this meeting of the committee on foreign affairs will come to order over the next week our committee will hold three hearings on iraq today we receive assessment of the nonpartisan general accountability office on iraq's governance track record based on benchmarks established by congress as we undertake this review and others in the coming days it is imperative that we look at iraq with the broader us possibile lands what we see is for the future of iraq as the g a o report shows in great detail this is some ssion is fatally flawed prime minister maliki has run his government protect shiite power the united states once the iraqi government to pursue a more flexible policy towards lower level members of the  stymied this move at every step and in so doing has demonstrated to the sunni population that this government is not their government prime minister maliki's shiite first policies have contributed directly to the inability of iraq's leaders to reach agreement on the critical issues facing the nation witness today g a o comptroller general david walker has called the iraqi government dysfunctional i couldn't agree more one of only needs to look at the was careful analysis of the current state of affairs in iraq to understand why the g a o is conclusions are extremely sobering only three of the eighteen benchmarks have been fully met for have been partially met with the remaining ones not even close to being met while the white house might have us believe that the troop surge is working it has become manifestly apparent to all objective observers that it is not and prime minister maliki is overly sectarian governing style is a key factor in this failure some will prefer to criticize the jail's methodology but rather than face the harsh realities of th intelligence community predicts that insurgent and sectarian violence will remain high over the next year that political reconciliation we'll remain elusive and that the iraqi government will become ever more precarious so it's not just the g a o handing out failing grades the administration's own nonpolitical experts  every bit as critical today i would like to touch on just four of the most important benchmarks sectarian violence iraqi  not in a desperate effort to show the surge is working the administration has attempted to cook the books by excluding large numbers of iraqi civilian casualties from its estimates arguing that only certain types of death are due to sectarian violence but the families of the dead know better than to write them off that way according to the government accountability office overall attacks on iraqi civilians have not dropped and the administration's own national intelligence estimate states and i quote the level of overall violence including get tax on and casualties among civilians remains high and quote in the context of this religiously fueled civil war it is near impossible that iraq's warring factions will be willing and able to make the tough political compromises essential to a stable and peaceful iraq also on the security front iraq is the do to provide three trained and ready army brigades to support security in baghdad again this critically important benchmark their sectarian loyalties spreading deep distrust among the iraqi public all of the forces remain completely dependent upon american troops for  transportation and other crucial logistical support and other benchmarks as the iraqis to ensure that the baghdad security plan will not provide a haven for  but according to the government accountability office the reliability of the police and national security forces to do their jobs in a nonsectarian way continues to be undermined by militia influence and political interference recent press reports have suggested that even units of iraq's armed forces sent to support the so called security plan f finally the iraqis were due to allocate and spend ten billion dollars in iraq year avenue for reconstruction projects again this benchmark remains partially unmet more than three quarters of these reconstruction funds which would help resuscitate iraq's oil industry and the increase  revitalize this critical sector mind boggling indeed on all eighteen benchmarks prime minister maliki could have played a critical role in leading iraq towards political reconciliation but instead maleki has remained a shiite factional leader who holds a fundamentally different view of iraq's future than we do as long as this remains the case no number of u s troops will be able to stabilize a civil war torn iraq i now call on my fr laden for any comments you might like to make thank you so much as always mr chairman for this timely hearing and controller general walker i'd like to thank you and your staff and not only for the hard work that you have dedicated to this assessment that also for the over one hundred other reports that day you have worked on concerning r f in iraq the developments and the issues covered by this g a o report and to be addressed by general petraeus and ambassador crocker next week are personally important to me as my stepson douglas and my daughter in law lindsey having served as marine fighter pilots to in iraq contributed to safeguarding u s interests in that country and to the emergence of a free democratic iraqi nation and they are but to among so many brave men and women committed to the successful accomplishment of our mission in iraq given the gravity of this subject it should come as no surprise the significant challenges do remain and that all of the benchmarks were not fully achieved within the three and a half month time frame since the supplemental  rather than using my time to give broad rhetorical statements on the iraq policy i will raise few specific questions and issues to the comptroller general to address during his presentation if i may mr chairman first clarification on the methodology used to interpret the benchmarks that would be greatly appreciated throughout the report there footnotes noting how the g a o defined a particular benchmark or a particular subset within the broader benchmark what were the general parameters guiding the g a o when arriving at such individual definitions and related to that i'm interested to learn your reasons for classifying certain benchmarks is not having been met while indicating that progress has in fact been achieved on some of the issues under consideration within a particular benchmark should this not qualify under your assessment as partially met for example in the benchmark regarding the formation of a constitutional review committee and completing the constitutional review your report indicates that the iraqi legislature formed a constitution review committee in november of two thousand and six would this not constitute the partial achievement of this benchmark furthermore would you agree that the fact that the constitutional review committee has received an extension and will most likely petition the council of representatives for another indicate that the c r c is making forward progress in addressing these issues similarly what criteria did you utilize to come to the conclusion that the iraqi government has failed to comply with the benchmark calling for enacting and implementing legislation establishing an independent high electoral commission provincial elections law provincial council authorities and a date for provincial elections when they haven't acted and implemented legislation establishing an independent high electoral commission understanding that as stated in your report that the benchmark requires more than the establishment of the commission such as the enactment of supporting laws under what circumstances then would it be considered is partially achieved i would also appreciate it if you would reports own description the iraqi government has drafted pieces of legislation aimed at ensuring an equitable dest distribution of iraqi oil resources the report goes on to elaborate upon the legislative process that these bills are subject to highlighting the review of the shura council of one bill and noting with respect to all sharing that the iraqi constitution does not of this oil sharing right exclusively for the central government as such the regions do have a degree of discretionary authority thus while we understand why the final assessment on benchmarks three and other legislative benchmarks is listed as not met would you not agree that there is forward movement and progress being made on these issues based on the g a o as a valuation would you be able to extrapolate a potential timeframe for when some of these bills may be enacted of course as legislators ourselves we know how unpredictable the legislative process can be how many different dynamics can alter the estimated time line for adoption and then enactment and i would also greatly appreciate further clarification mr comptroller general on your criteria for assessing other benchmarks for example the report states that the benchmark requiring that the government of iraq provide iraqi commanders will with all authorities to execute the baghdad security plan without political intervention has not been met citing that political intervention in the conduct of some security operations continues at what level then is this interference taking place and is it the official policy of the government of iraq explicit or implied similarly regarding the benchmark concerning enforcement of the law by the iraqi security forces is this the stated policy of the government of iraq or is mandated by prime minister maliki finally with respect to the benchmarks aimed at ensuring that iraq's political authorities are not undermining or making false accusations against members of the iraqi security forces which particular authorities were involved in making these accusations is that added to the periphery of the political spectrum or is it the conduct of the central government and pertinent to these issues i have constituents serving in iraq as many of us do but they have a more positive assessment of the situation on the ground based on their direct firsthand experiences one just recently sent me an email last week which highlights the immense risks taken by iraqi leaders at all levels and the extreme pressure they are subjected to and my constituent wrote that in the area where he has stations located near baghdad and i'm quoting him the key al qaeda leaders have fled the area families have running water almost all day now and maybe sixteen hours of electricity each day more and more people are opening their shops on the market street as they feel comfortable enough to sell their goods to their neighbors iraqi army leaders are taking a genuine interest in securing the area and helping locals with their day to day problems he continues however al qaeda has been attempting to thwart our efforts to gain control and better the community they have murdered five members of one family because one of the younger sons desired to become an iraqi policeman there has been one town mayor murdered who had taken much initiative to form and neighborhood watch group to inform us and the iraqi army of suspicious activity and to me intelligence and quote this firsthand account raises questions for me about some of the conclusions in the report that we are evaluating today and it also highlights the need to conceptualize the assessments to provide clarity about whether the problems that remain are due to a lack of will rather than the lack of capacity they caused by iraqi inaction or rather by the actions of insurgents islamic jihad is and rogue regimes neighboring iraq who are doing everything possible to establish their control over  and the entire region in the report the g a o recommends that the secretary of defense provide certain information to the president with appropriate kaviak perhaps the g a o should consider similar steps in formulating future assessments mr chairman i'd like to thank again controller general walker for appearing before the committee today and thank him for his insight as to where our energies may be better focused to help the government of iraq the people in yesterday the g a o presented us with a report card on how the iraqis are doing on a series of legislative security and economic benchmarks of eighteen benchmarks the government of iraq completely failed to meet eleven partially met just four and fully met only three by any standard sixteen percent is a failing grade but before we lay the blame for the mess in iraq at the feet of the iraqis before we condemn them for not completing constitutional review process or not passing laws on the the cation oil revenue sharing provincial elections or amnesty for insurgents let's think a little bit about who is ultimately responsible for the failure when it comes to failing schools in the united states thanks to president bush's no child left behind plan our policy is to recognize that widespread underachievement by students is the responsibility of the school districts administration not its students we shift the assets elsewhere so applying the same principle to iraq it appears obvious that the blame lies not with the iraqis but by what with president bush and the administration g a o scored the iraqis on eighteen criteria i'd suggest we judge the bush administration on just five organizing our government for for mobilizing our nation reconstructing iraq developing iraqi governing institutions and constructing an effective overall strategy for victory i would suggest that the administration's grades to paul bremmer to investors khalilzad and crocker to general doug lute the question of who is running america's show has never been effectively answered state defense the n s c we all know that the buck stops with the president the grade f next mobilizing the nation when a nation goes to war seriously goes to war sending hundreds of thousands of soldiers overseas for years of effort expending hundreds of billions of dollars and losing thousands of young men and women in the struggle one would expect the national leadership to work hard to mobilize the country in support of such an endeavor president bush on the other hand has urged the american people to go shopping and enjoy their tax cuts the grade f third the effort of resources for reconstruction the administration is spend billions of dollars of iraqi money and even more billions in american tax dollars that iraqi citizens still don't have access to the same amount of electricity they had before the war they don't have clean water or safe streets or any other of life's basic necessities and the oil sector the engine that was supposed to power wrecks economy five and a half years and two billion dollars later iraq produces less oil per day than before our war  grade f for developing and sustaining iraq's own governing institutions iraq has had elections and it has a parliament a cabinet a government ministries the only problem is they don't work the parliament incapable of making the difficult decisions needed unite the country fifteen of the thirty seven cabinet ministers have renounced their own government and iraqi ministries can't even spend their own budgets much less deliver services to the iraqi people not only haven't taught the iraqis to fish the fish we gave them is rotting from the head down the grade f ultimately the fifth test of leadership a strategy applying all the means of national power to achieve our objectives from the day the president decided iraq was the quote central front in the war on terror unquote every power and tool available to him should have been aligned to produce victory they were not a military plans were and remain today detached from the reality that victory is political not military are multilateral and regional diplomacy has been inconsistent blustery and convincing our coalition of the willing and efforts of burden sharing about to wrap up with the with your all of the british troops our soldiers bravery and sacrifice is being wasted on a plan that has been always mostly prayer the grade f when the president was campaigning for office back in two thousand he spoke often of what he quotes as the soft bigotry of low expectations unquote it's a catchy phrase one that implies that many of us were willing to tolerate failure because of our own biases is a good point when it comes to tax dollars there's no excuse for failure especially sustained failure having seen the report cog we must as we do with the no child left behind act determine that accountability means cutting off the money mister thank you the audience ptroller general walker who i admire greatly september is certainly a month of decision for this congress and this nation on the subject of iraq and this report is timely and helpful let me say at the outset i share every americans frustration with the fact that four and a half years into the iraq war effort there is not a completely stable capable farsighted iraqi government i have traveled to this nation five times since the initiation of military hostilities i have said to iraqi leaders and i will say again in this committee today i exhort the iraqi government to redouble its efforts to make progress on all of the challenging issues that have been raised in the benchmarks and in this report but i also want to say mr chairman i hope we don't lose sight of how difficult their job is resolving sectarian disputes resource controversies potentially rehabilitating bath party members these are all extraordinarily daunting tasks and while i deeply respect our witness today with all due respect to him and to this body i i can't help but identify with the statements written by fred kagan of the american enterprise institute has testified with distinction before this committee he wrote yesterday and i quote through no fault of the g the organization was sent on a fool's errand by congress its mandate was not to evaluate progress in iraq but to determine whether or not the iraqi government had met the eighteen benchmarks as a result as the report repeatedly notes the g a o was forced to fit an extraordinarily complicated reality into a black and white yes or no simplicity kagan continued quote one of the most striking things about the g a o report is its  failure to take adequate notice of the and are awake and the general movement within the sunni arab community against al qaeda in iraq and toward the coalition and bar appears twice in the document both times in a comment noting that violence  fallen in that province but without reference to the turn of the sunni population against the terrorists close quote mr chairman i i witnessed the end bar awakening in my visit there this past april i met with sunni leaders a general odierno on the marine corps base in ramadi it is an extraordinary development that the so called triangle of death a year ago now has tribesmen clerics community later leaders who are working hand in glove with american marines american forces and as they told me personally they are stating publicly that an attack on an american is an attack on an iraqi in their mind i share m concerns that we should be considering whether the iraqis in our national assets are making progress not whether they deserve a pass fail grade on congressionally created template and let me say we should not lose sight of the genuine progress that has occurred this year that has become more apparent to the american people in recent weeks even new york times columnist thomas friedman wrote today and i quote good news the surge is tamping down violence this reality is often lost on the torrent of criticism directed at our involvement in iraq mr chairman i have significant concerns about this report i look forward to the testimony i noted that on page one of the washington post today it reads military officials in iraq fall g a o report specifically the pentagon said quote we absolutely disagree with their characterization of sectarian violence close quote such attacks have actually fallen off significantly this year as have extrajudicial kill things in an effort to rebuke the iraqi government and encourage them to do more which they most certainly must do i hope and pray that we do not lose sight of the progress that our american forces and the iraqi forces and political leaders have made and we help continue to make i look forward to the discussion and and ultimately look forward to finding some consensus in this body for achieving a successful and stable victory for freedom in iraq and i yield back status of the surge or escalation by adding over twenty thousand of our soldiers to provide greater security and proper assistance than our government is giving hopefully to prime minister maliki and the iraqi government while we've been debating this issue of the war for the past five or six years now whether we should stay or leave much of the accusations against prime minister maliki for his failures to implement the important reforms that still have not been implemented and for which about prime incompetence in running this war has caused much suffering and tremendous cost of human life our soldiers and marines wounded and maimed for life a country remains seriously divided because of the failed policies of running this war i will look forward to hearing from our distinguished chairman or the director of general accounting office for his testimony this afternoon second was jeremy mrs smith of new jersey not meet levin out of eighteen i think that it's wrong to characterize the report as the wrong report the report is to see whether the benchmarks were being reached and they come out as a failure we're awaiting general petraeus to come before us and i know he's going to have a difficult time because we have so much respect for him and we know that he is doing such an ex and job and i remember the respect that we have for secretary of state colin powell who went to the u and said there are in fact i've been given information at their weapons of mass destruction biological and chemical weapons a person that had a tremendous amount of respect worldwide to find out that what he was told was absolutely wrong and so i really when when people that i respect so much are given a task really of supporting their leader i just wonder how much squeezing is going to be done in order to have a report come out it was supposed to be weapons of mass destruction biological and chemical weapons regime change now is to fight al qaeda in iraq on their soil so we don't have to fight them here it was not a single out caught operative in iraq beef for we decided to have a preemptive strike and now it is the training ground for them and so we've had such a flawed policy over three thousand dead you know we talked about them general time has expired book thank you very much mr chairman and i look forward to the testimony today just throw this out and hope this is something that we should be considering as well as the benchmarks that is what what is it that the iraqi people want at this point and i have a bill in the hopper that would suggest that there should be a referendum in the congress the house i should call in the government of iraq to hold a referendum to see if they would like us to stay there with our troops until order has been established or whether the iraqi people feel that we should begin an immediate withdrawal of american troops i'd like to know your impression of that and hopefully that would be an idea that would be considered to be important for all of us to understand that  making our decisions as to what is good for the people the united states and the people of the world in the future thank you very much mr chairman thank you mr short run thank you we will leave iraq in either one year or in ten years and it's not clear at which point iraq would be in better shape what is clear is that the current policy is harming american national security the world's sympathy with us on nine eleven has been turned into disdain and hostility our army is being broken what once caused fear in the capitals of our enemies now causes laughter we are told that we have to worry about humanitarian problems that might arise in iraq but the current policy forces us to ignore the humanitarian problems in congo darfur and elsewhere terrorists are enjoying sanctuary in somalia yemen and much of afghanistan and pakistan because we focus almost exclusively on iraq and the nuclear efforts efforts of north korea and especially a ran go forward without an effective counter policy our policy is probably not helping iraq it is certainly hurting our own national  line of methodology in this issue and take it a step further i would like to have your assessment on the confidence in the work and the work product because that means a lot to  further assessment the example used by my colleague from indiana about anbar province speaks particularly to the diplomacy that was utilized by the military not necessarily bombs and bullets and so it is my representation that it is now time to declare a military victory a success for the military mission the disposing of the government the democratic elections and now time to transition that diplomacy and political reconciliation to the iraqi government and it certainly is time now not to issue one single cent for any more surge or war in iraq and i'm committed to doing that as i'm committed to listening to you know more money for this war we're in doing it now and i thank you and i yield back is the wait september and now september is here your report is here and already there shooting darts through it there's much truth in your report and i commend you highly for it but i want to mention a few things general cases just that our forces are stretched out of bounds the temper of our deployments are not sustainable our quitman uses five times a normal rate and continuously operating in harsh environments major general benjamin mixon said last week i have not seen any improvement really in the year i've been here regarding the iraqi security forces progress is slower than it should be inside the iraqi army in particular we're in a no win situation as long as we're not making this kind of progress militarily on the ground but certainly at the root of it all the cure for this problem rests and a political settlement and there is nothing in the report as you suggest about the benchmarks that bring us even closer there and the fact that you've only said out of eighteen they've only met three possibly partially four and not met eleven at all and then you have this very stark contrast with what the administration is  saying that that itself says we've got a major major problem and a major disconnect between the reality on the ground and the lack of reality in the white house  report is the most the question based on all information is do we stay or do we just go away america has to resolve the issue of iraq and it seems to me success has never come from withdrawal and i look forward to your comments thank you mr chairman gentleman from south jim was growing up i used to tell my mom you know i'm in quite a scrape now and she'd say well we hadn't done such and so bob we wouldn't be here and i'd say yes i know but now we're in it it's really where we are right we're in challenge it's an american challenge is not a democrat problem it's not a republican problem it's an american problem in so i hope that here today we start a process of finding solutions to that american challenge to listen to you the floor is yours thank you mr chairman ranking member also like many other members of this distinguished committee i'm pleased to be here to represent the outstanding work that our staff has done in connection with iraq this is my third hearing on iraq i've got another one at least one more this week and some member briefings as well and it's important to note several things at the outset that we are reporting as required by law on the status of whether or not the iraqi government has met its commitments with regard to eighteen benchmarks we were required by law to do this we were required by law report by september one so we didn't pick it at a particular opportune time we're doing what we were asked to do and secondly it's important to note that we were asked to know whether or not the status was met or not met on each of these eighteen benchmarks however g a o must use its independent professional judgment and in doing so we also want to try to be fair and balanced and therefore i decided that it would not have been fair and balanced just to use a met or not met criteria and we used our independent professional judgment to decide in certain circumstances it was appropriate to show partially met furthermore i think it's important for you to understand that just because something is not met doesn't mean there hasn't been any progress for there are more one needs to understand that it is my understanding that the congress intended for this to be the first of what is likely to be a recurring reports by the g a o so this would establish a baseline from which one would be able to assess stablish progress or lack thereof going forward and finally it's important to understand that we provided a lot of commentary in order to try to provide add contextual sophistication with regard to where things are in connection with these eighteen items i want to say at the that irrespective of what we're saying that the current status is as of august thirtieth two thousand and seven that this should in no way shape or form detract from the the courageous efforts of our military in those very coalition partners my son fought in iraq as a marine corps officer and believe me we all want to win the question is how do you define winning and what's the best way to win and i think we need to revisit both of those key questions at this point in time now we and conducting this work interviewed officials from afar become defense state treasury multinational force iraq defense intelligence agency central intelligence agency national intelligence council the united nations a variety of parties including ambassador crocker and including general petraeus and let me say i believe that you need to seriously consider this report because it is a professional and independent report at the same point time i'll also say i think you need to seriously consider what you hear from ambassador crocker and general petraeus and what you hear from former general jones and others and you need to consider all that information in order to side what mr post said which i think is the right question what's the best way forward where do we go from here in doing that let me show on on the first graphic chart number one is on page four my testimony this is the source of the eighteen benchmarks this is not something congress came up with the basic source of these benchmarks are commitments that have been made by the iraqi government dating back to june of two thousand six the next graphic shows what our bottom line assessment is of on the eighteen benchmarks forest not all benchmarks are equal we did not attempt however to substitute our judgment for that of the congress of the administration anything else to say which ones are the most important i guess support the no not all benchmarks are equal secondly i think it's important to note that that odd these there are three categories legislative security and economic of the legislative one was met one was partially met and six were not met of the security two were met to or partially met and five were not of the economic one was partially met and again as i said if it's not met doesn't mean it's been no progress it just me it hasn't been enough progress to be able to give recognition to at least partially meant let me also note on that regard that we have in our report our methodology which is clearly defined consistently applied well documented and transparent as on what basis do we decide that something is not met partially met or or or met now i would respectfully suggest that you need to be asking some questions on that what other people report is what's their methodology what's the basis how do they reach that candidly we were asked to do something fundamentally different to what the president was asked to do the president was asked to note whether or not progress is being made whether or not progress is being made is fundamentally different than where that where things stand as of point in time it's also inherently more subjective whether or not progress is being made is inherently more subjective look at the president's management agenda which i commend it has to ratings at least twice a year where things stand at that point time and what type of progress is being made i would respectfully suggest you've got to consider both you ought to consider both now the next graphic will end up showing the legislative factors the legislative benchmark s in particular with regard to devote the cation the hydrocarbon laws the laws with regard to the regions elections amnesty disarmament and demobilization and you can see here that in many cases as in the case t hydrocarbon law and elections there are a number of things that have to get done it's not just one piece of legislation there are multiple pieces of legislation and door implementation actions that have to take place and therefore when you consider the full picture i think you might have a better understanding as to how we reached the judgments that we reached next plays if you look on the security front you'll see that these are the trends and over all the daily average daily attacks from june of two thousand and three to july of two thousand and seven and these are averaged a daily attacks these are not less fowley this is what type of activity is occurring and obviously february only has twenty eight months july has thirty twenty eight days july has sorry about that it's been a long day twenty eight days sometimes twenty nine leap years and july has thirty one and so i think in fairness you need to use average daily rather than going by monthly and what you'll see based on this public information non classified is that the attacks have gone up pretty consistently until july where they went down and in july we had roughly the same level of tax that we did in february of two thousand and seven now we're aware of information through august fifteenth we asked for the information through the end of august it was not provided to us but i'm hoping expect that you'll hear something on that you know when general petraeus you know comes before you and i think you need to consider that but we need we also need to keep in mind that this month is ramadan and historically there has been an abatement of violence the month before ramadan and an increase in violent violence during ramadan now let's hope that that won't be continued let's hope that we'll see an exception here with regard to our own bar problems there's absolutely no question that there has been a dramatic change in al anbar province there's absolutely no question that that you know that there are several reasons for that one of which is is that the tribal leaders decided that al qaida had gone too far and they decided that the enemy of their enemy is their friend and therefore they allied with us and there has been a tremendous change now the question is is that sustainable is that transfer of all out al anbar province is not baghdad the surge was supposed to be primarily about baghdad so it's not that that's not relevant it's just not relevant necessarily the benchmarks which you're about baghdad and political you know political and economic progress if you will there's also been some progress in baghdad with regard to the  surge there's no question about that and there's frankly been more progress on the security front with regard to what we've done not that what the iraqis have done but what we've done then there has been on the political front and core the biggest gap is a political front but one must keep in mind what was the purpose of the surge the purpose of the surge was to provide breathing room such that political progress could be made that's the stated purpose of the surge so far we haven't seen that political progress hopefully that will change hopefully that will change but that was the stated purpose of the surge next to our next graphic will show that if you look at our assessment as of august thirtieth two thousand and seven versus the administration's assessment as of july two thousand and seven and again they were assessing progress which is fundamentally different than status but if you look at that you'll see that there is one area where there is a significant difference where we said not met and they said you know they said satisfactory progress and that was on the first one but the rest of my that we agreed or there was a one difference in writing rather than a two difference and right now i would expect that the ratings you're going to hear next week are going to probably improve on some of these but i don't know that for a fact and we'll wait and see in conclusion as of august thirtieth two thousand and seven the iraqi government had met three partially met four and not met eleven of eighteen legislative security and economic benchmarks i think it's important to no that in late august iraq's senior shia sunni arab and kurdish political leaders signed a unity accord signaling efforts to foster greater national reconciliation the accord cover draft legislation and a path occasion reform and prevention of powers laws as well as setting up a mechanism to release some sunni detainees being held without charges however while this conceptual agreement has been reached we haven't seen progress with regard to the other benchmarks necessary to improve the writing and will hopefully we will see that progress by the next time we report but only time will tell as concerned as congress considers the way forward as mr post said it's not where we've been where we are is where we should go from here as you consider the way forward i think you clearly should consider our report you clearly should consider these eighteen benchmarks but you also if you consider the report of others and you could sit or factors that are beyond these eighteen benchmarks and these are not the eighteen benchmarks i would write if you asked us to write eighteen benchmarks they're important important you ought to consider them but i think there are other things that are important to that are contained in these eighteen benchmarks and i think it's also important to note that we made three recommendations which the administration agreed with in our report with regard to providing additional information to congress on these benchmarks more information on the nature of violence quantitative and qualitative lay and also more information on the loyalty of iraqi security forces not just whether or not you have enough it's not just whether or not they're ready it's whether they're loyal and by loyalty what i mean by that is when you discharge your responsibilities in a neutral nonsectarian fashion will you execute your your military duties and responsibilities in a neutral and nonsectarian fashion we don't have that problem in our country other parts of the world they do have that problem thank very much mr chairman i'm happy answer any questions the members may have thank you very much  for your very valuable observations one of the most disturbing comments to come out of iraq over the course of the last four and a half years was mr malec is observation a couple of weeks ago he obviously was annoyed by criticism from some members of this body when he said the we can find other friends were you aware of that observation did you follow that observation i heard some of his comments or read some of his comments i should say rather  well let me ask you in view of that comment how would you respond to my basic question we are establishing eighteen benchmarks or whatever the number is to what extent does molly and his government share the view that reaching these benchmarks is in his interest because one of the most disconcerting aspects of this period of evaluation and tomorrow this committee will hear from independent experts outside of government performance and some public statements what is your view of the extent to which he there's are objectives easy interested in a uni he government a unified non sectarian iraqi military or is this merely an illusion on the part of some people in our government while molly key in fact is for suing cleverly or less so he's own goals and objectives well mr chairman i can't put myself in prime minister mind i can say this that he has publicly stated on more than one occasion their agreement with these you know his agreement with these benchmarks he has publicly stated that secondly i think with regard to one has to keep in mind several things you have the government which is headed by prime minister maliki you have the elected representatives in the form of the parliament and you have the people there can be differences of opinion between those three as there are in our country on occasion and the fact is is that one also has to keep in mind that even if the government level in addition elected officials you have the ministers of which there are you know sectarian and factions that are involved with regard to various ministries so i think only time will tell but needless to say while  the shias control sixty percent while they have sixty percent of the population and iraq and the sunni's have about twenty percent and the kurds have about twenty percent that sixty percent is not a unified sixty percent there are factions within that sixty percent and so only time will tell how significant the new your view is the that fifteen of the thirty seven cabinet ministers  boycotting the work of the government it obviously shows that there is a significant problem with regard to commitment to this this government a you know it fifteen is not a majority but it is a substantial minority to what extent is that perhaps a crippling handicap on the ability of the mali key government to function only time will tell it's obviously a very troubling  indicator it's one that by the way is not one of the benchmarks per se but it is a very troubling indicator what is your view of a broader question that wasn't as the view it is not part of your assignment with respect to this particular undertaking but many of us feel that the tremendous focus financially and militarily on iraq dramatically detracts from the ability of our government to deal with other potential or future crises difficulties because the extent about four hundred billion dollars so far but i think the army in particular is stressed stretched strained and the current approach is unsustainable with regard to the army what is the psychological cost of a situation wherein the true burden of this on the taking falls on an infinitesimally small segment of our population as they made or that may be one percent or two percent the rest to some extent carry a lot of the load in terms of the financial burden but the personal involvement the personal sacrifice is clearly not widely shared at the very beginning of this on the taking when the deputy secretary of state met with us i raise the issue some four or four and a half years ago that in a major military undertaking the first criterion of evaluation must be sha sacrifice this clearly has been a military undertaking with minimal shared sacrifice what are the psychological the cohesive costs involved in this it would be difficult if not impossible to calculate the psychological cost i will say we now have an all volunteer force and that is a very significant difference from what we had for example during vietnam the vietnam conflict and so i think one has to keep that in mind secondly there's not a lot of sacrifice cause we're not paying for this war we're debt financing this war we're debt financing this war and our grandkids are going to pay it off with interest i think you missed mr chairman what is the role of the government accountability office you know when i when i'm listening to these the questions and the answers and and the report i have great respect for you obviously missed mr walker but i'm used to reading reports from the g a o about student loan compliance about medicare programs and now we have the general the government accountability office the comptroller general telling us is the army stretched are not stretched we meeting these benchmarks and reading the reports that say democratic leaders jumped on the g a o as conclusions to bolster their calls for a new strategy in iraq and republican leaders dismissed a report as dated and politically insignificant report on on the war effort and benchmarks i realized that this was this is a something we did to ourselves we passed that because a lot of horse trading in order to get the supplemental through and we said ok the g a o report is going to give us their assessment of whether benchmarks were met or not and i i just there's something about this whole procedure that i find so one settling as if we would have a g a o report on world war two and a o report on on the civil war and and base our conclusions on that and there's so much more that is involved here and i'm not saying that you're being countered and i'm not saying that you're that you're out of your out of your realm of x but i just feel uncomfortable listening to a report by the government accountability office about our war effort and about iraqi benchmarks it just it just doesn't seem to fit we have this this round peg is the square peg and we're just trying to make it fit and and i realize we passed you with this it's nothing that you asked for but it just doesn't seem to fit is the round peg in this square hole whatever the the metaphor is and i just can't get my arms around  just have a sense of of being very uncomfortable by having you sir with great credibility and wonderful service they can give us great insight about student loans and about medicare compliance but i can't fathom why you are saying to us the army is stretched too thin what in the world while a fine is you sure to say that i i certainly am not qualified to say but but yet here you are telling us  about the insurgents and all of the incredibly complex issues i'm not the only person that said that people at the pentagon have said that people in uniform upset that with stars on their shoulders so by no means am i the first person to say that i think it's important to keep in mind the book and the we're in the fact business and when congress wants to try to be able to obtain facts and to have a professional objective fact based nonpartisan nandu the logical and hopefully fair and balanced assessment but certainly you can talk about you when you say you said the army is stretched right what the  because if you look at if you believe issue reports on this this is not new and we've got more work we're doing right now what the congress has asked us to do with regard to what is the current rate readiness status of u troops there is a significant difference between our deployed forces our forces here at home in a variety of areas we've done work with regard to the operations tempo and the ability of the army to continue to supply the necessary force structure while still means maintaining a commitment that people won't be over there for more than a year and so there are a number of different factors that we've assessed and by the way everything that we do we provide the opportunity of the department of defense state whomever it might be an opportunity to review and comment on what we what we say we consider their comments in some cases or make changes in other cases we won't think it's just i just can't imagine at one point during world war two we would have gotten a report from the general accountability office about whether we were meeting the benchmarks and on the day what that report would have looked that what it would have said what it would have done to the american people to issued such a report at that critical time and and i just find it disheartening and realizing that we're the ones who who asked for this report that it would be i believe a significant is if the foreign affairs committee really would have issued a report on meeting the benchmarks it's a good guide but i i worry that it seems to be having a lot of ability you know you're taxing the message here instead of the message and that's what we here in washington you've been here lots of times and you know i guess for those of us who've been to iraq a number of times and hearing from a lot of the troops are coming home even on the break even though their two week r and r if you sit down with them their frustration on an analogy basis mirrors what you're saying and that's why i'm glad we have the chairman i read the report and understand that the g a o may not have the expertise at the pentagon but i also know that i am glad an outside federal agency that we depend on in congress congress to  look at all parts of the federal government whether it's a pentagon or hurt or anything else who's willing to do this under our our supplemental and again if we don't ask you to do it you wouldn't do it  so don't attack the messenger as well as you need to look at the issues and that's what i feel that's a problem with this i'm just glad the g a o did the report and chairman i don't really have any questions except again thank you for doing it and giving us another perspective that we'll hear the pentagon's perspective in the state department next week but we've heard that for four years now you're back on time thank you very much can i just mention real quickly because i think it's important to set the record straight we weren't asked to do what we were directed to do it and this was a law the law said shall do this by kember one and secondly i think you need to seriously consider what general petraeus and to say to i think it's appropriate to consider information from multiple sources and then to be able to make your judgment after you do that last thing really important for every member to read the classified national intelligence estimate and really important for every member to read our classified briefing slides that supplement our testimony thank you thank you mr walker and let me assure you that members of this committee do study and to read and contemplate all of these reports very seriously gentleman from south carolina m you said that the benchmarks weren't your own if you were writing them what would what would you write well without getting the whole level of detail i think there are important factors in the benchmarks i'm not trying to say that they're not important you can you shouldn't  consider i think you should consider them but i think there are there are several different angles that you also ought to think about going forward one some of the benchmarks you might want to on bundle some of the items that are in benchmarks for example sectarian violence if that's still going to be a benchmark versus militia control if you will secondly i think we also ought to think about whether or not whether or not the trend in sectarian violence is really appropriate because how do you know if it's sectarian violence or not if somebody is attacked or something's blown up me how do you know that it was because of sectarian violence is it more relevant to understand what the overall trend in violence is rather than sectarian violence thirdly economic factors what about economic factors you know what's going on with regard to in addition to security electricity water education things that every citizen of any country care about in order to see that their lives are being changed for fourthly what's being done with regard to from a foreign relations standpoint to try to be able to gain you know cooperation of the neighbors or at least in some situations to try to prevent or get people to agree not to do some things that they may be doing and so these are and i guess fitfully just off the top of my head you know what's being done to try to get the international community to provide more support in capacity building for the iraqi civilian ministries you know to try to help them help themselves deliver results here they can they can pay dividends and we're not going to get it is not likely at least that you're going to get people to supply troops if anything we've seen people moving the other way but there are a lot of things that can should be done and that allies have capacity to do that would help  you know achieve quote unquote victory in iraq i agree with your assessment that the surge was the theory of the surge was to give some space for political decision making to take place on the part of the iraqis and i think we've got to say to military success that our folks have performed exactly as we asked them to do and they performed beautifully now the question is how do we how do we get the iraqi i think the biggest point of leverage we have is what are we willing to do and what are we not willing to do all right whether it's financially or whether it's from a security standpoint and i think that one of the things that this body needs to seriously consider is what is an appropriate role for u s forces on the ground it's one thing to fight al qaeda wherever they might be in iraq aggressively as was done and now i am barre province it's another thing to train  iraqi forces it's another thing to provide you know air support and logistical support to iraqi forces it's quite another to be the one who's act who the ones who are actually policing the streets those are very different things and i think that's something we all need to debate what would you think about the concept of setting up a whole series of rewards and consequences and trying to establish those as as leverage points in dividing them equally among the six so you have rewards for sunni's rewards for she is rewards for kurds water projects electricity projects whatever that are laid out very clearly i would call them success checkpoints the idea of saying we want you to be successful here rewards if you get the oil law done by such and such a time frame if it's a month later you lose this water project rights a month later you just lose the sewer project in finally it down into where you start going into military changes such that we no longer police in your streets we're now you're seeing us move back to our bases i mean that's on down the road laying out a series like that is that a way of gaining leverage of several things one i think the congress needs to consider what should our goals be watch our objectives be watch our roles be what should our metrics and milestones be in that regard in general terms without getting real specific i believe in every area you need to have three things for for to maximize the chance of success number one incentives for people to do the right thing that doesn't necessarily mean financial incentives it could be a legal infrastructure or whatever incentives for people to the right things number two transparency to provide reasonable assurance that people will do the right thing call somebody is looking and number three accountability if people don't do the right thing those three principles can apply to everything including in this area there's some that say that that's an american concept or western concept isn't well applied in the middle east true or false well i mean i don't think that th pencil what you mean by incentives ok i mean you know when you when you talk about you know financial incentives and things that nature i think that's not a concept that is widely used in that part of the world but i think that there are  particularly in the confidence in the work that was produced so let me pose my questions along those lines i don't think that we should be pitting the g a o against the administration and the white house in terms of one upmanship frankly i think it's very important to make the point that this was a directive from the congress and that we have three branches separate independent branches of government and i would think that the constitution views them as equal even though we do know that there are extensive executive powers but i think the most important responsibility that we have and i think chairman lantos was this line of hearings that really are crucial to making the next step decision which i think in your remarks you may have captured what do we do next i do think it's important for this congress to respond to the fallen soldiers on the battlefield whose lives have been lost already those that we put in harm's way prospectively as we continue to follow this line of thought this line of direction so i hope mr walker in our questioning and i think you've been before the senate you will in no way in essence retreat from the concreteness of this report the administration will have every opportunity to present its case through general petraeus and of course  through embassador crocker but i think the record should reflect the reason why we have the g a o the reason why we have the allegedly the congressional budget office are supposed to be two distinct objectives creatures of government that respond in equal terms to the majority whoever it might be in congress and to the executive whoever it might  so with that being said i think that this is an indicting report frankly no matter how you tried to cover it up or make silk out of a pig's ear frankly fifteen of the benchmarks have not been completely met there is hedging of eleven versus eight or eleven versus seven but frankly i think the more direct number is fifteen and my point that i made earlier was the question about marines doing the diplomatic work so i ask you in this report do you feel confident first and to the main question that we've seen in frustrated as is the sectarian violence which causes the continued loss of life of our soldiers does this report in any way suggest that we have been successful in that way well first i think it's important to note and i read the washington post article this morning that presumably all of you read that you know my view is that there is only one area of strong disagreement between us and the military on this report and that one area of strong disagreement is on sectarian violence and if you look at benchmark number thirteen you'll see that it says we do see in the level of sectarian violence in iraq and eliminating militia control of local security are in agreement that there has not been a lemon a shia militia control of local security we are in agreement on that general petraeus will say that based upon his data which is classified that sectarian violence has gone down we are not comfortable with the methodology that they use for determining that and one can debate whether or not it's really even the relevant measure because if violence overall is high then how much significance is there as to whether or not it's sectarian versus not sectarian and how do you know if it's sectarian versus nonsectarian so so candidly you know i think  that that this we stand behind this report we made changes in what we were asked to do to try to provide a more fair and balanced perspective my opinion is that you shouldn't just consider where things stand as of a point in time you need to consider what progress is being made furthermore you also need to consider factors that aren't reflected by these benchmarks some of which i've already talked about and try i don't understand what's the best way forward from here well let me just say that it is at what cost that we consider the next steps more american lives over and over again so let me suggest that i think we can declare a military victory success story on the instructions given to our military starting in the spring of two thousand and three and with that yield the diplom out the diplomacy and the further political reconciliation to the iraqi government and surrounding states it is at what cost do we continue this path and i think there is no basis for us to continue as we look at this report and look at the maintaining of the sectarian violence which is a major criteria for peace in iraq i think the distinguished chairman i thank mr walker for his testimony and i  to act and achieve a lot of what we outlined in the benchmarks in your opinion or in your report do you feel that that that is giving them that if if if security or lack thereof is a major hindrance or is it something else before us i think our military is performing brilliantly they're doing everything we asked them to do they're making a difference but again they were a means to an end  they're not an end of themselves heretofore the progress that the military has made our military working in partnership with iraqis has not resulted in political progress significant political progress now the question is will it over time now some will tell you that the iraqis right now might be able to pass some of this legislation but the price of passing that legislation might be a further alienation of the sunni's and i think that's something that you you may well hear from ambassador crocker whatever that's something you need to keep in mind so you know in the end i think there's broad based agreement that you must  political accommodation in order to achieve unification if if your objective is a unified iraq that that is you know that is stable within its borders and can defend itself against its  know its neighbors i mean i and i do think as i said before mr flake i think it's time to redefine what success what should our goals be what should they be and not tell me what they should be what should they be what should our roles and responsibilities be to to achieve that how can we ensure that we have incentives transparency and accountability to make sure that we're making progress in connection with those goals and objectives so let me just state for the record i  think that this is a valuable report i think that congress we commission g a o to study a lot of things as ranking minority member mentioned some are clear cut as some or as easy as is the dare program that we fund every year worth while g a o comes back says no it isn't we continue to fund it in fact we who raise the funding for it it happens all too frequently here i understand it's much more difficult with something like this and i  take the point that you wouldn't one of the g a o to to study you know the d day invasion and to see what could have gone better there are limits but this is important and just back to security when i was in iraq in two thousand and four it struck me that in basra where the british were in control that was relatively violence free they they were there in the city but without much to do frankly at that time now on  other areas have become safer but basra is now somewhat of a mess are we do you get the sense that we're kind of squeezing a balloon here and where violence  somewhere else well obviously there's a limit as to the number of forces that we can commit and you can speak with the pentagon about that and i think only time will tell what the impact of the british withdraw again i commend you for the report and reiterate again the importance of you fulfilling the dicta of the law was in the report you chose it was a report that was mandated that you made and i think we have to accept that on the question of sectarian violence how do you arrive at the conclusion the sectarian violence has not decrease while the white house reaches a different assessment well first let me say that it's very important that you read our classified briefing slides on this because there's a limit as to what i can say in open session but but let me at the same point time  that there's no question that the data that is maintained by human f i a general petraeus at all will show that according to their data and their methodology sectarian violence has gone down we've seen their data through august fifteenth we asked for the data after august fifteenth we didn't receive it however there's also no question that we could not get comfortable with their methodology because it's different to be able to understand with a degree of certainty and reliability which type of violence well it's to sectarian violence versus nonsectarian violence therefore we have you know we have use the overall trend in violence average daily attacks which you have as the primary basis so we're not saying that we're not saying that it it hasn't decreased we're saying we're not comfortable with the methodology they use in order to be able to say that it has and a more relevant question is is that even a relevant measure she won't be concerned with sectarian violence or overall violence and i think that's an example of something th congress needs to think about when you're reviewing and considering these benchmarks going forward when is it violence against coalition forces violence against civilians well i don't exist on the on the chart that that is in my  testimony shows that that violence was on an upward trend until july overall violence until july it went down in july hopefully you'll hear from general petraeus as to what happened in august we have not we see the data in august but as of the as of july we were about the same level of violence that existed in february of two thousand and seven so it went down  july but it was about the same level of violence will exist in february of two thousand and seven and again this month is ramadan starting with then i think the next couple of weeks or so and let's hope that the past is not prologue with regard to violence during rama ramadan let me also point out that again i think that as we look at going forward we are going to be faced with something beyond any of our controls which i think  going to play a determining factor of just where we go and how we go our options are going to be fixed by the fact of the matter which everybody is saying it's not just us not just me it's general george w casey army chief of staff it's major general benjamin mixon those individuals i talked to earlier is every general our army our military has had it i mean it's at a point of severe diminishing returns and certainly within the next seven months by next april these folks are going to definitely have to start coming back so from iraq i mean there is a point of diminishing returns that have set and  strain of our military that in effect really puts this nation and the world at greater national security risk there's a cost benefit analysis here that i think we definitely need to look at and with the g o being an organization that is familiar with cost benefit analysis i'd just like for you to give me a brief cost benefit analysis on the war in iraq and especially going hours and the fact we're going to hit that wall we don't have an unlimited supply of young men and women to continue use as cannon fodder in this civil war we can no longer afford three billion  week borrowed money that our grandchildren have to play at some point the chickens come home to roost there's clearly an opportunity cost associated with our involvement in iraq above and beyond the direct cost in dollars above and real beyond the direct cost and loss of lives and wounded above and beyond whether what extent it has an impact on our foreign relations and our relations with certain parties in that particular reason is that there are other opportunity cost it's money and and capabilities that you don't have to do something else with and let me know that from a fiscal standpoint that our fiscal challenges will escalate within the next several years because boomers start retiring and when boomers start retiring in big numbers the costs associated with small security medicare escalate and we are not well prepared sure mr smith of new jersey thank you very much on the sturm and mr walker let me ask you a few questions and thank you for your testimony here today it seems to me the most superficial view of the benchmarks reduces the benchmarks to win loss or a matter on mitt analysis of some of the news reporting that i've read has already done that but since all benchmarks aren't equal i wonder if you can give some insight as to those to which you give more weight and the g a o gives more weight as being more important secondly what considerations should be given as to when not if but when certain benchmarks ought to be met particularly in the political area seems to me that amnesty benchmark number six and militia disarmament benchmark number seven both have language in the report that said the conditions were not right and i am this day having worked with a number of people who are involved with commissions around the world whether it be as south africa or in el salvador for folks are let out on the street or at least given the ability or the thought that they might be let out on the street thirdly is there a benchmark that today adequately captures the extraordinary cooperation with tribal leaders in combating qaeda is that contained in any of this reporting because or is that more recent order or the benchmarks not configured in a way that would capture that data as finally you mentioned progress in several areas including ambar province i wonder if you could define what you mean by several areas and defining quantify what you mean by progress and finally and you did allude to this earlier i do have another question are there any  address all of it but i think they're all excellent questions i would not want to say which ones i think are more important than others without having to have enough really think about that but let me give you a general description of what i think would be relevant obviously to the extent that you're talking about the iraqis being able to police their own streets the iraqis being able to do so not only in an effective manner but an even handed manner those are i think of particular importance in order to achieve not only security but broader reconciliation objectives over time second only legislative actions that demonstrate both in form and in substance that is one country you know operating for the collective best interest of all rather than the narrow interest of a few obviously are ones that have more importance and they also provide the infrastructure to make sure that it's not just something that's going to happen one time it's going to happen on a recurring basis like for example i heard one hearing yesterday well so money is being provided to alan barr province this month by the government well maybe that's true maybe it's not true question is who gets the money what happens with the money and what  e is there that all happened next month next year five years from now whatever ok i do believe that you ought to consider our report and these benchmarks but i also believe that you ought to think about whether or not you raises up to a little higher level and talk about what should our goals be at this point going forward what should the objectives be what should the metrics and milestones  including what should our role be going forward that would incorporate some of these benchmarks but it would also incorporate other things that are in these benchmarks and i have to you know i've talked about economic i've talked about foreign relations i've talked about trying to get you know more cooperation of our allies with regard to capacity building those are some examples and as i said before the house armed services committee this morning i said that we'd be more than happy to work with the congress on a bipartisan basis to try to help come up with something if you thought that would be helpful but i'd want it to be a bipartisan request it's not something i would want to do on our own nickel it's something i would want to be asked to do on a bipartisan basis by appropriate members of committee or overall understand your point i think it points well taken and that's why i think you have to look at where do we stand what progress are we making which ones are more most important what's a realistic amount of time that you take to achieve those metric and milestones ok gentleman from california mr cross the thank you very much mr chairman and the ranking member for what is again i think an excellent hearing i look upon this hearing and the subsequent hearings that we're going to hold  as very key and critical i think for the majority of members of congress certainly for myself as we try to determine over the course of the next month what should be the best strategy for our involvement in iraq and where we go from here because i think that is the most appropriate question so i look at this g a o report in terms of the totality of the other briefings that we will have before this committee and others as we debate and discuss appropriately so before the american public with the american public as to what is in america's best interests in the short and long term in the middle east i have several questions i'd like to ask you mr walker and we appreciate the good work that you've done on this it's already been said first of all i think it's important last point we i think we should direct you in a bipartisan fashion as to one what are realistic goals in the next eighteen months what would your priorities be if not these eighteen benchmarks these were agreed upon as a part had been mentioned before a political discussion that are taking place on the supplemental funding they supported by the administration if you believe other priorities should be included are different benchmarks i'd like to hear what the should be and i'm glad to hear that you defined got to the bottom line how do we define  success and not victory because a victory i think as have been mentioned again before was achieved in two thousand and three there's no army to defeat here there's no navy to say we are now in the middle of a sectarian civil war and we're asked to be the policeman on the street  so my eyes just roll when we have these discussions which i think are political on whether or not we maintain the surge and definitely which we know we can't because it's already been stipulated both those in the department of defense and the pentagon as well as other experts indicate that our limitations are fast approaching with our ability to maintain our military commitment are the second false choices surrender we're not going to do that we have a whole reason to be in the middle east from iran to the situations with syria with israel and palestine we're going to be in that neighborhood for a long time as far as i can determine so let's separate the political rhetoric in terms of these two false choices we're not going to maintain the surgeon definitely and we're not going to surrender because we're going to be in the neighborhood for a long time let's begin to talk about in a bipartisan fashion where do we go from here in that case when i visited iraq last year and i'd like to get your take on this mr walker prime minister maliki said then what he is saying now and that is that his unity government's going to limit the militias to significantly reduce the violence to get the economy going and of course he's still saying that today and i've and i've come to the conclusion he's either incapable or unwilling to do what needs to be done so my question to you is about the role of this government and part of the benchmark speak to those roles it's my sense and a part of the world where i hate to say this but corrupt and we haven't talked about that yet here this afternoon corruption in this country in this part of the world is if not a way in life seems to be endemic having said that it seems to me democracy as we look upon it in democracy is that iraqis work on it is a totally different concept i mean i think  for the the shia community iraqi democracy isn't as a vehicle to regain power and wealth and if i'm a sunni and i'm looking at democracy and we're wondering how this government functions it's a vehicle for paybacks when i was in charge so i'm wondering do you think this democracy can work with this corruption that continues to be pervasive corruption is a major problem in iraq corruption is a problem in other countries in the region corruption is a problem in other countries in the world it's something that i talk to my counterpart about both in iraq on more than one occasion as well as here in the united states on more than one occasion and while clearly i think it's something that hurts you know inhibits the ability to make progress i don't think it's the major issue i mean part of the issue is the sunni's dominated through a dictator for a number of years the sunni's only represent twenty percent of the population of this country one person one vote figure out ok and so therefore the issue is is each of the key players the sunni's the shias the kurds and the subdivisions there are because there are different power points within each of those has to decide what do they believe is in their collective and in some cases individual interest over time and i think one of the reasons that you may not have seen more progress there is not because people are trying very hard not because the prime minister may not want to make progress but have enough of the players committed that they they want to do what's right for the collective best interest of all rather than their narrow interest and i can't put myself in their head i mean i don't we get past that it seems to me it's going to be tough sledding whether you know these or they got to be insane there's got to be an incentive and or consequences for their doing certain things and failure to do others and i think the other thing we have to keep in mind is this is a tough neighborhood it's been a tough neighborhood for centuries this is a neighborhood that has strategic interest for the united states we're going to have a presence in this neighborhood for a while but the question is what size presence where doing what and  congress and i've stayed here quite a long time to listen to you on pack quite a bit of nuance here but in that regard i'd like to make some comments and have you comment on the comments you have pointed to some inherent weaknesses here the first one being are these the correct benchmarks while not dismissing these are these wholly adequate to tell a complete story second is it's a snapshot in time and i do appreciate the  and measuring progress in some areas third isn't more to the point is it possible to create another evaluation mechanism that would perhaps be more dynamic and i know you've addressed this in with particular with mr smith and mr inglis that would look at increasing the probabilities of good outcomes given current trends and or changes in  policy perhaps congress ought to mandate to you that you study the next study's parameters before we mandate the study and it might get us to to that point of clarity i'd like you to comment on that second i am curious as to how this report ended up in the washington post prior to it being to before congress first i think that these objective that these benchmarks should be considered but i don't think they're the only things that ought to be considered i think you ought to look at other factors other than these benchmarks secondly i don't think the author just look at status as of a point time i think you have to look at progress thirdly i think you have to recognize that all benchmarks are not equal and therefore one has to focus on trying to determine which ones might be more important than others i think we need to step back and look at goals and objectives metrics and milestones were happy to help us or go ahead did you where we're not wanted ok second secondly on the on the the washington post copies of the report were not provided to the hill copies of the of the draft report were only provided to the executive branch the executive branch i don't know who but somebody in the executive branch leaked the report to the washington post i personally called and the reason i say that is was provided to the hill and i know darn well it didn't come from the g a o ok so i can only i talked to washing post myself i was on business in korea and i call the washington post my elfin urged them not to run that  article because a i knew it had not completed a sensitivity review and that some of the data they're in might be classified in fact one of the things in the article was classified secondly that some of our  it i knew as of that point time we'd already decided to change one before we even got comments back from the defense department and in fact when they provided us other information we decided to change another one and so you know i don't know who  it but i do know it was leaked and i don't think that was you know in our interest nor do i think that was in you know the congress's answers but it happened well i appreciate your comments as the chairman said earlier we take this responsibility very seriously i look forward to this report assuming we would be on the front lines of review of it and to find out it's basically on the general public before we've had time for review as well as question is as frustrating and difficult back back to the earlier point though if i could if i could make it clearly a goal i think that shared widely i can't speak for everyone i won't be presumptuous in that regard but it has stabilized iraq with a potential for self government a diminishment of our casualties increasing iraqi responsibility for their own future that would empower a draw down at some point in time hopefully the near term those are the type of parameters obviously that benchmarks are geared to assess those would be the type of parameters that i would assume could be a part of the dynamic analysis looking more at current trends shifts of policy the major or minor shifts of policy change of mission as well so i'll leave that for your contemplation should we come up with some bipartisan agreement to further study the issue that supplemented with scenario analysis well we you know as we use scenario analysis the military all the time we g a o it started using scenario analysis in nonmilitary applications and i think it has application here that's what i'm fly by probabilities right right right i hear you thank  maliki government and i'm curious of prime minister maliki as did the government made their own assessment in terms of how we as a counterpart to this whole effort and in the walk war if he is given any  basset who's head of the supreme audit institution in iraq whether he's been asked to do anything but i would doubt it i don't know if the media reports are accurate but as i recall that before the president made his decision to have this surge if the washington post article  other major papers are made statements to the fact that prime minister maliki advised our president not to send twenty thousand soldiers to iraq and i don't know if this is accurate is there any truth in that i don't know if there's any truth to that or not and i don't know that we've done any related work now we haven't had indicated earlier that the fifteen million people that live in iraq sixty percent are shiites and that the fact that  occurred is a statement that the primary reason the number one priority as to why we wage war against saddam hussein was because of the nuclear issue and nothing else it was the idea of democratizing or  was the that was the primary reason that was given that was in two thousand and three it's my understanding that saddam was saying to the twenty or thirty year period that he was the dictator in iraq he tortured and murdered killed well over three hundred thousand shiites that period during his reign and given the fact that twenty percent of the population is sunni the other twenty scourge would it be safe to say that there is just no way that his government is going to give some balance to the sunni representation this is going to be dominated shiite government no matter how we look at it simply because of the population factors well the question is is how much are they willing to give and that's not yet that's yet to be determined he had indicated earlier also this say s forces are currently strained i know the media reports have always quoted generals and our military leaders but i'm curious if any of the people in the department of defense civilian authority over these military officers have made any assessments or  or statement to to affirm what you said that our military definitely is strange you know that iraq would have there been a number of people from the pentagon as well as in uniform who have made very similar statements you know casey is one  you know you can say what i'm saying is not new you know there seems to be some question of that but anyway you had indicated earlier also that right now we're debt financing this war can you elaborate a little further on that  we're running large deficits the deficits are larger than advertised because we spend every dime of the so security surplus and other govern operating expenses we're not saving any of that we're replacing the cash with ious a the deficits are scheduled to get worse when baby boomers start retiring and there are other factors that will affect what the deficits might happen going forward both on the spending side and the tax side you know there's been a lot of numbers given in terms of exactly how much has not declared war only congress to declare a war last time that was done was world war two but depending upon what you talk about the global war on terrorism which would include iraq afghanistan and other activities beyond that and you get a higher number it's my understanding iraq and again i'll provide something for the record about four hundred billion to date just for iraq just for them that's financial because there are other non financial cost and there's been some indication of success that we've made in the anbar province but that's only one problem past there are different degrees security concerns in different provinces some don't have serious concern here and concerns and haven't for a while others have very serious concern and concerns i think why people focus on  and bar province is it's a total turn around and it's not baghdad it's close it's been a province where there has been where there has been a sanctuary for al qaida and where it was a place where  go to and use as a launching point to go other places and clearly there's been a dramatic change there but i come back and say how much of that is because of the sword how much of that is transfer of all how much of that is sustainable and ho very responsible leadership in dealing with this other foreign policy issues are appreciate your leadership tremendously general walker you've done an admirable job in a very stressful and difficult assignment and you have my accolades for that what the g a o stands for now by the way the government accountability office what was it before that the general accounting office even though we were never in the accounting business ok your folks have are more inclined towards accounting degrees and actually not know only about ten percent of our staff have accounting degrees ninety percent of our staff have master e new numbers but right now let me just say that i appreciate your taking on this very difficult and politically charged task do you happen to know i mean you've mentioned about you know the violence is going up do you happen to know historically whether or not at in the final days of a cause of wars whether the violence is increasing or decreasing historically  i haven't done the work on that not i don't know that we have either so for me to be able to give an insight you know the assumption here is if indeed the number of violent attacks is not going down that that must mean that we are stuck in a deeper  that isn't necessarily the case historically but you haven't looked into that so i wouldn't ask you to comment on that i will say my reading of history suggests that during the end of major conflict there actually are ins of more violence and more killing and more casualties doing due to the fact that one party believes it's about to lose the battle and that could well be what's going on here i'm not saying that it is but it could be  you're not suggesting in any way today with your testimony that liberating the iraqi people of having the united states use military force to liberate iraqi people from saddam hussein's dictatorship was not totalitarian group that controlled afghanistan and they're gone and they're not going to come back even though there's they're still around there's no one thought that the people of afghanistan are going to turn back to the taleban or in some way turn to even an anti american regime necessarily but instead we did that with people always talk about the boots on the ground we didn't have enough boots on the ground to accomplish the mission of the mission was accomplished in afghanistan which has about an equal population to iraq and it almost an equal size of not bigger and we did that with about two hundred boots on the ground right but i would respectfully suggest mr rohrabacher that afghan san is very different than right and history shows that afghanistan attempting to revive as well as the fact that recent recent activities in afghanistan are a matter of concern right now let me just note that we won the military objective in iraq with that with our military objective they cheated we achieved our objective in afghanistan what brought about the chaos after iraq was not a lack of troops during the liberation just as we had very few troops in afghanistan if there are some criticism of this administration i think it is totally justified in what we have done since to ensure the success in afghanistan the political decisions that were made were made in a way to ensure the success we actually made deals with the various power groups within that society we did not do that in iraq and instead we tried to transform that society which was not necessarily the goal that would be achievable finally let me just note this there were people who have opposed our efforts in iraq from the first minute that the president sent troops toward baghdad there was a sandstorm and i remember people saying how we're going to get tied down and that there are there are others who are motivated and i believe very well motivated people who for moral reasons are opposed to all war now i'd frankly i don't really pay a lot of attention to either one of those opinions because i'm trying to be practical and i want to stick to achieve our objectives and leave as soon as possible but we have a lot of things to do to work together on and i again compliment the chairman and hope that in this week as we move forward mr chairman that we can do so in the same bipartisan spirit among those people who are actually trying to find a practical solution talked about goals and objectives and i think it's time to reassess goals and objectives and i think that they need to be appropriate realistic attainable and sustainable we are where we are the question is where do we go from here and it's time to reassure me could you indulge me one more question did you at all assess the amount of foreign assistance from the saudis for example that is going into iraq i understand for example ninety percent of all the suicide bombers are saudi citizens have did you any assessment of the amount of foreign assistance going into the military operations not in connection with because the inspectors were there finally saddam hussein who knew he had no weapons of mass destruction and he knew he had no chemical biological weapons said let the inspectors go where they want to go and when that announcement was made the president ordered the hans blix and the inspectors out in forty eight hours so if we were trying to have an avoidance of war because that easy to get in drop some bombs hard to get out and if there had been a little more foresight about weapons of mass destruction that were not there if that was the purpose for the war then why didn't we have allow the inspectors to continue to find these weapons of mass to struction that they called showed pictures of at the u n so that's where all that is i just want to real quickly one do you feel that the sense governments run on power people like revenue are revenue sharing power of the government do you believe that it's possible for iraq to share in the power or do you believe in regional separation in three parts  i don't really think it's appropriate for me to be able to say what i think the answer to that is and let me ask you then do you think that they will be able to  create a government then that will satisfy all three i mean is that the same kind of question only time will tell i mean the fact of the matter is if you go one person one vote the shias obviously have the vote but keep in mind big footnote the big footnote is that all shias don't have the same necessary and forest there are different factions within the shia community the resources in that country are not distributed evenly among the geographic regions and so you know the ultimate test will be as how much are those that have a majority vote willing to give up in the interest of national unity that that's the ultimate question  some some of these factions have more of a willingness to see a strong central government than others do kurdistan is doing fairly well at the present point and in regard to that with the k and the rumors that weapons have gone into them from the kurds do you feel that this question on the border with turkey and and the p k k is something that will also tend to create a problem in the future i know that's a matter of concern especially with regard to the neighbors in the region in regard to the army you mentioned it was stretched i guess more my questions about where we're going in the future we have an all volunteer army even with high bonuses that they're giving for re upping some as they call it do you feel that we can at this present current ra continue to get recruits in the all volunteer army to sustain this ongoing battle where the question is at what price i mean you know in a free market economy if you willing to pay enough money you can get enough people you know there's no doubt about that but the question is what's the opportunity cost and do you have any notion of the number of of contractors that are used for military purposes not work related as opposed to regular army are or regular military was painted pencil how you define for military purposes clearly we're seeing and we've done work on this and other work is ongoing clearly we've seen an unprecedented use of contractors for security as well as non security activities in iraq about how many do you have any idea fifty thousand d o d still trying to get a sense for how many contractors are there i'll see if i can provide something for the record based on the work we've already done just to give you a sense ok you know we've been asking them they don't seem to know you know five thousand ten thousand oh no it's  could just on tractors just finally hurt and i still have an orange light before it gets red the big embassy we have i mean it's gigantic i understand i haven't seen it they don't encourage us to go there as much as we used to used to be able to draw i've been to baghdad to the green zone now they want to fly and now they don't really want to go so i assess the things can begin to much better what is the the potential of that massive embassy if we're going to have so much uncertainty in in the city and then the country in general well it's my understanding it's our largest embassy obviously in size  also in staffing it's intended to be our largest embassy obviously there's a tremendous amount of money that's been spent not just because of size but also because of security concerns you know one would expect that we're going to have relations with iraq for a number of years but you know we'll have to wait to see how things turn out i mean you know we're going to have an embassy in iraq i can't imagine that we're not going to there are more fundamental concerns frankly right now with regard to you know the government and the security and  thank you mr chairman i watched your interview on sixty minutes on the medicare prescription drug bill as much you know i agree with that i think it was a terribly fiscally irresponsible bill and i think it is going to cause a lot of problems so before i start taking issue with some of the things you said that you know that there are some of the things that you've done with which i agree how many years were you in the military the none as i had as had appointments to the nail on airport scanners could go get a bad left here but you want me on military not any knowledge no i wasn't how many years were you in the foreign service i would have not been in the foreign service ok what i want to make sure i understand is you're giving opinions  on foreign service issues for which you really don't have any experience i mean you weren't in foreign service you weren't you're an accountant this is a this is not my opinion this is the institutional opinion or g a o we do have people have been listening to your write your responses you gave an awful lot of opinions a lot of opinions if you want me to i'll give you gave a lot of opinions and i just want you to know that i think you're very bright guy and you've done a good job as control comptroller general but you just simply aren't qualified to give some of these opinions that you're giving you're not a military man you never were you're not a person who's been in the foreign service you never were so i would like for you in the future when you appear before the committee to confine your remarks to facts from your report and your investigation not giving opinions on the she is a decision as to what's going to go on over there because you don't have any expertise in that area i mean i read your  impressive you get a number of honorary doctorates in that sort of thing and i think that's great and you're obviously an honorable student jacksonville university and john f kennedy school of government at harvard i think it's great but it  bothers me when we have people before committees who really have had no experience in a given field acting like we're giving opinions on issues for which they really have very little knowledge mr barnard not the not the only person that has been the military that expressed opinion i i don't really and it's not my opinion i don't base on our war c c i really don't care about other people's opinions you're the guy at the table sure and you're the guy giving opinions for which you have no expertise no knowledge and no experience and so i just would like to say to you now and when you're testifying and i have dealt with you before the committee for good government for and so forth i just we should confine your remarks to the facts and to the issues as you see them but as far as going into opinions based upon work that we've done ok so and it's not my opinion i am conveying my thoughts based upon work that we collectively have done based upon questions that i'm getting let me just say this sure i would li for you to read the transcript but as i listen to every word you said and you gave a number a large number of personal opinions not stuff that was in your report or facts that were acquired by your compatriots there these were your opinions and you are not qualified to give those opinions and you are nice and you shoot i think the report is funny and i have great great admiration for your qualifications but when you're testifying before a committee if i were chairman i used to be i would try to confine your remarks to the facts instead of opinions for which you don't have any experience well let me say mr burton that one i will be happy to record the transcript i always do have a hearing secondly let me also say that when i answer questions i'd on upon based on the reports that are coming before you we've issued over one hundred reports and testimonies on iraq so you know if somebody asked me a question and we've done work on it and i've directly been involved in many cases that i'll answer based on what we've done which may not be the report that's before you now but it doesn't mean that it's not based on facts that's what i want to do but do it based on facts and not your opinions and i hope you will read the transcript i will i absolutely positively will and i'll be happy to talk to you separately about it if you want we've already thought all right mr chairman and thank you mr walker i for one when i knew we were going to have a g a o report relax and i was and i was relieved because i didn't know what you were going to say until we started reading it paper but i felt certain that you'd be fair you'd be unbiased and if we asked you a question you'd answer it and that's what's happened today and thank you for asking our question and not dodging them and acting like you've never thought of g a o and never thought of any of of the issues that you were asked about today so thank you for that you rico confirmed to me what i think ought to be our goals and objectives from this point on in iraq i'm not going to go back to all that i too am a person that was against being there before we even voted to go there but one of the things i think we need to me absolutely sure about is that we're clear we're not going to abandon iraq and the iraqi people as because we've certainly caused them enough chaos and  a lot of tragedy and we're not going to abandon our troops when it comes time to bringing them back so my three major goals i'm going to ask you about and i guess i'm going to ask you your opinion about two of them the first one i'm just going to tell you i believe our step right now is to fully fund the safe and organized redeployment of our troops and our military contractors and i know will take time and i don't see using  our taxpayer dollars in any way in iraq other than to bring our troops in the the contractors home safely but i also think we need to assist the iraqi people in their government  rebuilding their infrastructure both their economic and physical infrastructure and i think that we should be responsible both of these working with the international partners with helping with reconciliation so starting first with reconciliation what do you think reconciliation would look like and do you think that we could can and should encourage it and how would you suggest we weigh in as part of that with violence getting in the way of reconciliation i mean that i know that's kind of like a four way question but if any right to that you'd feel confident in answering i'd appreciate it right first to reiterate we've done one hundred reports plus in testimonies on iraq not just the one you've gotten today so anything i say is based upon the work that we've done either not just with regard to this report by others i think the iraqis have to decide whether or not they want reconciliation we can't decide that for them ok think the congress needs to consider since the congress has the power of the purse what should be the appropriate goals and objectives going forward and what should be our role versus the iraqis walls and achieving that and i don't know all the malee what the iraqi people will decide and i don't think anybody knows what the iraqi people will decide but  that would be my comment well speaking of power of the purse we've allocated funds that haven't been spent in the congress for ten billion dollars actually  reconstruction projects iraq and we do that for our own for projects in our own districts unfortunately we allocate the money but we don't spend it where do you see the greatest need for for reconstruction what would should be or would be the top priority well we've issued a number of reports in the past with regard to what has happened with regard to the electrical electricity sector the oil sector you know water treatment plants and things of that nature clearly the economy is driven by energy resources and that is the primary form of revenue that their government has and so you want to not not only be able to get production back but you also want to be able to have adequate security over what you're producing because there's a lot that has been stolen if you will with regard to that but you also need to make sure that you have reliable and equitably distributed electricity you need to try to make sure that you have clean possible water ok and obviously the iraqis are also concerned with regard to having a safe and effective place for their children to be taught as well as basic things like the trash picked up all right we've issued reports on many of these things a unfortunately because of the lack of adequate security even when progress has been made sometimes these facilities haven't been able to be maintained and adequately secured and so security is central not the only thing that needs to be done but it is central to try and do a trial of the progress and a number of our fronts including the reconstruction thank you gentleman from texas mr mccollum i think the chairman and mr walker thank you for being here today i also want to say the beginning that i agree with you that this is ultimately the struggle is up to the iraqi people at the end of the day i want to know i'm all for benchmarks and satisfactory mixed sufficient progress there are a lot of shades of gray in between all this when you agree that it's a subjective well what we did do mr mccall is we were originally asked to do met not met and we used our independent professional judgment to say in some cases we use partially met and by the way when we say not that met that doesn't mean no progress because we weren't asked to assess progress although we did try to provide some context on that and in the you know in the narrative that we have in the report in the commentary section that's a good point so in some categories where it was not met there could these some progress oh yes we're not saying there's no progress in some cases there are little in some cases there's a modest amount but not not enough to say partially met and in some cases there are some of the questions that don't even lend themselves to partially met increasing the number of iraqi security forces units capable of operating independently either involvement the shakes is much more significant than it was even six months ago and that the shia sunni and kurdish political leaders of sign a statement aimed at fostering reconciliation among the ethnic and religious factions  findings in any way take into account what we're getting reports on in terms of reduction of violence well first there's a difference between overall violence and the of those attacks and whether or not those attacks are sectarian or nonsectarian the nature and number thirteen which is your specific question we don't have a disagreement with the administration on eliminating militia control the local security we both agree it has not been eliminated where we do have a difference of opinion with the military is general petraeus and i'm sure he'll articulate next week does have a methodology that he uses to calculate sectarian violence we haven't got cops come up with his met methodology his methodology does show a reduction in sectarian violence but we can't we have not gotten counsel with his methodology we're not saying that his numbers don't show that we're just saying we're not comfortable with the methodology and we think it's also something that congress needs to think about is is it more important to focus on sectarian violence or total violence and how do you know if it's sectarian interests forces nonsectarian interest for example and i would commend to you mr mccaul our it's a five briefing document we have more information on that with regard to our concerns and other information that i would commend to you we've yet to hear the formal reporting for august violence from may to july coming from from february to july went up so much that violence at the end of july was about the same as february my understanding is it's gone down further in august but then again ramadan starts this month you know two monsters not make a sustainable trend even for a recession for example for recession you have to have a quarter or a you know you have have more than one quarter of consecutive negative growth so i think you know it's important to see what the trend is but it's also important to have enough time to get a sense that it truly is a trend and we're jittery and since the time of the surge has been fully operational since  that they do it outstanding job and i know that the opinions that you're providing us today are not the personal opinions of yourself they're the opinions of a first rate staff but i think it's important given what we've heard from some members today in terms of their there are questions that it be noted that your opinion coincides with the opinion of many in the military key players in the military there was a report in the washington post just recently where it was stated that senior u s military and government officials acknowledge that it will take years for the me and marine corps to recover from what some officials privately privately have called a death spiral in which the evel more rapid pace of wa known rotations as consume forty percent of their total gear weary to crew and left no time to train to fight anything other than the insurgency now at hand this is coming  out not from the government accountability office but from senior defense officials specifically this is from this is a quote from general schoomaker who happens to be the army chief of staff who i'm sure is well versed in the needs of his me we have a strategy right now that is outstripping the means to execute it he testified before the senate armed services committee i presume he knows what he's talking about the army's vice chief of staff general richard cody described as stock the level of readiness of i mean units in the united states which would be called on if another war breaks out the readiness continues to decline of our next to next to deploy forces and those forces by the way strategic reserve these are the words of the vice chair not from a g a o report general peter pace chairman of the joint chiefs of staffs was asked at a house hearing just recently if he was comfortable with the preparedness of the i mean units in the united states his response was no i am not comfortable he warned that the nation faces increased risk because of shortfalls in troops equipment and training the commandant of the marine corps testif similarly general general conway so i guess say that we can conclude that our military forces are indeed stressed out but let me move on  there will be a nother report that will be issued by an independent commission created by this congress chaired by a pharma general now general johnson and it's been reported that one of the recommendations will be that the iraqi police those units should be scrapped and we should start from scratch and that is really disturbing news and by the way on the jones commission it's all former military retired lauren fauresmith officials people with presumably the expertise which gives them some credibility in this matter mr chairman with the gentleman just just in case that maybe eight maybe was too subtle or maybe i was too blunt and it's not getting to just some members the point i was making is that absolutely all of those individuals whom you named are absolutely qualified to give assessments about whether army is stretched or not to valid assessments whether we agree with them or not but those of the people who make those statements and our great esteem witness is a wonderful man he is not qualified to make those assessments well i just mean if he gave his opinion by citing sources that are knowledgeable sources i understand that but it seems to me that he's given a lot of opinions that don't have reclaiming the fine reclaiming my time i presume  after the issuance of some hundred reports on this that he and his staff of had more than ample opportunity to discuss these issues with general pace with general conway with the vice chair and the chair of the army general schoomaker but i want to get to the point about the police who has been in charge of police training now for years subsequently we're talking about starting from the beginning what have we been doing for four years mr walker because after the surge it was a critical component of the equation to provide security that the police would take on that role now we going to hear from another independent commission that we've got to start all over again after four years what a disgrace general walker well several things any comments that i make are based upon work the g a o has done they're not my personal opinion is not appropriate for you to give my my purse my personal opinion i can't separate myself from my position as can dollar general united states and head of the g a o so they're not my personal opinion and they're based upon work the g a o has done we have people with military experience with foreign policy experience with a variety of other things that work in g a o the president the vice president have no military or foreign policy experience do i does that mean i don't respect their opinion i do they've got a lot of people who work for them who do so i think it's a false claim to say you know we're not qualified to do this work we're in the only qualified to do this work and all of the work that we do is based upon you know looking at hard data interviewing qualified individuals and the appropriate parties have an opportunity to review and comment on our work and we consider that were their comments before we issue our report so i stand behind everything i've said as the chair for an additional minute so that the comptroller general could respond to my question about police training and the report by the johnson commission that the training  been so lacking that we ought to scrap all of the existing police units in begin all over again after a full year is well it was a shared responsibility between the united states and the iraqi government and secondly for the record it's my understanding the secretary defense gates does not have any military expense experience either so you know frankly i think we need to stick with the facts i would ask one final question was to chairman i would ask that those americans that have been responsible flawed the training of the police be identified and that information forwarded to the chairman of the full committee so that we can ask those individuals to come forward and pulls their the question as to why this conclusion by this independent commission headed by general jones that we have to begin all over again after four years i think the general question is what if any accountability where will there be missed of all i know i speak for every member of this committee you know expressing to you and you are singularly a bose that deep appreciation we are much in your debt this hearing is concluded