united Iraq. Kurds are the largest group, as you
know, in the world without a nation of their own. The fact
that, when given the fact on whether or not they would like to
have a nation, 90 percent said yes, I don't think is terribly
surprising.
Mr. Shays. Thank the gentleman.
We'll go now to Mr. Kucinich.
Mr. Kucinich. Mr. Ambassador, would you agree that post-war
Iraq would certainly be the time when we would see our troops
come home?
Ambassador Edelman. Congressman Kucinich, when you say
post-war Iraq----
Mr. Kucinich. I'll repeat the question.
Ambassador Edelman. Yes.
Mr. Kucinich. Would you agree that post-war Iraq would
certainly be the time that we can expect our troops to come
home?
Ambassador Edelman. I think we would all like to see our
troops come home as soon as they possibly can. The major combat
phase of operations ended, and we very quickly found ourselves
in a situation where we had a major insurgency to deal with. We
have put in place a political process that has led to the
development of a democratic government in Iraq, and I think we
have an obligation to help that government defend itself until
it can stand on its own two feet, at which time we will be I
think very happy to have everyone in the United States and the
coalition side come home.
Mr. Kucinich. How long have you been with the Department of
Defense?
Ambassador Edelman. Congressman Kucinich, I was sworn in
just a little over a year ago in August 2005.
Mr. Kucinich. And what did you do before that?
Ambassador Edelman. Before that, I was the U.S. Ambassador
to Turkey from 2003 to 2005.
Mr. Kucinich. And what about before 2003?
Ambassador Edelman. From 2001 to 2003, I was serving on
Vice President Cheney's staff in the Office of the Vice
President.
Mr. Kucinich. In your service on the Vice President's
staff, were you involved in any way in decisions that related
to Iraq?
Ambassador Edelman. I was a participant from time to time
in the deputy's committee meetings that took place on that
subject.
Mr. Kucinich. Were you involved in reviewing intelligence
reports that related to Iraq?
Ambassador Edelman. It was--we got intelligence on a
variety of different issues, including Iraq, as part of our
normal daily briefing.
Mr. Kucinich. So the answer is, yes?
Ambassador Edelman. Yes, I reviewed intelligence on Iraq
and any number of other subjects.
Mr. Kucinich. Did you see intelligence reports on Iraq that
said that there was no connection between Iraq and September
11th?
Ambassador Edelman. Congressman Kucinich, there were a
number of both raw intelligence reports and finished products I
saw during that time period which said a variety of things, but
I don't think it's necessarily appropriate in an open hearing
to be discussing specifics about intelligence.
Mr. Kucinich. Au contraire, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I
just asked the witness a question about his role as a member of
the Vice President's staff in reviewing intelligence reports
that may have been the basis or not for going to war, and he
just responded that--I'll paraphrase it--it may not be
appropriate in an open setting to answer those questions.
Ambassador Edelman. No, Congressman Kucinich. I said I
reviewed such reports, I said I would not feel comfortable
discussing the specifics of those intelligence reports.
Mr. Kucinich. Why not?
Ambassador Edelman. Because they are classified, sir.
Mr. Kucinich. Oh.
Ambassador Edelman. But I will be happy to answer any
questions you might have.
Mr. Kucinich. You know, Mr. Chairman, some day, we're going
to have a hearing where these witnesses raise their hand and
they're going to have to testify what they know and not hide
behind this idea that things are classified.
Mr. Ambassador, when you were working for the Vice
President's staff, did you see any intelligence reports that
said that Saddam Hussein was connected to al Qaeda?
Ambassador Edelman. There were a number of reports which
Director Tenet has testified to in open session that indicated
there had been contact between Saddam Hussein and elements of
al Qaeda over the years, and I did see those reports.
Mr. Kucinich. Were there any intelligence reports that you
saw that contradicted that information?
Ambassador Edelman. Yes, there were.
Mr. Kucinich. Did you ever sit with people in the
intelligence community and at the request of the Vice President
advise people how the intelligence should come out?
Ambassador Edelman. No, I did not.
Mr. Kucinich. Do you have any knowledge whether the Vice
President did or not?
Ambassador Edelman. I don't believe that, to the best of my
knowledge, the Vice President ever directed anybody as to what
intelligence products should say or not say.
Mr. Kucinich. Do you have any knowledge--or have you seen
any intelligence reports that suggest that Iraq was trying to
obtain uranium from Niger? Did you see those reports?
Ambassador Edelman. Yes, I did.
Mr. Kucinich. When did you see those reports? Do you
remember?
Ambassador Edelman. I'm sorry. I don't recall precisely. It
was over a 2\1/2\ year period, Congressman.
Mr. Kucinich. Did you have any contact with the Italian
government relative to those reports?
Ambassador Edelman. No, I did not, sir.
Mr. Kucinich. Did you see any intelligence reports that
indicated Iraq had weapons of mass destruction?
Ambassador Edelman. Yes, sir. There were any number of
reports. There was a vast body of reporting on that subject,
which I saw both when I was a career Foreign Service officer
serving in the Clinton administration as well as a career
Foreign Service officer serving in the Bush administration.
Mr. Kucinich. Did you see any reports that simultaneously
said that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction?
Ambassador Edelman. There was a vast body of reporting,
Congressman Kucinich, that went to a variety of different
questions having to do with both the nuclear, biological and
chemical weapons programs. You are really talking about
thousands of pages of reports.
Mr. Kucinich. Did you see reports--I'll ask the question
again for the purpose of clarification. You were a member of
the Vice President's staff.
Ambassador Edelman. I may have to answer the question, sir,
I may have seen such reports, but I think the vast
preponderance of the evidence at the time indicated that he
did.
Mr. Kucinich. So you saw reports that said that there were
no weapons of mass destruction; those reports existed?
Ambassador Edelman. No, I don't recall ever seeing anything
that said no weapons of mass destruction existed. There may
have been reports that went to different aspects of different
programs and what might have been done or not done, but I don't
recall anything saying he had no weapons of mass destruction.
But, as I said, there were thousands of reports, and I can't at
this point, looking back, not having prepared for that set of
questions for this hearing, which I thought was going to be----
Mr. Kucinich. No, no. It's going to come up in these
hearings, Ambassador. Now, did you see any intelligence related
to Ambassador Wilson's trip to determine whether or not Iraq
was trying to get uranium from Niger.
Ambassador Edelman. No, not until that information began to
appear in the public print, sir.
Mr. Kucinich. Did you see any information regarding--in the
intelligence reports regarding Valerie Plame's role?
Ambassador Edelman. No, I did not, sir.
Mr. Kucinich. Now, Mr. Ambassador, were you aware of any
statements by the Secretary of Defense that forbade military
strategists to develop plans for securing a post-war Iraq?
Ambassador Edelman. I'm not aware of such a statement, but
I wouldn't have been in a position to be aware of it because I
only reported to the Department of Defense in August of last
year, sir.
Mr. Kucinich. Are you aware of any phase four plan that
covers security, stability and reconstruction?
Ambassador Edelman. Would have had phase four plans in any
number of contingency plans that are prepared by combatant
commanders for the Secretary. I am not sure which you are
talking about.
Mr. Kucinich. Has this administration built permanent bases
in Iraq?
Ambassador Edelman. Sir, we have turned over 53 of 110
forward operating bases to Iraq. We have 57 currently under
U.S. control. We continue to have plans for turning over more
of those, and as far as I am aware, we have no plans for
permanent bases in Iraq.
Mr. Kucinich. And what are the plans specifically to bring
the troops home?
Ambassador Edelman. The plan is, as Admiral Sullivan
described earlier, that we will make an assessment jointly with
the government of Iraq through the joint committee on what are
the conditions for turning over increasing responsibility for
Iraqis to take control of the country as a whole over time, and
as that occurs, the commanders in the field will make
recommendations to the Secretary of Defense, and he will then
make recommendations to the President about how U.S. forces can
be drawn down.
Mr. Kucinich. Will the troops be home in a year?
Ambassador Edelman. I am not in a position to say that,
Congressman Kucinich.
Mr. Kucinich. Will they be home in 2 years?
Ambassador Edelman. I wouldn't want to make a prediction of
a particular point in time. I think the number of troops, we
hope, will begin to go down. It's gone up and down over the
past year in response to the circumstances on the ground, and I
think General Casey and his colleagues continue to make
recommendations on that basis.
Mr. Kucinich. Will they be home in 5 years?
Ambassador Edelman. Sir, it's a hypothetical question. I
really, at this point, I just----
Mr. Kucinich. Not hypothetical for the families who are
wondering about the young people serving. Will they be home in
5 years?
Ambassador Edelman. I can't say whether they'll be home in
5 years or 4 years or 3 years or 2 years. It's going to depend
on the circumstances on the ground. We have every reason to
believe that increasingly Iraq will take control of the space,
the battle space in the country, and that we'll be able to
bring everybody home sooner than that.
Mr. Kucinich. Will they be home in 10 years?
Ambassador Edelman. I'd certainly hope so.
Mr. Kucinich. Now yesterday on Meet the Press, your former
boss said that, knowing everything he knows today, invading
Iraq was still a good idea. Mr. Cheney. You know this means
that, regardless of the facts, regardless of whether Iraq had
WMDs or not, regardless whether Iraq was a threat to our
Nation, this administration was determined to attack Iraq. In
other words, regardless of the facts, the administration's
intent, maybe even before September 11th, was to attack Iraq.
Now, as a former member of the Vice President's staff and as a
representative of the administration, can you state this was
the administration's policy?
Ambassador Edelman. I think it was the administration's
policy that the threat presented by a regime that had refused
to comply with 16 U.N. Security Council resolutions, 17 after
the November resolution in November 2002, to completely account
for the stocks of weapons of mass destruction that we knew he
had, which he had used in war against Iran and against his own
people; that regime, which also had relations with a variety of
terrorist groups, like Abu Nidal who was clearly present and
with whom the Baghdad regime unquestionably had a relationship;
that the payment of suicide bombers, $25,000 per family; that
the potential link between that regime and its possible
possession of weapons of mass destruction, its unwillingness to
accede to the demands of the international community after
many, many years and 17 resolutions made it imperative to
defend against the prospect that the regime, which according to
the Duelfer report, still harbored the desire to produce
weapons of mass destruction as soon as the sanctions regime
came off, represented a threat that needed to be dealt with.
Mr. Kucinich. Isn't it true that at a meeting of the
National Security Council on September 12, 2001, Secretary
Rumsfeld told members of the Council that now is the time to go
after Iraq even before any determination had been made over who
was responsible for September 11th.
Ambassador Edelman. Mr. Kucinich, I'm sorry, I'm not sure,
I don't believe I was at that meeting and I certainly didn't
hear the Secretary of Defense say that.
Mr. Kucinich. Have you read Bob Woodward's book, Bush at
War?
Ambassador Edelman. I have.
Mr. Kucinich. Check page 49 out, because in that, there's a
citation with regard to that exact statement by the Secretary
of Defense. Now, let me ask you again, did Iraq have anything
to do with September 11th?
Ambassador Edelman. To the best of my knowledge, we have no
evidence of that.
Mr. Kucinich. Did Iraq have anything to do with al Qaeda's
role in September 11th? Or potential role in September 11th?
Did Iraq have anything to do with al Qaeda?
Ambassador Edelman. I think, with regard to the
relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, as the 9/11 Commission
report indicated, there clearly was a pattern of contact. I
think reasonable people can differ as to whether that pattern
of contact represented an operational relationship or not.
Mr. Kucinich. Mr. Chairman, I think it's important for us
to introduce into the record--I'll get a copy of it--the Senate
panel report, Intelligence Committee, that says, prior to the
war, Saddam's government, ``did not have a relationship, harbor
or turn a blind eye toward al Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-
Zarqawi or his associates.''
One other question, did Iraq have weapons of mass
destruction up until the time that we attacked them?
Ambassador Edelman. Iraq, we know for certain had weapons
of mass destruction before 1991 and used them. The state of our
knowledge about the ultimate disposition of their weapons is
included in the report that Mr. Duelfer did of 1,200 pages.
Mr. Kucinich. Was the attack on Iraq because they had
weapons of mass destruction, was that well founded?
Ambassador Edelman. I think that the preponderance of
evidence that was presented to people in the administration as
was presented to people in the previous administration was that
they had weapons of mass destruction. We've learned
subsequently that, from the work of the Rob Silverman
commission and others, that there were some flaws in that
intelligence assessment.
Mr. Kucinich. Yes, there certainly were, weren't there.
Thank you.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman. And I want to thank both
witnesses for making really good-faith efforts to answer all
questions. And I think you know that a Member can ask any
question they want. And I come from slightly maybe a more
significant difference with my colleague in regards to this. So
when I met with the French, the British, the Turks, the
Israelis, the Jordanians, before the war in Iraq, they were all
convinced he had weapons of mass destruction. The French were
the only ones who said, while they have them, they won't use
them.
When this committee conducted our Oil-for-Food program, and
we were the ones who initiated those hearings, and I had a call
from Kofi Annan saying we didn't need to do these hearings
because he said the Russians have agreed to a hearing, and then
we get a call from Mr. Volker saying we don't need those
hearings. We had those hearings, as did others, and we learned
that Saddam had undersold his oil and gotten kickbacks and
overpaid for commodities and gotten kickbacks.
We learned from the Duelfer report, while no weapons of
mass destruction, he also confirmed that Saddam never thought
we would attack because he bought off the French and the
Russians in the Security Council. And we also know from just
even in the New York Times report in December--excuse me, this
year, that in December preceding the invasion, that he for the
first time told his own military people, no weapons of mass
destruction, and his generals were shot. So even his own
people, even his own leaders felt he had the weapons. I would
just say, having known that, to have gone based on that, if we
had thought he didn't have weapons and have gone in would have
been wrong. But I felt very strongly that, one way or the
other, we needed to deal with Saddam, and the sooner the
better, but it should have been, obviously, on factual,
accurate information.
And I'll just make a point that I've been--with Joe Wilson,
I've seen him promote his book in which he blames the White
House. And finally, we get an issued report saying it didn't
originate from the White House. It emanated from a comment that
the State Department deputy director had shared, and it had
come from that direction. And there are really no stories now
about that. And the fact that the White House didn't mastermind
this effort, it seems to me that Joe Wilson made a better
effort of disclosing to everyone that his wife was connected
with the CIA.
I want to say, in regards to Anbar province, that I think
it was pretty clear from the DOD reports even earlier, this was
the one area in our 18 provinces that we called critical. And I
think DOD has been very clear that you can't win it just
militarily. But it has gotten worse. And this is the whole
point of what motivates me to have these hearings. I am not
seeing the political will on the part of the elected officials
to do the reconciliation that is required to bring in Sunni,
Shias and Kurds. I realize that the Sunnis are asking for more
than they should. But the Shias are giving them less than they
deserve, and somewhere in between is an answer. And we also
know that Iraq is awash with oil, and if anyone thinks this is
about oil, our getting it, when you spent nearly $400 billion,
it would take a long time for there to be a payback on oil. But
what I want to do is get a sense from both you, and I want to
go back to you, Rear Admiral, I want to know what the numbers
mean. There's ultimately a base number that then says, from
that base number, as we keep adding competent Iraqi military,
that we should be able to draw down, and the one area where I
agree with Mr. Kucinich on is that it is in the best interest
of the Iraqis as well as the Americans to know when that will
start to happen. Now, what I think, and this is my bias, is I
think we have so underestimated the enemy continually that
we've never had the right numbers. So we are really doing what
is clear now, we just continue to buildup more Iraqis without
seeing Americans come home. And I fear, and I want to say this,
that this number of 325 is just--it's a number without meaning.
That's what it is to me. It's a number that is somehow there,
but it has no meaning to me because I can't basically reconcile
the fact that we have 325,000 security--and that is, we hope,
Admiral, to have that number achieved by December, correct?
Sorry. The nodding head doesn't get in the transcript.
Admiral Sullivan. That is correct.
Mr. Shays. Obviously, some of that will not have a year's
worth of experience. That is, they're trained and on the force
and named but they're not yet competent; correct?
Admiral Sullivan. That's correct, sir. That number
represents a milestone in terms of fielding and training
equipment.
Mr. Shays. Let's just say this, a year from December then,
we can make the assumption, minus those who will be killed, and
there will be a number, that we have 325,000 security people
who are all trained, and they've had on-the-line experience.
And as the military tells me, nothing trains you better than
being shot at. So the question I ask is, is it fair for me to
assume that a year from now, we will have 325,000, less those
who quit and less those who are killed? Is that correct?
Admiral Sullivan. I think that's a fair assumption, and it
may actually be more than that, depending on the decisions that
are made in the country about growing the forces even larger.
Ambassador Edelman. Mr. Chairman, if I could add one thing
to what Admiral Sullivan just said.
Mr. Shays. You can always add. I am going to pursue my
questioning a little bit. Feel free to jump in.
Ambassador Edelman. One of the things that I think is
important to remember is, if you talk to, you know, Generals
Petraeus and Dempsey, who have been commanders of MNSTC-I, the
cooperation and training command, is that our first effort was
to try and get combat boots on the ground. And so the initial
part of the training has been focused on producing battalions
that we can get into combat. If you will, I think it's what
General Dempsey calls kind of putting out bricks. So we're
putting out one kind of brick at a time.
Mr. Shays. So what's your bottom line?
Ambassador Edelman. The point is, now we need to work on
developing the ministerial capacity at the Ministry of Defense
and the Ministry of the Interior to take these combat units and
be able to provide them with command and control and
sustainment and logistics, and that is where much of the effort
is going into. We've now trained three training battalions, so
now some of them can be remedied and the numbers can be brought
up.
Mr. Shays. I understand that the next year would be to
improve quality which is your basic bottom line point; correct?
Ambassador Edelman. Correct.
Mr. Shays. But if I subtract the 137, we're looking for a
Ministry of Interior of 188,000; is that correct, Admiral?
Admiral Sullivan. That is correct, yes, sir.
Mr. Shays. Tell me--but isn't it true that when you just--
let's just take the military for now, most of the military will
be army. It will not be navy. It will not be air force. Is that
correct?
Admiral Sullivan. That's correct. We are looking at about
118,000 Army out of that 137.
Mr. Shays. And isn't it correct that this military is being
trained for insurgency, not to defend borders?
Admiral Sullivan. Yes, sir, the decision was made when--you
asked how we arrived at that number, and the decision was made
that we needed to shape this force. We did this in conjunction
with the Iraqis to be able to conduct counterinsurgency
operations inside their borders.
Mr. Shays. That part is logical.
Admiral Sullivan. Right.
Mr. Shays. But Iraq has some unfriendly neighbors. So am I
wrong in making an assumption that we're going to have American
troops there or nearby for a long time to be able to--unless
the Iraqis ask us to leave--in order to defend this nation or
discourage attempts by its neighbors to in any way violate
Iraqi space; is that not true?
Admiral Sullivan. It is very much a possibility, sir. But
there have been no decisions made.
Mr. Shays. Let me ask it backward, OK, if you don't have
troops that are trained in other than insurgency work, who--
isn't that an indication that there are certain--that Iraqi
forces do not have the capability to be a defensive force with
artillery and all the other things that a military needs.
Admiral Sullivan. Well, they will have some artillery, and
the intention was to develop a force that would have a modicum
of its own self-defense capability without being an Army that
could threaten its neighbors.
Mr. Shays. I just really need to--I mean, we--the advantage
for both of you is that I get my questions answered in the
third or fourth round and not have to stay until the seventh
round because multiplied times three, three Members here. It
is--I think it's a no-brainer answer. The bottom line to the
question is, the people we are training, we are training for
insurgency; we are not training them as a typical army. Is that
not correct, Ambassador?
Ambassador Edelman. I think the main task is, right now,
the counterinsurgency and to be able to, you know, provide
basic defense for the country. As long as we're there, I think
the security guarantee for them is our presence.
Mr. Shays. Thank you. And I think you would agree with
that, Admiral, correct? The nodding head, I'm sorry I don't
mean to----
Admiral Sullivan. Yes, sir. I would agree with you.
Mr. Shays. So that tells me that one, we will have a role
in the future, or some other country will have that role to
fill in the void the Iraqis won't have. Now, isn't it true that
we're not really developing an air force. I mean, they don't
have many pilots, and they don't have--either fixed wing or
helicopter. Is that correct?
Admiral Sullivan. It's primarily going to be a logistics
force, C-130's and helicopters; no fixed wing attack-type
aircraft at this point in time. The Iraqis may decide at some
time in the future to develop that on their own.
Mr. Shays. But let me ask you this, in this force of 137--
excuse me, 118 military, how many pilots will there be at the
end of this year, fixed wing and helicopter?
Admiral Sullivan. I don't know the answer to that, sir, but
I will have to take that one for the record.
Mr. Shays. But you would acknowledge it is very small.
Admiral Sullivan. It will be a relatively small number,
sir, yes, out of an air force of 1,600, quite a few of those
will be support personnel and maintainers and so forth.
Mr. Shays. So, again, isn't it logical for me to assume
that we or some other country is going to have to provide that
for the Iraqis, not just in the short term but in the long
term, until they're able to do that, help train their pilots
for fixed wing and helicopter.
Admiral Sullivan. It's a logical assumption, yes, sir, but
we don't know yet what kind of arrangements our government is
going to set with the government of Iraq.
Mr. Shays. Well, it's going to be Iraq's decision, but the
bottom line is someone's going to have to fill that void for
them.
Admiral Sullivan. I think that's a fair assumption, yes,
sir.
Mr. Shays. It is a fair judgment in my assumption. I am not
going to ask you to answer it, but it's a fair assumption on my
part to assume it is most likely going to be asked. I am not
complaining about it. I just want the record to state it. And
then I am trying to work from that knowledge.
I am basically dividing up Iraq's needs in two ways. They
need a force that can patrol the streets and deal with
insurgencies and the insurgency, and we have a part in
fulfilling that role; I know that because four of the people
that we buried or have had church services in the Fourth
Congressional District have been blown up by IEDs, and that is
basically doing patrolling type of work not typical in military
operations. It's more like police work. You would acknowledge
that to be true?
Admiral Sullivan. Yes, sir. And if you'd allow me, there's
an effort underway right now in conjunction with the government
of Iraq to look out into the future, out 5, 10 years into the
future, and figure out what kind of a military ultimately they
need and figure out also what kind of equipment they should
have, what they can afford, what they have the capability to
maintain as we move toward normalizing our security
relationship with the government of Iraq. And that's not final
yet, but at some point in time, they'll have a vision for what
they think their military ought to look like.
Mr. Shays. And given that----
Ambassador Edelman. Congressman Shays, I might just add one
thing to Admiral Sullivan because your question is a very good
one I think. And one of the reasons--some of our casualties are
a function of the fact that we have still been in a position of
having to supply the combat support and combat service support
to the Iraqi security force units because they lack right now
the logistical and mobility capability to do that. General
Dempsey is aware of that. He is accelerating, has been
accelerating the training of motorized transport regiments that
are required for that as well as the headquarters' service
companies that will provide the kind of organic logistic and
supply support that will allow the Iraqis to take on more and
more of the CS, CSS role. And I think that's important to note
going forward.
Mr. Shays. It is important to note, but the bottom line is,
when we talk about U.S. troops leaving, I really break it up--
for me, I break it up into two parts. Excuse me, when we talk
about American troops leaving Iraq, I break it up into two
parts: the function that we do that is for police work dealing
with insurgency, and the other function that we do dealing with
mobility, logistics, medics, even our 20,000 contractors,
security folks. I break it up into two parts. And it seems
logical to me if your numbers are accurate and wisely
determined, and when these 118,000 police--excuse me, 118,000
military, plus 188,000 Ministry of Interior police and border
patrol become competent, then we should at the very least be
able to take out those troops that are doing the police type of
work, patrolling the streets and getting blown up. And I also
happen to believe that these numbers are somewhat predictable.
In other words, we know how long it takes to train them. We
know how long--how many stay in once they are trained. We know
what their capability is after a year's worth of training, and
but what I suspect is that we are using the Iraqis and keeping
building up the forces to in a sense deal with the fact that we
have not yet had the full complements of our own people there
to do what we need to do, and that's why we are not seeing our
troops come home.
So let me just segue into in just 2 minutes here, and then
I'll give the time to my colleague again from Maryland. I want
to talk about the police. Based on my trips, based on my
conversations, the real weakness isn't necessarily with the
police who are in every community doing what we traditionally
call police work. It's with the national police. And my
understanding is, it's probably a concern that at least 20
percent shouldn't be in the force. Is that a force of about
12,000, Admiral? Of national police?
Admiral Sullivan. The national police is a force of about
24,000, Congressman.
Mr. Shays. OK. And of the 24,000, is it not true that we
have concern that probably 20 percent were--should be, you
know, kind of asked to leave because they were brought in as
militia and not properly trained and they tend to not have been
integrated like the military?
Admiral Sullivan. Yes, sir, that is a concern, and we are
working with the prime minister to do a vetting plan of the
existing forces as well as retrain some units, but it is a
concern, yes, sir.
Mr. Shays. OK. Well, I'll come back to that in my next
round of questions. I am just going to end by saying that, in
this conversation, I want to kind of add some emphasis to your
point. When I go to Iraqis, and I say, what's your biggest
concern, it's that--their answer to me is, you will leave
before we're ready. That's their biggest concern. It's not the
bombings. And when I speak to Iraqis, they don't have any
fondness for the past regime. I can say that with absolute
conviction because I have had more than enough conversations in
14 visits. That's like saying to the Koreans that they love the
security they have because they're secure. They're really
secure; they're starving, but they're secure. It's like saying
to Iraqis, somehow because there's 40 percent unemployment in
Iraq, I should be surprised. There was more than 40 percent
unemployment before. The only program they had before was the
oil-for-peace program. They had no trade. They had no commerce.
And also, when I ask Iraqis, are you a Sunni, they will say I
am a Sunni, but I am married to a Shiite. I will ask a Shia: I
am a Shia, but my brother is married to a Sunni. When I asked
my Iraqi intern whose parents live in Baghdad, he says, they
ever thought of themselves as Sunnis, but they are Sunnis, but
when you start getting killed because you are a Sunni, you
start finding comfort with other Sunnis. And I blame that on
the inaction of the politicians in the last year. There was no
government for 4 months. You not only had the mosque in flames,
blown up, but you didn't have any response to it. And so I am
going to come back in my next round to say, I am going to ask
you, what gives them the kickstart to make these tough
decisions? I know only one solution, and that is to start to
tell them that the police side of the security, the insurgency
kind of effort, needs to be done by them, and we stay to do the
logistics, the mobility issues and the heavy operations where
we go in to a cluster of insurgents to do that kind of work. At
this time, I'll recognize my colleague from Maryland.
Mr. Van Hollen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks again,
both the witnesses for their testimony. I plan to ask more
questions about going into the future, but I was listening to
the testimony and exchange you had with Mr. Kucinich, and I do
think it is important just to go over a few things on the
historical record.
And let me begin with weapons of mass destruction question.
Yes, Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. He used
chemical weapons against his Kurdish population in the 1980's,
and of course, we know he also used them in the Iran-Iraq war.
Unfortunately, United States provided Hussein a lot of the
targeting information during that war that allowed him to make
effective use of those and other weapons. And we also know that
the United States despite efforts from some Members of Congress
back in the 1980's, decided not to impose economic sanctions
against Iraq--any serious strict comprehensive economic
sanctions--against Iraq as had been proposed originally in a
piece of legislation in the Senate introduced by then-Senator
Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island. In fact, the Reagan
administration at the time opposed that piece of legislation.
So I am always a little bit puzzled now when people go back
to those events as they claim justification for military action
when they weren't even willing to impose economic sanctions at
the time they were being used. It is just a little bit
hypothetical. I know you didn't do that just now but others
continue to raise that issue.
With respect to our assessment of the time, we know that
the folks at the Department of Energy got it right with respect
to aluminum tubes. We know the folks at INR and the State
Department got it right, their assessments were buried in
footnotes in some of these analyses. But there are a lot of the
people in the Government that got it right. But unfortunately
we sort of seem to have a sifting mechanism when it came to the
information in the administration. Stuff that supported the
argument that going to Iraq was accepted and the stuff that was
conflicting was thrown out.
And we all know that Secretary Powell has said that
unfortunately, one of the blots in his record will be testimony
he gave on behalf of our country--all of us--at the United
Nations, which proved to be false.
And so, I think it is important that we remember that there
were people in the government who got it right with respect to
weapons of mass destruction for whatever reasons, and I am not
going to go into a debate on that right now. They were not
listened to adequately.
Now, connections between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, and
as I was listening, I just--have you had a chance to look at
the Senate Intelligence Committee report that came out?
Ambassador Edelman. It was posted on the Web on Friday,
Congressman Van Hollen and I have only had a chance to kind of
glance at it. I haven't had a chance to sit down and read it.
Mr. Van Hollen. Would you agree that Saddam was many bad
things, but one thing he was not, would you agree, was an
Islamic extremist.
Ambassador Edelman. I think if you look at, we are getting
into we are getting a lot of history here.
Mr. Van Hollen. Was Saddam an Islamic extremist?
Ambassador Edelman. If you look back after the first Gulf
war, you do see an effort by Saddam to give a greater Islamic
complexion to his regime. He added the words ``ahu Akbar'' to
the flag, a number of conferences were held that were open to
Islamists and, I would argue that some of the--it is correct
that traditionally, Iraq had been a secular society, under the
Baath regime, but I think in his last 10 years, he gave vent to
a growth of Islamic thinking, both in his rhetoric and in his
sponsorship of certain things that led to some of what we have
seen as you said when we lifted the lid on the Pandora's box.
Mr. Van Hollen. Mr. Ambassador, Pakistan is an Islamic
state, is it not?
It is an Islamic state, is it not Mr. Ambassador?
Ambassador Edelman. It is a state in which Islam has a very
important role.
Mr. Van Hollen. Is General Musharraf an Islamic extremist?
Ambassador Edelman. I wouldn't characterize him that way at
all. On the contrary he is being targeted for assassination
efforts by Islamic extremists.
Mr. Van Hollen. Let me read to you an assessment made by
the CIA with respect to Saddam Hussein January 29, 2003, before
the war, and I am quoting from the Iraqi support for terrorism
CIA assessment report, ``Saddam has viewed Islamic extremists
operating inside Iraq as a threat, and his regime since its
inception has arrested and executed members of both Shia and
Sunni groups to disrupt their organizations and limit their
influence.''
I think it is clear if you read this report based on what
many people have known for a long time, is that Saddam Hussein
viewed groups like al Qaeda as a threat. He viewed them clearly
as diametrically opposed to his view of the world. He was a
brutal dictator. But he was certainly no Islamic extremist.
And I really find it difficult that--I mean we are having a
hearing in here----
Ambassador Edelman. I didn't use the word Islamic extremist
to describe him.
Mr. Van Hollen. I asked you if you thought he was.
Ambassador Edelman. I don't think he would fit that rubric
at all. I don't think that is anything contradictory between
what I said in my answer and what you read out in the report
which I have not had a chance to read.
Mr. Van Hollen. Thank you, Mr. Ambassador, but I think the
issue is that there is this effort to portray this whole issue
of the attacks of September 11th and Saddam Hussein as part of
this United Islamic extremist effort, when, in fact, we well
know that Saddam Hussein was not an Islamic extremist.
Let me ask you this: Do you think it is misleading and
inappropriate for public officials of the United States to make
statements suggesting that Saddam Hussein was part of September
11th?
Ambassador Edelman. I am not aware of any such statement,
Congressman Van Hollen.
Mr. Van Hollen. If there were would you agree that it would
be misleading and inappropriate?
Ambassador Edelman. I think I heard the vice-president say
yesterday that we have no such evidence and I don't believe he
or the President has ever said that.
Mr. Van Hollen. I believe that in many occasions in the
past, they have put the two together. I am not referring to any
remark made yesterday. Let me turn very quickly on the question
of Iran.
From my perspective, I think in talking to a lot of people
who follow the region closely, Iran has been the big winner of
the war in Iraq. After all, here is a country they fought a
long war with in the 1980's, that has now sort of fallen into a
situation of chaos in many parts of the country. And the
Iranians had been emboldened, as you said, in your testimony.
They are causing trouble there.
Can you tell the committee a little bit about exactly what
the Iranians are doing in Iraq, and how they are going about
trying to exploit the situation there? We know that many of the
members of the current Iraqi government were in exile in Iran
during the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. They have
these ties with Iran. If you could talk a little bit about the
manner in which Iran is benefiting from the chaos in Iraq.
Ambassador Edelman. I think it would be a mistake to assume
that because people may have been resident in Iran for some
period of time in exile that necessarily means that they were
subservient to Iran. I don't--would not make that----
Mr. Van Hollen. And I didn't use those words.
Ambassador Edelman. I just would make that as an
observation. I think that Iran and Iraq obviously are
neighbors. They will have a relationship, they should have a
correct and proper relationship as neighbors should have. Iran
has been planning a very unhelpful role through a variety of
mechanisms, both providing assistance to militias and providing
some of the materials that have been used for IEDs. And we have
said that and we have mentioned it in the 9010 report.
Mr. Van Hollen. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman. Let me say so everybody
knows, this is going to be our last round and then we will be
done. So we are starting with Mr. Kucinich, and I just say to
you, I was surprised, Mr. Ambassador, you didn't mention the
$25,000 rewards for, to families involved in suicide bombings.
Ambassador Edelman. I did, in my comments.
Mr. Shays. Did you also mention Abu Nidal?
Ambassador Edelman. I did.
Mr. Shays. Boy, I am not paying attention.
Ambassador Edelman. I think the record will show I
mentioned both of those things.
Mr. Shays. I am happy you did. OK, Mr. Kucinich.
Mr. Kucinich. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, excuse me.
Mr. Ambassador, in your role as Under Secretary of Defense
for policy, can you confirm recent published and broadcast
reports that U.S. troops have already or are currently
conducting operations inside of Iran?
Ambassador Edelman. Congressman Kucinich, I noticed that
you mentioned that in your opening remarks, and that you made
reference to the Seymour Hirsh article in The New Yorker, and I
am glad to have an opportunity to respond. I am not aware of
any such operations. And I am in a position, I think, to say
that having read the Seymour Hirsch article, although not
necessarily all the others that you cited, but that description
of conversations that he has in the article bears no
resemblance whatsoever to any conversation I have ever been in
in the Department of Defense.
Mr. Kucinich. Are U.S. military personnel, have U.S.
military personnel or are U.S. military personnel deployed
inside and around Iran?
Ambassador Edelman. We have military personnel deployed in
Afghanistan and Iraq, which are bordering nations, but I am not
aware of any operations inside Iran.
Mr. Kucinich. Were there operations inside Iran in the last
year?
Ambassador Edelman. Congressman Kucinich, I am not aware of
any deployment of U.S. troops to Iran.
Mr. Kucinich. U.S. military personnel?
Ambassador Edelman. Sir, I have already answered the
question.
Mr. Kucinich. Is that a no? So there is no U.S. military
personnel of any way shape or form?
Ambassador Edelman. Not that I am aware of, sir.
Mr. Kucinich. Either preparing a battlefield, gathering
intelligence and recruiting local fighters?
Ambassador Edelman. Sir, we have in an effort to fighting
the global war on terror, to determine information about
terrorists around the world, and I don't think it is
appropriate to get into a discussion of that in an open
hearing.
Mr. Kucinich. Is the U.S. planning and now recruiting
members of MEK to conduct lethal operations and destabilizing
operations inside Iran?
Ambassador Edelman. The only question having to do with the
MEK that I am aware of that is we have a number of them, around
3,000 of them at Camp Ashraf, and we are working with the
government of Iraq because Prime Minister Maliki has asked that
they no longer be present to figure out how they can be either
repatriated to other countries or, in some other way, no longer
in detention in Iraq. That is the only issue that I am aware of
or have been involved in with the MEK.
Mr. Kucinich. Has the Department of Defense already
commenced hostile actions against Iran as was the case prior to
the Iraq war?
Ambassador Edelman. I'm not aware of any hostile actions
that we have taken against Iran, sir.
Mr. Kucinich. Has the administration already made the
decision to attack Iran?
Ambassador Edelman. I am aware of no decision that has been
taken by the President to attack Iran.
Mr. Kucinich. Is this Congress and the American public now
coming under the influence of an orchestrated campaign to take
the country into a military conflict against Iran?
Ambassador Edelman. Sir, right now the U.S. Government is
involved in a very serious diplomatic effort working with our
colleagues among the EU three and the permanent five members of
the United Nations Security Council to try and come to grips
with the development of Iran's nuclear program, which we
believe is a nuclear weapons program and that is the only
activity that I am aware of.
Mr. Kucinich. Has the U.S. strategic command supported by
the Air Force drawn up plans at the president's direction for a
major bombing campaign in Iran?
Ambassador Edelman. Sir, we don't discuss contingency plans
and I would not want my answer to be taken as either a
representative of them saying yes or saying no. It is just not
an issue we discuss in open public hearings.
Mr. Kucinich. I am going to state that question again.
Has the U.S. strategic command----
Mr. Shays. Excuse me. Let me ask the gentleman, I would be
very uncomfortable as the chairman of this committee to have
someone be discussing the issue as the Ambassador answered. Are
you looking for another question or are you just asking him to
give the answer that he has already given?
Mr. Kucinich. You know, Mr. Chairman, the Department of
Defense refused to even attend a classified hearing on this
specific issue. We saw the run-up to the war in Iraq. There is
quite a similarity here in terms of the way the tracks were
laid to go after Iraq and what they are setting up to go after
Iran. Now, you know, I wouldn't even be raising this if this
gentleman had shown this committee the courtesy of showing up
in a classified meeting.
Ambassador Edelman. I was never asked to come to a
classified meeting, Mr. Kucinich.
Mr. Kucinich. Someone you work for who is above your pay
grade was.
Mr. Shays. I understand my colleague's unhappiness with
this. I would just want to say as chairman I would not want him
to answer this question, because I would not want this
committee to be into that area so----
Mr. Kucinich. I am going to say, Mr. Chairman, because I
don't want to bring this up, but since we are at this point,
for years, I refused to sign a statement about classified,
divulging classified information, because I had been to too
many classified briefings when I first came to Congress that
ended up on the front page in the newspaper, and then I was in
a position to talk about it. But in order for me to hear from
the Department of Defense in a classified meeting at the
suggestion and coaxing of the Chair, I signed the statement
only minutes later to learn that the Department of Defense
wasn't showing up.
So look--and it was about this question. Has the U.S.
strategic command supported by the Air Force drawn up plans at
the President's direction for a major bombing campaign in Iran?
Ambassador Edelman. Congressman Kucinich, as I said
earlier, and the Secretary has said, he would like to arrange
an ops Intel briefing for the Members before they go out, and
you know, people can ask questions at that time, but we just
don't comment on contingency plans of one sort or another. And
as I said earlier, I wouldn't want that to be taken as either a
denial or a confirmation of the premise implicit in your
question.
Mr. Kucinich. Has the Department of Defense been warned by
top ranking generals that the military's experience in Iraq
where intelligence on weapons of mass destruction was deeply
flawed, has affected its approach in Iran?
Ambassador Edelman. I am not aware of such statements, sir.
Mr. Kucinich. Do you concede that there are gaps in the
intelligence with respect to this administration's
understanding of the situation on the ground in Iran?
Ambassador Edelman. I think we have gaps in intelligence in
many matters, including in regard to Iran.
Mr. Kucinich. In your judgment--and I would like the Rear
Admiral to answer this, as well--would attacking Iran heighten
the risk to American forces inside Iraq?
Ambassador Edelman. I really think it is inappropriate to
address a hypothetical question about an attack that I have
already said there has been no decision by the President to
make such an attack so, you know, I just think we are dealing
with, in a realm completely----
Mr. Kucinich. I want everybody to check this out because
the fact of the matter is that all planning for any kind of
conflict involves hypotheticals.
Now Admiral, you are a military man. I am asking you, would
attacking Iran heighten risks to American and coalition forces
inside Iraq?
Admiral Sullivan. It is very difficult to answer without
knowing the circumstances, but I think on the face of it, it
probably would.
Mr. Kucinich. Thank you, Admiral.
Ambassador, has the White House been in contact, and that
is, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, been in contact with the
Department of Defense relative to planning for a nuclear attack
on Iran?
Ambassador Edelman. Sir, as I said, I am not aware of
anything remotely like anything described in the Seymour Hirsch
article in The New Yorker.
Mr. Kucinich. At any time, did the White House insist that
a plan for a bombing campaign against Iran include the possible
use of a nuclear device to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment
plant at Natanz?
Ambassador Edelman. I am not aware of any such thing.
Mr. Kucinich. You are a Under Secretary of Defense for
Policy. And have you been in any discussions regarding a
bombing campaign with respect to Iran?
Ambassador Edelman. Congressman, I have been involved in a
number of discussions about Iran, but most of them have focused
on the diplomacy, because that is where the administration's
focus is right now.
Mr. Kucinich. In your current role as Under Secretary of
Defense for Policy are you or anyone within the Department of
Defense currently working on are have been working on selecting
potential bombing targets in Iran?
Ambassador Edelman. Congressman Kucinich, you are
essentially asking me the same question you did earlier with
regard to contingency plans. And I am in the same position that
I was in earlier, which is that I don't think it is appropriate
to discuss contingency plans in an open hearing. We don't
discuss them in general.
Mr. Kucinich. We already know that in the days immediately
following September 11th, Secretary of Defense was advocating a
war against Iraq. Now during your time in the Vice President's
office, did you or were you aware of anyone else when you were
in the Vice President's office working on military options for
Iran?
Ambassador Edelman. I am not aware of anybody in the Vice
President's office having worked on military options for Iran.
Mr. Kucinich. During the time you were in that office?
Ambassador Edelman. During the time I was in that office.
Mr. Kucinich. Did you see any intelligence relating to Iran
during the time you were in that office?
Ambassador Edelman. As I said before I saw intelligence on
any number of different subjects that were part of the normal
intelligence briefing that I received every day.
Mr. Kucinich. Was it your job to help select the
intelligence that would help to make the case for a war against
Iraq?
Ambassador Edelman. No, sir, it was not.
Mr. Kucinich. Whose job was it?
Ambassador Edelman. I'm not sure anyone had such an
assignment sir.
Mr. Kucinich. Then how did we get to war against Iraq based
on intelligence that you said that you reviewed?
Ambassador Edelman. It is the President's decision.
Ultimately, it is a Presidential decision, sir.
Mr. Kucinich. Does the Vice President have anything to do
with that, based on your role working with the Vice President?
Can you share with this committee any of your impressions as to
whether the Vice President was involved in that decision?
Ambassador Edelman. The Vice President, in my experience,
was very careful to provide his advice to the President in
private and many times those of us on the staff were not aware
of what that advice specifically was.
Mr. Kucinich. Isn't it true that the President generally
defers to the Vice President on issues that relate to attacks?
Ambassador Edelman. Sir, I think anyone who has actually
seen the President and the Vice President interact would not
say that the President defers to anybody. The President is the
person who makes the decisions for this administration.
Mr. Kucinich. Thank you. Do you believe the President must
seek authorization from Congress before conducting military
operations in Iran?
Ambassador Edelman. That is really a legal question sir.
And I am not in a position to answer that.
Mr. Kucinich. Well, you are the Under-Secretary of Defense
for policy.
Ambassador Edelman. I think it depends very much on what
the circumstances are.
Mr. Kucinich. Do you receive authorization from Congress
before conducting military operations in Iran?
Ambassador Edelman. It would depend on the circumstances.
Mr. Kucinich. Under what circumstances should the President
of the United States be able to order an attack on Iran without
the permission of the Congress.
Ambassador Edelman. We are just dealing in such an area of
hypotheticals, sir. I believe the President, before we went
into combat in Iraq, came to the Congress. He will make the
determination of what the relationship between his
administration and Congress ought to be.
Mr. Kucinich. Does the U.S. withdrawal out of Iraq impact
U.S. military options in Iran?
Ambassador Edelman. Again, we are dealing with some very
hypothetical questions here. I don't--I don't want to, by
answering the question, either appear to be confirming or
denying the noticing that there is some kind of plan to attack
Iran because as I have said, that is a discussion that Mr.
Hirsh has had in The New Yorker that I don't believe bears any
resemblance to the reality as I know it.
Mr. Kucinich. Mr. Chairman, I will wrap this up. Here is a
summary.
Hypothetical, Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.
Hypothetical, Iraq was tied to September 11th. Hypothetical,
Saddam Hussein working with al Qaeda. Hypothetical, Iraq
intended to attack the United States. Hypothetical, Iraq had
the capacity of attacking the United States. This
administration translated every one of those hypotheticals into
a course of action that resulted in disastrous war.
Over 2,600 American troops dead, 100- to 200,000 Iraqis
dead, the cost of $350 billion or more maybe $3 trillion,
according to Joseph Stiglitz. We are borrowing money from China
and Japan to fight a war all based on hypotheticals. So this
gentleman has just laid out a course of response to my
questions about Iran saying, well, that is all hypothetical.
Indeed, Mr. Ambassador, it is hypothetical. And we are
trying to find out, in our responsibility as a committee,
whether or not that very hypotheses that this administration
works from are riddled with falsehoods. That is why I asked
those questions. And I am disappointed with your answers. Thank
you, Mr. Chairman.
Ambassador Edelman. Congressman Kucinich, the only thing
that I am aware of that is riddled with falsehoods would be Mr.
Hirsch's story in The New Yorker.
Mr. Kucinich. When well when you raise your right hand and
under penalty of perjury in an open committee where you answer
questions without shielding your self behind the rubric of
classified formation, then I will be ready to take your word
for it.
Ambassador Edelman. Congressman, I have answered truthfully
and candidly all the questions that have been put to me.
Mr. Shays. Thank you. Ambassador, I think you have been
very candid and where you haven't been willing to answer you
have been candid about that. And I appreciate that. And I
appreciate your responses as well, Rear Admiral.
I want to talk and conclude with going back to the primary
purpose of this hearing, which is to talk about security
numbers.
And we are now talking about police. And there are
approximately 24,400 national police out of that total number
of 188 police and Border Patrol, 188,000 police and Border
Patrol. Of that 24,000, does the Department of Defense have
estimates as to how many are competent and reliable?
Admiral Sullivan. I am checking my figures here,
Congressman, make sure I give you a good answer. We do have the
unit readiness ratings for those units. There are national
police in the lead with coalition support, and I think the
number is nine battalions of those police that are actually in
the lead. And then another almost 40 that are working side by
side with the coalition forces.
Yes, we do track those numbers.
Mr. Shays. Isn't it true that 20 percent, that you want to
remove about 20 percent and that the Iraqi Government wants to
see about 20 percent of that 12,000--24,000 reduced by 20
percent?
Admiral Sullivan. That is a rough figure.
Mr. Shays. Let's take it as a rough figure. Do we have a
program to do that or do the Iraqis have a program to do that?
Admiral Sullivan. They do have a program to do that, yes,
sir. And also retrain some battalions that have not performed
up to par.
Mr. Shays. Is it correct, going back to the Army, that only
10 percent of the Iraqi army are Sunni Arabs, which equates to
about 12,700?
Admiral Sullivan. I am not sure of that figure. I know we
are not tracking the battalions by composition by religion, but
I think the estimate is somewhere in that neighborhood.
Mr. Shays. So it is a relatively small number, is it not?
Admiral Sullivan. It is, yes, sir. It is close to their
percentage in the population, which I think is around 20.
Mr. Shays. It would be about half of what it should be.
Admiral Sullivan. Yes, if that number is right, and I am
not sure that it is, sir. It may be higher than that.
Ambassador Edelman. Congressman Shays, if I might, I think
one of the things we are trying to do is to make sure that this
national institution is seen as representing all Iraqis, and so
we are trying to get consciously away from the ideas of people
as they enter the armed forces, and the police thinking of
themselves in ethnic or sectarian terms, but rather thinking of
themselves as Iraqis first.
Mr. Shays. I realize that, but if you just have all Shias
going into a Sunni area, they are going to know.
Ambassador Edelman. Point well taken.
Mr. Shays. You want an integrated military correct?
Ambassador Edelman. Yes, and the point is, as I think as we
indicated in the 9010 report, we are moving more and more in a
direction of a force that is getting pretty close to the actual
percentages, but there is still some disproportions and so for
instance in the officer corps you tend to see more Sunni
officers than Shia because of past history and tradition.
Mr. Shays. What factors went into the decision that the
Iraqi security force would total 325,000 particularly an Iraqi
army of 138,000 or so?
Admiral Sullivan. Well, as I stated earlier, Congressman,
there were a number of considerations. We took a look at the
rough order of magnitude of what size force is needed for a
country that size to do focus on counterinsurgency operations.
We did not obviously want to duplicate the army that existed
under Saddam, which is an aggressive and offensive-minded army.
So those are the numbers we came up with. And we also took
a lot on the police forces at representative nations in the
region, what we thought we knew about the Iraqi police before
the war, what size they had at the time, and factor all of
those things in to arrive at these numbers. And as I also
mentioned, we wanted to make sure it was a force that could be
sustained and maintained by the Iraqis once we had helped them
build it.
Mr. Shays. When the Iraqi army and police have reached
their maximum size of 325,000 trained and equipped personnel,
will that allow Iraqi security forces to take over completely
the job of street patrols and combat operations?
Admiral Sullivan. That combined with a certain level of
experience and assessment by our forces as to their
capabilities. So it is not a simple mathematical answer,
Congressman. It is a lot of factors involved.
Mr. Shays. Let's say when they had a year's worth of
experience so they are fully competent. I mean, a year's worth
of on the ground, being-shot-at experience.
Admiral Sullivan. I am sorry I missed the question.
Mr. Shays. On the ground years worth of experience do they
then become competent?
Admiral Sullivan. They should, yes, sir.
Mr. Shays. Well, if they aren't, then the number is a low
number. I mean, candidly, once they become competent, and I
mean----
Admiral Sullivan. Sir, I understand your question.
Mr. Shays. Because otherwise, the 138,000 or 137,500 or not
enough.
Admiral Sullivan. Sir, even our own units move in and
outside of competency based on where they are in their cycles.
Mr. Shays. I understand, but we are talking about margins.
We are not talking about huge numbers. In other words they
become more competent, maybe there was some significant
injuries, key officers were killed, but, let me kind of just
get to the end of this then. We have--basically, we have 3
provinces that we call stable, those are the three Kurdish
areas. We have eight that are moderately stable. We have six
that are serious. And we have one that is critical, Anbar.
And so, but of Iraq, how much of Iraq is under primarily
Iraqi control with Iraqi governments and--but let's take the
military first. How many are basically being patrolled by
Iraqis, not coalition forces?
Admiral Sullivan. About 60 percent of the country, the
Iraqi security forces are in the lead. Now they are supported
by coalition forces but they are planning, conducting
operations in about 60 percent of the country, in the lead.
Mr. Shays. But we have only transferred one of those
provinces to the Iraqi prime minister.
Admiral Sullivan. Yes, yes, sir that is a slightly
different calculus. That is a process that involves the
provincial Governor, General Casey and his role as
multinational forces in Iraq as well as the prime minister in
assessing whether or not that government is capable of running
their own security without having lead under the coalition so--
--
Mr. Shays. But there is one where I say it is totally
independent we might invite Iraqi troops, I mean, American
troops in, but I want to be clear. Let me ask the question, is
this basically under Iraqi control, Iraqi troops, and they are
in charge?
Admiral Sullivan. That is correct, yes, sir.
Mr. Shays. In the other districts that are--60 percent of
Iraq, that is, where Iraqis are taking the lead, they are still
under U.S. control?
Admiral Sullivan. Yes, sir. We have transferred one Iraqi
division to this Iraqi ground force command that is under the
administration of the Ministry of Defense, and so they are not
doing operations under multinational command Iraq control. So
that is kind of a separate issue. But in quite a few areas, the
Iraqis are in the lead conducting the operations. They are
still reporting to the multinational command Iraq, excepting
this province of al Muthanna and this 8th Iraqi army division.
Mr. Shays. I just want you to just be--we went from 40
percent primarily where the Iraqis are taking the lead, now it
is 60 percent, but that 40 percent was an unstable number
between 8 weeks ago. Did someone push that number down to 30
percent? I just need to have that 60 percent even better
defined than you are defining it right now.
Admiral Sullivan. Yes, that 60 percent is a figure
referencing territory.
Mr. Shays. So how about populationwise?
Admiral Sullivan. I think that represents about 65 percent
of the population, but I can check that figure.
Mr. Shays. Does it represent specific provinces or is it
a--are we dividing the province in half with primarily Iraqi
control and----
Admiral Sullivan. In some cases, the province, it is
divided in half. It is not strictly along provincial or
province border lines.
Mr Shays. So what I wrestle with is given that 60 percent
is primarily under Iraqi control and initiative, why we still
have the same number of troops. And I only have two
conclusions, one that we simply didn't have enough coalition
forces so we have been using them to buildup. Or, that we have
continually--continually underestimated what we would need and
not recognize that Iraq was getting more violent.
Those are my only two conclusions. I want to know at what
point we reach that base to which we then can withdraw our
troops.
If we get to 100 percent or 80 percent in the lead, does
that begin to say we can reduce our troops? When is that going
to happen?
Admiral Sullivan. Sir, that is a very difficult question to
answer, and the reason it is is that because the evolving
security environment will determine when the commanders on the
ground think that they can safely withdraw some of our troops.
Mr Shays. Let me respond to that by saying to you where I
have trouble with is why I got so angry at my staff going once
into Iraq years ago and being aware that we didn't have the
body armor, and we didn't have the military equipment at its
highest protection level, upgraded and then being told by the
military it will be done in 3 months. And then I go back 3
months later we still have the problem.
And I come back and they say well we underestimated the
number we needed and the violence and so--that happened three
times. So my logic tells me why don't we just assume the worst,
the very worst, and then work off that number because we have
been wrong so many times.
And I have another theory. My theory is this the American
people don't think we have a plan because we don't share the
plan that we have and because that plan has been wrong more
often than right.
So we have one choice, share the plan that has been wrong
and at least they know we have a plan, or not talk about the
plan so people don't think we have a plan that we are just kind
of, like, winging it. We are not winging it. We are just wrong.
What this committee is going to pursue with you, and we are
going to ask for these numbers, we want to know when the
baseline is there on a worst-case-based scenario, and from that
point, we are going to recommend that we are--we feel with
some, I hope, conviction we can predict when our troops can
come home under a worst-case scenario.
It bothered me that when we voted on a time line a few
months ago. We then read we had a time line. We all knew we had
a time line. The administration said it was condition based.
Why not just assume the condition is going to be really bad,
and give us a time line based on the really bad rather than
thinking it is going to be better.
And I want to just say I have looked at the classified
documents, and I believe that our plan is unrealistic. It
suggests we are going to get troops out and that Iraqis are
going to take over well before they are going to take over. And
I think we all know that. So my plea with all of you is to have
some realistic numbers that we can work off of, because I
believe the American people, as well as the Iraqis, have a
right to know when we are going to see some kind of reduction.
And then I am going to say to you, but it is only going to
be the reduction on the police side of the equation, because we
are still going there for operations. We are still going to be
there for logistics. We are still going to be there for medical
support. We are still going to be there for those things. And
we are still going to be there to make sure that Iran, Syria,
Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia doesn't think this is a land they
can have some opportunity to move into.
So what would you like to put on the record before we get
to the next panel? There is anything you would like to put on
the record? Ambassador.
Mr Edelman. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to maybe
address a couple of points that you made just now and then go
back maybe circle back to one you made in your opening
statement, if I could.
While I think all of us would like to have some
quantitative answer that would give us some confidence about
when we can start withdrawing United States and other coalition
forces, I think a lot of this ends up being a qualitative
judgment that inevitably has some subjective element in it. You
were asking a question about our units that have 1 year of
experience, you know, doesn't that kind of get them there? I
think a lot of it ends up a being a question of leadership at
the unit level. And there, because we now have embedded
trainers, we have a better mechanism for being able to look at
that and when we have problems weed them out, but it also is, I
think, undoubtedly true that some of what we are grappling with
is a kind of particular culture that was bequeathed to the
military by the preceding regime that is going to take a little
bit of time to work through, getting people to take initiative
getting people to see their responsibility as being a
commander, as being for their troops and their well being as
opposed to a means for greater patronage or benefit for the
individual.
It is going to take a little bit of time to work through
that. And I think the difficulty we have with fixing things
quantitatively is that there is some important qualitative
element, and that goes not only for senior commanders but more
junior commanders and NCOs as well and we are beginning to
address some of these problems.
You began the hearing by talking about, I think, quite
eloquently the progress you saw during many of your preceding
trips between the turnover of sovereignty in June and then the
election in December, and you expressed some concern about the
stagnation since then. And I think all of us share some of the
impatience and concern that I think your comments reflect about
the length of the process that took place.
And you rightly point out that we had some benchmarks which
forced the pace, if you will, politically in Iraq. I would
submit to you however that we are in a slightly different
situation now because sovereignty was returned in June 2004, we
are still deal with a series of limited governments whose
duration was going to be limited.
And only with the installation of the current Maliki
Government after the December elections do we have a fully
sovereign, permanent government of Iraq that has now got to
step up and take decisions.
And the earlier benchmarks were dictated by an arrangement
agreed by Americans and Iraqis when the circumstances were a
bit different.
I agree with you that we need to find some ways to force
the pace of the process. I think the constitutional revision
process may help that to some degree. And I think the necessity
of having provincial elections which we have touched on from
time to time in this hearing is yet another potential
opportunity to set a benchmark that Iraqis have to build
toward, both on the reconciliation side which my colleague,
David Satterfield, will address in your hearing on Wednesday
and other means and mechanisms for getting the Iraqis to
shoulder more of the responsibility here so we can begin the
process of bringing forces home eventually.
Mr. Shays. Thank you, Ambassador. Admiral.
Admiral Sullivan. Congressman, I would just like the record
to show that in response to your comment about a plan, we do
have a plan and we have been executing that plan for quite some
time and that is to buildup the Iraqi security forces. They
have the ability to provide for their own security and that has
been the plan for quite some time.
I share your frustration with the fact that the situation
has evolved and that we have had to adjust plans over the
course of the last several years several times. But in fact, I
would not want the American people to leave with the impression
that there was not a plan. And that plan was being executed.
Thank you.
Mr. Shays. Thank you both very much. I very much appreciate
your being here, appreciate your coming to this hearing and we
will have a 5 minute break and then we will go to our next
panel. Thank you both.
[Recess.]
Mr. Shays. The ranking member had asked that a report of
the Select Committee on Intelligence on postwar findings about
Iraq's WMD programs and links to terrorism and how they
compared with prewar assessments together with additional views
be submitted for the record. And without objection, so ordered.
Mr. Kucinich. I thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
Let me introduce our witnesses and thank you for your
patience. We have Mr. William Nash Major General retired, U.S.
Army senior fellow for conflict prevention, and director of the
center for prevention action council on foreign relations; Dr.
Bruce Hoffman professor, Security Studies Program, School of
Foreign Service, Georgetown University; and Mr. Alan King,
former commanding officer for 422nd civil affairs, Battalion
operation, Iraqi Freedom, advisor for Tribal Affairs Coalition
Provisional Authority.
Gentlemen, we really appreciate your being here. We
appreciate your testimony. We appreciate your patience. And we
are really looking forward to this panel so thank you.
As you know, we swear in our witnesses, and I would ask you
to stand up and we will ask you to raise your right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Shays. For the record, our three witnesses have
responded in the affirmative. We are going to go in the order I
called you. We will do the 5 minutes and then we will roll over
another 5 minutes, and if you could finish within 10, that
would be good. But my basic philosophy about the second panel
is they were waiting, and so we cut them a little slack.
And frankly, we anticipate learning a lot from the three of
you, so thank you.
I want to just remind you to turn your mics on before we
start. Mr. Nash.
STATEMENTS OF WILLIAM NASH, MAJOR GENERAL RETIRED, U.S. ARMY,
SENIOR FELLOW FOR CONFLICT PREVENTION, AND DIRECTOR OF THE
CENTER FOR PREVENTION ACTION COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS;
BRUCE HOFFMAN, PROFESSOR, SECURITY STUDIES PROGRAM, SCHOOL OF
FOREIGN SERVICE, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY; AND ALAN KING, FORMER
COMMANDING OFFICER, 422ND CIVIL AFFAIRS BATTALION OPERATION,
IRAQI FREEDOM, ADVISOR FOR TRIBAL AFFAIRS, COALITION
PROVISIONAL AUTHORITY
STATEMENT OF WILLIAM NASH
General Nash. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, it is a great
opportunity for me to be here, and I hope my views will be
useful to you. Having listened to the first panel, and
particularly your explanations and questions gave me a much
better feel for some of the things that you want to go after,
so maybe I could help a little bit more beyond my prepared
statement.
I think one of the issues that I would like to, because it
is part of my day job, if you will, today, is to talk a little
about bit about how the U.S. Government is organized, equipped
and trained to conduct post conflict operations, and I would
like to draw attention to that. It is most important it not be
considered just an armed forces problem, but a problem of the
entire government. And I strongly recommend that this
subcommittee and the committee in general become actively
engaged in improving our capabilities in that arena.
I refer to you the Council on Foreign Relations Independent
Task Force report entitled ``In the Wake of War'' which talks
about ways the government in general and specifically the
Department of State and the Department of Defense can better
address post conflict challenges. And I provide you a copy of
the report and would ask that its contents in its entirety be
entered into the record, with note that Samuel Berger and Brent
Scowcroft were the co chairs of this independent task force,
and that was a very fine effort to try to identify some ways
that we can improve things.
Mr. Shays. Without objection, it will be submitted and for
the record, ``Council on Foreign Relations, In the Wake of War:
Improving U.S. Post-Conflict Capabilities.''
[Note.--The report entitled, ``In the Wake of War:
Improving U.S. Post-Conflict Capabilities,'' may be found in
subcommittee files.]
General Nash. Thank you. I realize you focus on Iran, it
may seem somewhat overwhelming to try to talk about Government
reform issues, but that is exactly what we need to do because
we cannot afford to do things in the future like we have done
them in the past.
Sir, any strategy on Iraq has to concern itself with ends
ways and means. Simplistic statements about goals for democracy
and free market economy will not be sufficient. Bumper stickers
stay the course, cut and run are not the alternative actions
concerned with Iraq. A timetable for troop withdrawals is also
not a strategy. It is a measure--it is a way to disengage. And
disengagement is not an option for us today.
Three years ago, we were in a senseless debate in this city
about whether or not there is an insurgency in Iraq. Today we
argue over whether or not there is a civil war.
The debate is really a domestic political issue, not
really--using Iraq as a venue.
We dithered instead of taking strong and decisive action.
And the bottom line in Iraq today is that there is an
insurgency, there is civil war, there is rampant crime and the
Iraqi people have far less security today than they had before
the American invasion, despite whatever advantage they may have
gained in getting rid of Saddam Hussein.
I fear that a withdrawal now, in the current American
forces in Iraq a significant withdrawal would add to the
violence.
This is not only a function of the capacity of the Iraqi
security forces, but also the maturation of the political
institutions and a settlement--a final settlement if you will
on power sharing arrangements.
All this has to be done in the face of an al Qaeda-inspired
insurgency against the Iraqi government, against the coalition
forces, against Shiites and against moderate Sunnis. So this
multi layered, multiple war is being fought on top of each
other makes it very, very difficult and frankly, we need many
more debates and hard questions answered that you asked rather
than the bumper sticker debates that all too often take place
on Sunday mornings in the various other campaign stops.
Two additional factors I would like to draw your attention
to for your consideration. The first one is how long can we
maintain this force that is there now? And I talk about this in
terms of the men and women and their families and the Nation
that is providing the service over there.
Their dedication is unmatched, and frankly I say it is our
proudest accomplishment. But I don't know how long this can go
on. And I would say that in a year and a half----
Mr. Shays. How long what can go on again?
General Nash. How long the Armed Forces of the United
States can sustain the operations we have been conducting in
the Iraq for the last 3-plus years. And I think another 2 years
we will see significant impacts on recruiting, retention and
possibly discipline in the force.
The other factor of course is that--and I think one of the
problems that you are having in this regard, I am adding to my
statement from what I heard--because of what I heard this
morning, is that there has been a persistent shortage of forces
in Iraq since day one.
And the fact of the matter is the reason they can't tell
you when they can withdraw down from 150,000, sir, it is my
belief is the assumption that is the proper number of baseline.
And without a good baseline that you are desperately
searching for, it is impossible then for the commanders--and
the commanders will not come out and disagree with their
political bosses that they need more troops. They are equally
hesitant to reduce the forces that they currently have, and
that is a way of telling you they don't have enough, despite
the progress made in training the Iraqi force.
The second factor I would add to the discussion which is
implied in many of your questions is the enemy has a vote on
how many forces are necessary.
So as the enemy strength and capacity and actions increase,
then there is no concomitant reduction in the requirement for
American forces. The enemy has a vote in this force level
debate.
Given these two factors and the limited tolerance by the
people of the United States for commit for much more commitment
and casualties, I think we need to consider a short-term
increase in coalition forces in the country.
Recent action in Baghdad has delayed the redeployment of a
brigade adding to the strength of the security forces in
Baghdad by just under 4,000 soldiers. We may want to consider
expanding this delayed rotation process for the next 18 to 24
months and take the risk that by using more forces for a
shorter period of time, we may be able to reduce our overall
needs.
This may be considered by some imprudent, it may be
considered an all or nothing action. I would recommend we study
it and we look at it as a possibility for achieving our way.
And finally, I would make three comments, sir, on the path
ahead, the clarification of U.S. objectives is the end in the
strategy that we need to establish. The interests of the United
States and the interests of the Iraqi people are not
necessarily the same. And we need to understand that our
interests must prescribe our strategy.
There is suspicion in Iraq and in the region as a whole
about the long-term intentions of the United States with
respect to oil presence and the future relations with the Arab
and Islamic world. Without refighting, the political debate
over why the U.S. invaded Iraq, Congress has the ability, if
not the responsibility, to clarify our intentions by describing
the United States concrete goals in Iraq.
My view is that we should send a clear message that the
U.S. military presence will not be permanent, and this means
that we should stop those permanent military construction
activities, the MCA projects that have been appropriated by
Congress, throughout the country.
We should not stay the course, we must broaden the course.
Without a dramatic change in the perception of the role of the
United States in the Middle East, we will continue to see them
rise in anger against us, resulting in more conflict and a
further drain on our resources. We must understand that U.S.
actions with respect to Israel and the Palestinians, Iran and
Syria and Lebanon have a direct and too often negative impact
on our ability to stabilize Iraq. Less conflict, not more, is
what is needed.
And finally, we must emphasize the political and diplomatic
and economic needs, time and time again our commanders have
talked about the solution to Iraq is political and economic not
military.
But these solutions require both a regional and
international effort led by our country. We cannot afford any
other approach politically or economically ourselves. Sounds
like a tall order, I understand, but if we succeed in
bargaining the course and clarifying our objectives, I think we
can find much greater international support.
And as you talk about your frustration on deadlines and the
maturation process of political institutions and
responsibilities within Iraq, I would argue that a lever on
force presence is not necessarily the most important lever that
we could use to spur political action on the part of the
Iraqis, and I will look at economic packages, political
assistance issues that are more, and I would look for some
economic carrots we can use in order to emphasize the need for
political deadlines to be met.
And sir with that I will stop and I look forward to your
questions.
Mr. Shays. Thank you very much, Mr. Nash. We are going to
have some good fun in our dialog here. I appreciate it. It
gives us a lot to think about.
[The prepared statement of General Nash follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Shays. Dr. Hoffman.
STATEMENT OF BRUCE HOFFMAN
Dr. Hoffman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Representative
Kucinich, for the opportunity to testify before the
subcommittee on this important matter. That is America's
involvement and role in Iraq has now become the most
contentious issue of our time is a reflection of the complexity
and frustrations of securing the security and instability of
that country. It is compounded by a decidedly mixed picture of
progress in some critical areas of Iraqi security, alongside
continued stasis and serious reversals in others. Little
clarity or consensus, moreover, emerges from conversations and
e-mail exchanges with senior American and coalition diplomats,
advisers and military officers in Iraq or from journalists
assigned there, and other informed observers with immediate or
recent direct knowledge of the situation in that country.
This much in terms of Iraq's security however is perhaps
clear. The great progress made in training and improving the
Iraqi army and associated military forces has not been matched
by similar improvement with the Iraqi police, the essential
main stay of law and order and the foundation about which the
stability of any country must be based.
It is on this specific issue that I will focus most of this
testimony before turning to issues such as the security of
Baghdad and the prognosis of overall U.S. security policy and
efforts in Iraq.
The central objective of U.S. security policy for Iraq is
to train, equip and buildup the Iraqi security forces so that
they can assume responsibility from American and coalition
forces for the stability of their own country.
With respect to Iraq's military forces, advances in
training and deployment have indeed been considerable, although
as we heard earlier, it should still be noted that despite
these improvements, the Iraqi army is still dependent on U.S.
military forces for intelligence and logistical support.
The police however present an entirely different and more
depressing picture. The situation regarding the Iraqi police is
all the more lamentable, given that 2006 was supposed to be the
``year of the police,'' when the resources and attention
hitherto focused normally on building the Iraqi army were
instead devoted to the national police.
The importance of police, both in civil society as well as
in countering insurgency, cannot be overstated. In no area is
this distinction more critical than an acquired intelligence.
Clearly effective police work, be it against common criminals
or terrorists and insurgents, depends on intelligence, and
intelligence depends on public cooperation. Police typically
have better access to human intelligence sources than the
military. This information, whether freely provided by citizens
to beat cops known to them or obtained by police from its
informants snitches and other sources in and around the
criminal underworld is essential to detect and apprehend
terrorists or insurgents. It is essential also in undermining
local support for terrorists and insurgents and in breaking
their control over and influence in communities.
Yet despite the critical role of police, more often than
not, this has, from the start, largely been ignored by the
American authorities responsible for building the security
forces in Iraq. As one coalition adviser with long experience
in Iraq dating from the summer of 2003 recently lamented, the
coalition never got its arms around the police as they did with
the Iraqi troops on the ground that we were training.
Accordingly, a game of catch up has been in play almost from
the start of our involvement in Iraq.
In May 2004, the CPA started to address the initial
problems with police trainings by establishing CPATT, the
coalition police assistance training teams. Although U.S.
military supervision provided better management of the police
training effort, many of the American personnel responsible for
this oversight did not know much about civilian policing,
police training, or police work.
Another more serious problem arose, however, when graduates
of this training were subsequently incorporated into largely
unsupervised police units commanded by persons who, in the
words of another American adviser deeply familiar with the
process, either ``had either nefarious intentions, death squad
activity or distinctly sectarian agendas, or who were
themselves corrupt or inept.''
In hopes of establishing more rigorous supervision of the
police, in May 2006, the multinational Corps-Iraq assumed
responsibility for mentoring the Iraqi police. While this has
generally been a positive development, the number of mentors,
whether American military police or more appropriate civilian
police advisers serving as international police liaison
officers, IPLOs, has proven woefully inadequate. And both their
quality and skills has been remarkably uneven. Even the stopgap
measure adopted by MNSTC-I in Baghdad of making up for the
shortfall in civilian advisers by assigning MP military police
companies to police stations is not an altogether perfect
solution.
Military policing is significantly different from civilian
policing. And many of the MPs themselves have no experience of
police work outside of military bases and the military itself.
Further the deployment of MP companies notwithstanding as
of June 2006, some 40 percent of police stations throughout
Iraq were reported to have no coalition oversight or
supervision whatsoever.
This dearth of supervision has also had enormous
consequences on the professionalism of the Iraqi police forces,
vitiating whatever successes had been achieved in training. For
example, while the newly instructional regimen may have
improved the technical competence of individual policemen in
terms of investigative and forensic skills, it has done nothing
to counteract the sectarianism and corruption permeating both
the ministry of the interior MoI and police.
Indeed reports of the subversion of the MoI are the Badr
Corps and SCIRI on the one hand and by followers of Moqtada al-
Sadr belonging to the army Mahdi on the other seem to be
endemic to any discussion about corruption in the ministry and
the police. The dimension of sectarian infiltration of the
police is so pervasive, one source claims, that the MoI's
intelligence arm has now been completely subverted by the Badr
corps while parts of the national police have been heavily
seeded with Sadr loyalists.
Let me now turn to the security plan for Baghdad and the
prospects for success.
Arguably, until stability is established in Iraq's capital
city, the public, neither in the United States nor especially
in Iraq, will believe that a corner has really been turned in
the struggle. Although implementation of the latest security
plan for Baghdad has gone reasonably well, it is still too
early to tell whether this attempt will be any more successful
than any of its predecessors have been. The newest iteration
involves a three-phase operation whereby Iraqi and American
forces enter a specific neighborhood and secure it from
insurgents and terrorist activity, as well as sectarian blood
letting.
Once it is deemed cleared, the responsibility for the
neighborhood security is turned over to Iraqi control as the
military units move on to the next neighborhood. Although
cautious optimism prevailed in most discussions and e-mail
exchanges I had over the past 2 weeks with senior United States
and coalition officials and former colleagues in Baghdad, some
skepticism was expressed that there was sufficient American and
Iraq--trained Iraqi security forces in the city to achieve a
lasting positive impact. Moreover, according to one official
visit, recent official visitor to Baghdad, ``the patterns of
attack once the main force moves on are that insurgent attacks
then increase. In the last 2 weeks there have been a resurgence
of attacks once U.S. forces clear out. Formed units of national
police in Iraqi army are performing fine. Regular civilian
police who have American and coalition mentors are good, and in
several areas, police comportment has improved technically at
checkpoints and so on, but there is yet no real sign that they
all can hold the ground by themselves without American military
forces present.''
The inadequate numbers of both American military forces and
trained, reliable Iraqi security forces was cited by another
knowledgeable observer as a problem both with respect to the
Baghdad operation in particular, and Iraq security in general,
in fact, as we have heard through the morning. Given that Iraq
has a population of about 25 million people, based on a 20-to-1
ratio of population to security forces, essentially what the
British military had in Northern Ireland during the 1980's. You
need roughly 500,000 troops and police to maintain order.
However as we have also heard this morning, the envisioned
total of Iraqi trained Iraqi security forces is only 325,000.
Let me conclude now.
Two salient conclusions seem clear from the preceding
discussion of training and deploying of the ISF.
Iraqi military forces will likely continue to build and be
increasingly capable and will be able to assume the lead in
more parts of Iraq. The Iraqi police, however, will continue to
be both the problem and the Achilles heel of Iraqi security. In
this respect, whatever advancements have been achieved in terms
of the Iraqi army, the situation with the police counterparts
remains as problematical as it is frustrating.
Corruption remains a problem in the MLI. It is also
reportedly beginning to affect the MOD. The MLI, of course long
involved with security issues in Iraq, is plagued by
corruption, nepotism and kleptomaniacs. The MOD is not nearly
as bad, but the same signs of corruption are appearing.
The MOI, though, is certainly the biggest security problem
here. If the MOI was fixed we would have pretty decent police
intelligence and a decent police force. Reforming the MOI is
the biggest problem we currently face. This is from the U.S.
diplomat who has been in Baghdad since 2003.
Although the form of MOI is a question of Iraq's political
will, it is in our power to improve police on-the-job training
and performance through the provision of the CPAT IPL program
and the priority accorded to the recruitment of more and
appropriately qualified Coalition civilian police advisers.
Until that can be achieved, the deployment of more U.S. police
units is a second-best option, but nonetheless a helpful
palliative.
As support and oversight of the Iraqi police from the start
of the Coalition Provisional Authority has been a matter of too
little too late and of numerous passed opportunities, this may
be the last opportunity to address the existing shortcomings of
the Iraqi police establishment.
Finally, it is difficult to predict for these reasons at
one point if the ISF can take on additional security
responsibilities with a reduced American presence.
Realistically, in my opinion, 3 to 5 years at least are
required for the Iraqi military and 7 to 10 years for the
police. It would not be likely for another 7 years that the
Iraqi security forces can completely replace all combat--all
U.S. combat forces in Iraq. At the moment, therefore, it is not
realistic to set a withdrawal timetable based on the current
readiness of the ISF.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Hoffman follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Shays. Mr. King.
STATEMENT OF ALAN KING
Mr. King. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to
testify before you today. I would like to make five key points
in summarizing my written statement.
First, there are three major challenges that must be
overcome if Iraq is to assume full responsibility for its
security. The first of them are militias. The activity of the
militias are the single most divisive issue challenging the
legitimacy of the central government. We are aware of Iran's
multimillion-dollar budget to back the militia, and with Sadr's
influence in the country growing, the Iraqi Government will be
hard pressed to pursue its objectives.
We witness the results of what uncontrolled nonstate actors
did in Lebanon. Sadr's Mahdi army is equivalent to Lebanon's
Hezbollah, and while not considerably as heavily armed today,
it poses the same potential threat as to Iraq's future. I
believe that if the U.S. departed today, Sadr's militia are
poised to lead Iraq to civil war and SCIRI's Badr Corps
domination of the security forces has positioned this nonstate
actor in a state-sponsored position to pursue its independent
goals.
The second challenge is the lack of a legitimate and
professional police force to deal with the unrestrained
criminal force.
And the final challenge is the unreliability of the
judicial system that makes tackling the police problem
unrealistic and impractical.
Second, when I arrived in Baghdad on 8 April 2003, Major
General Buford Blount of the 3rd Infantry directed me and the
unit I served in as the commanding officer of the 422nd Civil
Affairs Battalion in the mission of taking the first steps
toward the immediate reconstruction of the city. Generally, men
hugged us in their gratitude for liberation. We were 140
soldiers and we were trained, committed and hard working, and
we understood what it meant to be the tip of the spear in the
postliberation period.
We paid a price. One American soldier and an Iraqi
translator killed, four soldiers wounded, including Major
Damone Garner who sits behind us today. Our unit received five
Purple Hearts, 21 awards for valor and the Presidential Unit of
Citation.
In 3 short years, I have watched the resistance grow into a
substantial insurgency. I believe this is in large part due to
America's fundamental misunderstanding of our success. When the
President declared an end to major combat operations on May 1,
2003, we had decisively defeated an armed force and the war in
Iraq was over, but at that very moment the war for Iraq began.
Our objective at that time was no longer to defeat an armed
combatant, but to decisively engage the Iraqi people.
After May 1st, our conventional tactics, with an emphasis
on kinetic solutions designed for decisive victory over a
noncombatant, provided the insurgency a textbook ideological
basis for receiving at least passive support, if not direct
support, in conducting attacks against the Coalition and the
Iraqi--Iraq's security infrastructure.
In the days following the liberation, a military strategy
could have been more effectively collaborated with a political
and economic policy designed to win the people, thus allowing
the Iraqis to eliminate the insurgents themselves. Since April
2003, I have watched a transition from cautious concern for the
Coalition's tactics to sympathy for insurgencies because of our
tactics to complicity with the insurgents to fight our tactics.
We must fully address the motives and tactics of the
insurgents. There are six elements: the militias, the
nationalists, religious extremists and sectarians, foreign
fighters, former regime loyalists and common criminals. The
demographics of the insurgency are different in each province
and each element has its own motives for fighting.
As we have seen, Baghdad has become the axis of the
insurgency. This is where all six elements exercise their power
and force a complicity of the people; because of the lack of
security, people are compelled to use the competing groups for
protection.
Fourth, in November 2003, because of my tribal engagement
activities, I received a new assignment as deputy director of a
small team of experts on Iraq and I was tasked to work with
Iraq's tribal leaders. In my book, Twice Armed, I explain how I
engaged thousands of tribal sheiks and clerics over the 16-
month period I served in Iraq enabling me to capture some of
the most-wanted personalities from the former regime, including
two from the infamous deck of cards, along with the former
chairman of atomic energy and Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, a/k/a
Baghdad Bob.
From the Iraqis I met, there was one constant theme that
was espoused by all: We are Iraqis. This nationalistic identity
transcends religious and ethnic identity, transcends religious
and ethnic identification and provides a prospect for Iraq to
become a unified nation. For this national identity to
continue, it is necessary for the Iraqi leadership to table
their personal objectives and come together on behalf of their
country.
In closing, Americans must understand that in Iraq we will
not have a decisive battle of victory, and in its absence, we
should not leave. The process for victory in Iraq is not
military, but instead political and economic, where the Iraqi
Government, supported by the Coalition, wins the Iraqi people
and they defeat the insurgency. Security and stability are
processes, not identifiable events, and properly defining the
end state of the process will allow us to determine when we
should leave Iraq.
Again, thank you for this opportunity. I look forward to
your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. King follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Shays. I thank all three of you very, very much. And I
am going to first ask, giving myself 10 minutes--we are going
to stay with the 10 minutes and then just keep going back and
forth--do any of you agree with anything that the others have
said or anything that you would want to qualify?
Is there any statement, for instance, Dr. Hoffman, that Mr.
Nash and Mr. King made that you might want to elaborate on?
Mr. King, is there any statement that Mr. Hoffman or Mr.
Nash has made?
General Nash. I would largely agree, and I tip my hat to
Alan King for his comments and, of course, his service there.
The one thing, his defining the six categories of the
elements of the insurgency, I agree with the six; I don't agree
that they are all under an insurgent category. Because an
insurgency is directed normally, usually--almost always
directed against a central body of some sort, and the
internecine fighting that is taking place in Iraq is
multiblurred, and everybody is fighting the United States. Not
everybody is fighting the United States, but--almost everybody
is fighting the United States, but within this mass of
confusion, there are different fights taking place with various
opponents combining and breaking up, given the circumstances.
So it is not one insurgency with six participants. It is
several, some of which are insurgencies, some of which are
civil conflict, and then there is crime that is part of all of
it.
Mr. Shays. Any other comments?
Mr. King. I would like to say, when I briefed Ambassador
Khalizad before he went over to Iraq, I tried to define the
different categories of what he would see the military and the
Coalition forces facing. I agree that they all don't fall under
the insurgency, but we try to have this one umbrella term to
define all of the activities that are going on in Iraq. In the
south, you have predominantly Mahdi's army; they actually have
the same police cars, wear the same uniforms as the police.
One of the phases of insurgency is where you infiltrate the
police, and SCIRI Badr Corps have done just that. In the west,
in Anbar, you actually have cities where there are no police;
Haditha and Baghdadi and others, there are no police present
for various reasons.
I met, as I said, almost 3,300 sheikhs. All the top sheikhs
of the entire country came to me and presented their ideas, and
through them, I captured almost a dozen of the most-wanted
criminals in Iraq. We captured Saddam Hussein's doctor,
bodyguard, driver, Baghdad Bob, the chairman of atomic energy
and others.
They understand their society, and I listened to them to be
able to deal within their society. Al Anbar is going to be a
challenge. The Dulaimis have historically been a problem. They
were a problem for the Ottomans; they were a problem for the
British, and they have proven to be a problem for us, but they
have to be addressed in political terms and I don't think that
we have--the Government of Iraq has addressed their concerns.
It goes back to the case of not allowing some of their sons in
the military.
I use the insurgency umbrella to be able to define one
thing rather than have it on the outside. I do agree with
General Nash; I understand they are not part of an overall
insurgency, but they are all fighting one another.
Mr. Shays. I am curious as to why all three of you suggest
time lines can't work as it relates to the replacement of Iraqi
troops--excuse me, replacing American troops when Iraqis become
competent. And you are going to have to help me out here. If
the French told us that they had 20,000 troops, Mr. Nash, would
we replace their 20,000 with ours or would we say, Oh, we will
just add 20,000?
I would like each of you to respond to that question.
General Nash. Again, sir, I would say that we should not
work from the assumption that the current force levels there
are proper. And so, intuitively, the commanders are hesitant,
and I am hesitant to recommend a one-for-one swap if I don't
feel that I----
Mr. Shays. Why don't we be honest and say that we need
50,000 more or 80,000 more or 20,000 more?
General Nash. I would like that question answered. I agree
with you.
Mr. Shays. So the reason why you are uncomfortable with the
time line is you believe that we do not have the proper amount
of security in Iraq?
General Nash. Absolutely, sir.
Mr. Shays. OK. That doesn't mean a time line doesn't work
at all. Let me make my point and then you respond to it. It
just simply means that time line doesn't begin until we buildup
to the base.
A time line doesn't mean that we reduce the number of
troops from this point. When I suggested a time line as it
relates to the replacement of Americans who are doing police
work with Iraqis, I have suggested that we--the time line might
even say, OK, you have to add another 50,000 more Iraqis.
But there is a certain point, and why can't we determine
that?
General Nash. The major failure, in my view, in Iraq is the
slow development of the political institutions, political and
judicial institutions, that give a reason--a reasonable
representative government that provides goods and services to
the people of Iraq, and to include security. The time line--the
deadlines for performance should be on the performance of the
government and then we adapt to their improvements, not
establish a withdrawal schedule.
Mr. Shays. Let me--I'll come back to you on this. But you
have made your point, right?
General Nash. Yes, sir.
Mr. Shays. OK. I want to debate it later.
Dr. Hoffman.
Dr. Hoffman. Well, I'll have to say I am largely in
agreement with General Nash. I think, firstly, we face two huge
challenges in Iraq: One, not just the insurgencies, but the
insurgencies that we have heard from Mr. King as well. But the
second problem which has also been alluded to is, we have a
failed state contending with lots of different struggles and
without the power and the tools actually to control those
struggles. So, therefore, you know right from the start those
are two of the most enormous challenges, both fighting and
building up the Iraqi Government.
In terms of the time line, I have to look--I am a historian
by training, and I have to look at just the course of
insurgencies in the last year. When I was advising the
multinational force headquarters in Iraq we did a study on
duration of insurgencies. The successful ones take between 9
and 12 years to win. The unsuccessful ones, which I suspect we
have to classify Iraq in, take between 10 and 13 years. So my
response is, we need a time line.
Mr. Shays. You are making an assumption that I would base a
time line on whether or not they have dealt with the
insurgency. I mean, Israel has been dealing with terrorists,
Hezbollah, Hamas. There they are still a functioning
government.
I am not suggesting that a time line would be based on when
the violence would end. I am just suggesting a time line that
is based on when Iraqis can take our place, and that is a
difference. There is a huge difference.
So if you could open your mind up a little bit to that
concept, what I think is, we will be out of Iraq and there will
still be violence. There will still be fighting, but it will be
their problem, not our problem.
Dr. Hoffman. Well, I think I go back to General Nash's
point. We have to assume that we have the right to properly
size force structure.
Mr. Shays. So we come back to that. We need to know what
the baseline is. I mean, that is the message I am getting from
all three of you: What the heck is that baseline? And what
strikes me is that our government is not being candid with
itself and with us, with the Iraqis, what that baseline number
needs to be; and because they had a lower baseline before,
there are some who frankly have a history. And probably that is
the best argument for getting new people. They wouldn't have a
history; they could think fresh.
Dr. Hoffman. Well, I think it also masks a huge problem. We
have set the baseline in such a way I don't think 325,000
trained Iraqi forces are sufficient. If we want to get the 20-
to-1 ratio that existed in a place like northern Ireland, which
was far less complicated then Iraq, where there was an existing
government and a functioning democracy, you have to have 500
security forces. So even with our troops there and the Iraqi
forces brought up, you are still going to fall short of that.
Mr. Shays. That is the value of this discussion of a time
line, because what it basically says is, the time line to
reduce doesn't start until you get to 500. That is--yeah, OK. I
hear you.
Mr. King, how long were you in Iraq?
Mr. King. I was there for 16 months. I went over with the
first group in March 2003, was wounded in February 2004, stayed
until July 4, 2004, and then spent 16 months in the hospital.
Mr. Shays. Well, I want to thank you for your service. I
want to thank you deeply and sincerely. This young man who is
sitting behind me, who is he?
Mr. King. That is my son.
Mr. Shays. What is his name?
Mr. King. That is Wesley. He's the one that paid a larger
price than any of us.
Mr. Shays. I think the woman behind you is your wife?
Mr. King. Yes, sir.
Mr. Shays. And what is her name?
Mr. King. It is Barbara.
Mr. Shays. I want to say to you, Mrs. King, and to your
son, Wesley, you should be very proud of your husband and your
dad. And we are very proud of you, very, very proud.
Mr. King. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Shays. And I want to say to you, Major General, how
long were you in Iraq?
General Nash. I occupied Iraq, sir, before it was popular.
I was--I occupied Iraq in 1991 in the first Gulf war for--
several times, but--I have traveled to Baghdad after the
current war, but I don't have near as much time as Mr. King
does in Iraq.
Mr. Shays. Well, we appreciate your service, and I have
been noting that I have been referring to you as ``Mr.'' and I
should be referring to you as ``General.''
And I would just like to thank Major Garner, who is sitting
behind you, as well for your service in Iraq. Thank you so very
much.
We are going to go with a 10-minute rule here. But it is
generous.
And Mr. Kucinich. Thank you.
Mr. Kucinich. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
General Nash, today you are advocating for a 18 to 24-month
increase in U.S. troops in Iraq, including delays and
redeployment of U.S. troops as their replacements arrive. At
the same time, you also stated about the stress to unit
soldiers and family is severe.
Do you believe that had the U.S. withdrawn its forces
earlier during the formation of the Iraqi Government, such as
following the January 2005 national elections, that we would
still be in the same situation today?
General Nash. At the time before--at the time I advocated a
withdrawal of forces beginning with the political success of
the elections, and made public statements that I had resigned
from the ``We Need More Forces in Iraq'' club. Events
subsequent to that have caused me to understand that the
failure to provide security in key places, particularly
Baghdad, in Iraq is largely a function of the lack of presence
of forces.
We do need to tie troop withdrawals to political success,
but at the present time, we do not have that success, and I
think we need to put more emphasis on achieving security in
those locations.
Mr. Kucinich. So you are saying, you first have to have a
military solution before you have a political solution?
General Nash. No. It is absolutely essential that the
political solution is the key element in this, but the military
has a role to play in that. Security has a role to play in
that.
The problem is, we are neither fish nor fowl with respect
to security. We have not provided sufficient presence of forces
to allow people to go about their lives in a reasonably normal
manner, and we need to decide whether or not we are going to do
that.
Mr. Kucinich. Let me ask you this. The deployment of
forces, does it or does it not depend on the situation in Iraq
with respect to how many insurgents there are in a given area?
General Nash. Yes, sir. I mean, it is directly related to
the enemy action.
Mr. Kucinich. Is it possible that as we deploy more forces,
there are more insurgents?
General Nash. That is--that is one of the arguments that
has been--has been advanced. I would say to you, it is not the
numbers of soldiers that are there that would grow the
insurgency. It would be--the behavior of the soldiers present
would have a larger controlling factor in whether or not the
insurgency grew.
The deliverance of peaceable areas supported by political
and economic action will reduce an insurgency over time, but it
is over time, not a short frame.
Mr. Kucinich. You talk about economic action. What is your
assessment of the reconstruction of Iraq?
General Nash. I think the reconstruction of Iraq has been--
has been mishandled. Programs that have emphasized development
of local job production have been more successful than large
projects.
In the words of one commander that served in Baghdad in the
2004-2005 timeframe, we need to understand that we need 100
shovels much more than we need one backhoe. And our failure to
understand that in a nationwide environment has caused us to
create large-scale projects whose fruition is long range and do
not give relief to the people that need the work and the
security.
Mr. Kucinich. Do you think that the longer that U.S. troops
are in Iraq, it serves to fuel or frustrate the insurgency?
General Nash. It serves to dampen the civil war. It has
elements that can fuel the insurgency, and one of the important
distinctions here is to understand the nature of what all the
different conflicts are about. And as I said in my statement,
there are multiple layers of conflicts taking place, some of
which the presence of U.S. forces moderate and some of which
the presence of U.S. forces aggravate.
That service, sir, is why this is so hard. But the bottom
line is, in my judgment, that the provision of security in an
environment where political institutions can mature, those
economic opportunities can occur, will be of greater benefit
overall than the possibility of causing some folks to continue
to resent the American presence.
Mr. Kucinich. Following your logic, General, the presence
of the U.S. troops helps to moderate civil war, but fuels the
insurgency. Would the reverse be true? Would the absence of
U.S. troops lessen an insurgency and----
General Nash. I think it would increase the civil war, the
civil war aspects of the confrontation. And I think that much
of the insurgency would then be redirected to the government
itself, because much of the insurgency is, in fact, foreign
fighter jihadists, motivated--that is, as opposed to the Iraqi
Government and to a large portion of the population as they are
to the U.S. presence.
Mr. Kucinich. Is a civil war likely to continue whether we
are there or not?
General Nash. Certainly.
Mr. Kucinich. So you could understand why some of us feel
that withdrawal of U.S. troops would be beneficial not only to
the United States, but to the people in Iraq, because there is
going to be--there is a civil war going on right now that
troops are kind of caught in this middle. And that is one of my
concerns.
General Nash. And you have every right to feel that, and
you are making me very uncomfortable in trying to defend what
has taken place in Iraq.
Mr. Kucinich. I don't want to ask you to do that, General,
because you have expressed a level of candor here which I think
is admirable. And I guess what happens is that, you know,
Congress inevitably makes these decisions as to whether or not
we cutoff funds.
General Nash. Sir, I understand.
Mr. Kucinich. That really is our decision. The
administration can say, well, we are going to keep the troops
there, but it is up to Congress. If Congress cuts out funds,
those troops are coming home.
I appreciate your testimony in that regard.
Dr. Hoffman, you made the case in your testimony about a
civil society, you have to have a police force to have a civil
society. There is a difference between, you know, the
democratizing influence of police and the presence of the
military.
But when, you know, in the testimony where there is a huge
absence of the kind of police that are needed--we had a hearing
about this maybe a year ago--and at the same time where there
are police, there may actually be some other military elements
in the police uniforms, that could be a confusing factor in
trying to get--you know, get democratic governance. Do you
agree?
Dr. Hoffman. Well, I think, you know, this is a reflection
of one of the problems we have always had with the police,
which I alluded to in my testimony, is that we've never devoted
the attention and resources to building them up. And without, I
think, a working police force, we are building a security
structure that is just on a foundation of sand. By no means am
I suggesting if we buildup the police now, we are going to
address the insurgency of the civil war problems, but we will
have the prospects of a foundation for a future.
Mr. Kucinich. I have to ask you what is the level of
influence of Iran over this Shi'a militia forces. Are they
funding these militias? Are they training them?
Dr. Hoffman. Well, at least from my experience, when I was
with the CPA in the spring of 2004, even then we saw that Iran
was involved backing a number of different sides, not just one
horse. Of course, it's particularly close with SCIRI, the
Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, because that
was created in Iran and many of its leaders had sought and
received sanctuary in Iran before our liberation of Iraq.
Clearly, there is Iranian involvement with al-Sadr and his
forces. But from my observations 2 years ago, I don't think
that they have changed. Iran had a hand everywhere and was
monitoring everyone to control the situation at least in hopes
to influence the manner favorable to its own interests.
Mr. Kucinich. Here we are on the 5th year anniversary of
September 11th attacks, and on the day that the American people
have learned that some of our military leaders in Iraq believe
that hope is lost in the Anbar Province, for example, can you
offer an opinion as to--or do you know where the prime minister
of Iraq is going today, where the prime minister is going?
Dr. Hoffman. He's going to Tehran.
Mr. Kucinich. He's having a 2-day meeting with President
Ahmadinejad in Iran. What do you suppose that's about?
What is the significance of that, someone who has filed
this and stated that Iran is certainly involved in Iraq and
stands to gain considerable influence whether the United States
stays or leaves? What do you think?
Dr. Hoffman. Well, clearly, Iran has always had an active
interest in Iraq because, especially during Saddam Hussein's
time, it felt threatened by Iraq. So that accounts for long-
standing interest, and I think a long-standing ambition that
Iran has had going back to further revolution that brought the
Ayatollah Khomeini to power to be the regional superpower, to
be the hegemon, and indeed it is attempting, I think, to
exercise that influence through Iraq.
Mr. Kucinich. You heard the questions that were asked
before, the Admiral, about what would be the impact on Iraq if
the United States attacked Iran. Do you--do you note any point
at which there is a an alliance of interest other than Muqtada
al-Sadr between Iran and Iraq?
Dr. Hoffman. Well, I think the Iranians have often been
extremely professional in their subversion of Iraqi society and
even their subversion of Iraqi Shi'a groups, so I'm sure they
have a strong influence.
I think I might respectfully disagree with the Admiral. I
would imagine that if--that one of Iran's trump cards, if we
were to launch any offensive operations against Iran, would be
not only to mobilize Hezbollah and its worldwide assets, but
also, I think, to make our existence in Iraq if not
unbearable--then if not untenable then certainly unbearable.
Already one has read of reports in recent months of
thousands of what seem the Iranian citizen militia who have
been trained and sworn to carry out suicide attacks in Iraq to
defend Iran, if so directed.
Mr. Kucinich. One final question and this is directed to
Mr. King. And I want to join in thanking you for the risks that
you took; and we are glad that you are home safe.
You used your study of both the Christian Bible and the
Koran as well as Iraqi tribal history in performing your civil
affairs work; is that correct?
Mr. King. Yes, sir.
Mr. Kucinich. Did you find that the Iraqis that you dealt
with were Islamic fascists?
Mr. King. No, sir, but they had concerns particularly in Al
Anbar both before the war and after that there was a movement
by Wahhabis and others, particularly in Fallujah, Ar Ramadi, Al
Qa'im, Haditha, to try to turn individuals in that area.
Mr. Kucinich. What is the continuing appeal of clerics such
as Muqtada al-Sadr to Iraqis or those who advocate violence
such as al Qaeda?
Mr. King. Al Qaeda is predominantly more--there--they are a
different sect. Muqtada al-Sadr, in my opinion, he would want a
Shi'a Islamic revolution within Iraq. I think he's positioned
within the provincial elections to take control of a large
portion of the south along with SCIRI in Karbala and
Nasiryiyah. The Wahhabis have a whole different idea about
life.
Mr. Kucinich. But why do any of these people have appeal
there?
Mr. King. I would say Malumba, that they have lost their
appeal, they are trying to hold their ground, but that the
tribes in particular no longer want them there. The insurgency,
the Iraqi insurgency, the pure insurgency that wants to see the
return of a Sunni secular government wants them gone and has
gone out of their way, particularly since the end of last year,
to try to rid the area of those particular extremists.
Mr. Kucinich. Would you agree with the Washington Post
story today that Anbar is--the implication from the story that
Anbar is lost?
Mr. King. No, sir. You know, Nassaad Naif, who is the
sheikh out there for the Dulaimis of the Al-Jaza'iri house,
Aniza, who is the sheikh general for the royal family out in
the west, along with a number of others I can name to you, they
are nationalists and they see themselves as Iraqis but again we
go back to history, the Dulaimis, which is predominantly
Dulaimi area, they have always been a problem for any
government, even Saddam's.
Saddam had a problem in 1995; there was an uprising because
he killed one of the members of the tribe. They are going to be
a problem. They have to be dealt with in a very sensitive
political way. The stronger tactics, you take the stronger,
they'll fight back.
Mr. Kucinich. Thank you, Mr. King. I want to thank you,
thank the panel.
Mr. Shays. At this time the Chair would recognize Mr. Van
Hollen.
Mr. Van Hollen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank all of you for your testimony. Sorry I had to go out
for a little while, but I've had a chance to review some of
your written testimony. And thank all of you for your input.
And, Mr. King, thanks to you and your family for your
sacrifices, all of you.
Let me start, if I could, with you, Mr. King, because I
think you identify in your testimony one of the really central
issues here, which is the question about whether or not the
central Iraqi Government, as it's currently constituted, is
going to continue to exercise the levers of power as a central
government that represents all Iraqis, or whether some
components of that government are simply using those levers of
power to further the interests of a particular group.
And you specifically mentioned in your testimony, and I am
quoting here, ``Iraq has formed its internal security along
sectarian lines with the Shi'a-dominated ministry of interior
and the existence of the militias imposing strict
fundamentalist policies, including death squads being
circuitously attributed to the government's inaction or
complacency.''
My question, I guess, is very simple. If that is what is
going on, in other words, if the ministry of interior, which is
supposed to be the Iraqi ministry of interior, is essentially
operating as a wing of certain Shi'a militia movements, how can
we ever expect to end the civil unrest between the different
communities in Iraq?
Mr. King. I believe as long as it is organized in the way
it is, it will continued to be challenged. I think the ministry
of defense has done a more professional job of trying to do
that even though they don't have the levels of representation
of the Sunnis. But I think that the SCIRI's corps, the Badr
Corps, which is the military arm of SCIRI, its infiltration
into the ministry of their death squads and commando units and
the Jaish, which is now seen as one of the faces of insurgency,
their attempts to try to infiltrate the police is a challenge
that we need to try to address; and that is going to be the
most significant issue that is going to--that we are going to
have to deal with in the near future.
Mr. Van Hollen. My--I guess my question is, what are we
doing, what can we be doing? As you say later in your testimony
the SCIRI's Badr Corps-dominated security forces has positioned
a nonstate, acting or in a state-sponsored position, to pursue
its objectives independent of the government's objectives.
But taking with your earlier testimony, with the ministry
of interior, those have become--their government within that
ministry, those are their objectives and given the fact that,
you know, we have an insurgency which, according to the opinion
report, remains potent.
But we obviously have an ongoing--you know, as the General
points out, whatever you call it, the fact of the matter is,
thousands of Iraqis are dying in sectarian violence; and the
ministry of the interior, which is the ministry that has the
responsibility for preventing that kind of sectarian violence
is, according to your testimony, an arm of SCIRI's Badr Corps.
How are we going to deal with it? I would ask all of you
that.
Mr. King. I know that they have taken steps to try to
remove the militias. I don't think that has been as aggressive
as it should be.
Mr. Shays. Could I interrupt to make sure that we know who
``they'' is?
Mr. King. I am sorry. The Iraqi Government has taken steps
to remove individuals. They have gone back through lists of
Baathists. But we will remain challenged in the future as long
as the Badr Corps, who was a trained militia from Iran, and
Jaish al-Mahdi exists and the only way that we can do that is
to aggressively assist the Iraqi Government to remove those
individuals as expeditiously as possible and rebuild the police
to a base level, whatever we establish that base level to be or
the government establishes that base level to be.
Mr. Van Hollen. But you mentioned the Iraqi Government.
SCIRI is the largest--SCIRI is the largest political party.
Mr. King. Yes, sir.
Mr. Van Hollen. And isn't----
Mr. King. SCIRI stands for Supreme Counsel of Islamic
Revolution.
Mr. Van Hollen. I realize there is no easy answer to that,
but it seems to me that we have heard nothing from the
administration, frankly, as to how they are going to deal with
these central issues other than just, ``Trust us, it's going to
get better.''
And the fact of the matter is, the violence is getting
worse and part of the reason it's getting worse is that there
are certain movements within Iraq that, while they say they all
want to be Iraqis, the fact of the matter is, they are using
their positions of influence and power to further the interests
of a particular group and they seem to have the upper hand.
Do they not have the upper hand today?
Mr. King. If I could make one point on that, today, in the
earlier panel's testimony, the discussion about the slow
movement of the government, I would say that, you know, Prime
Minister Maliki is walking a very fine line, right down the
center of the road. And he's got to try to keep the extremists
on the far right, which is about 25 percent of the political
parties that are in power, along with the moderate democrats
and the--you know, the moderates within the Shi'a party, try to
make them all move toward a unified nation.
And he--it is going to be a slow process. I don't think
that we are going to see that in the very near future.
Mr. Van Hollen. Any other predictions?
Dr. Hoffman. Well, it's late in the day to start with small
steps, of course, but if we use small steps, we are never going
to get anywhere.
I think, rather than tackling the militia issue head on,
especially for a government that is dependent on a coalition,
one way to begin to have a positive impact on the ministry of
the interior would be actually to hold the individuals
responsible in the ministry of whom evidence is being gathered,
of whom charges are just waiting.
But there is no political will to bring charges, not for
militia involvement or political affiliation, but rather for
crimes that would be crimes in whatever statutes existed in
Iraq; for corruption or nepotism, and certainly for death squad
activities and human rights abuses. And where there is
evidence, a demonstrable sign of holding people in the ministry
accountable and ending this, there has to be a political step
forward, the will, that is, to hold criminals responsible.
That--in and of itself, whether that would ultimately tip the
balance, I think it would be a realistic step forward; and
without that, we are really doomed and the ministry itself is
doomed.
Mr. Van Hollen. I guess the question there is, who is going
to do the arresting? You have the ministry of the interior who
is responsible for this. Now you can have the army step in, and
we know that there have been some clashes between some of the
death squads and the army.
But I just--I just think if we don't get our hands on this
particular issue, we're obviously in bigger trouble than we are
today, than we are right now.
Dr. Hoffman. You are right, but I think that is critical,
the unknown second step. The first step is for the prime
minister of the government is to take a stand and to order it
to be done, and then there is the practice of implementing it;
but if he's not going to order it, then the challenges you
underscored are that much greater.
Mr. Van Hollen. Mr. Chairman, I asked the earlier panel
about this ongoing discussion within Iraq about the passage of
legislation to create the provinces in the south. And I
understand the constitution allows for that, but I think the
Sunnis believe that there would be some additional possible
modifications to the constitution. They would address some of
their concerns primarily--I guess the--some clear benefit from
Iraqi oil that would be going to the Sunni.
Do you--what is your sense of the political situation right
now? Have the different groups essentially made a decision to
go their own way in Iraq in the sense that they have made a
calculation that they are better off pursuing their own
particular goals and that of their particular groups instead of
the goal of a united Iraq?
Dr. Hoffman. At least among the established parties, I
don't see that yet, even among the Kurds that have always been
the most strident and outspoken about separatism. They are
still staying with the central government.
Even someone like Muqtada al-Sadr, whose motives I wouldn't
begin to divine and who is certainly a highly corrosive
element, I think, of the entire mix but, unfortunately, is the
kingmaker because he has the balance of representatives that
puts whoever is in power there. I think at the moment he is
still participating and holding on to at least a Federalized
system.
But I think it is all reflection of--that in a weak
government, in this power vacuum, everybody at the moment is
hanging back, marshalling their resources, hoping their
opponents are weakened so they'll be in a position in years to
come to fill that vacuum.
So the fact, I think, that all of the representative
political figures in Iraq have held back from civil war is
entirely positive and commendable, but at the same time we have
to be clear it is a reflection of their own power and the
advantage or the opportunity they think at this particular
moment they convene. I think what we have is a constellation of
factions strong enough to assert their own will.
Mr. Van Hollen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Van Hollen.
Gentlemen, I want you to tell me what you agreed and
disagreed with in what the earlier panel said. In other words,
the key point, what--is there anything that you just said, you
have to be kidding me? Or you know, well, a lot of good that
does us because you are so off.
I mean, you weren't sitting passively. Or was it just more
of the same; or good luck, committee, you are never getting the
numbers you want.
I mean, what were you thinking in reaction to the first
panel? You all were here, correct?
General Nash. Yes, sir. I saw a lot more of the same, sir,
from the administration and I've had severe reservations about
this whole--this whole effort. The failure to come to grips
with what is necessary--what is militarily necessary to
accomplish in Iraq and to ask for the necessary resources to
achieve that is a continuous--continuous weakness in the
pursuit of our objectives there if you don't come to grips with
it.
And it goes back to this issue of, you know, if you are
going to--if you are going to be an occupier, at least be a
good occupier and establish security and order and stability.
And then build from there and transition from there if your
intentions are to be good and promote democracy.
Mr. Shays. I would like to say that if you are going to be
a good occupier, what?
General Nash. If you are going to be a good occupier, be
good at it. And then develop a plan to transition to a
democratic free market, respect for civil rights and the like
over time.
But we have never established that modicum of security that
is necessary in Iraq to pursue our political and economic
objectives and to give the Iraqi people a chance to grow. And
that was because of all of the things that everybody has talked
about.
And there is not a willingness to make fundamental changes
in our objectives and be more clear about our objectives. There
is a failure to establish a broader course that takes into
account regional issues that are at the heart of the perception
of the United States' intentions in the region.
And so it is a--so it is--I go back to the expression, we
continue to be neither fish nor fowl in the pursuit of our
objectives. One of the things, sir, that--and I am wrestling in
my own mind about this time line issue that I know you are
concerned with as you look for a way to positively influence
the action. There is great concern about relinquishing the
initiative to those who oppose us, and the time line as the
measurement for progress or as the strategy for pursuing our
objectives is, that is the greatest concern about it; it
relinquishes initiatives.
Mr. Shays. It relinquishes initiatives to whom?
General Nash. To those who oppose us, to the enemy.
Mr. Shays. I don't get that logic one bit. I don't get it
one bit.
General Nash. OK. Sir, if I know you have a plan, if you
know your plan, OK; I am going to wait until it best suits my
interest to act against it. And if you have a plan for
transfer, and I know that I can defeat the replacement better
than I can defeat you, I will delay any initiatives and I will
build my case.
Mr. Shays. Do you have any doubt that the opponents of Iraq
think we will be there indefinitely? Do you think they think we
will be there forever? Even the Iraqis think we are going to
leave too soon. So, I mean, you are not telling them anything
they don't already know.
General Nash. Sir, I understand what you're saying. But to
publish a schedule is to tell them something very specific.
That is what's a concern. The concern also is the fact that I
go back to--I go back to the action that if it becomes set in
concrete, the enemy has a vote to disrupt this. This needs to
be understood.
Mr. Shays. Unless you take the worst-case scenario.
General Nash. I understand.
Mr. Shays. Then if you take the worst-case scenario there's
nothing the enemy can do to make it worse.
General Nash. There's not one person in this town, sir, who
will take the best--worst-case scenario and present it to the
American people for their plan for Iraq.
Mr. Shays. I have looked at classified documents that are
basically the joint military--multinational force campaign
plan. Have you looked at that?
General Nash. No, sir.
Mr. Shays. I will tell you it is about as unrealistic as
you can imagine.
General Nash. I believe that.
Mr. Shays. I mean, the more I look at it, the more angry I
get.
General Nash. Yes, sir.
Mr. Shays. I'm not frustrated. I am angry. I am not
frustrated. It is like I am almost coming to a conclusion--and
this is why I love these hearings. I love getting people who
are so--who focus all their lives about this, because in the
process of your opposing the timeline, I realize why. It is
based, first, on you think the numbers--the baseline number is
really unrealistic. That's the start of it. And if I wasn't
pushing it, I am not sure I would know that in the way that I
know it.
And then the other point, which I think is an easy argument
to refute ultimately is it tells our enemy. I mean, our enemy
knows more than we would care for them to know right now. And
they know this? They know the United States ultimately got out
of Vietnam. They know that we took away the dollars of the
Vietnamese to at least do it on their own. They know that every
American life is so precious that there is a number, whatever
that number is, when Americans will simply say, We're out of
here. They know it.
And they listen to the debate that we have in this country
with half of our constituency against it, and half of Congress,
or close to it, against it. I mean--so it strikes me that the
value of a timeline would be to maybe get Republicans and
Democrats in the same room and say, You want to know that
there's some limit here, and the Iraqis want to know we're not
going to leave too soon. So why not do it on something very
logical? When you are competent, you take our place, and if the
fighting still continues, you are competent to fight them. And
no different than what has existed in Israel for 60-plus years.
So in my logic, my logic says I speak to some Iraqis whose
biggest fear is that we will leave them, but I say that we
won't. I don't know what the election will be like for this new
Congress. And the President can initiate an action but a
President can't fund an action. So I am thinking as well, you
know, we're critical of the Sunni, Shias and Kurds. They don't
have their act together. Republicans and Democrats don't have
their act together in terms of the fact we have men and women
who are risking their lives every day, and we are not coming
together as a country to find a common ground and a common
message so that our troops don't wonder what the hell we're
doing back home; because when I speak to most of our troops,
they're pissed off, excuse me, at what they see on CNN and
they're angry as hell that their government is divided. That's
what I see.
So I don't think we have to tell the insurgents anything
they don't know. Plus, the insurgents think that we're
decadent. They think that we value life so much and they value
the afterworld so much that they're going to beat us. And I
have to tell you at the rate we're going, maybe they're right,
you know, frankly. So maybe in a best-case scenario, timelines
win. But I don't see a best-case scenario. I'd like you to
react to the panel.
Dr. Hoffman. I think that what struck me, although I am not
necessarily sure that a congressional hearing is the place that
you would see this kind of self-reflection, but it seemed to be
a confidence that we have the right--that we have the right
strategy, which has in essence been the same strategy that
we've had for the past 3 years, and yet what I think was coming
out very clearly in the question and answer is that the
situation in Iraq has certainly changed and constantly evolved
over the past 3 years. The situation today I would argue is
very different than it was even a year ago. Unfortunately it
tends to get more complex and more violent. But nonetheless, I
don't think that our strategy has kept pace with those changes
and we've stuck with, in essence, the same plan; that we can
very quickly and expeditiously, more so than is realistic,
buildup the Iraqi Army and police so that we can get out of
there without accepting, I think, that----
Mr. Shays. And the only thing that has changed, frankly, is
the timeline of when all of that will happen. So in other
words, it is a strategy that just keeps pushing back the dates.
Dr. Hoffman. Well, and seeks--and continues to seek
improvement by doing in essence the same thing but just
changing around sometimes the organizational boxes. I mean, I
think this has been the case with the police, is that 3 years
into this process, I mean, as we heard in the previous panel,
the police are still untrained. Certainly they compare very
unfavorably to the Iraqi Army, and not only are they untrained
but they're subverted and infiltrated so their loyalty is even
in doubt. But yet we keep investing in the same approaches and
the same strategies.
Mr. Shays. Let me ask, is that fair in this case? Because
they are reviewing the national police in particular and
looking to that, who's competent or not. Is that not a sincere
effort?
Dr. Hoffman. No. I think it is a sincere effort, certainly,
with some of the commando units in Baghdad. I think they have
been reformed and there has been a vetting, but what always
worries me is that it's either too little too late or only
piecemeal. And going back to Representative Van Hollen's
question, I think without the political will to really rout out
thoroughly the corruption, the sectarianism, the abuses in the
Ministry of the Interior, that even reforming units are
attempting to do this on an individual basis without that
direct political leadership from the center and political--the
center meaning the centralized government--again it's still
going to be at the margins.
Mr. Shays. Any other point before I go to Mr. King?
Dr. Hoffman. Just one other thing is just that even in the
case of the Washington Post story about Al-Anbar Province that
Representative Kucinich talked about this morning, it only
strikes me--and this I think also came out in the testimony
this morning--that so much of our assumptions in in Iraq are
just based on conjecture. It's what we think the insurgents
want, what we think motivates the insurgents. I mean,
Representative Kucinich feels strongly, or at least my
understanding of what he was saying, it's the presence of
American forces and in some cases the actions of the American
forces that have motivated the insurgents and perhaps increased
their numbers.
I would take a different view, and I would say that in part
it's our inability to secure Iraq, to create a sense of
stability where the situation, even where there have been
improvements, has been worsened and which has dashed
expectations on the part of the problem, has created a vacuum
which has breathed life into lawlessness; because I think the
message in Iraq is that lawlessness stays or at least you can
get away with it. So that's on the one hand.
On the other hand, we still don't or have never had a clear
idea of this enemy. We have never done a systematic
intelligence collection and analysis of the morale and
motivation of the organization, of the sources of dissents, and
of the fault lines within the insurgent movement. Instead our
intelligence operations----
Mr. Shays. Would you say insurgent movements or insurgent
movement?
Dr. Hoffman. Movements. Movements. In other words, the
thousands of detainees we have--and we've been doing this since
2003--we lean on them for high-value target information. We
look to them, and I think quite rightly, to extract force
protection and information, but we're just thinking of this in
tactical terms and getting an immediate solution. We are not
thinking of this strategically and understanding them, building
up the detailed knowledge of why in fact--I think the question
isn't that Al-Anbar Province--that the United States is failing
in Al-Anbar Province, as the Washington Post suggested. The
question I would have--what I missed here this morning is, why
is it failing? And what is our analysis based on? It's usually
based on us viewing the Iraqi problem through our own prism,
but not really, and we've never really understood our adversary
there.
Mr. Shays. Thank you. I'm going to come to you as soon as I
do Mr. King first.
Mr. King. I think the most significant comment that was
made was that we're focusing on a counterinsurgency. That's the
process for the defense, building the defense forces. But we
still have to look at what the external threats are if we were
to leave. And if they can take care of themselves internally,
if that's the instinct we want, and if we can clearly establish
a timeline to get there, who's going to take care of the
external influences, whether it's Iran or Syria or others, once
we do leave, if they're just taking care of themselves?
You know, I was responsible on the day that the regime fell
for reestablishing the police department, put in that
individual named Vince Crabb. He was dubbed sheriff of Baghdad
by the press. And the police were corrupt before we got there,
and they're corrupt now. You know, the year of the police--I
understand and I respect that particular operational endeavor,
but I think that we need to take a deeper look at that.
Mr. Shays. Let me just inject myself, though. When we
eliminated all the police, all the border patrol and all the
Army and we stood up or started to stand up the police, the
only time I really came close to weeping was when there were a
whole group of Iraqi policemen who we gave no weapons to in
Baghdad, and then a terrorist group went in and went from
office to office and just obliterated them. I tell you, that to
me was like one of the hardest moments I've had. And just think
of the message that gave every Iraqi. You know, we're going to
train you to be a policeman, we're not going to give you
uniforms, we're not going to give you guns. We set them up,
that they're in the office and they get obliterated.
Mr. King. On that 13 days that I was responsible, we put
5,000 police officers back to work 1,400 firemen. The police
officers were armed. We gave them--we actually took a cache
every day of pistols and gave them pistols and AK-47s. When
ORHOC came in, they disbanded the police and wanted to do
assessments and start from scratch. That was where we lost
ground. They already knew what was the problem: It was broke.
We at least had a starting point and had some momentum.
The biggest thing that I--I believe that should be
addressed is, again, we're focusing on internal security
through counterinsurgency operations but we're not focusing on
what it would take to be able to secure themselves externally
against an external threat; i.e., Iran or Syria if they were to
come across the border with heavy weapons.
Mr. Shays. Isn't that our easiest problem right now,
though? In other words, that's the least of their problems
right now, isn't it, because we can provide that protection.
Mr. King. Yes, sir. But that's the issue. If we're talking
about now a timeline, when can we withdraw----
Mr. Shays. But isn't there a difference between troops who
are--our American troops are patrolling the streets of Baghdad
and Basra and you name it, getting blown up and shot at and
troops based--doing operations that are military operations. I
mean, there's a huge difference between those.
Mr. King. Yes, sir. I would give you an analogy. When I
moved into the city, I took over the palace. I sent my troops
around to knock on every door in a four-block area. And we
said, We're here, and here's what we do, and what's your most
significant concern? At that particular time, it was early in
the liberation.
Mr. Shays. When was it?
Mr. King. This was May-June timeframe of 2003.
Mr. Shays. Early spring, summer.
Mr. King. Yes, sir. But when my soldier was killed, when he
was killed by an IED, the same one that Major Gardner was
injured in, they came to us that night and told us who did it.
And we were able to capture him 5 weeks later; we caught the
five guys who did it. When I was ambushed and my bodyguard was
killed, that next morning they called and told me which tribe
did it. I called the sheik of the tribe and a week later they
told me who it was and it had been taken care of. That's the
type----
Mr. Shays. Now, at that great moment when we're going--so
what turned that around, in your judgment? I don't want to--
this is about as important a question as I could ask you.
Because I was there early on and I saw that kind of effort on
the part of the military. So what, in your judgment, turned
that around?
Mr. King. You know I went up with the first troops. We
fought our way up. By the end of April, every one of my teams
had been in some direct action. Even though we were a support
element, we were civil affairs, we weren't supposed to be
fighting and we were supposed to be helping them. We weren't a
direct action. I fought a group of Syrians on the 10th of
April. But there are troops that followed who didn't realize
that our point, as I made in my statement, we had won the war,
we had defeated a--decisively defeated an armed enemy. At that
moment, though, the war for Iraq began and the objective was
the people. We were there to help the people. And kinetic
responses, particularly in this society, aren't necessarily the
only way when we don't have enough----
Mr. Shays. So it was replacement troops or--how long were
you there? Do you understand the question I am asking? I mean,
you are talking to a Peace Corps volunteer. I have no trouble
understanding what you are telling me.
And I remember when we were in Iraq in April in, a guy
Mohammed Abdul Hassan basically was telling us as we asked
questions, What are we doing to make you uncomfortable? He
said, You throw candy on the ground and our children pick it up
like children--excuse me, like chickens. They're not chickens.
And at one point he kind of grabbed me on the shoulder and he
said, You don't know us, and we don't know you.
Now, when we went in August, we met certain military groups
that were doing tremendous outreach just like you did. I want
to know, in your judgment, what stopped that? Was that the next
group that came in that didn't know it was their
responsibility? Was that a decisive leadership change that said
stop doing this and do something else? What was it?
Mr. King. It was an understanding. I mean for me and my
successor, we had a good handoff. And he took on my mission and
continued it on. But his successor saw no value added with
engaging the sheiks, and he just disbanded the entire
operation. They had no one to turn to at that point.
For me, I wrote a paper in June 2003 that explained the
Iraqi culture and the differences and the misperceptions we had
about how Saddam dealt with them. Like the regular police
couldn't go kick in the door. They had to go get the
neighborhood Ba'athist to go and knock on the door. The secret
police could. But that wasn't everybody. But when we kicked
in--even when I caught----
Mr. Shays. When you say ``could,'' who could?
Mr. King. The secret police in Saddam's regime could kick
in the door, but the regular police couldn't.
Mr. Shays. Why was that?
Mr. King. That was the rules of engagement. Like for me,
when I caught Saddam's doctor and bodyguard and driver, we
thought Saddam was inside. And our reinforcements hadn't showed
up, a large crowd had gathered. I just decided to knock on the
door and ask, Is Saddam at home?
Mr. Shays. You decided to do what?
Mr. King. I just knocked on the door and said, Is Saddam in
here? I didn't kick in the door, I didn't run into the women's
quarters. I didn't drag him out. I made that individual walk me
door to door within that building to secure it. But we caught
Saddam's doctor, bodyguard, and driver, along with a suitcase
of clothes that we believe was for Saddam, without having to
do, you know, a hostile raid. I only had to do that one time
the entire time I was there, and caught, you know, number 23
off the deck of cards, number 55 off the deck of cards,
caught--Baghdad Bob walked in my office and surrendered. The
chairman of atomic energy walked in and surrendered, the former
Ambassador to Russia walked in and surrendered. All these were
former Ba'athist individuals. But it was because of a trust
that I had built and with a relationship. I stayed. I didn't
have the turnover. There was a lot of turnover in those days.
They were there for 90 days, 6 months. There wasn't a long-term
commitment. These people build everything on relationships. Who
can they go to? And once the relationships changed and they
don't have that same one, there's a level--there's a time
period where trust has to be rebuilt. And in the early days in
the transfer of battle space, some of that was lost.
Mr. Shays. Thank you. The gentleman from Maryland has been
very generous and patient. He has as much time as he wants.
Mr. Van Hollen. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And
thank all of you again for your testimony.
Dr. Hoffman, I think you sort of summed up the situation
very well when you said it's more complex and more violent
today than it's been in the past. And in fact it is getting
more complex and more violent. It is amazing that we have not
done as a country the kind of in-depth analysis you talked
about with regard to the different groups, their different
motivations, and how that impacts our decisionmaking process
here.
I want to go back to the issue of trying to get a political
settlement in Iraq, because I think General Casey has said it
many times, and others as well. If you don't get a political
settlement among these different groups and address the
different interests that are at play here, you're not going to
be able to resolve the insurgency or the civil war situation.
There's a lot of focus on training the Iraqi troops, and that's
very important. We want the highest quality troops. But it
doesn't do us any good if we teach someone to shoot better and
be a better shot if they don't have loyalty to the central
government and we're simply improving the lethality of the
militia.
And so while, you know, it's important to go over these
statistics about who's trained and who's not trained, until we
get the political pieces right, we're not going to be able to
resolve this issue.
Now, General Nash, I noticed you had served in a couple
places. You were in Bosnia as well as Kosovo. And I guess if
you could draw on that experience to look at what's happening
in Iraq today. We're going to hear on one of our later panels,
I think it's the third set--third set of hearings from
Ambassador Peter Galbraith, who served as our U.S. Ambassador
to Croatia, who has just written a book called The End of Iraq.
And his analysis is petty simple. Iraq has fallen apart, and
now we are spending a lot of time trying to put it back
together. It's not that it's together and we're trying to keep
it from falling apart, it's the opposite. And he essentially
comes to the conclusion, not with any joy, but looking at the
reality of the situation on the ground, that having a strong
central government in Iraq isn't going to happen. Not because
he doesn't want it to happen but because the constituent groups
in Iraq have decided that it's not in their interest to make it
happen.
If you could please just comment on that based on your
experience in the Balkans.
General Nash. Well, thank you, sir. You know, the earlier
panel, there were quite--you asked questions about analogies to
the Balkans, or that issue came up. And of course there are
many tactical lessons we have learned in the Balkans that could
have helped us a great deal in Iraq.
Decisive initial force. I mean, one of the things you talk
about, force levels, when I give a talk about Bosnia, I always
say we took too many folks to Bosnia but we didn't know it at
the time. And we were able in a year to reduce a significant
amount, and that's a better way of doing things than scrambling
from the bottom up.
I think the political dynamics, though, of Iraq today,
there's not going to be a strong Federal Government in Iraq for
a long, long time. I just--the political circumstances are such
that I don't think you can put it back together. And so there
has to be a central--I think--I think it is to the United
States' interest to promote a central body that has a degree of
influence on international affairs and military action in the
region. I think it's also to the Iraqi people's advantage to
have an arrangement where the resources and riches of the
country, not only oil but in agriculture, another potential of
the country, is shared in a reasonable manner. But the fact--
because of the neighborhood they live in, and because of a long
number of historical issues that they face, we're not going to
have this one-state model with 18 provinces that participate in
it federally.
Whether we could have achieved that, if we had done things
differently at the beginning, I don't know. I think we could
have ameliorated some of these forces in a variety of ways, but
we are where we are.
So one of the issues about time is trying to provide a
sufficient umbrella to allow these political forces to work
out. My recommendation is, is that we need extraordinary effort
to try to--to try to allow that accommodation. And our ability
to influence it is absolutely limited. But there is a need to
try to let it occur, and there are a number of actions that I
could go on and on about to try to promote it to some degree;
but I do not have a great confidence that we're going to see a
solution at any short-term period of time, and I don't think
we're going to--and while I disagree with the op-ed that Peter
Galbraith wrote several years ago now about the three-state
solution, I am afraid his contemporary forecast is--may not be
too likely to come about.
Mr. Van Hollen. If I could, I don't know if anyone else has
a comment on that, but let me followup. Because I think we all
agree that given the fact it is Dr. Hoffman who said it's more
complicated and more violent than--and what we're doing now is
clearly not working. It doesn't seem to be pushing forward a
political settlement and political reconciliation in Iraq. And
my view is that questions about U.S. force levels and decisions
as with respect to time, you need to be tied to political
decision points within Iraq, but if we're going to do that
we've got to identify some. And the fact of the matter is, I
haven't heard anything coming out of the administration with
respect to what those political decision points would be.
We were supposed to have a renewed discussion on the
Constitution at the end of August. I don't know when that's
going to happen now. We have this legislation that's being
considered, pushed by the Shias to develop the autonomous
province in the south, which is clearly an indicator of where
they're coming down in terms of these issues by pushing that
forward before beginning the conversation on the Constitution.
And I am just interested in what political decision points they
made, because otherwise more of the same is not a strategy.
It's a strategy for failure because the situation is getting
worse and we have a Pentagon report that says it--I mean
Congress required they tell us this. It's one of the few things
they've sort of been straightforward about. They have to do it.
But it's clearly, you know--we've all heard that the definition
of insanity is knocking your head against the wall, keep doing
the same thing, and expect a different result. Well, we're not
getting different results other than worse results. So what
would those political decision points be?
And, you know, I think some hard questions are going to be
asked. Why isn't, you know, what about--Senator Biden and, you
know, we would not agree with every element of the plan but at
least they're talking about some political solution here and
whether--they've got some ideas out here. I haven't heard
anything from the Bush administration in this regard. And we
might not like sort of the prescription of Ambassador
Galbraith, but what he says is he doesn't like it either.
It's just a reflection of reality on the ground. It's a
reflection of these migrations taking place within Iraq today.
It's a reflection of the fact that if you took a referendum in
the Kurdish area, well over 90 percent of the Kurds say they
want independence. I know the Sunni leaders in Baghdad say
something different, but that's not necessarily a reflection of
the will of the people there. So he comes to it more out of
sort of sorrow than any joy here.
And you know, I agree with you, General Nash. From the U.S.
perspective, the best solution would be an Iraq that stays
together for a whole host of foreign policy reasons. Iran's on
the border. Yeah, we've got all sorts of questions with Turkey
and the Kurdish issue, but how much--if it's a question of
putting it back together and what we're doing now is not
working, and you know--I know you talked about resources, and
you may or may not agree, but there's--there's no one--the
administration's not talking about more troops in.
So really, what are the political decision points that we
need to be looking at? I understand your testimony about
timetables, set timetables for withdrawal, not putting them
fixed in legislation. I happen to agree with you. But then we
need a political--we need some key political decision points
with respect to making these critical decisions. What are your
recommendations?
Dr. Hoffman. Well, I'll jump in. It gives my colleagues
time to think. Of course it's a difficult question. I mean, at
the risk of perhaps putting it too simplistically, I think
there's two big main choices that--or two main questions we
have to ask ourselves. Are we determined to see this process
through? Or at what point does it actually have a lay-down
marker? Or do we just give up and say that if there are no
advances then it's not going to succeed?
From my perspective, unlike my two colleagues that actually
fought in counterinsurgencies or at least in environments like
that, I have only studied them for brief periods, served in
those environments in an advisory capacity. But in some
respects this isn't that different from many of the issues that
we debated in these rooms over Vietnam or El Salvador.
Just take a more recent--the more recent conflict in El
Salvador. I mean, this was an involvement that began during the
Reagan administration, that originally had enormous bipartisan
support, and we faced I think very similar challenges. First we
went in there and we had to completely rebuild the Salvadorean
armed forces. We had to retrain the military and the police. We
initially tried to do it very quickly on the cheap. When
General Warner went in there in 1981, for example, he came back
and said that it would take 3 years and cost about $300
million, and he was laughed at for being overly pessimistic, I
think a scenario we might have seen played out 3 years ago in
Washington.
It ended up taking a decade and ended up costing over $6
billion. So it took tremendous investment. Even then you could
still point to failures in El Salvador. We trained every
Salvadorean officer in the United States. This wasn't a matter
of a handful of advisors or a small portion given their
military force training. Every officer was trained in the
United States. We created their NCO core. We had multiple
training missions. Not just--I mean, same problem we have with
the police in Iraq. Not just make them technically better. We
improved their technical capabilities, their fighting
capabilities. They then went out and engaged in death squad
activities. We had to go out and stop that.
Even in 1989, even in the last years just as the cold war
was ending, the main insurgent group there had a last spasm of
activity nationwide, urban uprising, and exactly that unit, one
of the most elite units of the Salvadorean military, a unit
that had just been trained by the U.S. special forces mobile
training team, went to the university of San Salvador, as you
may recall, killed 14 Jesuit priests who they believed were
sympathizers. They had been trained repeatedly by us.
That's part of I think the challenge and the time that it
took. But at the end of the day, even with the enormous
setbacks in San Salvador it took a decade in an even less
complex and a less violent society--although El Salvador is
pretty violent--than Iraq. We still haven't built the
foundations for democracy that exist today and that has to be
one of our guiding principles.
Is what we're doing in Iraq worth it and do we have the
stomach and the stamina to stay with it? As an insurgency
analyst, as a terrorism analyst, from my point of view--and
this is an apolitical statement--but just as a terrorism
specialist, I worry very much that declaring victory and
leaving precipitously, getting fed up and withdrawing and
leaving Iraq to whatever fate awaits it is going to be a call
to our enemies, and not necessarily to our enemies in the
region, to al Qaeda and to associated Jihadists who will see
this exactly as they did in the late 1980's, that they defeated
then what was then one of the two superpowers, the Soviet
Union, and then they decided to take on the United States.
This isn't just conjecture or myths or legends, that for
the last year at least when I was at Rand, I spent time
studying documents that our forces seized in Afghanistan to
learn about al Qaeda's early history in the early 1980's, where
it got its ideology strategy, and this is something that is
undeniable, that they have hubris, that they were so full of
themselves, having defeated the Soviet Union, they sought to
turn on the United States. That's what I worry about, not
having the determination committed to resolve Iraq.
Admittedly, we may have gotten involved far too hastily in
our planning, especially in our phase 4 planning. It may have
been ill-considered involvement in retrospect, but I think
equally hasty and equally ill-considered withdrawal from Iraq
will indeed affect us in very adverse ways in the future.
Mr. Van Hollen. If I could just--one last thing Mr.
Chairman. Let me just--on the El Salvador analogy--and I think
there's some very good points made there, and you said Iraq was
even more complicated. And one of the major complicating
factors is the sectarian violence between the Sunni and the
Shia. We can have a discussion about to what extent that was
latent before we went in and to what extent it has been
aggravated, and obviously the bombing of the Golden Mosque was
a major catalyst for that. But there was clearly concerns about
that possibility before the bombing of the Golden Mosque.
Now, with respect to al Qaeda, I do think--and given that
this hearing covers lots of many issues--but you would agree,
would you not--and let's put aside the situation that exists
today and what we should or should not do and how al Qaeda will
or will not interpret it. You would agree, would you not, that
until the United States went into Iraq, the likelihood of al
Qaeda being able to use Iraq as some kind of base of operations
was minimal; that in fact Saddam Hussein was not an ideological
compatriot of al Qaeda; that he was in fact in many cases a
secularist who used Islam in his--for political convenience;
that he was in fact, as I said, the ideological opposite of
Osama bin Laden. And in fact, whatever we decide to do going
forward we have now created a mess with al Qaeda in Iraq that
did not exist before we went in there.
Dr. Hoffman. Sir, I don't disagree with you at all. If you
asked me that question in 2001, 2002, 2003, as I did say it
then, I would have said the same thing.
Mr. Van Hollen. But you don't disagree?
Dr. Hoffman. I don't disagree.
Mr. Van Hollen. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the
hearing.
Mr. Shays. We're going to close up very shortly. Wesley is
getting hungry. I am getting hungry. He did want to know about
our hearing on Wednesday and Thursday and said, is my dad going
to get to testify? And I said, Wesley, I'm sorry to report you
will have to be at school on Wednesday and Friday--rather, on
Wednesday and Thursday. But he told me he's a good student so
he was able to get away today. So that was good.
I don't believe we can fail in Iraq. I believe that
failure--forget what it does to oil prices. It means that there
will be an all-out civil war. It means that the Islamist
terrorists will win and be emboldened, and it means that Iran
will clearly be the dominant force. So it's not an option. It's
just not an option.
The only issue that I am wrestling with is, one, what do we
do to make sure we win? And I am left with the fact that--and
I'll tell you someone else who didn't think--doesn't think we
can afford to lose, and that's Thomas Friedman who, writing for
the New York Times, has basically said, you know, he thinks we
are now baby-sitting a civil war; and as he points out, he had
one bullet left in his gun, and he fired it off to get people
to wake up.
I believe that--the one thing that I am concluding in this
hearing that I didn't think I would feel with the intensity I
feel now, it is so clear that our baseline is too low, and that
there is no way I can justify it being so low except for the
fact there are people in the Department of Defense who have a
history of justifying that low baseline, that maybe the only
way that baseline--and we have an honest dialog about that
baseline, is getting people in who have no connection to those
decisions. And that raises the fact, then, you have new
leadership and all the leadership changes that would take place
in the Department of Defense. But I am convinced as strongly as
I was, that the way we need to proceed, and it's contrary to
your--all three of your advice, particularly two of you, is
that we need to know logically what that baseline is. We then
need to understand that as an Iraqi has been trained, been in
office, been in position for a year in the line of fire, that
they have capabilities that then justify our removing troops.
We can predict to the day when that is because we know how long
it takes to train. We know what their record is in staying. We
know the competence of those who stayed after a year. We know
how many are competent and how many aren't.
So I don't--I am not convinced by your reluctance to move
forward with that, though I have to say, you obviously are all
experts. I am convinced--one thing you haven't told me is what
do we do to change it; what do we do to get people to wake up?
And none of you have come forward with any suggestion of how we
do that.
So maybe I'll end with that question. If you don't want a
timeline, if you don't want that, if you tell me what gives the
political will to the Iraqis to move forward with the same kind
of an intensity they had in 2005--and you can't have it both
ways, you can't be against some kind of timeline and then tell
me you want changes without telling me what brings that change.
So I put my best solution on the table. I would like you to end
up with your best solution.
General Nash. Sir, I want to begin with a word of thanks.
Thanks for a serious discussion and a commitment to try to do
the Nation's deed. And for that I am very grateful, and I wish
there were more of you in the room.
Mr. Shays. Thank you for saying that.
General Nash. Sir, I begin with a positive statement about
a timeline. It drives debate, and that's the debate we need to
have. And so I would encourage--I would encourage all methods
to cause an intelligent discussion. And I sat here, again,
reflecting on panel one with great frustration for the lack of
serious dialog and open dialog on the issues.
My biggest problem with a timeline as a strategy, sir, is
that I don't know what I have when the timeline is finished.
And we want to draw--to write a timeline on the replacement of
military--security forces by other security forces, and I don't
know if the number 325,000 is the right number, and I don't
know if the 150,000 is the right number.
Mr. Shays. We do know this, we do know that the 325 is not
the right number.
General Nash. Yes, sir. I do know it's not.
Mr. Shays. We don't know what is the right number.
General Nash. Oh, sir, I don't know, but it's closer to
500,000 than it is 325,000. The current plan does not call for
a sufficient security of the borders.
Mr. Shays. OK. No, I just wanted----
General Nash. It's somewhere in there, and the right number
of 150 for 150 is somewhere between 200 and 250. OK, that's the
same number I said in the summer of 02, by the way, 250,000.
But in any case, that's not the crucial issue. The crucial
issue is the political settlement. So, are you going to drive a
political settlement that will sustain the country and achieve
the U.S. objectives of a place that will not harbor terrorists,
it will be peaceful with itself and with its neighbors? And so
it's that transition, that development of a political
institution power-sharing arrangement that is the driving
factor on American success in the country.
Mr. Shays. Let me interrupt you there, because you and I
totally agree with that. And I agree with you about the other
part on the number of troops. The baseline is too low. Isn't it
logical to assume that if the Iraqis know it's on their
shoulder and not ours, that they are going to have a much
better chance of success if they sit down, Shias and Kurds.
Now, the Iraqi--the Shias will tell me the Sunnis want too
much. I agree. The Sunnis will tell me when I visit them, the
Shias are not giving them enough. I agree. So it strikes me
that if they know and they can plan for it and know that in a
year we will reduce so many of our troops and 18 months so many
more, that they have an incentive to do the very thing you
said. And so you tell me what gives them the incentive that's
better than that.
General Nash. Sir, the first thing I want to emphasize
before I answer your specific question is that there are major
forces at play that do not want to--that are working very hard
to ensure a political accommodation is not achieved.
Mr. Shays. Right.
General Nash. And so as we talk about incentives for the
Iraqi people, a non-unitary--you know, not a single object
there but the players, the Iraqi players in all of this--even
if there's a group of good-faith negotiators, Sunni, Shia, Kurd
and they come within--they melt--they boil themselves down to
just those three players in looking for accommodation, which is
a large assumption, then there's still major forces that have
every--that chaos is the objective.
Mr. Shays. We understand that. But it's not all. And the
logic there is you isolate those. You bring some clerics on
board, and you isolate the others, and then everybody goes
after the others.
General Nash. Right. But again, that is not necessarily--
that is the enemy who is least conducive to a timeline
development.
Mr. Shays. I understand. I understand.
General Nash. All right. With respect to the development of
the political institutions, I agree that the discussion--that
a--that an event, a condition-based strategy, should have an
associated timeline. That is always done. No matter what they
say, you know, here when you do a condition, an event-driven
matrix, you're looking at time limits for that.
Mr. Shays. I would like you to tell me your best suggestion
on how you get the political part of the equation to be more
aggressive, and I haven't heard anything yet.
General Nash. I would combine economic incentives or the
lack thereof as a major element. I would include an element of
security assistance, OK, beyond that of six helicopters and
five C-130's and a very small navy, so they have a chance to
have a real military force and have influence in the area. They
have no choice under the current military structure the United
States is designing than to find ways to accommodate themselves
with their neighbor to the east. They have to get along with
Iran. They have no choice. We're designing the force in that
manner. I would go to Tehran myself if I were the President of
Iraq, because I can't afford any kind of conflict with them.
Mr. Shays. I agree with that. That's a very interesting
point.
General Nash. So those are some of the incentives both on
the security side and on the economic side that I would----
Mr. Shays. I'm biased, but I like my suggestion to motivate
them better than yours.
General Nash. OK.
Mr. Shays. Dr. Hoffman.
Dr. Hoffman. Firstly, I never met with General Nash before,
and I find myself agreeing with him on many things, but none
more than on thanking you and Representative Van Hollen for
these hearings and for this opportunity to really address you
in a much longer time that I have ever had in any other
congressional hearing. Thank you very much.
Mr. Shays. Thank you for thanking us.
Dr. Hoffman. I will go back--I think it's fine to set a
timeline, but I go back to when we first met, which was 7 years
ago when you were conducting hearings long before September
11th on why we don't have a strategy for countering terrorism
or why we don't have a strategy for our counterterrorism
policies. And I think if we're going to set a timeline, we have
to ask the same questions: How can we stick with the same
strategy then? And that we have to realize that there's a
military term, you don't reinforce failure, but it seems we
haven't been succeeding in the past 3 years. Yet we keep
investing in the same piecemeal basis and the same strategy
that obviously isn't succeeding.
So I think it has to be a political will on our part
firstly to make the commitment, if the Iraqis will make the
commitment to see this through--and I will come to the Iraqi
side of the dimension in a second--but also to have the
commitment ourselves. If we're going to set a timeline then we
have to be much more reflective on where we've gone wrong in
the last 3 years and not just keep repeating the same mistake.
In terms of the Iraqis I think--and again, maybe it's my
practical approach to this problem that may also be naive--but
I think there are any number of small steps that can bring
about a much longer stride and that we just haven't pushed the
Iraqis hard enough. I think there's plenty of people, as you
well know from your trips to Baghdad, in the embassy and in the
military who know what needs to be done. It's just the problem
of doing it. I think first and foremost, there should be a
conscription on the part of the Iraqis. I'm still surprised, if
I'm not mistaken, that there is no national conscription in
Iraq. We're just soliciting volunteers, whether it's for the
police or for the Iraqi Army. If this really is their fight----
Mr. Shays. Let me just ask you this, though, to interrupt
to clarify. Are you aware that they're having a hard time
getting volunteers? My understanding is that they don't. But
has that changed?
Dr. Hoffman. No. I think they still are getting volunteers.
It's part of the reflection of the economy as well, as well as
everything else, but no. As a national commitment, though, I
think that for conscription would be one step because I think
that would require other things that the Iraqis have resisted
that I believe are essential for counterinsurgency. You can't
have a conscription if you don't know who your population is.
So you have to have a detailed census and you also are going to
have to issue national ID cards so you know who people are,
and, when they turn the proper age, get them into office. We
have been pushing the Iraqis, at least since I was with the CPA
2 years ago, to have some sort of census.
Mr. Shays. Let me ask if you had conscription--in other
words, you would basically have a draft.
Dr. Hoffman. Exactly.
Mr. Shays. Then you are talking about potentially millions
rather than 325,000.
Dr. Hoffman. Well, we could control the numbers.
Mr. Shays. So it's an interesting proposal because
basically what you would do is you would basically be in a
sense, you would have--some of these young folks you would be
having literally in your military in bases under the
supervision of somebody else, rather than on the streets doing
battle.
Dr. Hoffman. Well, of course, it would only work if we had
the same kind of commitment, perhaps a bigger troop commitment,
to have the trainers to train this new army. But this may be,
you know, completely half or even quarter baked. The only
reason I thought of it was when you were discussing Israel
earlier, I thought, what is one of the things that accounts for
Israeli national cohesion is that there's universal service,
and this is absolutely essential for Israelis for integrating
the diversity of the people who are Israelis. So that's at the
top of my head, trying to----
Mr. Shays. No, no. And I appreciate that a lot.
Dr. Hoffman. Going out. And then I also thought, well, the
conscription issue demonstrates the Iraqi commitment. But also
as I said, the kinds of accounting that you would have to have
for it would push the Iraqis in other directions. You can't
have an insurgence if you don't know where--who the people are
and where they're going. And that's been one of the biggest
problems. That's why the British succeeded in Northern Ireland
is through license plates; they could find out if someone was
out of place, and was traveling across Northern Ireland at a
place they shouldn't be, and they could then ask the questions.
We have no such ability in Iraq.
And then I would say as a fourth, go back to a point that I
answered to Mr. Van Hollen's question is that also, if we're
going to make this investment in training and true Iraqi
national military, then also there has to be a purging of their
discordant and corrupt sectarian elements from the MOI,
wherever else; and this is the political will that has to be
demonstrated by the leadership in Iraq. Then we get to the
problem.
This was the same problem we had in Vietnam and also in El
Salvador. It's conditionality and trying to get our--you know,
who the government we're mentoring to actually do these things.
But perhaps the firm timeline, I think setting the timeline
on its own won't solve the problem. But setting the timeline,
as you argue we need to do, with perhaps these very firm points
that have to be done as part of a change in strategy and policy
might provide the influence and the pressure for the Iraqis to
change. I mean, it may be--and I am not saying this at all in a
partisan way. But it may be that we just need a new perspective
here. When the British--the first 3 years in Malaya, in the
late 1940's and early 1950's, were failing dismally. In fact, a
lot of the same problems we see in Iraq existed in Malaya.
That's held up now as one of the--the leading ways to solve a
counterinsurgency. Actually, it was the death of the high
commissioner at the time and then a change of government that
resulted in just a new approach.
Now, again, I am not saying this is partisan, that we
should have a clean broom, but what I am saying is that if
we're going to have a timeline, we need a new strategy and we
need people who will have an honest discussion about what the
new strategy should be.
Mr. Shays. I would just note for the record, that would be
a change in the administration, not in Congress. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. King.
Mr. King. I would also like to emphasize thank you for the
opportunity to share my thoughts with you today and provide
testimony.
I was one of the primary cease-fire negotiators on Fallujah
One, and the one thing that came across during our
negotiations, Iraqis have never won a war but they've never
lost a negotiation. And they're quite apt at that. So the
political dialog would have to be pushed from our side for all
the groups to come together.
The most recent move by Barzani to not fly the Iraqi flag,
which sort of flies in the face toward the other Iraqis, that
was one of those things that we need to address.
Mr. Shays. Explain the flag again.
Mr. King. This past week, Mr. Barzani directed that in his
areas they no longer fly the Iraqi flag but the Kurdish flag.
So I mean, if we're trying to move toward a unified government,
a unified country, I mean that flies in the face of it. To set
a realistic baseline, obviously 325,000 individuals for a
country the size of Iraq with 26--you know, 26 to 28 million
people may be a little low. That will establish the end state.
How long will it take us to get there? When will they be
prepared to take over their own security? And that will allow
us to design a timeline based on that end state, that process.
And I agree with Dr. Hoffman that we're probably looking at 7
to 10 years for this to take place.
To help the judicial system, they only--they look at having
1,500 judges. I think they're at 720 today, less than half of
what they need. This causes a problem for the rule of law, the
implementation. So, to help the commission of the public
integrity to sort out some of the issues within the Ministry of
Interior and move those forward. Yes, sir, thank you again very
much.
Mr. Shays. Is there any last comment that any of you would
like to make before we adjourn? If not, we are not adjourning.
We are recessing, correct? Yeah. And that's all I need. We are
recessing until Wednesday.
And, Wesley, recessing means that we will be back here on
Wednesday but with new panels. Your dad has done his job
extraordinarily well, as have you, Dr. Hoffman and you, General
Nash. And it's been an honor and a real education to have you
before the committee, and I thank you very much. So we stand in
recess until 10 on Wednesday. Thank you all very much.
[Whereupon, at 2:57 p.m., the subcommittee recessed, to
reconvene at 10 a.m. On Wednesday, September 13, 2006.]
[The prepared statement of Hon. Jon C. Porter and
additional information submitted for the hearing record
follow:]
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