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THE EVOLVING NATIONAL STRATEGY FOR

VICTORY IN IRAQ

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY,

EMERGING THREATS, AND INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

JULY 11, 2006

Serial No. 109–228

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio

BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

DAVID MARIN, Staff Director

LAWRENCE HALLORAN, Deputy Staff Director

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, EMERGING THREATS, AND INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut, Chairman

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

TOM LANTOS, California

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

R. NICHOLAS PALARINO, Staff Director

ROBERT A. BRIGGS, Clerk

ANREW SU, Minority Professional Staff Member

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on July 11, 2006 ............................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Jeffrey, Ambassador James, Senior Advisor on Iraq to the Secretary

of State and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the

Middle East, Department of State; Mary Beth Long, Representative,

Department of Defense; and Brigadier General Michael Jones, Deputy

Director for Political Military Affairs, Joint Chiefs of Staff ...................... 74

Jeffrey, James ............................................................................................ 74

Jones, Michael ........................................................................................... 82

Long, Mary Beth ........................................................................................ 81

Pollack, Kenneth, director of Middle Eastern policy, Brookings Institution; Laith Kubba, senior director for Middle East and North Africa,

National Endowment for Democracy; Anthony Cordesman, Admiral

Arleigh Burke Chair in strategy, Center for Strategic and International

Affairs [CSIS]; and Dr. Kenneth Katzman, Specialist in Middle East

Affairs, Congressional Research Service ..................................................... 113

Cordesman, Anthony ................................................................................. 145

Katzman, Kenneth .................................................................................... 157

Kubba, Laith .............................................................................................. 136

Pollack, Kenneth ....................................................................................... 113

Walker, David M., Comptroller General of the United States, accompanied by Joseph Christoff, Director of International Affairs, Government Accountability Office ........................................................................... 21

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Cordesman, Anthony, Admiral Arleigh Burke Chair in strategy, Center

for Strategic and International Affairs [CSIS], prepared statement of .... 147

Jeffrey, Ambassador James, Senior Advisor on Iraq to the Secretary

of State and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the

Middle East, Department of State, prepared statement of ....................... 78

Jones, Brigadier General Michael, Deputy Director for Political Military

Affairs, Joint Chiefs of Staff, charts ............................................................ 85

Katzman, Dr. Kenneth, Specialist in Middle East Affairs, Congressional

Research Service, prepared statement of .................................................... 159

Kubba, Laith, senior director for Middle East and North Africa, National

Endowment for Democracy, prepared statement of ................................... 138

Kucinich, Hon. Dennis J., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Ohio, prepared statement of .................................................................... 16

Pollack, Kenneth, director of Middle Eastern policy, Brookings Institution, prepared statement of .......................................................................... 116

Shays, Hon. Christopher, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Connecticut, prepared statement of ........................................................ 4

Walker, David M., Comptroller General of the United States, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 25

Waxman, Hon. Henry A., a Representative in Congress from the State

of California, prepared statement of ........................................................... 10

(1)

THE EVOLVING NATIONAL STRATEGY FOR

VICTORY IN IRAQ

TUESDAY, JULY 11, 2006

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, EMERGING

THREATS, AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:08 p.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher Shays

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Shays, Marchant, Burton, Platts, Turner, Dent, Kucinich, Sanders, Maloney, Van Hollen, Ruppersberger,

Lynch, Higgins, and Waxman (ex officio).

Staff present: R. Nicholas Palarino, Ph.D., staff director; Robert

A. Briggs, analyst; Robert Kelley, chief counsel; Raj Lalla, Jake

Parker, and Jeff Hall, interns; David Rapallo, minority chief investigative counsel; Andrew Su, minority professional staff member;

Earley Green, minority chief clerk; and Jean Gosa, minority assistant clerk.

Mr. SHAYS. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations

hearing entitled, ‘‘The Evolving National Strategy for Victory in

Iraq’’ is called to order.

Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad called Iraq the defining challenge

of our time. He said, ‘‘What happens in Iraq will shape the future

of the Middle East, and the future of the Middle East will shape

the future of the world.’’ I think he is right on target.

On April 9, 2003, the bronze statue of Saddam Hussein towering

over Baghdad’s Firdos Square was torn down. The statue’s toppling

is viewed as the symbolic point at which Hussein’s government

ceased to exist, and when hopes were high that hostilities would

end.

After a successful military campaign lasting less than 6 weeks,

President Bush declared, ‘‘Major combat operations in Iraq have

ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have

prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country.’’

Saddam Hussein and his government were toppled, but combat

operations did not end. The job of securing and reconstructing Iraq

has become extremely difficult. The terrorists and insurgents seek

to prevent Iraq from having a democratically elected government

that respects majority rule and minority rights.

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Over the past 38 months, I have visited Iraq 12 times, and this

subcommittee has had 10 hearings relating to Iraq. I have seen

both setbacks and progress in our efforts to help this new nation.

Numerous Americans and Iraqi officials and Iraqi citizens have

shared with me their concerns about serious mistakes made by the

United States and coalition forces. In my judgment, flawed planning for postconflict Iraq by the Department of Defense allowed

Americans to be the face for Iraq for more than a year. Failed planning allowed widespread looting immediately after coalition forces

took control; indiscriminate de-Baathification of the government

work force; and dissolution of Iraqi security forces, military police

and border security forces.

After digging ourselves into a deep hole during the first year, we

have made significant progress. The first major success was the

transfer of power to Iraqis in June 2004. This was followed by the

Iraqi people electing an interim government in January 2005,

which then drafted a Constitution. The Iraqi people ratified that

Constitution in October 2005 and elected a 4-year representative

government in December of that same year with 76 percent voter

participation.

Since June 2004, the members of the Iraqi security forces have

nearly tripled to 265,000. They have made strides in combat effectiveness and leadership. They are better trained and equipped, and

they are developing the capability to act independently of coalition

forces. Today these security forces are taking the lead in controlling

approximately 30 percent of the country.

The Iraqi economy is growing. The International Monetary Fund

estimates that gross domestic product grew by 2.6 percent last year

and is expected to grow by 10.4 percent this year.

Initially the administration relied on the Military Campaign

Plan, a classified military campaign plan, as its strategy for transforming Iraq into a representative democracy. Then, in November

2005, the administration published the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq. This roadmap established a three-pronged strategy:

Build stable, pluralistic national institutions; clear areas of enemy

control; and restore Iraq’s neglected infrastructure.

As the situation has evolved, so has U.S. strategy. The administration is focused on assisting a new Iraqi Government in promoting its own agenda of national reconciliation, improving security,

increasing oil and electricity production, and engaging other nations in Iraq’s development.

To help implement Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s agenda, President Bush on June 14th at a news conference said, ‘‘We

will continue to conduct joint military operations with Iraqi security forces to secure the cities of Baghdad and Ramadi, send senior

Cabinet-level advisors to Iraq to improve oil and electricity production, and increase diplomatic outreach to other countries promoting

assistance to Iraq.’’

To end the war and begin a withdrawal of U.S. forces, the United

States needs to particularly support Iraq’s national reconciliation.

National reconciliation entails amending Iraq’s Constitution, providing conditional amnesty for insurgents, and revising wholesale

de-Baathification. This effort is absolutely essential.

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Today, with the help of the Government Accountability Office,

administration witnesses including Ambassador James Jeffrey, Ms.

Mary Beth Long, Brigadier General Michael Jones and reknowned

experts on Iraq, we examine our National Strategy for Victory in

Iraq and recent statements by President Bush after his meeting

with the Prime Minister in Iraq by assessing the evolution of the

U.S. National Strategy for Victory in Iraq in response to changing

security, political and economic events, and, perhaps more importantly, evaluating the evolving strategies themselves to better understand their chances for success.

The United States liberated Iraq from a tyrant who tortured and

killed his own people. We made mistakes in our efforts to secure

and rebuild the country, but we are correcting those mistakes, and

progress is being made. Yes, the task is difficult, but that only reinforces the need to closely examine our roadmap for success.

I am not afraid we will lose the war in Iraq in Iraq. I am deeply

concerned we will lose the war in Iraq here at home. Our efforts

to remove Saddam Hussein from power and help bring democracy

to the most troubled part of the world is truly a noble effort that

must succeed, because, as Ambassador Khalilzad said, ‘‘What happens in Iraq will shape the future of the Middle East, and the future of the Middle East will shape the future of the world.’’

We thank all the witnesses for taking the time to appear with

us today.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. With that, I would recognize the ranking member,

Mr. Kucinich.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to defer to

our ranking member of the full committee Mr. Waxman.

Mr. SHAYS. The ranking member of the full committee is recognized.

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

All Americans want Iraq to succeed. They want Iraq to be peaceful. They want ordinary Iraqis to have electricity, clean water and

a safe environment.

At the same time, Americans want to end the war. They want

our troops to come home, and they want to stop losing lives, and

they want to stop hemorrhaging taxpayers’ dollars.

The question for today’s hearing is whether the Bush administration has a plan to do this that will work. Unfortunately, the Bush

administration’s record for planning on Iraq has been abominable.

Before we went the to war, President Bush and other senior administration officials promised we would be welcomed as liberators.

They also promised the reconstruction of Iraq would pay for itself.

This turned out to be wishful thinking that ignored the advice of

experts who had studied the region for years.

As the result of both of these promises turning out to be false,

we have now faced a virulent insurgency that has grown increasingly deadly. We have squandered approximately $50 billion in

United States and Iraqi funds on reconstruction with virtually

nothing to show for it. GAO is issuing a report today that confirms

this.

The GAO report states that the original plan assumed a permissive security environment which never materialized. GAO also

finds that essential services have not been restored to prewar levels, and the United States has yet to prove that it has made a difference in the Iraqi people’s quality of life.

These were not the only mistakes. Ambassador Bremer dismissed

the Iraqi Army, providing recruits for the insurgency. The administration underestimated the amount of troops that were necessary

despite the warnings of General Shinseki and others. The administration failed to plan for troop support until after the fall of Baghdad, and the administration failed to prevent massive looting after

the fall of Baghdad.

These were all additional mistakes. These were grave errors that

made things worse, and they thrust us into a quagmire. So now we

are in the unfortunate position of having to rely on this incompetent administration to lead Iraq and the United States out of this

war. We all want to succeed, but how do we get there?

The Bush administration’s offer is a vague proclamation about

its strategy. They say victory will take time, but the process cannot

be based on the timeline; that the success must be based on conditions on the ground. Their supporters say things like, if we can’t

succeed in Iraq, it will be because of failure of resolve in the United

States.

Well, what are the conditions that are going to be necessary? The

goal is a peaceful, united, stable and secure Iraq. How will the administration decide whether the American people have done

enough, based on the number of Iraqi security forces we train? And

9

what if the violence continues? Will the administration’s decision

be based on reducing the number of attacks each week, and what

are our performance measures? When will the administration decide it’s time to go, and why can’t the American people know ahead

of time what the specific benchmarks are?

The GAO report is critical of the Bush administration’s strategy

in one particularly telling way. GAO states as follows, ‘‘the strategy

neither identifies the current and future costs of implementing the

strategy, nor does it identify the sources of funding needed to

achieve U.S. political, security, and economic objectives in Iraq.’’

Since there is no future cost data, GAO makes this finding, ‘‘as

a result, neither DOD nor Congress can reliably determine the cost

of the war, nor do they have details on how appropriated funds are

being spent or historical data useful in considering future funding

needs. In addition, none of the strategy documents take into account the total cost of Iraq’s reconstruction.’’

The administration has been in Iraq for 3 years and has spent $311 billion to support its efforts there, yet the administration

strategy includes no information about future costs. This tells me

they don’t have a real plan. They are winging it, hoping that the

violence will miraculously settle down, but lacking any real sense

of how to achieve this.

Mr. Chairman, I have little confidence in this administration’s

proclamations about the future of Iraq. For the past 3 years, they

have been saying the next 6 months are going to be the turning

point. I hope we can get more specific, substantive and straightforward answers from them today.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Henry A. Waxman follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. I understand the vice chairman of the committee

does not have a statement. I appreciate his being here and will ask

the former vice chairman of the committee Mr. Turner if he has a

statement.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Chairman, I thank you so much for your continued focus on Iraq and for your holding this hearing today. This

is a very important topic, and your commitment continuing to go

to Iraq to see on the ground what is occurring there is so important, and your bringing that information back and making certain

that we have hearings so that this story can be told about what is

occurring and what the plans are is very important.

I regret that this issue of Iraq continues to be made a political

issue. Something as simple as the war on terror, where we should

have full and unanimous support from everyone, turns into a litany

of political complaints and assaults on the administration, which I

think is incredibly unfortunate.

Our enemies are watching today. Those who are in the war on

terror against us are watching today. Repeatedly, misinformation

and mistruths, untruths, are told about Iraq and are told about the

situation that led up to the war.

I just participated on June 29th in a hearing in the Armed Services Committee. I am a member of the Armed Services Committee,

and in that hearing Lieutenant General Maples was testifying on

the weapons of mass destruction that had been discovered in Iraq.

Those portions are of a report that had been most recently made

public, the remainder of which remains classified. With all the partisan discussions that we have heard, there are many people even

on this dais who have made statements that there are no weapons

of mass destruction.

I want to read to you a portion of my questions and the answers

from Lieutenant General Maples that occurred in that hearing, because the evidence that was presented, what so far was allowed to

be made public, is that since 2003, coalition forces have recovered

approximately 500 weapons munitions which contained mustard or

sarin nerve agent.

These are my questions for Lieutenant General Maples, who is

before us in that unclassified, declassified portion of the report. It’s

about Iraq, and I asked, knowing that we have these 500 weapons

that are now in our possession.

In Iraq, they produced those weapons-grade chemical agents, and

they weaponized them. You are actually finding weapons; is that

correct? I will say that again, and they produced those weapongrade chemical agents, and they weaponized them. You are actually finding weapons; is that correct?

Lieutenant General Maples said, that is correct. The report says

over 500. And there’s a portion of the report that is classified, and

the general went on to say that the portions of the report that are

classified indicate that the numbers are, of course, greater than

500.

I asked another question about the capabilities of the regime.

From the review of these weapons, is it clear that they are Iraqi

in origin? We had already established that they are chemical weapons-grade, chemical agents, and they have been weaponized. So I

asked, are they Iraqi in origin? These are not weapons of mass deVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:45 May 09, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00016 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\34545.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
13

struction that have been purchased on, say, wmd.com; these are

Iraqi-produced. And he said, yes, sir.

Do you have any evidence that the individuals that produced

them were no longer in Iraq or had lost the capability or the intellect or the knowledge or the production that would assume they

could then produce others? And he responded that there was no information that the ability of Iraq to produce weapons-grade agents

or to weaponize them had been eliminated.

Some of the political statements that we have had, Mr. Waxman

himself on June 15th stated, Mr. Speaker, before we went to war,

President Bush and other administration officials made three

promises to the American people: One, we would find weapons of

mass destruction; and goes on to say all of these three promises

have proved to be false.

Mr. Waxman read almost virtually his June 15th quote today. He

left out the no weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Dennis Kucinich

said there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but there

are WMD in D.C. Lies are weapons of mass destruction.

What is important about those statements is that we have in our

hands over 500 weapons of mass destruction, weapons-grades nerve

agent, where it has been weaponized by Iraq, that showed they had

the capability. Yet the political discourse here has been to discredit

the existence or the capability of Iraq to have or possess or to create weapons of mass destruction.

I certainly would like the political discourse on the reconstruction

and our efforts to win the war on terror to be one of support and

not one of undermining the efforts of the United States to protect

the American people.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman.

The Chair would recognize Mr. Kucinich.

Mr. KUCINICH. With all due respect to my good friend from Ohio,

this administration led this country to war based on lies. You

know, where are the weapons of mass destruction? We were given

this whole phantasm of, well, you know, we are going to be hit with

weapons of mass destruction, Iraq is going to attack us. Iraq did

not have weapons of mass destruction, did not have the capability

of attacking us, did not have the intention of attacking us, was not

connected to September 11th, and we are here talking about a national strategy for victory in Iraq.

Who are we kidding? Come on, get real, wake up, America. This

administration has lied to the people. They are selling this lie all

over. They are selling it again to this committee. Balderdash. It’s

time that we challenge them directly.

You know, this idea of a national victory strategy was issued in

2005. It was quite clear to many of us that it was nothing more

than a public relations ploy. The so-called strategy came 2 years

after the mission was declared accomplished, and we were told that

major combat operations had ended.

This administration never had and still doesn’t have a realistic

strategy in place. They continue to issue a wish list and timetables

based on a political situation in Washington, not on a situation in

Baghdad. They often use this line: Well, when the Iraqis stand up,

we will stand down. That is just a slogan; that’s not a plan. MeanVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:45 May 09, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00017 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\34545.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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while, over 2,500 troops have died, tens of thousands have been injured, hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis injured or killed.

This administration had a plan, all right, a plan for occupation;

doesn’t have a plan for reconstruction, doesn’t have a plan for exit

strategy. In the past they stood before the Congress and the American people and declared that we would be greeted as liberators,

that Iraqi oil would pay for reconstruction, that Iraq’s vast stockpile of WMDs posed a threat to this Nation.

The White House knew there were no WMDs in Iraq. There was

no link between September 11th and Iraq, no uranium in Niger, no

mobile trailers functioning as biological labs. All these claims, like

their so-called phony strategy for victory, were misleading. They

were false. They were meant not only to scare and confuse and distract the public from this war, they were meant to establish a permanent presence in Iraq.

Nobody in this administration has taken responsibility. Nobody

has been held accountable for these lies, but I predict that someday

the world community will hold these individuals accountable. The

administration has proven its credibility problem time after time,

and the national strategy for victory is an example of this problem.

When it comes to Iraq, this administration’s credibility gaps become a credibility abyss. OK, you have Saddam Hussein in jail, al

Zarqawi is dead, Iraq is in the midst of a civil war, and violent

deaths are reported daily. Our troops are still in harm’s way, and

we have still not dealt with the serious issue, are we ever going

to leave Iraq?

Could it be this administration doesn’t have an exit strategy because they don’t intend to exit? Even if and when large numbers

of our troops are sent home from Iraq, all evidence seems to suggest that we are planning a permanent military presence there. Despite the denial by the Pentagon leaders that they are not building

permanent base in Iraq, we know of several large airbases at

Balad, Al-Asad, Camp Taji and Talil constructed for the long-term.

In these bases we have already invested hundreds of millions in

taxpayers’ dollars. These bases now have fast-food restaurants,

they have bus routes, even have their own supermarket. We are

not there for the long term?

Furthermore, the Overseas Basing Commission last spring wrote

that military presence corresponds to influence. We cannot hope for

much influence without presence. The degree of influence also correlates a level of permanent presence that we maintain forward.

So it’s inconceivable that long-range U.S. influence in Iraq is not

being sought, yet plans for a long-range military presence in Iraq

are not being made to this Congress and particularly this subcommittee.

The Department of Defense’s plans for a military base in Iraq go

right to the question of what victory in Iraq is supposed to mean.

It’s hard to understand our national security strategy in Iraq can

be assessed without knowing the plans for a military base in Iraq.

I hope the GAO has been successful, where our subcommittee efforts had failed, in determining the DOD’s sufficient detailed information about the cost and types of military installation in Iraq.

As Congress continues to debate the strategy for handling the

war in Iraq, it is imperative to examine the usefulness or lack

15

thereof of the long-term and near-term U.S. military presence

there. I hope this hearing will accomplish this.

But, you know, it’s time we challenge this administration about

their phony stories about WMDs, and you can produce some kind

of manifest right now. The fact is that the United States sold weapons of mass destruction to Iraq years before Saddam Hussein—

when Saddam Hussein was in power, and those weapons were accounted for by the United Nations commission, and we know that

they were destroyed, and this administration went to war based on

a false pretext. Period, end of story.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Dennis J. Kucinich follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. We will continue with the testimony of our witnesses

when we get back. We will be delayed for a little bit with a few

votes. We are at recess.

[Recess.]

Mr. SHAYS. I call this hearing to order. I appreciate the patience

of our witnesses. I would like to take care of some business first

before recognizing our first panel.

I ask unanimous consent that all members of the subcommittee

be permitted to place an opening statement in the record and that

the record remain open for 3 days for that purpose. Without objection, so ordered.

I ask for unanimous consent that all witnesses be permitted to

include their written statements in the record, and, without objection, so ordered.

At this time, we will recognize our first panel. Our first panel is

the Honorable David M. Walker, Comptroller General of the United

States, accompanied by Joseph Christoff, Director of International

Affairs. Both are obviously from the Government Accountability Office.

As is our custom, I would invite both witnesses, and if there is

any other witness, Mr. Christoff, behind you, anyone else who

might make a comment, I would like them to be sworn in at this

time as well.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. I would note for the record that all of our witnesses

have responded in the affirmative, including our Comptroller General.

Let me just say before beginning, the purpose of this hearing,

and obviously Members are free to discuss other issues that they

choose to with the witnesses, but the purpose of this hearing is to

examine, one, whether we had and have a strategy, and to what

extent that strategy is meeting the needs of our engagement in

Iraq. But obviously Members are free to ask any other questions

or make any other points they want to make about Iraq.

I consider this one of the more important hearings this subcommittee has held. I am very appreciative to all our witnesses. I

realize that there will obviously be strong emotions about an issue

that is extraordinarily important.

So with that, Mr. Walker, can you hear us?

Mr. WALKER. Yes, I can, Mr. Chairman. Can you hear me?

Mr. SHAYS. We hear you very well. Please give your statement.

We thank you for taking the time to do it, even though you are in

Dallas.

STATEMENT OF DAVID M. WALKER, COMPTROLLER GENERAL

OF THE UNITED STATES, ACCOMPANIED BY JOSEPH

CHRISTOFF, DIRECTOR OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE

Mr. WALKER. [The following statement was delivered via teleconference.] Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee. I want to thank you for the opportunity to appear before the

subcommittee. I want to congratulate you and the subcommittee on

your continued commitment to oversight in this area and other

areas. I also want to thank you for allowing me to be able to testify

22

remotely from our Dallas office; and, finally, to acknowledge, as you

did, that Joe Christoff, who is the Director of International Affairs

and Trade Team, is there to be able to assist me with any questions that I may not have the answers myself.

If I can, Mr. Chairman, I will like to just summarize my statement. I understand the entire statement has been provided for the

record. Is that all right?

Mr. SHAYS. Yes.

Mr. WALKER. I will move to do so.

Mr. SHAYS. Your entire statement is in the record. You may summarize as you choose. We do the 5 minutes, but obviously we allow

an additional 5 if it’s necessary.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think I can stay within

the 5.

My testimony today is based upon a report that we are releasing,

which evaluates the U.S. national strategy for victory in Iraq

known as NSVI. It also considers seven supporting documents as

well as other GAO reports where we have assessed U.S. activities

in Iraq to date.

In summary, the NSVI, or new strategy, is a clear improvement

over previous U.S. Government planning efforts for stabilizing and

rebuilding Iraq; however, the new strategy and its supporting documents are incomplete, because they do not fully address all of the

desirable characteristics of an effective national strategy.

On the positive side, the strategy’s purpose and scope is clear because it identifies U.S. involvement in Iraq as a ‘‘vital national interest and the central front in the war on terror.’’

The strategy also generally addresses the threats and risks facing the coalition forces, as well as providing a comprehensive description of the desired U.S. political security and economic objectives in Iraq; however, the discussion of outcome-related key performance measures that are designed to help assess progress in

achieving these goals and objectives is limited, needs further work,

and is not adequately transparent.

On the other side of the coin, the strategy falls short in at least

three key areas. First, it only partially identifies which U.S. agencies are responsible for implementing key aspects of the strategy or

resolving conflicts among the many implementing agencies.

Second, it does not fully address how U.S. goals and objectives

will be integrated with those of the Iraqi Government and the overall international community, nor does it detail the Iraqi Government’s anticipated contribution to its future security and reconstruction needs.

And, third, it only partially identifies the current and future cost

of U.S. involvement in Iraq, including the costs that will be necessary to maintain U.S. military operations, help to build Iraqi

Government capacity at the provincial and national level, and to

rebuild critical infrastructure.

At this point, Mr. Chairman, I think it’s important to note that

people talk about rebuilding. We are talking about rebuilding infrastructure. But from a practical standpoint, Iraq is building its first

government institutions, so it has not had a viable governmental

infrastructure, and that we are starting from almost ground base

zero.

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Furthermore the June 2006 Camp David fact sheet provides additional detail, but does not address the key shortfalls we have

identified in these three areas. I know the State Department has

said this document is intended to be high level, it’s not intended

to get into detail. We have looked at the supporting documents.

They do not get to the level of detail that we believe is necessary,

importantly, for the Congress to be able to do its job, and in order

for the American people to have an understanding of exactly where

we are, where we are making progress, where we are not, in order

to provide a fuller and fairer picture for people to reach their own

reasoned conclusions.

There are a range of security, political and economic factors that

will hinder U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq and to achieve key goals

in the U.S. strategy. First, the United States and Iraqi Governments are trying to stabilize Iraq by training and equipping additional Iraqi security forces and by securing Baghdad and selected

strategic cities. Although the number of Iraqi security forces is increasing, these forces still lack the logistical command and control

and intelligence capabilities to operate independently. Moreover,

increases in attacks against the coalition and its Iraqi partners and

the growing influence of militias have adversely affected United

States and Iraqi efforts so far.

Second, the United States and Iraqi Government are trying to

improve Iraq’s capacity to govern by reconciling the conflicting sectarian groups and building the capacity of national and provincial

governments to provide security and deliver services that all Iraqis

need, care about and will appreciate. However, continuing sectarian conflicts and the lack of core competencies in a number of ministries, along with widespread corruption, have served to hinder

these efforts.

Third, the United States and Iraqi Governments are trying to revitalize Iraq’s economy and to restore essential services in the oil,

electricity, water and other key sectors, but these efforts have been

impeded by security challenges, corruption, budgetary and other

matters.

The formation of a permanent Iraqi Government gives the

United States a new opportunity to reexamine its strategy for Iraq

and to more closely align its efforts with those of the Iraq Government as well as with the international community at large.

The report that we are releasing today recommends that the National Security Council, in conjunction with the Department of Defense and the State Department, complete the strategy by addressing all six characteristics that are indicative of an effective national

strategy and incorporate them into a single integrated document.

In particular, the revised strategy should clarify each agency’s

roles and responsibilities, specify future contributions that will be

necessary, and identify the current cost and future resources that

will be needed in order to fully and effectively implement the strategy.

In conclusion, based on GAO’s ongoing and completed work, including the report that we are issuing today, the United States,

Iraq and the international community should consider taking additional actions to help achieve sure and sustainable success in Iraq.

These include improving the sustainment of Iraqi security forces by

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enhancing their support capabilities; namely, command and control, logistics and intelligence.

Second, expanding efforts to improve the capabilities of national

and provincial governments, including greater technical assistance

and training. The United States and the international community

need to do more to help Iraqis help themselves deliver results that

all Iraqi citizens care about. Most Iraqi citizens care about the

same things that most American citizens do, safe streets, good jobs,

reliable electricity, clean water, pick up the trash, education,

health care, etc.

Last, No. 3, the need to develop a comprehensive anticorruption

strategy that improves the regulatory environment, strengthens accountability organizations, reduces subsidies and enhances investment opportunities.

Mr. Chairman, that completes my summary statement. I would

be more than happy to answer any questions that you or the other

subcommittee members may have. Joe Christoff is there to provide

additional information as necessary.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Walker follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. We will start off with Mr. Kucinich.

Mr. KUCINICH. May I direct questions to——

Mr. SHAYS. Yes, you may ask Mr. Christoff or the Comptroller

General.

Mr. KUCINICH. These questions would be to Mr. Walker. First, I

have to preface my questions. The DOD’s plans for our military

bases in Iraq go right to the question about what victory in Iraq

would mean. For instance, last spring the Overseas Basing Commission wrote that military presence corresponds to influence. They

said, ‘‘We cannot hope for much influence without presence. The

degree of influence often correlates to the level of permanent presence that we maintain forward.’’

So, it’s inconceivable the long-range U.S. influence in Iraq is not

being sought. What exactly are the plans for a long-range military

presence in Iraq? This subcommittee has been trying to ascertain

what the long-range plans are for certain very large military installations in Iraq, such as at Balad, Al-Asad, Talil and Camp Taji.

The Congressional Research Service wrote in April 2005 some

projects suggest a substantial U.S. investment to improve facilities

that could be used for the longer term. DOD has requested its military construction funds for 5 years, the standard length of time,

which could be perceived as indicating a more extended U.S. presence, and that is in Iraq. Projects that suggest a longer U.S. presence include $57 million

for Balad Airbase designated as a strategic aerial port to expand

aircraft ramps, construct roads and storage areas for equipment,

and replace airfield lighting. That is a quote from a CRS memorandum.

Now, our staff met with members of the Overseas Basing Commission, Mr. Walker. They learned that the Commissioners received no information from DOD about Iraq and would not comment. When our staff was briefed by DOD, they were told that a

strict silence would be observed in all matters relating to Iraq.

Now, it’s hard to understand how national security strategy in Iraq

can be assessed without knowing the plans for a military base in

Iraq.

So, Mr. Walker, did the GAO succeed where our subcommittee

efforts have not? Did GAO receive from DOD sufficient detailed information about the cost and types of military installations in Iraq?

Mr. WALKER. Well, first, Mr. Kucinich, let me say that we have

not performed a specific engagement designed to try to ascertain

the cost of military construction activities in Iraq. It is something

that we would be willing to consider doing, but that’s not something that we have undertaken. However, let me tell you what we

do know, if I may.

Mr. KUCINICH. No, wait, you have answered my question. I have

a followup question.

Mr. WALKER. I will, very quickly.

Mr. KUCINICH. Were you able to ascertain whether or not future

costs and resources were addressed?

Mr. WALKER. No. Basically the position right now, the Defense

Department, is the United States does not plan to have a long-term

presence in Iraq. That is why the Overseas Basing Commission

was not asked to look at this. It’s clear that we are likely to have

53

a presence for a considerable period of time. It’s clear that there

will be capabilities that will be there for the Iraqis or someone. But

their position is, at the present time, the United States does not

plan to maintain a long-term presence in Iraq.

Mr. KUCINICH. Was the GAO given a detailed briefing of the

DOD’s intentions for facilities in Iraq?

Mr. KUCINICH. We have had some interaction with the Defense

Department on this issue, but their position has and remains, to

my knowledge, that while extensive costs are being incurred, they

are being incurred primarily to support our involvement for an undetermined period of time, and not to maintain a long-term presence in Iraq.

Mr. KUCINICH. So, you say an undetermined period of time is a

short presence is what you are saying. Now, Mr. Walker, what attempts did GAO make to find the answers to these questions about

bases? Did you, for example, seek access to these bases at Balad

and others to see how permanent or impermanent they may be?

Mr. WALKER. We have done some work in Iraq, but we have not

done a specific engagement designed to try to address the issues

you are raising, Mr. Kucinich. I am more than happy to talk to you

and other members of the subcommittee if you are interested in

doing so.

Mr. KUCINICH. Well, I certainly think that it would be of interest

to this committee and the American people to know whether or not

the United States is preparing for a long-term presence in Iraq

based on the construction of those bases. And since it didn’t look

at it in terms of the scope of this study, I think it would be important for you to do it in a followup. Thank you, sir.

Mr. WALKER. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. The Chair would recognize Mr. Waxman. What we

are doing is we are doing 6-minute questioning.

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Before I ask some questions of Mr. Walker, I want to respond to

the comments made by our colleague on the other side of the aisle,

Mr. Turner from Ohio. He mentioned in his opening statement that

he thought I was derelict for not mentioning that weapons of mass

destruction were found in Iraq, and he mentioned a report by General Maples and the National Ground Intelligence Center.

But, unfortunately, Representative Turner gave only a small part

of the story. According to General Maples, the munitions recently

found buried in Iraq were produced in the 1980’s, and, according

to the NGIC report, these munitions are not proof of an ongoing

weapons of mass destruction program in the 1990’s.

I would just add that there was a FOX News story from June

22nd quoting a Defense Department official that the munitions

were not even in useable condition. And according to this official

Bush administration account, ‘‘This does not reflect the capacity

that was built up after 1991. These munitions are not the WMDs

this country and the rest the world believed Iraq had, and not the

WMDs for which this country went to war.’’

So before criticizing me, perhaps the Member would do better to

consult the actual report he cites. Well, before everybody gets excited, therefore, that he found the weapons of mass destruction,

let’s just put that issue to rest.

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The second issue I just want to comment on before I ask some

questions of the Government Accountability Office is why is it partisan to criticize what’s happening in Iraq and how this administration has been handling the matter? I don’t consider that partisan.

Are we supposed to keep quiet about the whole thing and just

cheer the President on and say stay the course?

These are slogans. I, too, have been to Iraq, Mr. Chairman. I

know what it’s like for Members to go to Iraq. You go to a green

zone. It’s all very, very carefully protected. You hear from the generals that give you upbeat stories. They wouldn’t even go out, some

of them that brief us, into Iraq itself, and very seldom do you ever

have Members of Congress go outside of the green zone. So let’s

keep in perspective what we are told.

Just to criticize and raise issues is not in any way, in my view,

a partisan matter, because some of the criticisms that have been

most vigorous have come from Republicans as well as Democrats.

Now, Mr. Walker, I want to turn to you. I mentioned in my comments to start off that on one issue, cost, you found that the administration’s strategy does not identify current and future costs of

the Iraq war, nor does it identify the sources of funding needed to

achieve U.S. objectives.

Can you tell the committee why the administration strategy does

not include cost estimates, especially since we have been there for

more than 3 years?

Mr. WALKER. Well, as you know, Mr. Waxman, the administration has resisted for several years providing cost estimates longer

than 1 year in advance. I think it’s best that you try to ask the

administration why they haven’t done it.

Clearly, I think there is a basis to come up with some estimates.

There obviously could be variances based on how conditions develop, but the idea of not coming up with any longer-term estimates doesn’t seem to be reasonable.

Mr. WALKER. Did you ask the Bush administration for cost information, and how did they respond?

Mr. WALKER. I would ask Mr. Christoff to respond to that in the

case of this engagement.

Mr. WALKER. Mr. Christoff.

Mr. CHRISTOFF. Mr. Waxman, for this particular engagement, we

looked at what makes a good strategic plan and what are the critical elements in a good strategic plan.

Mr. WAXMAN. Would you answer my question, because I have

other questions. I have limited time.

Mr. CHRISTOFF. We asked them specifically for their long-term

estimates.

Mr. WAXMAN. Now, I want to look at the administration’s past

planning. Your report says that the administration expected a permissive security environment in Iraq. But I am sure you are familiar with the volumes of work the State Department had done prior

to the war warning that ethnic strive and sectarian violence was

likely, given a U.S. invasion.

I am also sure that you are familiar with the comments of

George Bush, Sr., a Republican, who predicted after the first Gulf

war that a U.S. occupation would result in incalculable human and

political costs, that there would be no visible exit strategy, and that

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the United States could still be an occupying power in a bitterly

hostile land.

Now, your report, the GAO report, makes clear that the administration incorrectly believed it would have a permissive environment, but your report doesn’t say why they believed this. Who told

them that? Who was giving them advice it would be a permissive

environment, and why did they ignore all these experts, including

the President’s father? Mr. Walker, you want to address that?

Mr. WALKER. I will start, and then I will ask Joe to fill in.

It was very clear that there was inadequate intelligence, poor

planning, not enough options considered with regard to potential

scenarios for conditions on the ground.

Now, as to why they did or did not consider the advice and counsel of various individuals, I can’t comment on that. I don’t know

whether and to what extent Mr. Christoff can, but I would ask him

to try.

Mr. WAXMAN. Well, I think you pretty much answered my question, except you raised another one. Are you a partisan? You suggested there were a lot of mistakes made.

Mr. WALKER. I am an independent. I said that there was poor

planning and inadequate consideration of alternative scenarios for

potential conditions. And because of that, I believe that some of the

challenges that we have have manifested themselves.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Christoff, your report concludes the administration diverted billions of dollars intended for reconstruction to address security concerns, and that it failed to anticipate before the

war. Is this an accurate statement?

Mr. CHRISTOFF. What our report said was that there was a reconsideration of what the priorities were that Ambassador

Negroponte brought in and felt that there was insufficient resources that were going to the security environment, and he transferred moneys from the water and electricity sector to try to provide additional moneys for the security sector, particularly for

training and equipping Iraqi security forces.

Mr. WAXMAN. They didn’t anticipate that.

Mr. CHRISTOFF. What they anticipated—could I get back to your

first question about the permissive security environment? The assumptions that the CPA developed were assumptions that were developed in the summer of 2003 when the insurgency was not as intense as what subsequently developed.

So they went into the reconstruction plans with three key assumptions, one of which was that there would be a permissive security environment that would allow reconstruction to go forward;

second, that the Iraqi Government would make important contributions to that reconstruction effort. So those were the critical assumptions, as well as trying to get the infrastructure up to prewar

levels.

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Shays.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman.

We are going next—let me just tell you the order I have on the

Democratic side of the aisle. I had Mr. Kucinich first, Mr. Waxman,

then I have Mr. Higgins next, then Mr. Van Hollen, Mrs. Maloney,

and then Mr. Lynch, and then Mr. Sanders will be after that. We

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will inject Republicans as they come in. I am just going to keep

coming down here at this time.

Mr. Higgins. Just so the Members know, we are giving approximately 6 minutes, sometimes a little over. I am not going to fight

the red light.

Mr. HIGGINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just—I am on the

GAO findings, and a lot of this is, you know, a question of semantics and seemingly fact distortion and verbal manipulation, because

when I look at the situation, what I have come to learn, what I

have read, both official and unofficial, fundamental to the success

of the Iraqi operation is security, without which none of the other

assumptions really matter all that much, because they are not

achievable without fundamentally achieving that goal of security

and allowing the new Iraqi system to evolve naturally toward selfsufficiency, self-determination, which would eventually lead to an

American withdrawal not based on arbitrary dates, but on real

dates, based on a real strategy.

It just seems to me that when we are talking about the several

assumptions that have significantly changed, the several assumptions haven’t significantly changed, they were fundamentally wrong

in the first place. What was also wrong was that the assumptions

that went into trying to address these things.

I am concerned that this really adds up to a generally failed policy, a policy that has not kept its commitment to the American people, that has not kept its commitment to the Iraqi people, to create

a safe and stable environment. And, anecdotally, the reports that

we get every single day seem to further question this whole issue

of security and making progress. I look at these charts, and while,

you know, somewhat attractive, and seemingly there is some kind

of measured progress here, the insurgency threat is only increasing. The terrorist threat is only increasing.

So my question is, you know, what does—what is the authority

of the Comptroller General’s capacity to provide the basis, form the

basis to change this policy? Because from what I see here, this is

a continuation of the same, despite your office having found that

things have significantly changed. I don’t see a corresponding

change in the policy. I think that is what this committee needs to

know. I think that is what the American people need to know. I

would ask that question fundamentally of you, whoever wants to

take it.

Mr. WALKER. Mr. Higgins, let me address that question. As you

know, the Comptroller General of the United States is head of the

Government Accountability Office, which is a legislative branch

agency. Therefore, we are an Article I institution under the Constitution. We can do our work in a professional, objective, factbased, nonpartisan, and nonideological manner, which is what we

do. We can make recommendations. But under the Constitution, we

cannot require the executive branch to adopt our recommendations.

Fortunately, about 85 percent of the recommendations we make

are eventually adopted. In the case of security, I would agree with

you that security is fundamental. As Maslow’s theory notes, which

we all learned in college, self-preservation is the most fundamental

need. Therefore, if you do not have an adequate security environment, then that has an adverse ripple effect with regard to a variVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:45 May 09, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00060 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\34545.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ety of other dimensions, one of which being the reconstruction dimension, but it’s only one.

At the same time, while you need to secure the security objectives, and while the trends on that have not been positive within

the last year or so, the fact is in order to achieve real and sustainable success, it needs to be not just on the security dimension, but

also on the political and economic dimension, because even if you

have stability, which is key, you need to start delivering results

that all of the Iraqi people care about, whether they are Shi’a,

Sunni or Kurd, and there’s a real problem there.

Mr. HIGGINS. Obviously. I am done, thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. At this time I will recognize the vice chairman of the

committee Mr. Marchant.

Mr. MARCHANT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Walker, President Bush in his June 14th press conference on

his return from Baghdad said that he suggested to the Iraqis that

they use the country’s oil assets to unify the country. The most

common question that I am asked in my district about the rebuilding of Iraq is what is happening to the oil income from the Iraqi’s

sale of oil? What was the original plan as far as the use of the oil

income in Iraq?

Mr. WALKER. I will start and ask Mr. Christoff to supplement.

First, the assumption was, rightly or wrongly, that the Iraqis

would be able to pay for a lot of the related reconstruction efforts

in large part through oil revenues, because, as you know, the Iraqis

at the present point in time, are receiving about 90 percent plus

of government revenue through oil revenues.

The challenge of that is severalfold. No. 1, oil production levels

are below prewar levels. There are serious challenges with regard

to production and distribution, in part complicated by the insurgency, in part complicated by the fact that even when you end up

repairing something, the Iraqis have a difficult time maintaining it.

But furthermore, there’s tremendous corruption, and there’s a lot

of theft going on. There’s an estimate, as noted in our report, that

about 10 percent of the refined fuels are being diverted, and about

30 percent of the imported fuels are being diverted.

In fact, I myself have been to Iraq a couple of times. My son

fought in Iraq with the Marine Corps. But the last time I was

there, which was earlier this year, I was showed some numbers

with regard to oil production and revenues, and it took me about,

you know, a second and a half to realize that, obviously, there was

massive corruption going on, because the numbers just didn’t add

up.

Mr. MARCHANT. Mr. Christoff.

Mr. CHRISTOFF. Let me give you some information, Mr.

Marchant, and you can tell me if I’m answering your question.

First of all, when the original assumptions were made back in

2003 about Iraq’s investment, the assumption was that there would

be oil revenues beyond what was needed to run the government,

to provide all of the functions of government that could be used for

reconstruction efforts.

The situation that you have today now is that if you look at the

Iraqi budget you see a budget that, No. 1, is funding what some

could contend to be a blow to bureaucracy, primarily because oftenVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:45 May 09, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00061 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\34545.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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times you don’t know who is working in the different ministries.

There are ghost employees. You have subsidies that the IMF estimates that 50 percent of GDP in Iraq is going to food, fuel and

electricity subsidies, and then you have the continuing support for

a burgeoning security force and the costs associated with that.

You add all that up and there isn’t a lot in terms of capital in- vestment that Iraq can currently contribute. They budgeted $6 billion in their 2006 budget for capital investments. I don’t know if

they’re going to be able to provide any assistance in that area since

last year they budgeted $5 billion but were only able to spend a

couple hundred million.

Mr. MARCHANT. Do you think that it was a reasonable assumption going in that the oil income would be a significant supplement

to the rebuilding?

Mr. CHRISTOFF. I’m not certain if we knew what all of the commitments and expenditures were on the Iraqi Government in terms

of the massive subsidies, the pensions, the employment, costs associated with employment.

Mr. MARCHANT. In his press conference on June 14th, President

Bush indicated that perhaps a distribution of the oil revenues between the Shi’as, Sunnis and Kurds would be a way of unifying the

country. Is that a realistic—at this point, is there enough of the oil

income that’s not dedicated simply to the day-to-day organization

that could be used for that benefit?

Mr. CHRISTOFF. That is one of the 24 points that’s part of the National Reconciliation Plan the Prime Minister has put together.

There are going to be some really tough decisions that have to be

made in the next 4 months as we go through the constitutional

process—the constitutional amendment process. The Constitution

has, some would contend, interesting but conflicting articles within

it. One article says that all existing oil reserves are part of a national government, all future reserves are more or less decided toward the issue of what is the Federal structure, what will the national government control, what will the provincial government’s

control.

What complicates that debate even more is that the Kurdistan

Regional National Resources Minister has said that the debate

about who owns what has already been decided and they are not

open to any further negotiations about the Constitution.

So Iraq certainly is oil rich, but the question of who controls the

future oil reserves is going to be a contentious issue as we go

through the constitutional amendment process.

Mr. MARCHANT. Mr. Walker, do you think it is a reasonable assumption going forward for us to continue to speculate that there

will be oil income available for the rebuilding?

Mr. WALKER. I think that you are going to have to deal with the

security situation. We’re going to have to end up helping them to

enhance capacity to be able to increase production and maintain

these facilities.

There’s also going to have to be efforts taken to deal with the

subsidies. One of the reasons that there’s so much theft going on

is because the price for energy on the market within Iraq is substantially lower than it is in surrounding countries; and, therefore,

that provides a tremendous incentive to be able to steal these fuels

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and to be able to sell them for whatever purposes, corruption or

otherwise.

So I think you’re going to have to make progress on these fronts

and others in order to really be able to have any hope of having

any additional revenues. Plus, keep in mind that the pledges that

have come from the international community have largely been

loans, not grants; and I think there is no question that the international community is going to have to do more if we ultimately

want to try to achieve long-term, sustainable success.

Mr. CHRISTOFF. The subsidy question is sort of a double-edged

sword. Iraqis were paying about 13 cents a gallon for regular gasoline. Last week, it went up to 44 cents a gallon. A lot of discontent

about being able to afford that.

The World Bank is estimating that if Iraq can get gasoline prices

up to about 60 cents a gallon, that’s going to free up about $1.5

billion that would have gone to purchasing refined fuel that could

then go toward reconstruction efforts.

So that’s a critical part of the whole economic effort that we

think Iraq has dealing with the subsidies because it can free up additional resources for capital investment.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

At this time, the Chair would recognize Mr. Van Hollen.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; and let me thank

Mr. Walker and Mr. Christoff for their testimony.

I think at a hearing on national security it is important to take

us back to the terrible events of September 11, 2001, and just remind the American people that the attacks at that time came from

Afghanistan, that they were launched by al Qaeda and Osama bin

Laden and had nothing to do with Iraq; and many of us were surprised to learn just last week that the Central Intelligence Agency

[CIA], has decided to disband the one unit at the CIA specifically

dedicated to tracking down Osama bin Laden.

Michael Scheuer, who was at the CIA, now retired and used to

head that group, said this about disbanding that unit: This will

clearly denigrate our operations against al Qaeda. These days at

the agency bin Laden and al Qaeda appear to be treated merely as

first among equals. We have not completed the mission, despite

what the President said on the aircraft carrier back in May 2003.

Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda remain at large. In fact, the

Taliban activity in southern Afghanistan has stepped up recently,

according to testimony by General Maples, the head of the Defense

Intelligence Agency; and I believe it’s a mistake to be reducing our

presence, military presence in southern Afghanistan.

So I think as we focus on this hearing it is important to put it

in context and remember that the terrible events of September 11,

2001, had nothing to do with Iraq.

Mr. Walker, you have appeared in front of this committee many

times to discuss issues of Government accountability. You’re the

head of the Government Accountability Office. We’ve had many

hearings on the question of pay for performance; and you have

asked for the ability in your department to pay your employees

based on their performance, is that right?

Mr. WALKER. That’s correct. That’s correct, and we’re doing it.

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. That’s right. Would you agree that in any organization if you ignore and reward failure you get more failure?

Mr. WALKER. I think there has to be accountability when things

don’t go the way that you want.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you. As the head of the Government Accountability Office I’m pleased to hear you say that.

Let me give you a couple of facts with respect to Iraq. Let’s start

with weapons of mass destruction. Individuals in the administration who got it wrong with respect to weapons of mass destruction

have either been left in place or rewarded. Secretary Rumsfeld,

Secretary Rice have never received any sort of penalty or display

of criticism from the President for getting it dead wrong. George

Tenet, who said it was a slam-dunk case, received the Presidential

Medal of Freedom.

Individuals at INR Department of Energy who questioned the

issues like the aluminum tubes, I have never seen them get an increase in pay for their performance in getting it right.

General Shinseki said we needed more troops on the ground. He

was cavalierly dismissed by then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul

Wolfowitz who said those numbers were way to high. We know

many Generals now, at least eight, have come out and said their

advice was ignored by Secretary Rumsfeld and they’ve called for

his dismissal and resignation.

Secretary Wolfowitz said we’d have plenty of money to pay for

the war in Iraq based on Iraqi oil revenue. He was rewarded with

a position as President of the World Bank. Those individuals who

called for greater troops on the ground, their predictions and requests were ignored.

The cost of the war. The President’s former Chief Economic Advisor, Lawrence Lindsey, at one point predicted $100, $200 billion

cost of the war. People said, hey, you’re crazy; that’s way too much.

Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz said that. So did the head of OMB at

the time, Mitch Daniels. They said that’s crazy, way too high. We

know now that it was in fact too low.

My question is very simple. When you have that many people

getting it wrong, doesn’t it send the wrong signal for the President

not to hold anybody accountable for those failures, failures with respect to WMD, failures with respect to number of troops needed for

stability on the ground, failure with respect to predictions of costs,

failure with respect to Abu Ghraib and other things that have undermined U.S. credibility and our moral standing around the

world. Doesn’t it make it more difficult to succeed in Iraq when you

ignore failure? Isn’t that going to give us more failure?

Mr. WALKER. Mr. Van Hollen, I believe very strongly in not being

partisan and not being personal; and so, therefore, I won’t comment

with regard to specific individuals. I will, however, say this: There

has been inadequate accountability today.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I appreciate that. I think it’s pretty clear from

the litany of failures and the fact that nobody has been held accountable.

Let me ask you this, if you had that kind of series of failures at

the Government Accountability Office, would you be giving bonuses

to those individuals who were making those decisions?

Mr. WALKER. Absolutely not.

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Would you be making sure that people who

had a record of failure and getting it wrong at GAO, if you were

to use your authority that we have given you with respect to the

pay-for-performance system, would you make sure that failure was

reflected in terms of the compensation they received and the kind

of—whether they received a pat on the back or criticism from you?

Mr. WALKER. We would. We believe in performance and accountability, and it’s more than just our name.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Well, I thank you for that testimony.

Let me ask you with respect to the recent situation in Iraq—and

we’re all very alarmed by the fact that there is increasing sectarian

violence. Many of us who opposed the decision to go to war made

the claim and the case that when you take the lid off Pandora’s

box, when you have a situation of historic rivalries between different ethnic groups, that unless you have a plan to somehow bring

about national reconciliation you’re going to unleash these historic

forces. I’m not sure any plan could have done it. But the fact of the

matter is at least at the State Department there was a plan that

had been put together to try to address some of those issues but

that plan was thrown out of the window by Secretary Rumsfeld

and they decided that they were going to do it their own way rather than abide by that plan.

Do you think that was a mistake? Do you think that was a failure in terms of proceeding?

Mr. WALKER. As I said before, I think it’s clear that there were

not enough scenarios considered and more should have been considered, including the possibility of sectarian violence.

Let’s keep in mind one of the things we have to do better is to

learn from history, and there has been a long history in this region

that should inform, hopefully, our decisionmaking.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank the gentleman.

Mr. Dent.

Mr. DENT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Walker, I just wanted to get your opinions on the situation

on security forces in Iraq. I had spent some time in Iraq last summer in August down in Basra, up in Kirkuk and also in Baghdad;

and after speaking with some of the British forces down there their

general assessment had been that the Iraqi security forces, that is

the army, was doing rather well, standing up well. The police services needed some help and the border forces, border security needed a lot more help than any of the other areas.

What is your assessment of the security situation in Iraq and

what do you see that is needed to improve that situation?

Mr. WALKER. First, your question is the security situation. Then

I’ll touch on the security forces. Unfortunately, most of the statistics that are public—and, as you know, the attack statistics are

only public through April 2006—that the trend has not been positive; and that, furthermore, while the statistics since April 2006

are still classified, statements have been made by General Casey

and others to show that the security situation is not good and that

we continue to face a range of attacks in a variety of forms.

With regard to training Iraqi security forces, significant progress

has been made in training an increasing number of Iraqi security

forces; and, at the same point in time, it’s important not just to

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consider quantity but also quality and the ability of these forces to

operate independently and to sustain themselves.

So we’ve made real progress in training an additional number of

Iraqi security forces. Their capabilities are improving, not as fast

as many would like. But the real challenge here is going to be what

about their ability to sustain themselves, their ability to provide

command and control, logistics, intelligence. We are having to provide most of that, and that’s likely to continue to be the case for

a period of time.

Mr. DENT. As a followup, I want to get to the issue of the costs

of our involvement in Iraq. What is the current cost per month of

the U.S. involvement in Iraq, including the cost of U.S. military operations, rebuilding critical infrastructure, and Iraqi security forces

and any other cost elements that you can elaborate on?

Mr. WALKER. First, I think you have to keep in mind the current

cost versus the tail. The current costs are estimated at about $1.5

billion a week, but there is a tail, and the tail is the cost associated

with refurbishing, reconstituting our equipment, transferring the

force, costs associated with disability and health care for those who

have been disabled and wounded in battle, and we still don’t know

how long we are going to be there and in what size. But about $1.5

billion a week is my understanding.

Mr. DENT. As a followup to Mr. Marchant’s question, you had

talked about the price of oil or gasoline in Iraq. When I was there

last summer, I thought I heard the number bandied about that the

price of gasoline was about 15 cents per gallon, which was considerably less than the cost to produce and refine the product. What

did you say a few moments ago was the actual current market

price for gasoline in Iraq?

Mr. WALKER. That was Mr. Christoff, and I ask that he repeat

those numbers.

Mr. CHRISTOFF. You’re right. Last summer through December it

was about 13 cents a gallon. It’s now 44 cents a gallon for regular.

Mr. DENT. It was my understanding, too, at the time that most

of the gasoline that was produced, the crude produced in Iraq was

sent out of the country to be refined, is that correct?

Mr. CHRISTOFF. Iraq has about half of its needs it can produce

within the country, and the remaining half it has to import.

Mr. DENT. So under that regime, obviously, the government must

have been subsidizing gasoline, subsidizing not just gasoline but

electricity and other commodities.

Mr. CHRISTOFF. Food as well.

Mr. DENT. Can you give me a quick assessment as how that has

changed? Apparently, it’s gotten better, at least in gasoline. Are we

allowing market forces to establish themselves more effectively in

that economy today than had been the case 6 months to a year

ago?

Mr. CHRISTOFF. When Iraq signed an agreement with the IMF,

they agreed to increase fuel prices this entire year so that it hopefully reached levels of about 90 cents a gallon, which is comparable

to the region. They missed a March increase, so they tried to make

it up for the increase that occurred last week when they went from

13 cents to 44 cents a gallon. The goal is by the end of this year

to bring it up to regional prices of about 90 cents a gallon.

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Mr. DENT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have no further questions and yield back.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank the gentleman.

At this time, the Chair would recognize Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you very much. Thank you for your testimony.

In your report you noted that only—the financing of it is only

partially identifying the current and future costs of U.S. involvement in Iraq. Are you tracking or is our Government tracking by

program? Can we total it by program the full cost of the involvement in Iraq of the $311 billion? Can you break it down by what’s

going for rebuilding critical infrastructure, how much for Iraqi security services? Can you break it down in those categories?

Mr. WALKER. Mrs. Maloney, there is an ability to break it down

to a certain extent, but as you and the other members on the subcommittee know, the Defense Department has terrible accounting

systems. It is the only major department in the U.S. Government

that still cannot withstand an audit.

We are receiving cooperation from the Defense Department in

trying to understand how supplemental funds are being expended

as well as other funds, but they have thousands of legacy non-integrated accounting systems which do not provide for timely, accurate and useful information to make informed decisionmaking, nor

do they provide adequate information for the Congress to be able

to discharge its constitutional responsibilities effectively.

Mrs. MALONEY. For well over 3 years we have been having hearings in this committee and others where the administration says

it’s going to get better, we just need a few more trained Iraqis, and

it just never seems to get better, and the number of trained Iraqis

seems to never get in place, and it doesn’t seem like they have

clear measures of what they need to achieve to be able to have success so that our troops can come home.

One area that is particularly disturbing to me is the whole area

of contracting and procurement. Of the $311 billion, why can’t we

give some of it to the Iraqi people to rebuild their own schools and

hospitals and oil fields?

And I cite the example that General Petraeus told me when I

went to Mosul. He was trying to build a cement factory. A U.S.

firm had a large contract for tens of millions of dollars. They

weren’t acting. He just put up a notice, is there any Iraqi who can

build a cement factory, and they built it for $60,000. The Iraqis

were employed, they were happy, and he got the cement factory to

go forward and help the people of Iraq.

But what is so disturbing to me is we have one hearing after another where we discuss scandals with Halliburton and other contractors. The Government continues to give the contracts to Halliburton and others and for some reason cannot contract with the

Iraqi people. We might have less problems with stealing and accounting if we worked with the Iraqi people and they would be employed and it would be moving toward stability in the country.

My question is, why can’t we as a country contract with the Iraqi

people to rebuild their own country so our people can come home

and why do we continue to give money to a contracting system that

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by all reports has all types of flaws and scandals and mismanagement?

So, again, for 3 years we have been calling for reforms in that;

and I haven’t seen any reforms. Why haven’t we been able to contract with the Iraqi people like General Petraeus so successfully

did?

Mr. WALKER. Mrs. Maloney, as you know, the contracting activity

for the Department of Defense has been on GAO’s high-risk list for

many years. There are serious problems in contracting not only in

Iraq but, frankly, outside of Iraq.

There is little question that there are additional opportunities to

try to be able to engage the Iraqi people to help them rebuild their

country, and that’s something that I think needs to be considered

to a much greater extent than it has been in the past. It’s something that I have testified on in the past, and my understanding

is the chairman is also planning to have another hearing in the

not-too-distant future talking about contracting activities.

Mr. SHAYS. Will the gentlelady yield?

Mr. Comptroller General, we are waiting from the GAO for a specific list of the businesses to look at for investigation and we said

we would go wherever it took us. So whether it’s Halliburton or

some smaller company. And we are still waiting for that list. I just

want you to know that.

So you are right. We have pledged to do a hearing. We have yet

to receive that list. I welcome it, and this committee will pursue

it.

Mr. WALKER. I will followup with you.

And I also think it’s important, Mr. Chairman, that you not just

obtain information from us but you also obtain information from

SIGR, which is the Special Inspector General for Iraq, which is

supposed to be focused 100 percent on reconstruction, as well as

some of the others. But I will followup.

Mr. SHAYS. I just want to remind you. I’m giving the gentlelady

her time.

In public forum when you were sitting at the front desk you

made the very important point that we have a corruption problem

and it isn’t just the bigger companies; and I said to you, just give

us the worst examples and we’ll go forward. If you want to seek

advice from the Inspector General, we would welcome that. But you

have given very aggressive testimony today, and I just want to be

very certain that you are aware that you made the statement before. We publicly encourage you to provide that information and we

have waited and waited and waited for that information to come

forward, and that’s an example I think of accountability on the

other side of the coin.

Mr. WALKER. Be happy to get back with you. I think there was

a misunderstanding on what we’d agreed to, but I’ll followup.

Mr. SHAYS. It’s a public record.

Mrs. Maloney, you have the floor; and I have given you back your

time.

Mrs. MALONEY. Following up on the chairman’s comments on the

corruption problem, maybe we’d have less of a corruption problem

if we could contract with the Iraqi people. It would also help with

the employment and rebuilding the infrastructure. It would be less

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of an incentive to destroy the electricity plant or the hospital or the

school if it was built by their people, employing their people. And

we have called for it over and over again, and I believe we should

legislate it, requiring that a certain portion of American dollars

and contracts go to the Iraqi people. If we’re trying to help the

Iraqi people, why don’t we put them in part of the leadership of

their own country and give them the resources to get the job done

so that our men and women can come home?

Mr. WALKER. Mrs. Maloney, can I set the record straight on

something?

Mr. SHAYS. Would you suspend?

This is a very formal hearing and a very important hearing.

There will be no applause. I want to be very clear about that, no

applause in a hearing. Thank you.

Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, can I set the record straight on an

issue?

First, let me be clear the problem with regard to U.S. contracting

is, by and large, not a corruption problem. It is a waste, abuse and

mismanagement problem; and it involves——

Mrs. MALONEY. Some people call that corruption.

Mr. WALKER. I will followup. The corruption problem—the corruption problem is there’s an endemic corruption problem in Iraq;

and so the corruption problem deals with Iraq, not necessarily U.S.

contractors and U.S. operations. But both are a problem.

Mr. CHRISTOFF. Mrs. Maloney, can I provide you with some additional information?

Mrs. MALONEY. Please do so in writing, because my time is up,

and I have one other question I would like to ask that is very important to me.

When will the Iraqi parliament establish the Constitutional Revision Commission? As we are aware, women’s rights have been

rolled back under the new government. They are now under Sharia

law. I spoke to a judge. She was a judge. She can no longer be a

judge. The Sharia law is very restrictive for women, and I feel it

would be a crime beyond belief if women lose their rights and because of our involvement become lesser citizens with tremendous

problems.

Related to that, what are the prospects that the Commission can

agree on amendments that resolve the Sunni concerns, especially

on the distribution of oil revenue and power-sharing arrangements

between the central government and among Sunni, Shi’as and

Kurds?

Mr. CHRISTOFF. I don’t have information about when the Commission is going to begin its work. Once that Commission is formed

I think, as you know, it has a formal period to try to bring recommendations to the full national assembly.

What you just mentioned in terms of resolving issues related to

oil is going to be very contentious, as you have many of the resources in the Kurdish north, the Shi’a south and then trying to

figure out what part of current oil reserves versus future finds and

how is that going to be shared between the national government

and the provincial governments.

Mrs. MALONEY. And the loss of women’s rights?

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Mr. CHRISTOFF. Absolutely, that’s an additional part of what can

be up for the Constitutional Commission to resolve and how you

balance the principles of democracy that’s in that Constitution but

also trying to adhere to Islamic law at the same time.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you. My time is up.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

At this time——

Mr. BURTON. Mr. Chairman, I would like to reserve my time.

Mr. SHAYS. You can reserve your time. Thank you very much for

being here.

At this time, the gentleman from Boston, MA.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank the ranking member as well for having this hearing. I want to thank the

panelists for helping the committee with its work.

I want to read a section in the GAO report of the assessment for

the national strategy in Iraq. It’s the part I agree with, and I think

it is really the guts of this report. It talks about the goals and objectives of the President’s strategy for Iraq.

Then it says: However, the discussions—this is three sentences:

However, the discussions of outcome-related performance measures

to assess progress in achieving the goals of the strategy and the objectives of the strategy are limited. Moreover, the strategy falls

short on at least three other areas. First, it only partially identifies

the agencies responsible for implementing key aspects of the strategy. Second, it doesn’t fully address how the United States will integrate its goals with those of the Iraqis and the international community; and it does not detail Iraq’s anticipated contribution to its

future needs.

Now I have been to Iraq five times, and I have been to Afghanistan once, and I don’t spend any time at all in the Green Zone,

quite frankly. Been to Falluja, spent overnight in Falluja, Tikrit

and the Sunni Triangle, the Iranian border as well. Spent a lot of

time in areas that aren’t protected and trying to get as much information as we can. And I have to say that, in trying to measure

progress of what’s going on in Iraq, it is extremely difficult; and I

think the reason is we don’t have a system there that provides for

that. We have the military, and it’s all on them. And it’s a strategic

disservice to our military to ask them to do everything we’re asking

them to do right now.

We’re asking them, first of all, to beat down the insurgency.

That’s their primary goal that they were trained for. We’re asking

them, in the meantime, to train the police department. We’re asking them to train security forces, the department of defense there.

We’re asking them to patrol every single reconstruction project in

the country.

And on top of that we’ve given them the responsibility for political reconciliation, which is to shift government operations to the

Iraqis. And that’s where we’re falling down, because it’s the sixth

priority on the military’s list. And that’s just not happening. It’s

not being measured.

I have spent time with the Iraqi parliament, been on the floor

of the Iraqi parliament, spent time with the President there,

Talibani. They are not getting the responsibility for even the most

basic services in Iraq. If your electricity goes out, you go see the

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U.S. military; if your water isn’t running, you go see the U.S. military; transportation, go see the U.S. military. Hospitals, schools,

the whole 9 yards, it’s the responsibility of the U.S. military.

It’s a political process. We are falling down especially in the role

of transitioning some of the basic services to the Iraqi Government.

I had my staff and some folks at CRS, I asked them a question.

I said, given our history in the United States, are there any other

models out there where the United States had occupied another

country and had a transition government from the U.S. military to

the civilian incumbent population? And they came back with one

report, and it was the example of the Philippines.

In 1944, after the United States drove the Japanese out of the

Philippines, by default we ended up in control of the 7,000 islands

that make up the Philippines. It wasn’t an independent nation at

the time.

I think what FDR and the U.S. Congress in 1944 did then was

instructive to this case today. What they did was they established

a national commission made up of representatives from the White

House, picked by the White House, three from the Senate, three

from the House; and their responsibility, their sole responsibility,

was to transfer the government from the U.S. military to the Philippine Government. And it worked very well in that instance. It introduced accountability sector by sector, and that’s something that

we lack very much here.

Now I’ll be back in Iraq in late August, beginning of September,

and there is still no system of determining how this whole process

is going, and I think we need that process here. If Congress and

the GAO are going to do our jobs in terms of tracking progress or

lack of progress or at least informing the American people what’s

going on, we have to have a system in place to do that. It is not

there right now. We don’t have transparency.

I can’t tell you exactly how we’re progressing over there with any

of the areas of government control. I’m not an expert on military

issues, but I think every Member of Congress is somewhat of an

expert on politics. I know from being in Iraq and listening to the

Iraqi people they are not much different from the American people

in this sense, they elected their leaders back in December, they

elected a parliament, a President, Prime Minister, but still for all

these basic services they’ve got to go to the U.S. military to get

some action.

I know what my constituents would do if they elected me and I

did nothing for them. I know what my constituents would do. They

would regard me as a puppet government or someone who is just

a shield. And the Iraqi people are going to draw that conclusion at

some point in this whole process. So if we want to do the right

thing for the Iraqi people, we shift the responsibility to the Iraqis

for a lot of this stuff.

I think one failure in the President’s thinking is there is going

to be this moment of peace and quiet in Iraq where he can do this

transition. Not going to happen. Not in any stretch of the imagination. So we need you.

Now I have actually drafted a bill on this. It’s called the Iraqi

Transition Act, which creates—it’s not original. I took the example

that FDR and the Congress in 1944 set up. It’s not my idea, it was

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theirs, and it worked. But we need something like this to put us

on a track where we have accountability so we can measure

progress or lack of progress. We have to have a plan.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Sanders, you have the floor.

Mr. SANDERS. Let me concur with much of what Mr. Lynch just

said.

Mr. Walker, if I could, in your report, you discuss a poll done in

March 2006 of Iraqi citizens; and your report states, and I quote,

that the poll indicated that a majority thought Iraq was heading

in the wrong direction and growing numbers of people believe that

the security situation, the provision of electricity and corruption

have worsened. And later you indicate that—your report says

bluntly, quote, essential services have not been restored to pre-war

levels, undermining efforts to improve the lives of the Iraqi people.

If you could, could you elaborate on your sense of how the Iraqi

people perceive their reality? The President of the United States

seems to think that every time there is a negative report that it’s

the media’s fault. The media is not telling us the truth about all

of the wonderful things happening in Iraq. But it seems that the

people of Iraq do not perceive all of the wonderful things that are

happening there as well.

What is your perception of how the Iraqi people themselves feel

about how things are going with regard to essential services and

other aspects which impact their day-to-day lives?

Mr. WALKER. Mr. Sanders, based upon my trips to Iraq and the

work that our teams have done, including their visits to Iraq, my

view is that the Iraqi people care about basically the same type of

things that most Americans care about. They want safe streets,

good jobs. They want reliable electricity, safe water. They want the

trash picked up. They want education and health care, the basic

things.

When you look at the statistics, while we have made progress on

a number of fronts, with the sole exception of electric generation,

which for the first time within the last month has now reached and

exceeded pre-war levels, for the most part in many of these other

areas we’re below pre-war levels; and that doesn’t go unnoticed by

the Iraqi people.

Candidly, in many ways I think we’re asking the military to do

too much; and that’s why I come back and reinforce what I said in

my opening statement. We need better metrics, we need better

milestones, we need more transparency, and both the United

States and the international community—and I underline ‘‘and the

international community’’—can and should be doing more to help

the Iraqis help themselves deliver these types of needs to the Iraqi

people.

These are nonmilitary. These are the need for civilian experts.

And, quite frankly, the U.N. and many other countries have experts that can add a tremendous value here, but they haven’t been

forthcoming.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Walker, if I could just change the subject just

a hair; and that is, earlier, in response to a question, you spoke

about massive corruption with regard to oil production and distribution. I would like you to say a word with regard to what is

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going on in terms of reconstruction of Iraq in terms of the kinds

of buildings and improvement in sewers, water, schools and hospitals, all these other things that we want to see.

I would suggest that, regardless of one’s opinion on the war, and

I strongly oppose the war, that the American people who are putting billions and billions, hundreds of billions of dollars into Iraq

at least want to see an Iraqi infrastructure created where the kids

can go to school, where people can drink clean water and so forth

and have the other amenities of life that you indicated the Iraqi

people want just as much as the people in America want.

Now what is the level of incompetence, of abuse, of waste? I read

somewhere that some $9 billion was unaccounted for in terms of

Iraqi reconstruction. Can you say a word on that?

Mr. WALKER. Well, several things. One, when you have an unstable security environment, it impedes your ability to reconstruct as

well as to maintain what has been reconstructed.

Second, the Iraqis have limited capability to maintain certain

technologically advanced facilities, whether electric generation facilities or water treatment plants. That has been a problem.

Third, in some of the planning that has been done, the planning

for reconstruction activities has been somewhat flawed. For example, there is a well-publicized example of where we were going to

build 100 to 200 health care facilities, clinics if you will, and that

rather than trying to build 10 here and seeing how it goes and then

10 there, there was an effort undertaken to start virtually all of

them at once to where very few got completed before the money ran

out.

So there are a number of planning problems, there are a number

of mismanagement problems, but the security situation as well as

the relative inability of the Iraqis to maintain certain more advanced facilities is very problematic.

Mr. SANDERS. No one would disagree with you that the security

situation will make construction very, very difficult, and reconstruction. But, on the other hand, there should not be billions of

dollars unaccounted for in the process. The American people want

to make sure that when we invest in rebuilding Iraq, we know

where that money is going. Can you speak a little bit about billions

of dollars which presumably have not been accounted for?

Mr. WALKER. What I would ask, Mr. Sanders, and I would suggest to the chairman for his consideration as he deems appropriate,

is that not only will I provide the information that we talked about

before but I think it would be productive for this subcommittee, to

the extent the chairman believes it would be prudent, to consider

having a hearing where myself, the Special Inspector General for

Iraq for reconstruction and possibly others might come before this

subcommittee to talk specifically about construction activities.

Mr. SANDERS. OK.

I would yield back, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. We will be happy to pursue that suggestion because I think it makes a lot of sense.

I’m going to give myself time now to ask questions and say——

Mr. BURTON. When you get a chance, I would like to make a

comment.

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Mr. SHAYS. I would be happy to have the gentleman from Indiana have the floor.

Mr. BURTON. I have great respect for everybody who’s spoken recently, my friends from Massachusetts and Vermont. But, you

know, when we start talking about history and talking about the

Philippines and how things were done so much better then, Germany wasn’t mentioned after World War II and neither was Japan.

There was an awful lot of wasted money then. We had military

control over both Japan and Germany for a long period of time, and

it’s always a work in progress.

Obviously, there are shortcomings in Iraq in turning the governmental control over to the Iraqis and making sure it’s a secure environment. If you go back to Germany after World War II, there

was all kinds of terrorist activity in Germany, in several parts of

Germany by those who still supported the Nazi philosophy.

So it’s not an easy task. I’m not making excuses for some of the

shortcomings, but I think we ought to realize that this is a very

difficult task. We are talking about fighting a war against terrorism, the headquarters of which or the head of it is in the Middle

East; and one of the things that we have to consider, in my opinion, is making sure that they don’t have an operational headquarters from which to expand their terrorist network around the

world. And if we don’t handle things properly in Iraq, if we don’t

stick to our guns over there, if we don’t win the peace, so to speak,

then I think that there’s going to be a vacuum created and al

Qaeda and the Taliban and all the others will see that as an opportunity to expand this sphere of influence and go in there and fill

that vacuum and there will be a headquarters, if you will, from

which they can operate worldwide.

I think this is a very, very integral part of the war against terrorism and I think our troops are doing a magnificent job. As the

gentleman from Dallas said, there are some management problems,

there are areas where I’m sure money is wasted, and that has to

be corrected, and there needs to be accountability.

As far as transparency is concerned, I think the administration

is trying to be as transparent as possible. I don’t see them hiding

anything.

When we start talking about history, I’d urge my colleagues to

look at what happened in Germany and Japan after World War II

when we were fighting the Nazis. It was extremely important that

we take over those countries until they had a viable governmental

structure established, which we did establish, and once it was established then we turned over control to them, and it’s worked out

pretty well.

I think it will work out just as well in Iraq, but we have to stick

to our guns, in my opinion. And it’s extremely important in this

day and age, especially in view of the fact that there is a worldwide

war against terror, that terrorists have attacked the United States,

attacked Spain, they’ve attacked England, they’ve attacked all over

the place, and Indonesia, Bali they attacked. We have to be ready

and willing to stay the course, and that course may take some

time. Iraq is one of the major focal points, and I hope my colleagues

on the other side of the aisle will realize that this is something that

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we can’t back away from, even though I agree with you there’s a

lot of shortcomings.

I yield back.

Mr. SHAYS. I would like to have the gentleman yield me time.

Mr. BURTON. I’ll be happy to yield.

Mr. SHAYS. I’ll say we didn’t hit the clock right away, so I’ll take

2 minutes off his time. Let me start out by my question. Then I’ll

take my own time.

Mr. Comptroller General, Mr. Walker, we really appreciate the

work you do; and I am, frankly, one of your biggest fans. I am

eager, though, to—I feel that you have pointed out areas to which

you disagreed with the strategy to which it had not met the expectations. I have heard very little positive comments so I am drawn

to conclude that basically you’re pretty unhappy, that it’s not a

good plan, not a good strategy. That’s the way you have come

across.

If that’s the way you choose to come across, then that’s the way

it should be. But you have been extraordinarily negative, in my

judgment, without pointing out any positives; and I need to know

if you just see it as a dark side and there is no positives.

Mr. WALKER. Absolutely not. Can I clarify, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. SHAYS. I would love you to, because you’re on record.

Mr. WALKER. You have to keep in mind I have to respond to the

questions that I’m asked. I do try to respond to them.

First, I tried to make it very clear at the outset that this new

plan is clearly superior to the last version. I tried to make clear

that this new plan addresses three of the key elements that we believe need to be addressed in an effective national strategy reasonably well.

Mr. SHAYS. Which are?

Mr. WALKER. Those three are: It states a clear purpose; second,

it addresses the key threats and risk; and, three, it helps to define

the desired political, security and economic objectives that we’re

trying to achieve.

Mr. BURTON. Mr. Chairman, if I might interject, just reclaim a

few seconds of my time. I understand that this is a political season

and there is political issues at stake, and you just raised the issue

of the Comptroller General being very, very negative. I hope this

is not because of partisanship, Mr. Comptroller. You were appointed, I understand, by—who were you appointed by?

Mr. WALKER. I was recommended by the Republican Congress

and appointed by President Clinton, confirmed by the Senate.

Mr. BURTON. You were recommended by President Clinton?

Mr. WALKER. I was recommended by the Republican Congress,

nominated by President Clinton, and confirmed by the Senate.

Mr. BURTON. Nominated by President Clinton.

Mr. WALKER. I’m also a Reagan and Bush 41 Presidential appointee.

Mr. BURTON. I hope this is not an indication of a political vendetta.

Mr. WALKER. Absolutely not, Mr. Burton. I call it as I see it, nonpartisan, nonideological. I think there are a lot of things that have

gone well, but there are some serious challenges, too.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you very much.

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Mr. WALKER. We’re trying to be balanced.

Mr. SHAYS. The gentleman’s time has expired, and I will take my

6 minutes.

I want to pursue the line of questioning that I began. The bottom

line to your answer is there are three parts to the strategy that you

agree with and three that you disagree, is that correct?

Mr. WALKER. It’s not agree or disagree, Mr. Chairman. This is

very important. We are basically saying that, based upon our work,

that there are six elements of a strategy that need to be in place

in order to maximize the chance that it will be successful.

Mr. SHAYS. Hold on a second. Let me understand. Under what

basis do you decide the six? Is it from a textbook, general practices?

I just want to understand.

Mr. WALKER. It’s based upon past experience, best practices,

looking at what has been done in the past.

I issued a separate report on that, Mr. Chairman, I might add.

Mr. SHAYS. What are the six best practices that you would say

have to be in every strategy?

Mr. WALKER. Again, I will give you a summary. I’ll be happy to

provide a copy of the report which was issued previously.

First, that there needs to be a clearer purpose.

No. 2——

Mr. SHAYS. The strategy meets that.

Mr. WALKER. Second, it needs to address all major threats and

risks.

Mr. SHAYS. Does the strategy meet that?

Mr. WALKER. No. 3——

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Walker, I want you to take each one of those

principles and then delineate whether the strategy meets it or not.

Mr. WALKER. All right. With regard to staying a clear purpose,

the answer is yes. With regard to addressing key threats and risk,

the answer is yes. With regard to discussing desired key objectives,

namely political, security and economic, the answer is yes.

I would footnote that by saying we think there needs to be additional detailed metrics and milestones and more transparency over

those, as some Members have noted.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me pursue that. It is your point that you want

this committee to know that we don’t have a way to evaluate success or failure of the strategy, is that correct?

Mr. WALKER. That’s correct. There’s not enough adequate information available to the Congress in order to effectively address in

a timely manner what is going well——

Mr. SHAYS. I understand that.

Mr. WALKER [continuing]. Where we had a plan and where we

are having problems.

Mr. SHAYS. Now take me to the third, fourth and fifth and tell

me why those are an integral part of any plan.

Mr. WALKER. OK. So the first three we’re saying they have it in

their entirety or substantially. The next three we’re saying they

have addressed it but not adequately and there are significant gaps

that we think need to be addressed.

The first one, which is No. 4, that it does not adequately identify

which specific departments and agencies of the U.S. Government

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are responsible for each of the key elements. In some cases, it does;

in other cases, it does not.

The fifth element is how do the U.S. goals interrelate and how

can they be integrated with the goals of the Iraqi Government and

with the efforts of the international community.

So we are laying out our plan, we’re saying here is what the desired outcomes are, but the need to try to integrate that with what

the Iraqis are doing and hopefully what we can get the international community to do more of, which is to try to help make this

a successful situation.

And then, last, there is not enough information on what the estimated cost of achieving these objectives will be and what the funding sources are likely to be for those costs. And one of the functions

of that is not only how much but to calculate how much, how long.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

I want to be on record as saying that I have no question about

your presentation and the authenticity of it and the value of it. I

just want to be on record with you. You have a lot of credibility

with me.

What I now wrestle with is, in my 12 visits to Iraq, four times

outside the umbrella of the military, if I asked one Iraqi after another Iraqi after another what is their biggest fear, it’s this, that

you will leave us. And then some say that you will leave us before

we can take hold of democracy, like your country has, or that you

will leave us like you did in Vietnam.

And it’s true there is a poll that says 60 percent want us to leave

and 60 percent want us to stay, but it does add up. They want us

to leave but not until—we abolished their army, we abolished their

police, we abolished their border patrol. It would, in my judgment,

be an outrage to leave before we replace them, at the very least.

To leave them without their own police, without their own border

patrol, without their own army to me is inexcusable.

It is not your testimony, is it or not, that we need to leave?

Mr. WALKER. That is not my testimony. What my testimony is,

we’re in there. A lot of people agree or disagree as to whether or

not we should have gone in, but we’re in, and if we want to be successful, what is it going to take in order to be successful. What I’m

testifying is, based upon our work, what do we think the key elements need to be in order to maximize the chance of success? It is

in all of our interest as well as the Iraqis in the international community to be successful. That goes without saying.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much for your testimony.

We will adjourn this panel, and we will start with the second

panel. We will have a 2-minute break. Thank you very much for

your time. Thank you very much, Mr. Christoff.

[Recess.]

Mr. SHAYS. Calling this hearing to order and to welcome our second panelists at 5 of 5 p.m. We have Mrs. Mary Beth Long, Principal Deputy Assistant of Defense for International Security, a very

knowledgeable person on Iraq and Iran, as are our other two witnesses, Ambassador James Jeffrey, Senior Advisor on Iraq to the

Secretary of State and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of

State for the Middle East, Department of State. And also I think

you were in Iraq, Mr. Ambassador, for 13 months.

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Mr. JEFFREY. That is correct, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. We have Brigadier General Michael Jones, Deputy

Director for Political Military Affairs, Joint Chiefs of Staff; and I

believe you have had experience in Iraq as well is that right, sir?

General JONES. Yes, I did, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. We welcome all three of you.

As you know, we swear in our witnesses. There’s only one person

who ever has not been sworn in while I have been the chairman

in my 12 years, and that was Senator Byrd. If you’d rise. I chickened out.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. I would note for the record our witnesses responded

affirmatively.

We will start with you, I think, Ms. Long.

Excuse me, I think we will go with you Ambassador Jeffrey. You

will be starting this testimony. I usually move up the line, but we

are starting in the middle here. Then we will go to you, Ms. Long

and then to you, General.

But what I want to say is that I really appreciate your presence.

I think that this will be very helpful to the knowledge of Congress,

certainly be helpful to me, and I think ultimately to the American

people. So it’s wonderful to have you here.

Mr. Ambassador, you have the floor.

STATEMENTS OF AMBASSADOR JAMES JEFFREY, SENIOR ADVISOR ON IRAQ TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE AND PRINCIPAL DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE

MIDDLE EAST, DEPARTMENT OF STATE; MARY BETH LONG,

REPRESENTATIVE, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE; AND BRIGADIER GENERAL MICHAEL JONES, DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR

POLITICAL MILITARY AFFAIRS, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF

STATEMENT OF JAMES JEFFREY

Mr. JEFFREY. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, Mr.

Kucinich, members of the subcommittee, it is an honor to be here

today with you and a great honor to talk about a crucial issue in

our entire foreign policy in Iraq.

Let me begin by addressing the subcommittee’s query about the

relationship between the President’s national strategy for victory in

Iraq and the decisions announced following the June Camp David

principals meeting and the President’s visit to Baghdad.

The November 2005 national strategy laid out in comprehensive

detail the President’s program for victory at the strategic level. The

document begins by describing victory in Iraq as a process that will

come in stages, with an end state of an Iraq ‘‘peaceful, united, stable and secure, while integrated into the international community,

and a full partner in the global war against terrorism.’’ To achieve

that, the document lays out policies on three core tracks, the political, the economic, and the security.

On June 13th, on the concluding of a meeting on the NSC principals in Iraq, which also included the President’s trip to Iraq and

extensive contact with senior-ranking officials, the White House released a fact sheet on the Camp David meetings and certain steps

that would be taken to carry out the discussions.

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The Camp David meetings took place in response to a number

of operational developments on the ground since the November release of the national strategy. These include such positive events

as the formation of a broad national government in Iraq based

upon record voter turnout in December; rapid stand-up of Iraqi security forces; achievements in infrastructure despite insurgent efforts, including an increase in both electrical generation above last

year, as we just heard, and oil exports reaching levels close to the

IMF 2006 target; as well as the killing of al Qaeda in Iraq leader

al-Zarqawi. The meeting also came in the wake of less positive developments including sustained high levels of insurgent attacks

and a marked increase in sectarian violence and strife.

The decisions taken in June do not represent any deviation,

modification or replacement of the November national strategy.

Rather, that national strategy outlines in a comprehensive and unclassified form our strategy for victory in Iraq.

The Camp David fact sheet discusses our present-day tactics and

actions as updated following the stand-up of a new unity government in order to carry out our strategy and reach our strategic

goals. There is no inconsistency between the two documents. They

are complementary and part and parcel of a comprehensive plan

for achieving success.

The meetings in June also focused on building civilian capacity,

improving U.S. plans to support a rule of law initiative with the

Iraqis, and reaching out to the international community in order to

support the reconciliation program announced subsequent to this

meeting by Prime Minister Maliki. One such initiative is an Arab

League meeting scheduled in early August to be held in Baghdad.

On the economic track, Prime Minister Maliki discussed his policy

of national revitalization.

The President, in turn, as you have mentioned, Mr. Chairman,

has announced a series of actions by the Department of Treasury

and visits by several of our secretaries to support the economic

wing of our strategy. In support of the national strategy’s core assumption, ‘‘Iraq needs and can receive the support of the region

and the international community to solidify its successes.’’

The President welcomed Prime Minister al-Maliki’s approach to

international organizations to take the lead with his government in

developing a compact between the international community and

the Iraqi Government and people. The President designated Deputy Secretary of Treasury Robert Kimmitt and Department of State

Counselor Philip Zelikow to lead the U.S. effort in support of this

initiative.

Since that time Prime Minister Maliki has publicly appealed to

the United Nations, and Secretary General Kofi Annan has responded very positively, and we are moving forward with a meeting

now scheduled for July 20th in Baghdad with international participation.

In sum, sir, we see the work plan emerging from the Camp

David meetings as a critical roadmap to organize our assistance to

the Iraqi Government and to appeal to the international community in the coming months. We are heartened by the rapid decisive

decisions taken by the al-Maliki government. We are impressed by

the courage shown by the Iraqis, beginning with their political

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leaders and their security forces, and we are ever more committed

to seeing this endeavor, so critical to the security of all of us,

through to its victorious conclusion.

What I would like to do now is make a few comments in response

to the Comptroller General. First of all, we appreciate his efforts.

There’s a lot of work in there, and we agree with a great deal of

that. What I will assure the members of the subcommittee is that

we will take very seriously all of the points and of the recommendations. I would like to make several comments on those

points where he found us less than fully satisfactory.

First of all, in terms of the organization of our strategy, we have

two documents, National Security Decision Document 36 that came

out in May 2004, and our national strategy for supporting Iraq,

which came out in April 2005, both of which laid out in great detail

the specific responsibilities of the embassy, of the Department of

State, of the Department of Defense, of the U.S. military command

in Iraq, and of the interagency process in great detail. We have

been following that template for 2 years, and we believe we have

a very smooth and functional interagency process to do that.

Second, on resources, the Comptroller General is correct that you

can’t predict into the future. What we do owe the American people

and the Congress is an effort to take our resources and to track it

with a strategy.

For our fiscal year 2006 supplemental for Iraq and for our fiscal

year 2007 program for Iraq, we produced as part of the budget

process this pamphlet that I would also like to introduce into the

record, Advancing the President’s national strategy for victory in

Iraq.

In it we spelled out our assistance requirements along the three

tracks, security, economic and political; spelling out how much

money we would put into, for example, securing infrastructure, how

much money we would put into working in the field to support our

military forces, how much money we will put into human rights,

into democracy programs and into building up ministries.

So we are trying, to the best of our ability, into the future as we

can see it, to adhere to this model that was revealed in the victory

in Iraq strategy in our budget as well.

Last, in terms of the criticism that we need to work with the

Iraqi Government, we couldn’t agree more, Mr. Chairman. The

problem is we haven’t had an Iraqi Government that is permanent

until just a few months ago. We have had an interim government

and a transitional government up until the elections, and then a

period interregnum until the Maliki government could come into

place basically at the end of May.

As soon as they did come in place, the United States and Iraq

together organized the June meeting to do exactly what the Comptroller General has asked us to do, sit down with the Iraqis and

hear their plans, coordinate their efforts, including how they are

going to spend, as was briefed earlier, the $6 billion in capital

funds that they will have, we believe, in their budget this year.

This will allow us to adjust our own requirements.

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Sir, that is all I have at this point, but I would like to turn it

over to the Defense Department, Mary Beth Long, to make a few

additions.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Ambassador.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Jeffrey follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Ms. Long.

STATEMENT OF MARY BETH LONG

Ms. LONG. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and members

of the subcommittee. I would like to thank you for the opportunity

of the Defense Department to be here today. I would like to incorporate and concur with Ambassador Jeffrey’s statement and adopt

it to the extent—both verbal and written.

In addition, I would like to clarify just a few points, the first

being that the written report of the Comptroller is very interesting,

and, like our sister agency, the Department of State, we also will

look at it very carefully in order to take the suggestions and recommendations that are provided.

We do think it’s important to point out that to the extent that

the report criticizes the national strategy for victory in Iraq, it may

mischaracterize or misunderstand the reason for that document,

which is stated on page 9. That document was designed to lay out

the framework for the American public in order for them to become

familiar with the goals, the strategies, and the way that the government is organized in order to achieve their victory in Iraq.

I also would like to talk for just a moment about three of the recommendations made by the GAO report, and those three actually

are are recommendations that members of the various committees

and working groups that work within the framework of the national security and the national strategies on Iraq are working

with, and those recommendations were to develop a security strategy for the Iraq National Police and the Iraq National Army to develop those capabilities. Those are certainly efforts that fall both

within the strategies and the implementation aspects of the plans.

The second were to deal with the capabilities of the Iraqi Government and the provinces and the districts. Again, this is the subject

of considerable discussion and work by both the United States and

Iraqi Governments that is ongoing and is part of the implementation documents as part of the strategy that are contemplated by

the plans reviewed by the GAO.

And, finally, dealing with the problems of corruption and accountability. As many of you might know, there are initial efforts

to get inspectors general within the militaries of the Iraqi and

other security forces constructs, and the subject of corruption and

accountability have been dealt with, and we are continuing to deal

with them, and we will have to as we move forward. But they are

certainly not issues about which we are unfamiliar.

Finally, as to the Camp David fact sheet, I would like to point

out that elements of the security tract were addressed at Camp

David not only by members of the U.S. Security Strategy Team,

but by those who were participating from the U.S. Government as

well as conversations between the President and Prime Minister

Maliki.

For example, Prime Minister Maliki has made security in Baghdad one of his top priorities, and discussions ensued regarding the

militia and how to get security in other important cities including

Ramadi and Baghdad improved over time, and mechanisms for

United States and coalition forces to work more closely with Iraqi

National Police and other forces in order to accomplish that.

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The other issues that were discussed were the priorities and the

plans by the new Minister of Defense and the Minister of Interior,

who were newly appointed in Iraq. There was considerable discussion of the priorities, implementations and ways ahead for our governments to work very closely on implementing those strategies.

With that, I would like to, I think, thank you again for the opportunity. I look forward to your questions, and I will turn to my colleague Brigadier General Michael Jones.

Mr. SHAYS. I think that you, general, you have the floor. Thank

you, Ms. Long.

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL JONES

General JONES. Mr. Chairman, Representative Kucinich, members of the subcommittee, in the interest of time, I would like to

thank you for the opportunity to testify and thank you for your

continued support of our men and women in uniform.

With that, I look forward to answering your questions.

Mr. SHAYS. Could I just give you an opportunity to at least make

some statement about the previous statement of the previous panel

before we start to ask questions? Rather than our taking time to

pursue it, just respond where you agree or disagree with the previous panel.

General JONES. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I agree with Ambassador

Jeffrey’s comments and also Ms. Long’s comments.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Marchant.

Mr. MARCHANT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This question will be

for the Ambassador, Mr. Jeffrey.

Tell us about any talks that are either ongoing or you have been

approached about by the insurgents on issues that it would take

about—what issues it would take to begin a stepdown or a deescalation of the insurgency’s attacks, and will it take a total implementation of the reconciliation plan to bring that escalation of insurgent attacks to the table? Is there a very narrow set of circumstances? Is there a priority list that seems to be surfacing as

far as the issues that have to be addressed first before there will

be some decrease of the attacks and some backing away from that?

Ms. Long, if you have an answer for that as well, I would be

happy to hear it.

Mr. JEFFREY. Thank you very much, Mr. Marchant. We are very

aware that there has to be an end to any conflict, and this requires

some form of conciliation, some form of reaching out to those parties that are willing to participate peacefully in the new Iraq.

Among the insurgent groups—and I have to underline that these

are very disparate, very—not very centralized groups of insurgents,

that’s this insurgency, it doesn’t have any command and control.

Among them there are groups who have reached out to the Iraqi

Government all the time, who reach out to our military personnel

in the field, who reach out to people at the embassy from time to

time as well, trying to see on the basis of which there could be

cease-fires or there could be a permanent end to the conflict.

We welcome this with several conditions. First of all, this has to

be with the leadership and the total knowledge of the Iraqi Government, because they have to take the decisions. Second, people have

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selves to the will of the Iraqi people under the democratic government that they set up. So far we haven’t proceeded very far in

these insurgent talks.

We did see some willingness of insurgent groups, for example,

not to attack polling stations and to—I won’t say cooperate, but

certainly not to try to undercut the voting back in December. We

have seen groups that have ceased fighting for periods of time.

We are trying to build on that, as you mentioned, with the reconciliation plan that was announced by the Prime Minister. This

is based on what many of these groups and what people close to

these groups have told us, the need for some kind of amnesty, the

need to relook at re-Baathification—de-Baathification, for example,

as some people see as an attempt to undercut Sunnis from all

walks of life who simply were forced to join the party, who were

teachers or doctors or that kind of thing. Frankly, they have a

point.

We are also looking at the need to get militias under control.

There is a great deal of sectarian violence, particularly in Baghdad

and the areas surrounding that. They are very concerned with that.

They are concerned about the presence of coalition forces. I

would say that as was mentioned earlier today, that is something

that people mention all of the time. But then when we do polls and

say how intently, how intensely do you focus on that, we get something like, as the first choice of what is the biggest problem in Iraq,

only 9 percent of the Iraqis say the presence of coalition forces. So

it is almost writ—basically a traditional thing to be opposed to foreign forces.

What they are opposed to is bad security, as the chairman said,

and they are very concerned about us leaving before the security

is under control. We are seeing, as al-Khalilzad has worked to

achieve, more willingness on the part of the Sunnis to see us as

part of the solution. So we are working on this, but it is slow-going,

sir.

Mr. MARCHANT. Thank you.

Ms. Long.

Ms. LONG. I would actually have very little to add other than I

think it’s important that the Iraqis will make the decision, and it’s

really too early to know. One of the reasons it’s too early to know

is we often refer to the authors of violence, sort of an insurgent’s

term, just as a general category. But actually it’s much more complicated than that.

There are at least—the terrorists who are al Qaedists, who have

a certain agenda. There are, of course, the rejectionists, who are rejecting the viability and the authorship of the true and free democratic Iraq. There are the Saddamists who are actually looking for

a retention of power, or a usurpation of power from one particular

sectarian group or another. There are very different groups, all of

which have a different agenda and are looking for something

slightly different in their reconciliation.

It will be a masterful, masterful stroke of the Iraqi Government

and our Ambassador, Ambassador Khalilzad, and the international

community to be able to reconcile these various groups in the next

few groups or years. But I am confident that, given the momentum

we have established, that will be the case.

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Mr. MARCHANT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Mr. Kucinich, you have the floor for 10 minutes or more.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to start

with questions to General Jones.

Welcome. Thank you for your service to our country.

The American people have been told that as Iraqis stand up, we

will stand down. Is there any reason to think that the Iraqis will

be able to provide their own security for their own people in the

near future?

General JONES. Sir, I think we have had this discussion where

we have tried to define what near future is. We increasingly see

Iraqis taking responsibility.

Mr. KUCINICH. Five years?

General JONES. In 5 years, I believe so.

Mr. KUCINICH. How many Iraqi battalions are there right now;

do you know?

General JONES. Sir, I think I have a chart. If we could go ahead

and put that chart up—that talks about the number of Iraqi battalions we currently have in control of their own sectors.

[The information referred to follows:]

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General JONES. I believe that number today is 75 that are in control of their own sectors.

Mr. KUCINICH. How many troops would that be, General?

General JONES. It’s a total of 260,000 or so Iraqi police forces and

Iraqi Army soldiers.

Mr. KUCINICH. Now, in 2005, the Iraqi Army nominally had

about 115 battalions; is that correct?

General JONES. Yes, sir.

Mr. KUCINICH. That would be about 80,000 troops, roughly?

General JONES. For the army troops, that would be correct, sir.

Mr. KUCINICH. OK. Now, I understand that when the Ministry

of Defense decided to supervise the payment of salaries, about a

third of the payroll was returned, meaning that people just weren’t

showing up.

I also understand that one ministry official estimated that barely

half the nominal army exists, and that just 10 percent show up for

combat. Is that correct, or is it a little bit different?

General JONES. Sir, first of all, by my experience, that would not

be correct. I have not ever seen anything to indicate that ever.

What I would say, early on in the early days, before we stood up

the forces, I think there was a considerable problem in both police

and to some degree in the army forces that we stood up of what

we call ghost soldiers or ghost policemen. That is people on the roll,

but not present.

The embedding of what we call the transition teams actually has

helped put a significant amount of quality control on knowing how

many soldiers are present in the unit; also instituting things like

the daily report of accountability of soldiers, so that you know how

many were signed, how many were present for duty and so forth.

So I think, in terms of the number of these ghost soldiers and

policemen, you have seen those go down markedly. The Iraqi forces

also instituted or reviewed—actually go through the roles in order

to try to ensure that there weren’t these kinds of ghost folks out

there. So I think there has been significant change in that.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you, General.

Who in the army keeps track of the records of the weapons that

are provided by the United States to the Iraqi Army?

General JONES. I think Minstiki is probably the one source that

knows what’s been issued to whom throughout the period, although

I think in the early days, when we first started standing up these

forces, that the accountability for those probably is not very firm,

because we saw in April 2004 kind of a failure of the forces at that

point, a lot of desertions and so forth. And I believe there’s probably a significant loss of accountability of those early weapons.

Mr. KUCINICH. Well, I have read that Iraqi defense officials have

said that the Americans have not provided them with records of

who has been receiving weapons, and that without such controls,

soldiers have been selling their weapons on the open market.

Would that be consistent with your understanding of what it was

like, say—let’s say, a couple of years ago?

General JONES. I would say certainly there have been—undoubtedly been instances where individual policemen or soldiers sold a

weapon that was issued to them, I believe probably more prevalent

in the police forces, because those weapons were actually issued to

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them to be kept by them as opposed to the army units where weapons are principally stored in arms room. Soldiers draw them to do

their duty and then turn them in.

Mr. KUCINICH. Is the United States providing the Iraqi Army

with the most sophisticated weapons rights now?

General JONES. I think they are providing them—depends on

your particular favorite weapon. The AK–47 weapon is a favorite

among many people. Of course, that wouldn’t be my—you know,

my personal preference.

Mr. KUCINICH. Is there a reluctance to provide the most sophisticated weapons to the Iraqi Army right now because they might be

afraid they might be used against the Americans or American

troops?

General JONES. No, sir, I am not aware of that being the driving

factor. I think the driving fact on the choice of weapon is what do

the Iraqis have experience with in terms of operating and maintaining, and also, you know, what is most available to rapidly field

a force as quickly as possible.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you, General.

I would like to continue to inquire about the hundreds of millions

of dollars that the United States spent or plans to spend on large

U.S. military installations in Iraq. I stated before I believe there

are concrete indicators that this administration is planning to have

a military presence in Iraq for the long term, and, in this case, we

can say more than 5 years, and that these are permanent facilities,

permanent.

First to General Jones, can you enlighten the subcommittee on

the Pentagon’s long-term plans for the bases?

General JONES. Sir, I can talk about the plans for the basing, as

I understand it. In terms of long-term security relationship, that

really hasn’t been determined at this point. I think the Iraqis clearly are key players as the sovereign state that help determine what

relationship they want with us over the long term.

In the shorter term, I know that our strategy has been to move

from the 110 large bases or bases that we had all around the country to do two things. One is to start turning over bases to Iraqis,

and the other is to consolidate forces at different bases in order to

reduce the total numbers that we have.

Mr. KUCINICH. Well, are we spending $57 million at Balad Airbase, for example, just to walk away?

General JONES. I am not sure what the number is, but I would

say at that airbase, because of the importance it has in order to

facilitate current operations, it takes a significant investment. If

you look at the air traffic, it comes and goes there, the weather

conditions and so forth, that I am sure we have made a significant

investment there, not designed that I am aware of for the long

term. The few times I have been up there, in terms of the living

facilities, all those kinds of things, those are clearly not designed

for the long term.

Mr. KUCINICH. Swimming pools, fast-food restaurants. Are these

the kinds of things that go into temporary bases?

General JONES. I am sorry, sir?

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Mr. KUCINICH. When you put up a supermarket or swimming

pool or fast-food restaurant, do they go into temporary facilities as

well?

General JONES. Right. As I recall, the Balad post exchange,

which is what I think you may be referring to, is in what we call

a clamshell kind of facility, which is actually a temporary facility.

But, yes, there’s a significant post exchange up there, as well as

the other major bases where we have large concentrations of

troops. They are not, to my knowledge, intended to be permanent.

And my visits to those facilities would indicate they wouldn’t be

over a period of years.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you.

To Ms. Long, the GAO report says, and I quote, cost data are not

included in the strategy. As a result, neither DOD nor Congress

can reliably determine the costs of the war, nor do they have details in how the appropriated funds are being spent or historical

data useful in considering future funding needs.

Is that true or false?

Ms. LONG. It’s certainly true that the strategy that the GAO

looked at and the accompanying seven documents did not include

cost figures, that is correct.

Mr. KUCINICH. How much—can you tell this committee, what is

the war going to cost?

Ms. LONG. I don’t believe anyone could tell you what the war is

going to cost, sir. But what I can tell you is that strategy documents that are outlining the goals and the implementation of the

President’s policies and strategies for Iraq probably are not the

place where one would go for a resource guide. Those are budgetary

documents that are available elsewhere in the administration.

Mr. KUCINICH. Well, this does say that you do not discuss substantial financial and other costs in connection with your strategy.

Now, are you saying that the cost is decoupled from your strategy?

Ms. LONG. No, sir; in fact, I believe that Ambassador Jeffrey

pointed out that the resourcing requests that were made are tied

to the strategy and the implementation documentation, and, in

fact, there’s a pamphlet that produces that.

I also believe, sir, that the Comptroller testified that he did not

request the cost documentation, that it is available, sir.

Mr. KUCINICH. Actually, what it says here is the strategy neither

identifies the current or future costs of implementing the strategy,

nor does it identify the source of funding. That is in this report.

What do you have to say about that?

Ms. LONG. I would say that statement is accurate, and that it is

not intended to be in the strategy document that the GAO looked

at; that information is available elsewhere; and that GAO, I believe, testified that they did not request it, sir.

Mr. KUCINICH. You just told me that information is available

elsewhere, but a second ago, you just told me that you can’t estimate the cost of the war.

Now, do you have documents, you know, anywhere in the Department of Defense that estimates the cost of the war over a long period of time?

Ms. LONG. I would take that back, sir. It is my understanding

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committee in 2 weeks, and I would suggest that we have that information for you to be sent as it is available for that hearing, sir.

Mr. KUCINICH. So you are saying there is information available,

or there is not?

Ms. LONG. I am saying, sir, I am unable to provide that information, and I will take your question back.

Mr. KUCINICH. There’s been a little bit of circumlocution.

Mr. SHAYS. If the gentleman will suspend, we will be having a

hearing next week on the total cost of fighting the war on terror,

which will include Iraq, and we have specifically requested—so the

gentleman will be able to pursue this information. I am going to

give him a little more time to just make his point.

But we specifically, in part because of your request, are going to

have that hearing, and I think it will be very interesting, about the

cost, about the cost.

Mr. KUCINICH. Yes, Mr. Chairman. You know, we are looking at

this report, which came kind of late to members of the committee.

Mr. SHAYS. That’s the GAO report.

Mr. KUCINICH. Right. That’s the report I am talking about. When

it talks about a national strategy for victory, whatever that is,

when you can’t get into the cost, then you decouple strategy from

things like infrastructure, reforming the economy, building Iraq’s

capacity, maintaining infrastructure, international, economic community and all those things, you know.

This may be way above your pay grade, Ms. Long, but I am just

going to tell you that your responses, while I am grateful that you

are here, have not really met the challenge that the Comptroller

raised in his document.

Mr. Chairman, I thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Let me just say that I think that the Comptroller was saying

that he would like the strategy to include the issue of cost, and

that is his opinion, and I would like to get into that issue with you

as to whether it should or should not when my chance comes.

Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you, but I want

to point out again, this document—I want to point out that this

document came to members of the committee, we got it right here.

When I read this, some of the things that I read were, at a very

instance—in terms of testimony that I heard would have been helpful to have had it earlier.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me explain, the hearing that we had, the GAO,

the GAO came out with their finding today, and that is one reason

why we invited the Comptroller to come. So they released it today.

That is why you are seeing it today. It is not DOD or State Department’s issue.

Mr. KUCINICH. Right. I understand that. I thank you. I thank the

witness.

Mr. SHAYS. But we will use this document to dialog next week

as well.

The Chair would recognize the gentleman from Philadelphia—I

mean, from Pennsylvania rather, excuse me.

Mr. PLATTS. Central Pennsylvania, the beautiful part, York, Gettysburg and Carlisle.

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Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for hosting this hearing on very important issues that we are discussing. I want to thank our panelists for your testimony here today, as well as your service to our

Nation in all three of your capacities. We certainly are a grateful

Nation for the job you and your colleagues are doing.

Ambassador Jeffrey, it is good to see you again here stateside,

having had the privilege of visiting our troops and other personnel,

including yourself in Iraq, on four occasions—I think three of those

four I had the pleasure of being able to meet with you. In fact, I

think you were part of a lunch meeting with a number of us Members about 21⁄2 years ago, where we met with Iraqi women leaders.

And that lunch meeting has long stayed with me, the message I

came across, and the issue of our presence in Iraq. And especially

when I see polls cited that 80 percent of the Iraqis want us out of

Iraq, and it’s always, well, what do they mean by that?

In that lunch meeting, the Iraqi women leaders, some government and nongovernment, said, we can’t wait for you and all of the

coalition forces to go home; and then went on to say, but we are

very glad you are here.

No country wants to have to rely on the assistance of others, but

they appreciate the assistance that our military or Department of

State and other agency officials are doing in having liberated them

from a tyrant and giving them the hope and opportunity of democracy that we so wonderfully are blessed with. So I appreciate all

of your work.

A couple of issues. I apologize with being back and forth with

other commitments today. I don’t think I am repeating the other

questions that were asked. But on the issue of national reconciliation and the 24-point plan that the Prime Minister laid out, and

then President Bush touched on in his statement in June, one of

the aspects of that was dealing with oil revenues and the distribution of those revenues between the Shi’a, the Sunni, the Kurds, and

then that went a long way in getting toward national reconciliation

or a key aspect.

I guess, Ambassador Jeffrey, your insights in how critical is that

in the big picture, and where do we stand in trying to move toward

that effort?

Mr. JEFFREY. It’s a very critical element. But, first of all, the

President, in his June 14th press conference, addressed this at

some length. The first thing he did was to underline that this is

an Iraqi decision. It’s their oil. It’s very important to the Iraqi people that they come up with their own conclusions.

Looking at this from the outside, and we have had a lot of experience around the world in a situation such as Iraq, certainly the

principle that the oil belongs to the people, we believe, is fundamental as a suggestion that we made to the Iraqis. In fact, the

Iraqis have incorporated that right into their Constitution, Article

108.

The second point is how the oil is managed, from our experience

again around the world, can play a huge role in bringing together

a diverse country, which Iraq is, and a very pluralistic country, or

it can help drive it apart. So, therefore, the Iraqis have to make

wise choices. It’s not our job to propose to them what the specific

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tional revisions, which they will look at on these and other articles—and this is tied, you are absolutely correct, to the reconciliation effort with the Sunni Arabs and some of the others—that

they take this into full consideration. We believe that they will.

They will be very, very interested in this. The President has

charged the Secretary of Energy to go out and work with his Iraqi

counterparts in the electrical and oil ministries to discuss how we

can be helpful in more detail, and we will do everything we can.

We do believe in these principles, but we have to be careful in

trying to push too hard in suggesting to Iraqis how to apply them.

Mr. PLATTS. I think that is an appropriate caution. The way I

look at it is we have given the Iraqi people the opportunity for democracy and freedom, but ultimately it’s up to them and how they

embrace it and how it is defined in Iraqi terms, not American

terms. Us being there to assist but, you know, not be controlling

is very important.

The current status, though, those negotiations, as they look

ahead to constitutional revisions, has there been any formal talks

on the oil distribution issue, or is it still preliminary?

Mr. JEFFREY. The Iraqis are still mulling over how they are

going to respond to the requirement that came out as part of the

last-minute additions to the constitutional process back last fall of

having a constitutional commission look at possible amendments

within 4 months. I am not going to speak for the Iraqis. I think

that they know that they have to deal with several other key

things both for their own political future and also for the reconciliation process.

One of them is the role of the regions, particularly the idea of

a very large Shi’a Arab region in the south. Another is oil. A third

one could well be the Kirkuk situation, how they are going to address that. We don’t want to predict in advance, because this is

going to be something that democratically elected leaders in their

Parliament will decide.

We do know that they are very much seized with this; it’s tied

into the whole reconciliation effort. We have faith that they will

work out a good solution.

Mr. PLATTS. I know that oil is a big part of that revision and addressing the Sunni concerns that were part of that brokered agreement in moving forward with the referendum in October 2005. Is

there a timeframe—it was 4 months—as far as when the commissions work?

I know on the one hand you want deadlines or timeframes, but

given that they are where we were 230 years ago—so asking for

deadlines today for us is a little different than asking an emerging

democracy for deadlines. Where do we stand on that timeframe?

Mr. JEFFREY. You are absolutely correct. There are two deadlines

which we are also striking for. There is also a deadline within 6

months to come up with an implementing legislation on the oil provision, so, thus, they have to come up with a hydrocarbon, and the

two are, in essence, tied.

The Iraqis, of course, are faced with an insurgency that they

have to deal with. They have a major security operation under way

in Baghdad. There’s a lot of fighting there. I think that they will

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ity. Again, I can’t predict anything fully, based upon the same principles that we applied, as you said, 230 years ago, in a parliamentary democracy, that sometimes you handle things in a variety of

different ways. We don’t know how they are going to handle this.

We know they are aware of this. They do have these deadlines, and

they will come up with an answer.

I would point out to the committee that we have seen the Iraqis

face a terrible—not a terrible, but a very, very demanding series

of deadlines in the U.N. Security Council resolutions and the transitional administrative law for elections and other things. As you

know, in a few cases, they missed some of the deadlines, particularly for standing up various organs of government, by a few weeks

and in some cases more than a few weeks, but in the end they met

that. I think there’s a lot of credibility that they will live up to the

spirit and, we hope, the letter of these commitments.

Mr. PLATTS. I always think it’s helpful when we try to judge

progress is that we do look back to our own Nation’s birth. In 1776,

our Constitution—you know, 1789, in between, we had the Articles

of Confederations, which were ratified by the Constitution—Continental Congress in my hometown of York when Congress met

there for 9 months in 1777. But it was 12 years later ’til we came

back and actually got it right with our Constitution that we operate under today. Sometimes I think we forget how long it took us

in our emerging democracy to do what we are now looking for the

Iraqis to do.

I think its good that we are conscious of those deadlines. They

certainly are Iraqi deadlines, but our assistance, and the coalition

forces and all the nations, you know, being supportive of them,

moving forward because of our government and the other governments that are providing a lot of the assistance militarily or financially, we know that there is some end goal in sight that we are

moving toward addressing some of the key issues, especially in the

area of national reconciliation.

The second issue, maybe Ambassador Jeffrey and General Jones,

both of you, the rule of militias, I know that may have been

touched on a little bit. You know, where we stand, I know, in the

Constitution, you know, they are prohibited outside of their formal

government entity, yet we obviously see, you know, their presence

still being very horrifically felt, I guess, by some of the actions of

some of these militias.

Where do we stand in trying to get arms around or the Iraqi

Government getting its arms around the militia issue? I guess,

General Jones, we will start with you.

General JONES. Yes, sir. Obviously, it’s an item of concern not

only for us, but for the Iraqis. The 24-point plan that the Prime

Minister laid out included addressing militias.

On the security side, we have actually seen some what I think

is considerable progress here recently. We have actually seen an increase in the number of instances where the Iraqi security forces

have confronted members of militias who were out with weapons

and doing things that they are not allowed to do, things on the

streets. So that is good. We have also actually seen the arrest of

one senior militia member just here in the last few days. So we are

94

seeing the Iraqis be more aggressive about enforcing the existing

laws that are already there.

In addition, I think there’s recognition that, you know, the reason that these militias exist is for a variety of complex reasons, so

they are looking at all the solutions that have to be applied, not

the least of which is part of the national reconciliation demobilization, things—the ability to put militia—former militia members to

work, integrate those that want to be as individuals into the

Iraqi—legitimate Iraqi security forces and so forth.

So it is a considerable problem, but I think the Iraqis are starting to face it in a much more serious way.

Mr. PLATTS. Mr. Chairman, if I could squeeze one last question

in. Thank you, Chris.

Related to that, getting kind of arms—or the Iraqi Government

and their security forces getting arms around this issue, is the competence of the local police, and in my meetings with General Casey

and the visits where we talk about this year being the year of the

police where we kind of made great headway on the military and

now trying to stand up the police, and not just numbers, but in

quality.

I think the way in of my meetings in Fallujah in February, that

ultimate success in these local communities is really going to be because of the success of the police who are in that local community,

as opposed to the military units. Where does Iraqi police stand

up—stand as far as where we want to be, where we want; and then

how many are fully equipped out there to kind of patrolling on

their own, as we ultimately need them to be?

General JONES. I guess I would just start off by summarizing.

Mr. PLATTS. I apologize if this repeats some of what was said in

the opening.

General JONES. Not at all.

There is considerable progress being made with police, but we

are starting from a position much farther behind with them. In

some cases, the one tier of police that have reached a very high

level of capability is the national police. These are those high-end

forces that have capability. We would probably have the equivalent

description of a SWAT team or something like that, but significant

forces that can do special kinds of missions.

Behind that, and requiring still quite a bit of work, are the local

police, the station police that we would think of as a precinct that

are out patrolling and so forth. Several reasons for that, not the

least of which I think is this is adverse to the tradition of policing

in Iraq. Traditionally station police stayed in the station. Nobody

was out patrolling. So we are trying to kind of change this police

culture to move people out of the police station and start doing this

community policing.

We have embedded police transition teams, just like we have

done with military transition teams. We have started to embed

those to work with Iraqi police in police stations. So we are seeing

signs of improvement. But I would tell you it’s the weakest aspect

of Iraqi security forces and is still going to take a continued

amount of time to work with them.

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ing done of the Iraqi security forces, that initial force structure will

be complete. Then after that, obviously, there’s what we would call

some sort of a premise or some period where people build experience as new police officers, that they are going to have to go

through a period to develop true capability in those stations.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, my thanks to you

individually and to your colleagues and to your respective offices

for your services, and especially the men and women on the front

lines in Iraq.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Van Hollen, thank you for your courtesy. Go over

10 minutes if you need to.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank all of the

witnesses for their testimony.

I would like to begin where I left off with the Comptroller General in talking a little bit about the terrible sectarian violence that

has been raging in Iraq today. I think we would all agree that even

by the bloody standards of the last couple of months in Iraq, that

the last weekend, with the cycle of violence, the bombing of the

Shi’a mosque, the killings by Shi’a militia in retaliation, and then

the Sunni retaliation in return, that cycle of violence has been a

particularly brutal phase.

My question, if I could, to you, Mr. Ambassador Jeffrey, is, in the

context of this hearing where we are talking about planning and

accountability, what I think has been a failure to plan for many

circumstances that were foreseeable.

Would you not agree that the sectarian violence that we are seeing in Iraq today, especially between the Sunnis and Shi’as, were

something that was eminently foreseeable when we went to war in

Iraq?

Mr. JEFFREY. I don’t agree that it was something that was eminently foreseeable. I think that it was one of the many risks that

we were aware of, certainly, back 2 years ago when I first became

involved in it. But I think the fact that we saw this outbreak of

violence first at anything like the magnitude that we see now—and

let me underline this is a very troubling development. This is in

many respects our No. 1 security concern right now.

Only after the attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra back in

February, so that is almost 3 years after we did go in, for 3 years

there was some tit-for-tat sectarian fighting in one area or another

area, typically around Baghdad. But by and large, we haven’t seen

very much of that.

Even today the primary focus of this is in and around Baghdad.

Even in other areas where we do have mixed populations, we don’t

see it. This doesn’t mean I am trying to play down this problem.

I want to again underline it’s a very serious problem. It’s something we have to devote a lot of attention to when we are working

with the Iraqis on this.

I think that compared to other societies that I have been involved in, Bosnia, Kosovo, I think that there is more fiber that

holds the Iraqis together, regardless of their religion or their ethnic

background, than we have seen in other societies. I think that is

one reason why it did stay together as long as it has. We believe

that it can return to that as well.

96

But we do not have a lot of time. We need to work. The al-Maliki

government needs to work on reconciliation, but also on effective

security measures to deal with that.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you.

If I could just followup there. I believe it was very foreseeable,

and that the history of Iraq suggests that it was foreseeable. I will

point out that Paul Pillar, who is a former CIA analyst who was

in charge of a lot of the analysts on these issues, testified just a

few weeks ago before a Senate panel saying prior to going to war,

the CIA—and I quote from his testimony—forecasted that in a

deeply divided Iraqi society, there was a significant chance that the

sectarian and ethnic groups would engage in violent conflict unless

an occupying power prevented it.

I would also like to just read another quote, because I think some

people may be surprised with the origin of the quote, ‘‘It is not

clear what kind of government you would put in. Is it going to be

a Shi’a regime, a Sunni regime or a Kurdish regime, or is it one

that tilts toward the Baathist or one that tilts toward the Islamic

fundamentalists? How much credibility is that government going to

have if it is set up by the U.S. military? How long does the U.S.

military have to stay to protect the people that sign on for that government, and what happens to it when we leave?’’

Those are the words of Dick Cheney, now the Vice President. He

made that statement back in April 1991, when he served as Secretary of Defense under the earlier President Bush, explaining to

the American people why the United States decided not to go into

Baghdad after using military force, appropriate, I believe, to extract Iraq’s forces from Kuwait.

I guess my question to you is, No. 1, were you aware of this analysis that was testified to by Mr. Pillar that the CIA said there was

a significant risk? Are you familiar with the State Department

study and analysis and plan that was put together? To what extent, if any, did the Defense Department that took over the immediate efforts in Baghdad, to what extent did they take into account

the warnings of people like the CIA and the people at the State Department with respect to something that I think was eminently

foreseeable?

Mr. JEFFREY. First, on the studies that were done before the liberation of Iraq, those were interagencies at work with various Iraqi

groups who were coming up with scenarios for the new Iraq.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. May I just ask you for clarification, are you

talking about the State Department study now, the CIA study?

Mr. JEFFREY. The State Department study, which is probably the

one I can best address.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Let me just ask you for the record, were you

familiar with the CIA study?

Mr. JEFFREY. No, I was not, but I was generally aware, although

I was not working on Iraq, of the State Department work, working

with Iraqis who came up with the various opposition groups, came

up with a variety of plans. Many of those plans, in fact, have been

formed or partially carried out by the CPA in the transitional administrative law or by the various Iraqi Governments. So it isn’t

that the plan was thrown out.

97

As I wasn’t involved in Iraq in that time, I don’t want to discuss

in detail who did what, when in the February, March, April, May

period of 2003. I do know that many of—I have seen and gone

through the State Department/opposition group proposals and studies and such, and many of them reflect ideas that were later incorporated into the——

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Let me ask you this: If it wasn’t foreseeable,

then I guess your testimony suggested it is not inevitable that this

would have happened; is that right?

Mr. JEFFREY. Right.

Let me go back. There’s a difference between a foreseeable risk,

which we all identified. In fact, one of the reasons that many of us

who were involved in Iraq in the 1990’s felt that there had to be

a change was that after 1990, in fact, during 1990, what we saw

was a tremendous effort by Saddam Hussein—an extremely bloody

effort of sectarian violence far greater than we see today against

the Kurds in the north. We had to intervene with our no-fly zones

and other efforts to bring that under control eventually.

So we certainly were aware there was that possibility, but we

didn’t think it was inevitable. I would like to state for the record

today that we do not think it is inevitable that the country would

disintegrate into large-scale sectarian violence. We do not have

that today. We do think that it is a risk that will grow, however.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Let me ask you this: If it is not inevitable—

we know what is going on the ground. I understand from your testimony that it didn’t have to be this way; is that correct?

Mr. JEFFREY. As I said, for 3 years roughly, after the liberation

of Iraq, there was very little—there was some, but there was very

little interethnic violence. Today in many areas of Iraq where you

have mixed populations, there is very little violence. So, therefore,

I would contrast this with the situation that I know fairly well in

Bosnia, where, by, oh, the beginning of 1993, there was an area of

the country where everybody in each group wasn’t as—full time

fighting the other people. We see nothing like that today.

Again, even saying these things, however, I don’t want to dismiss

the concern that we have about what we do see today, which is

worrisome.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I guess if it wasn’t bound to be this way, if it

didn’t happen to be this way, my conclusion would have been we

could have done something more to prevent it. I believe the failure

to plan for what, I think, was eminently foreseeable is a huge failure. I am not sure that we could have prevented what we are seeing today or not, but I do believe that we didn’t have in place a

plan to adequately deal with it. I think your analogy actually to

Kosovo and parts of the former Yugoslavia is very apt, in fact.

I think the difference in Iraq is many of the population areas are

separated. You have a population of Shi’a in the south, you have

the Kurds in the north, but where you have many Shi’a, Sunni and

Kurds living side by side in major metropolitan areas, particularly

Baghdad, you have seen, since the very beginning of the invasion,

a simmering of violence, a simmering of sectarian warfare. That is

what Zarqawi had wanted to exploit from the very beginning.

For us not to have planned better, to not have taken into account, I believe, the heeding, the warnings of the people at the CIA

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and, I believe, the State Department I think points to a terrible

failure in the U.S. policy. I think it is the biggest single danger to

having a political reconciliation in Iraq today.

The only question is, in my mind, whether there is, in fact, much

that we could have done to prevent it, which raises the question

why wasn’t more attention given to this very serious issue that was

raised by Dick Cheney when he was Secretary of Defense before we

made the decision to go to war in Iraq?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman.

I would like to yield myself some time now. This is really a terrific opportunity to understand the strategy and to understand

whether critics are accurate when they said there is no strategy.

We are talking about a strategy. We are talking about whether it’s

good enough, but we are talking about a strategy.

What I am interested in—well, I am interested in a lot of issues.

But what I would first like to do is put on the record that I happen

to believe that we did not find weapons of mass destruction. I am

not in this debate on whether what we are finding now are weapons of mass destruction. For me, I am just putting myself on the

record. They are the remnants of what existed.

I find that to get into this issue, well, now, being we finally found

them, they were not operative, they were not, in my judgment, a

threat; not why I wanted to go in, because of my concern of weapons of mass destruction.

I also want to say whether or not al Qaeda was there when we

went in, though al-Zarqawi was clearly—even listening to my colleague talking about al-Zarqawi from the beginning—I mean, if the

beginning was—that is interesting that there would be the acceptance that al-Zarqawi was there. But they are there now, and it

took us a long time to find him, but we did find him. We took care

of him.

So, one, I am not in debate on whether weapons are there now.

I know we are there now. I know al Qaeda is there now. I know

it is head-to-head combat right now, right now with al Qaeda. At

least that is what I believe.

I would like to know whether you, General, you, Ambassador,

you, Ms. Long, believe that al Qaeda is there, and that they believe

that this is where, for them, the battle is. Do they want to succeed?

Is it significant if they succeed to their overall goals? Maybe we

could start with you, General.

General JONES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Clearly al Qaeda in Iraq exists. Its fighting, we believe, is responsible for a very large number of the most brutal attacks, especially against Iraqi civilians, and so no doubt that they are there.

Mr. SHAYS. Are their attacks directed at one sect or Sunni, Shi’as

and Kurds?

General JONES. Mr. Chairman, my understanding is that they attack each of the sects with the intent of trying to incite sectarian

violence. So I am not sure about Kurds. Certainly both Sunni and

Shi’a targets are in their target set.

Mr. SHAYS. And Kurds that happen to be in Sunni and Shi’a

areas.

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General JONES. Yes, sir. It’s very hard to put all these in categories. Baghdad is a very mixed area of not only those three but

Christians, Jews, other kinds of populations.

Mr. SHAYS. The bottom line is you don’t have any doubt that

they’re there and you have no doubt that they’re taking it to us,

correct?

General JONES. Mr. Chairman, no doubt that they’re there, no

doubt in my mind they think that a successful democratic Iraq is

a huge threat to their more global aspirations, and the fighting is

very hard there.

Mr. SHAYS. Ambassador.

Mr. JEFFREY. Mr. Chairman, first of all, they’re there.

Second, they see this as the main event in their struggle for control of the Middle East and opposition to the West and opposition

to a global structure in security. If we falter and fail in Iraq and

if they’re able to establish a permanent sanctuary in all parts of

Iraq as they have in Afghanistan, my fear is that this will erase

all of the tremendous good we have done in response to 9/11 and

we’ll be back where be we started.

Mr. SHAYS. Ms. Long.

Ms. LONG. I couldn’t concur more with my colleagues here, but,

quite frankly, one need not take this panel’s testimony. Al Qaeda

itself has said in its proclamation that it is there and that Iraq is

the center of gravity for its global jihad and only step one in that

strategy and it’s a long-term strategy to promulgate terrorism

worldwide.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Ambassador, the national strategy for victory in Iraq was a document that came out more recently, but we have been there since

April 2003. What were the guiding mechanisms that we used?

What was the document that would detail our strategy? Was it the

military combat effort or how would you—walk me through.

Mr. JEFFREY. What I’ll do is I will start with and then I will walk

back from this point. Because, otherwise, it wouldn’t be a satisfactory answer.

I’ll start with the summer of 2004. The newly arrived General

Casey heading the new MNFI and Ambassador Negroponte collaborated on the first campaign plan. This campaign plan picked up

many of the ideas that we have further developed in the Victory

in Iraq document, specifically, the concept of a wedge to try to, as

we say in this document, isolate those who we can’t bring into the

system such as some of the Bathists and al Qaeda folks but engage

many others, even people in the insurgency who are willing to lay

down their arms and willing to abide by the rule of the majority.

That was our strategy that summer.

That led to—and once again in response to the GAO’s concerns,

this led specifically and deliberately, and I was involved in this

process, to major resource shifts. As the Comptroller General and

his people testified, we shifted billions of dollars from longer-term

infrastructure into shorter-term projects, primarily security but

also democracy programs, elections and immediate increases to the

oil system which are now coming on stream in increasing production. This was done in furtherance of exactly that strategy.

Now before that time, sir, I would have——

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Mr. SHAYS. Before.

Mr. JEFFREY. Before the summer of 2004, I would have to turn

to the military on what documents that they used. I was out under

CPA in the latter days, and I wasn’t aware of that.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just clarify, the bottom line was before June

2004 Mr. Bremer was under the command of the Defense Department—excuse me, answerable to the Defense Department. It’s my

understanding that the Secretary had sole responsibility of the political as well as the military effort in Iraq, as well as the reconstruction, and that, when we transferred power in June to the

Iraqis, that brought in State Department, who now had the responsibility for the political part of our effort in Iraq and the reconstruction and left to Defense obviously this major effort of the military operations and the reconstruction of their security forces.

Is that a fair analysis of what’s the significance of June 2004?

General JONES. Mr. Chairman, I believe so. The transition to

CPA, yes, sir, that’s where, although it was still under departmental control, you had this separate entity called CPA that was

not under the control of the uniformed military.

Mr. SHAYS. Answerable to whom? The White House directly?

General JONES. No, sir, answerable to the Secretary of Defense.

Mr. SHAYS. CPA was answerable to the Secretary of Defense.

General JONES. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. So you had that transfer at that moment. Before

then, the State Department had a limited role, correct?

General JONES. That’s my understanding, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. Can you speak to the strategy that guided us for that

first year?

General JONES. I would go back to the very beginning. That is,

the establishment of the national military objectives led to the Central Command campaign plan. From that the Central Command

land component commander had a plan, an operations plan for the

actual attack into Iraq in the time immediately following. They

transitioned that organization to a Combined Joint Task Force 7,

CJTF–7. It then developed what they call their CJTF–7 campaign

plan. Subsequently, that was upgraded to multinational force in

about the timeframe you’re talking about, the June 2004, timeframe, simultaneously with the stand-up of the embassy. At that

time multinational force developed their campaign plan, which has

now been revised several times, the latest of which is actually a

joint campaign plan with the embassy.

Mr. SHAYS. To the outsider and even to me the implications are

that we only had a strategy guiding the military, and are any of

the three of you capable of disavowing me of this fact? I mean, did

this plan as you understand it include dealing with the economic

reconstruction of Iraq, the political stabilization of Iraq?

Mr. JEFFREY. Let me take that on.

We definitely had plans covering all three tracks—economic, political and security—in the year before the summer of 2004.

To cite two examples on the political and economic tracks, as the

General covered the security track under CJTF–7, the Congress

and the administration together worked out a reconstruction program, Earth 1 and Earth 2, totaling $21.9 billion, the largest single

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ken down in a very sophisticated way into a whole series of reconstruction objectives, from water and electricity and roads and oil,

all the way into democracy, standing up security forces and other

things.

As the GAO reported earlier today, there were certain assumptions on that reconstruction program such as a permissive environment that turned out not to be so, but it was a very sophisticated

plan that manifested itself in major congressional budget action.

Second, on the political track, there were a variety of initial steps

culminating in the decision taken in the fall to turn over sovereignty to the Iraqis as soon as June 2004. This was then manifested in a U.N. Security Council resolution that we played a key

role in negotiating, 1546, but also, most importantly, in the transitional administrative law which laid out that process that has carried us through until the formation of the government a few

months ago.

Mr. Chairman, my answer is, before the consolidated plan of

2004, there were very sophisticated plans that were well coordinated in interagency meetings. It’s just that there was no one plan.

What we’ve tried to do is bring these plans together and further

refine them in one document.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just say, if I ask one of you to respond, I am

very happy to have others of you jump in. So don’t wait for me to

ask if you feel you can add value here.

So what I am hearing is that—I will tell you my sense of the

challenge, why the American people didn’t feel we had a plan, was

that the plans that I looked at were classified. It seemed to me that

what the administration finally concluded was that people continually saying we had no plan when there was no plan presented to

the public was because, frankly, we didn’t want to present it to our

adversaries. We realized that we had to balance these two concerns. One, we have a plan, why the hell would we tell our enemies

what our plan is? We have a strategy, why would we tell our enemies what our strategy is? Then the political opposition that started to form in this country that said we had no plan, we don’t know

what we are doing.

Am I right in assuming the administration came to the conclusion that they needed a document that was—two things, one, that

they needed to bring these strategies together under one plan,

which is one issue, and, two, that they needed to have a plan that

they could make public so the American people and Congress and

others would have a better understanding of it.

Mr. JEFFREY. Let me start off and open it up to the others.

Clearly, Mr. Chairman, there was a belief that we needed to put

on paper to the public the plans that we had developed and refined

over the preceding 21⁄2 years. I was working on Iraq before this

plan came out, and I felt that I knew what I was tasked to do and

that others did, and we had goals.

Again, they were laid out here, they are laid out well here, but

we already had them in various other documents. This combined

those. It refined them further. Some of the ideas in there, for example, the clear hold and build concept under the security was a fairly

new development. The Secretary talked about that in her testimony

in October 2005.

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So there are a few developments based, for example, on our success in areas that we tried to apply. The PRT concept was beginning to be stood up, and we put those in.

So this is a further refinement, but it’s a refinement of plans

that, as you said, were in different places and many of which were

classified.

Mr. SHAYS. Any comments?

Ms. LONG. I would only like to add that the Ambassador is correct and that strategy is a refinement. It is also to some extent is

a boiling down of what were the most salient and the core aspects

of what the President’s strategy was and what the various interagency departments were undertaking as parts of the implementation.

I get the chairman’s point that it’s important that the strategy

be linked to things such as a budget and cost analysis, and those

indeed do exist, and, in fact, Ambassador Jeffrey pointed us toward

those particular documents.

This particular plan that we’re discussing, the strategy for victory in Iraq, simply didn’t contain that information because it had

a very different purpose. This, as the chairman pointed out, was

considered to be the public document in order to convey in a very

effective and a very concise way the core values and the core implementation and aspects of the strategy of the ongoing conflict in

Iraq.

Mr. SHAYS. Now what I’m going to say is a bit negative, but by

my saying it this way it will help me understand where we are at

today. Either we didn’t have a plan and therefore we made mistakes or we had a plan and the mistakes made early on were because the plan was bad or we didn’t follow the plan. But we made

some mistakes early on, and I’m going to tell you what I believe

those mistakes to be. I would like to think that and I do believe

that we did have a plan but that there were flaws to it. I can’t

imagine that it would be otherwise.

Now I also preface it by saying that my greatest love is American

history, and I have not read a military effort that didn’t have huge

mistakes in it. If George Washington had the critics that we have

today, I don’t think—I think we would still be a commonwealth or

something like that. If Abraham Lincoln had been judged on his

first 2 to 3 years, we would be two nations. And when I hear the

fact that, with no disrespect to you, General, that there are military people who criticize this administration, to say nothing like

what Abraham Lincoln had to deal with, he ran against a general

who was so critical of how a war was fought.

I love the comment Lincoln made when he finally found a general he liked, General Grant, and people came up to him and said

the guy drinks too much, and Abraham Lincoln was reported to

have said, well, tell me what he drinks and I’ll give to my other

generals.

So I understand that mistakes are made, but if we don’t talk

about mistakes then it’s hard for people to understand where we

are. I will just tell you, and I’m not going to ask you to agree or

disagree, but I’m going to ask you the implications.

Allowing the looting, to me, was outrageous. Allowing the looting

said to the Iraqis that security doesn’t matter, and they walked

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right by Americans who allowed them to do it. I understand the

logic. We didn’t want to engage the Iraqis. So that was one issue.

To not have contained, at least where we could, the munitions

depots and to let literally our adversaries drive up in trucks and

take these munitions to me was a huge mistake.

But the mistake that I happen to believe was the most egregious

was we decided to not allow the army to restand, the police to

restand, and we basically got rid of their border patrol. What we

did is we said to 150,000 coalition forces you have to be the police,

the border patrol and the army for 26 million people in a country

the size of New England and New York. I think that was an impossible task.

So, General, I’m just going to say to you that I thought we had

enough military troops until we did that. But what I’m going to say

to you is that I think we then dug ourselves a deep hole. Am I to

view—and the reason I mention that—I’ve been there 12 times—

is I try to go every 3 to 4 months because I want to take the temperature and I want to gauge where we are. I basically viewed us

as being very successful in April 2003, with a chance of not having

what took place; and we took a nose dive in my judgment when we

disbanded their army, their police and their border patrol.

I had Iraqis say, why did you put my brother, my uncle, my cousin, my father out of work? Why did you put my son out of work?

Why couldn’t they at least guard a hospital? That’s poignant to me,

because the first death in the 4th Congressional District was

Alfredo Perez guarding a hospital.

I’m just saying to you I carry a strong conviction that mistakes

were made in the early times and that since June 2004 was the

moment to which we made a hugely successful, important decision

and that was to transfer to the Iraqis the ability to start to have

control over their own destiny. We started to have an Iraqi face.

I had a press conference shortly after we transferred power with

Negroponte and the foreign minister, and it was really thrilling for

me to have a press conference with the Iraqis. I stepped forward

and said, I think we’ve made a number of mistakes. Are there any

questions?

The first question was for the Foreign Minister, the second was

for the Foreign Minister, the third; and finally I leaned over to Ambassador Negroponte and said, this is the best proof that transferring power, that they have bought into the fact that Iraqis are now

beginning the control of their own destiny. They’re making their

own decisions.

Maybe you could just speak to the concept of mistakes, if you

don’t choose to talk about particular ones. Were mistakes made in

this war?

General JONES. Mr. Chairman, no doubt in my mind. I think

your historical context is exactly correct, and that is it’s a human

endeavor, no doubt there were mistakes made. Like you, I studied

history quite a bit as well. I think the important thing is you’re not

going to avoid the fact that you’re going to make some of these

kinds of mistakes, but what’s most important is what do you do

about that. Do you learn? Do you adjust and compensate for things

that you either thought would be true, turns out not to be, or

things that you didn’t anticipate? I think in that regard we have

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learned from mistakes and made considerable progress building on

what we’ve learned.

Mr. SHAYS. Maybe I could ask this question to you this way, Ambassador. Thank you, General.

How can the American people have confidence that we are less

likely to make mistakes today than in the past?

Mr. JEFFREY. As any conflict or campaign goes on, I think we

learn from what worked, what didn’t work. Without going into the

issue of why mistakes were made—and I agree with the General

and I agree with my Secretary, who mentioned a thousand mistakes—I can simply tell you, Mr. Chairman, that I made my fair

share of those thousand mistakes when I was out there.

I will say that, having been on the ground, it’s an environment

like any chaotic wartime environment, where mistakes are inevitable. The issue is do you keep your eye on the underlying goal.

And, as I have said, the underlying goal, which is laid out here in

the President’s strategy, is a democratic Iraq that isn’t a haven for

terrorists. That is what we guide on. And when we deviate from

that, when something goes wrong, we work with Iraqis to try and

correct it; and we’re going to keep on doing that.

At the end of the day, the American people, through their political processes, one of which was seen before us today, will have to

decide we’ll just try and do our best. I can’t give you a better answer than that.

Ms. LONG. I can’t disagree with any of the other panel members,

although I do think there is one thing that we can tell the American people about our hope that less mistakes will be made in the

future and that is, to the extent many mistakes were made in the

past, some of those were probably because we were unfamiliar with

or the changing circumstances of the ground had an impact on our

planning that were unanticipated or unaccounted for or not prepared enough for. But now we are in full partnership with the Iraqi

Government and the Iraqi people, and the Prime Minister and his

cabinet have been outstanding in their public and other statements

in support of all the goals that we have adopted for one another

in moving this fight forward. So we now have a partner on the

ground who is as much if not more interested in our success.

Mr. SHAYS. Would you agree that it was a major change, a pivotal point when you transferred power to the Iraqis in June 2004?

Mr. JEFFREY. I believe, Mr. Chairman, that it was, but the fact

that was simultaneous with my arrival there may color my judgment somewhat. I do think it was an important step. I think the

President took a very courageous step in accelerating what was

originally going to be a several year process. I think the process

that we set culminated in the current government is the proof in

the pudding, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. I have just one other area before I go to Mr. Van

Hollen. Let me just ask this and come to you.

The national strategy says build a stable, pluralistic national institution, clear areas of enemy control and restore Iraqi’s neglected

infrastructure. Now the administration is putting a focus on assisting the new Iraqi Government in promoting its own agenda, which

is compatible, it strikes me, but it’s national reconciliation, improvVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:45 May 09, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00108 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\34545.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ing security, increasing oil and electricity production and engaging

other nations in Iraq’s development.

Now the reason I wanted to talk about this is I want to focus on

national reconciliation. Because I found that I was one of the few

people who felt confident that transferring power in June 2004 was

the right thing to do, and it was based on the fact that, having

been there, I could just see they were ready. But it was interesting

to me that the critics of the war were absolutely adamant that we

shouldn’t transfer power, which was one of the most important decisions we did. If we made mistakes, and we did, that was one

thing that was not a mistake.

Now I make the same parallel to the whole issue of reconciliation. I am finding Members say we should not allow there to be

any so-called amnesty. How dare us think of that. And I’m going

back again to history and thinking, well, what took place after the

Civil War? We had Lee allowed to walk away in dignity, we had

the troops allowed to carry their arms back home, we arrested

President Davis of the Confederacy but then did not prosecute him.

The only one I believe that paid a penalty was the commander—

was it Andersonville, the prison camp? He was hung.

But it strikes me is it possible for there to be reconciliation without, one, amending the Constitution to draw the Sunnis in? And I

would think oil plays a major role in that. And is it possible to

have reconciliation without there being some forgiveness, obviously

within certain restraints, of those who sided with the insurgents

and maybe in fact were insurgents? Obviously, the people who are

walking around holding people’s heads in their hands, you’re not

going to reach out to them, but how about the others?

Mr. JEFFREY. The President’s spokesman, Tony Snow, addressed

this on Monday in response to a question.

First, and most importantly, this is an Iraqi decision, an Iraqi

process. They’re going to have to live with the results. Some sort

of amnesty certainly is being raised by many people inside and outside the Iraqi Government, and they’re going to figure out what the

best balance is between reconciliation and responsibilities and accountability for one’s acts.

Our first concern from the standpoint of the United States—and

this has come up several times all the way back to the Allawi government—is to ensure that there is no double standard, that is,

that an act against a coalition soldier is different from an act

against a Iraqi soldier or a coalition civilian and an Iraqi civilian.

Beyond that, we will watch what the Iraqis do and we will try to

be as supportive as we can. But, again, this is their process. This

is their system.

We do agree with you that those people, the al Qaeda groups and

those others guilty of war crimes, need to be brought to justice.

Mr. SHAYS. General, any comment? Then we’ll go to you.

General JONES. Mr. Chairman, the comment I’d make is I agree

with the Ambassador.

Clearly, in order to end hostilities, you have to take combatants

and have some method by which they stop the coming combatants,

and this is one mechanism. We’ve seen it applied in a variety of

places where conflict is transitioned to a peaceful environment. I

don’t think Iraq is any different.

106

Mr. SHAYS. We’re basically looking at al Qaeda’s presence there,

we’re dealing with Sunni insurgents, and we’re also dealing with

al-Sadr and some of the Shi’a groups. If we’re successful—excuse

me, if Iraq is successful in reconciliation with the Sunnis, then does

that not isolate al Qaeda and isn’t it more likely that we will see

Iraq have significant success against al Qaeda if we have the

Sunnis on board going after them instead of going after the government? That’s directed to you, General.

General JONES. Sir, my answer would be absolutely yes.

Mr. SHAYS. Ms. Long, do you have any comment about that?

Ms. LONG. No. I think General Jones is correct in that this

wedge strategy had been something that has been under discussion

for some time.

Mr. SHAYS. And is part of the strategy?

Let me just be clear about that. This is an effort on the part of

the Iraqi Government, and one of the criticisms of the Government

Accountability Office was, and specifically Mr. Walker, was that

there is not coordination between the plans of Iraq, which I just

mentioned, and our own victory in Iraq plan. So if you’d just speak

to that coordination and how the two strategies are compatible, and

then Mr. Van Hollen has the floor for as long as he wants.

Mr. JEFFREY. The wedge strategy of the original 2004 campaign

plan was discussed with the Allawi government. Allawi was very

active particularly in that period of time before our Fallujah operation in the fall of 2004. Reaching out to Sunni groups from

Fallujah and elsewhere, we participated in those. He was well

aware of the undertakings, as all the other Iraqi Governments,

that you need to, again, to quote the victory in Iraq strategy, to isolate those that are not going to be part of this process, the al

Qaeda, the Bathists, and to bring in those folks that are willing to

or can be persuaded to lay down their arms. That’s been our strategy for a long time, sir.

General JONES. Mr. Chairman, just for clarity, I’ll go to page 30

of the NSVI and just to point out one of the elements in there is

supporting Iraqi leaders in their request to bring all Iraqis into the

political process through dialog and the creation of inclusive institutions. So, clearly, this has been part of our desire to achieve this

reconciliation effort throughout the time we’ve had our strategy.

Mr. SHAYS. But the challenge that the first Prime Minister had

was he was the interim, transformational and then permanent. He

was the first. He was basically—there had been no election, so he

hadn’t been elected. He had been chosen by groups, correct, but not

elected. So the advantage Malaki has is that he now is the elected

chosen, with the fact that 76 percent of the Iraqis chose this government, including Sunnis, is that not correct?

Mr. JEFFREY. That’s correct, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. Mr. Van Hollen, you have the floor as

long as you want.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I won’t take too

long.

I just want to go back to, first, the point you have made with respect to the mistakes and acknowledging mistakes and learning

from mistakes and getting back to the earlier point I made with

the Comptroller General with respect to accountability. Because I

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think everyone understands that people in the course of decisionmaking make some mistakes. I think the biggest concern here is

you have a pattern of mistakes being made in the face of good advice to the contrary.

There were people who raised questions about weapons of mass

destruction. There were people in this Government who raised

questions about whether there was really any link between al

Qaeda and Saddam Hussein and whether there was any collaboration. There were people who raised good questions about the number of forces we would need on the ground to make sure there was

some stability in post-invasion Iraq. There were people who raised

serious issues about the costs of the war. And consistently those

voices were ignored.

I do very strongly believe that when you have a situation going

on, as we have now since 2003, where there’s a consistent pattern

not just of mistakes but mistakes being made in the face of strong

contrary advice and you fail to hold people accountable, you’re

going to get more failure.

So I would just like to ask you a basic question of accountability,

checks and balances. Would you not agree that in a bureaucracy,

in an organization like the U.S. Government that if you want to

send the right signal to people you have to hold people accountable

for their mistakes and you need to acknowledge and reward people

who get it right, just as a basic management principle?

Mr. JEFFREY. I agree with the principle, but if you will permit

me, Congressman, I would like to elaborate on this a little bit, because, otherwise, my answer would not be understood correctly.

First of all, there are levels of accountability. Those people who

violate the law, be it contractors or civilian officials who have been

identified by the Special Inspector General, those people are being

punished to the maximum of the law. Our military personnel, including fairly senior people involved in Abu Ghraib, have been punished in various ways.

In addition, there is another level of intermediate management

accountability. Not everybody who emerges from a year of horrible

experiences, in many cases in great danger in Iraq, is promoted, is

advanced to a higher position, is considered to have succeeded.

Those people—and there are many of them; I was involved with

some of them—have not had their careers advance. They made

mistakes that we simply could not forgive or forget.

Then there is the highest level, and here’s where I think there’s

I think a bit of conflating the standards. There is political responsibility. This is something that I as a civil servant cannot decide.

It’s something our elected leaders have to decide. I will say this.

From experience over many years in many conflicts and near conflicts situations with the U.S. Government, whatever action—at

one point, you said should we hold people responsible if they made

mistakes when there was contrary advice. Here’s the problem, Mr.

Congressman, and I could cite the Balkans as an example again.

There was always contrary advice. There are always strong opinions in the bureaucracy when you take any action, and one of the

biggest challenges we have is to finally get to the point of taking

a decision in less than full knowledge when there are so many people who are saying, no, that’s not the right course of action.

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I saw this is Bosnia when people said we should have sided with

the Bosnians in 1992, 1993, but there was a great deal of very intelligent advice that said, no, that would be a terrible mistake.

Then I worked closely with Dick Holbrook in 1996, and people

were advising him in different ways and the Secretary of State and

the President.

It’s a very difficult situation where you don’t—particularly in the

fog of war, at the highest levels, I think at the levels you’re talking

of, we have to let the American people pass judgment and hold our

leaders accountable for succeeding as we think they will or not succeeding, sir.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I would agree with you that’s where responsibility ultimately lies. I would just say there seems to be an incredible pattern here of consistently siding with the side that gave

the wrong advice against the side that gave the right advice. And

I would just point out again—and we’ve heard the testimony and

statements made by a number of the generals who were involved

in various capacities with decisionmaking, whether it was going to

war or in the post-war period, and I stop with this and close with

a question. We had retired Major General John Baptiste, he stated

a little while ago Rumsfeld should step down because he ignored

sound military advice about how to secure Iraq after Baghdad fell.

We had a number of other generals strongly recommending that

Secretary Rumsfeld step down as an accountability measure.

I don’t know, General, and I don’t want to put you in a tough

spot. I guess what I want to know is, were you in a position to be

aware as to whether or not the advice that was provided by many

of the people who have since criticized Rumsfeld and called for his

resignation, were you in a position to determine whether or not the

advice was in fact heeded or whether it was ignored?

General JONES. Congressman, the position I was in at that time,

I knew that there was lots of advice being given, not necessarily

always consistent, as the Ambassador said: more troops, less

troops. You have people arguing both ways even today. How much

of that advice was taken, whose advice was taken and who’s

wasn’t, I don’t have any personal knowledge of that.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I understand, sir.

I’ll just close, Mr. Chairman.

I think that, as the Ambassador pointed out, we have a number

of mechanisms within the Government for accountability. Ultimately, it is the decision of the American people. But I do believe

in terms of just managing the Government, and I just—managing

the Government in terms of creating the right incentives within the

Government, when people who do get it right are ignored and people who get it wrong are somehow promoted or encouraged, I do believe that sends a very bad signal to the men and women in our

Federal Government.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman.

I just have a few other questions. I’m not looking for long answers, but they are not insignificant. You respond as you choose.

The GAO said the strategy does not show costs, identify agency

roles, integrate U.S. goals with Iraq and U.N. goals. I would like

you, Ambassador, to speak to those three criticisms.

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Mr. JEFFREY. Very quickly, to followup on my initial comments,

the strategy taken as a whole, as I said, does have a funding component to it on the state side, and the military has a similar document as well. We’ll put this in the record. It is assigned with a

three-track policy: security, political and economic.

In terms of the organization, there I would disagree strongly. I

think that NSBD 36 and the NNSI program I describe are——

Mr. SHAYS. You’re speaking to——

Mr. JEFFREY. Yes, sir. The organizational roles are as clear as I

have ever seen it. Considering Government service and considering

the size of this endeavor, it’s amazing. These are very clear.

Of course, there are disputes. The GAO said it doesn’t clarify

every dispute between agencies. On this man’s and woman’s Earth

we’ll never come to that point, but it comes as close as it can to

setting up a coherent process.

The GAO is correct that we haven’t been able to align our goals,

our resources and such fully with the Iraqis. That’s because we’ve

not had a long-term Iraqi Government, and thus we had the meeting with the Iraqis for over 2 days on June 12th and 13th with the

President going there to do exactly that.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. I know that you answered each of these

questions in a little more depth, but I appreciate that succinct answer.

With regard to the militia, how can we—let me start with this.

I would like to know the role that you think Iran is playing in

terms of sending agents and money to Iraq.

Mr. JEFFREY. Iran is playing a very worrisome role, including the

death of coalition soldiers and Iraqis; and in the political sense of

it being difficult for us to fathom why the Iranians are doing this.

We are very concerned about this. We have spoken out publicly

about it, and this is another one of the key items on our agenda.

Mr. SHAYS. Isn’t it true that if Iraq were to break into three

parts that they not only have a Kurdish problem but they would

have a Shi’a-Arab problem? Because they not only have a large

Kurdish population in Iran but don’t they have a fairly substantive

Shi’a-Arab population as well?

The reason I ask this question is because this is what I was basically told by folks in the Arab Emirates, that what they were trying to argue to me is that it is not in Iran’s best interest, ironically,

to have Iraq fail.

Mr. JEFFREY. We agree with you. That’s why one of our concerns

with the Iranian activities is that we can’t find an obvious explanation for it. Some of Syria’s non-productive actions we have a certain explanation.

Mr. SHAYS. Are the Syrians cooperating with stopping jihaddists

from crossing Syria into Iraq? Are we sometimes getting cooperation and sometimes not?

I met with the Syrian ambassador, and he tells me you just tell

us what we’re doing wrong and we’ll stop. And I said 3 of the 10

things you’re doing wrong; we want you to stop all 10 things.

What is the relationship that we have with Syria at this point?

Mr. JEFFREY. Our relationship with Syria is colored by their behavior in Iraq, their behavior, for example, in hosting the leader of

Hamas who played such a bad role in recent events in Gaza and

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their activity still interrelated to Lebanon as well as the oppression

of their own people.

That said, on the Iraqi front we have seen a diminution of infiltration to some degree and we have seen the Syrians take a number of measures at airports.

There may be a cause and effect between the two. They need to

do more, including more cooperation with the new Iraqi Government in closing down some of the financiers of the insurgency who

have found refuge in Syria, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. If this is a long answer, I don’t want you to answer

the question. But, bottom line, could you speak to the Sadr militia?

Is this as worrisome—there is a view that we had an opportunity

to deal with him 3 years ago and we let him fester and now he has

become a major concern.

What I’m hearing is that he’s asked for the opportunity to do,

frankly, what Hamas did in Palestine and that was in the West

Bank and that was to feed the poor and the hungry and build a

support system while also doing their terrorist acts. In other words,

they’re not asking for oil, they’re not asking to run department,

they’re asking it seems to me to be on the human side of the government equation. Is that a concern to us?

Mr. JEFFREY. General Jones had a lot of up close and personal

contact with that militia, so I’ll let him take that.

General JONES. Sir, the organization, it has several elements,

one of which is part of a social welfare capability and that’s one of

the ways that he sustained support of the population. He obviously

has another element of his militia, which is an extremely unproductive portion of the organization. So he has both of those elements, and I believe he uses the social side just to sustain support.

Mr. SHAYS. This is my last question. Is the fundamental problem

political, military or economic? If you had to choose one, if you

would rank them—I’d like all three of you to rank them.

Ms. Long, I’d like you to go first. Rank which is the most worrisome. I’m not saying they aren’t all, but your three choices are political, military and economic. How would you rank them?

Ms. LONG. I would request not to have to rank them, quite frankly, but if required to answer I think a combination between the recent upsurge in violent attacks, which would be a security issue,

but combined with the political aspect. Because I do think that the

resolution of either of those is dependent and integrated with how

we deal particularly with the militia and integration of members

of society who have taken a look at the new government and who

are willing or able to become members of it and giving them the

opportunity to do so under the reconciliation ideas that the current

government has. I would put economic then slightly in the rear.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

General.

General JONES. I echo that they’re all totally intertwined, but if

I had to choose, I would say—with one caveat, I would say political.

Because, in the long term, it’s the ultimate solution to deal with

the underlying causes of the violence in the insurgency that have

to be done. I caveat that with al Qaeda, which does not have underlying political causes that can be dealt with, and I think that

issue is primarily a security issue.

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Mr. JEFFREY. Without security, you really can’t do anything or

enough on the political and economic tracks. However, as the General said, the solution to the security situation is not military but

political, so I think the two are entwined. Economic is, measured

only by that standard, less significant. It is an important factor but

not in the short term as vital getting the security and political correct.

Mr. SHAYS. I think all three of you pretty much had the same

view on this.

Let me just say that my colleague from Maryland just had one

followup; and my last question, which I’ll ask now, is: Is there anything that we should have asked that you think needs to put on

the record that we didn’t ask? Is there anything that if you left

here and didn’t put on the record you’d say I should have? That’s

my question to all three of you. But the gentleman from Maryland

has the floor.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I was just interested, Mr. Ambassador, in your response to the

question about the Iranian factor and the Iranian meddling. I

guess I’m a little puzzled by the fact that you and others are puzzled about the nature of the Iranian meddling and the negative aspects of that.

Let me just ask you, from the perspective of the current regime

in Iran, from their perspective, would they be better off with a fundamentalist Shi’a government in Iraq or a secular democratic government in Iraq?

Mr. JEFFREY. That’s why we’re puzzled. We were not puzzled by

what they’re doing, we’re puzzled by why, their motivation. A fundamentalist Arab-Shi’a regime in Iraq whose focus is on, in many

respects, the more senior clergy, with a 1,600-year tradition of

Shi’a-Islam, is not necessarily a good thing from the historical

standpoint to an upstart Shi’a regime of about 400 years duration.

So that’s not immediately obvious.

The other thing is we have seen in a variety of situations where

the Iranians are basically not dissatisfied with the democratic process. I mean, they have good relations not only with the Shi’a but

also with the Kurds. They are not too happy with us succeeding

there or anyplace else, but they have other interests as well.

So we still are trying to fathom why exactly they are working

with local militias with these special IED attacks and that kind of

thing, and we haven’t come to a good answer yet.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. They have a relationship with al-Sadr, right?

Mr. JEFFREY. They have relationships with al-Sadr, Talibani.

They have relationships with most of the actors in Iraq, which is

fully appropriate for a neighboring country in a country which has

suffered a traumatic experience with Iraq 20 years ago. I mean,

they do have from a historical standpoint legitimate political and

security concerns just like many countries have with neighbors. It’s

how they carry that out that we are concerned with at present.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I would conclude, Mr. Chairman, by saying I’m

not sure I’m as puzzled as you are by the way the Iranians are

playing it in Iraq. I think in many ways they have been the big

winner in terms expanding their sphere of influence in the region

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and in Iraq in particular, and I’m not sure why they wouldn’t see

it in their interest to have more of a fundamentalist-type regime.

After all, one of the positions the administration has taken is

that, if they were successful in establishing a democratic secular

government in Iraq, it would have ramifications and implications

throughout the region, namely, the people in Iran would want the

same thing. So if you take the administration at its word, it seems

to me you can understand why the Iranians would be concerned

about what might be developed in Iraq; and I think, again, it was

predictable that the Iranians would try and exploit and take advantage of this situation.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank the gentleman.

Would you care to put anything on the record before we adjourn?

Mr. JEFFREY. From my standpoint, nothing, Mr. Chairman.

Ms. LONG. Only to thank the chairman for this very important

hearing. We think it’s important to be able to explain the national

strategy and that there are a lot of documents and implementation

plans and all kinds of supporting documentation and other implementation strategies that complement that and that we welcome

the opportunity, whether through criticism by GAO or others, to

make those better documents and more responsive documents.

Thank you again, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

General JONES. No, sir, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just thank all of you for your service. I happen to know Ambassador Jeffrey the most, having visited him a

few times. You were all excellent witnesses and very helpful to this

process, and I appreciate that you came here about 6 hours ago to

begin. So thank you for not asking to be first and letting the GAO

go first. That was very helpful to this committee.

With that, we’re going to have about a 4-minute recess and then

we’ll start with our final panel.

[Recess.]

Mr. SHAYS. I am very curious as to whether our four panelists

have stayed. Let me introduce Dr. Kenneth Pollack, director of

Middle Eastern Policy, Brookings Institution; Dr. Laith Kubba,

senior director for Middle East and North Africa, National Endowment for Democracy; Dr. Anthony Cordesman, Admiral Burke

Chair in Strategy, Center for Strategic and International Affairs,

CSIS; and Dr. Kenneth Katzman, specialist in Middle East Affairs,

Congressional Research Service. I think the only one required by

law required to stay was the Congressional Research Service.

Gentlemen, it’s wonderful to have you here. I do need to swear

you in, as I think you know. If you would stand, we’ll swear you

in.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. Just for the record, we’re not going to be starting our

meetings in the future at 2 p.m. But it’s wonderful to have you

here.

I consider this panel an extraordinary opportunity for the committee and particularly for me; and what I would like, if it’s just

my colleague from Maryland and myself, is to have a dialog among

us and between us. So I think we’ll start in the order—excuse me,

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I don’t think we’ll start that way. Yes, we will. We’ll start with you

Dr. Pollack, and we’ll go right down. Just make your points as you

choose to, and we’re not even going to turn the clock on unless one

of them speaks too long and the others have to wait too long. So

maybe we better turn the clock on. We’ll do it 5 minutes and roll

it over.

STATEMENTS OF KENNETH POLLACK, DIRECTOR OF MIDDLE

EASTERN POLICY, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION; LAITH KUBBA,

SENIOR DIRECTOR FOR MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA,

NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY; ANTHONY

CORDESMAN, ADMIRAL ARLEIGH BURKE CHAIR IN STRATEGY, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS [CSIS]; AND DR. KENNETH KATZMAN, SPECIALIST IN

MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS, CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE

STATEMENT OF KENNETH POLLACK

Dr. POLLACK. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It’s a great

privilege to be here before this subcommittee. It’s also a great privilege to be on this panel with so many distinguished colleagues.

I think, as you are aware, a number of months ago we at the

Brookings Institution put together our own study group on Iraq,

came up with our own alternative strategy for Iraq, and most of my

remarks are framed by our thinking in the conversations that we

had when we were trying to work through this problem and determine what the United States ought to do to ensure success in Iraq.

The first point that I think is important to make in the course

of these hearings is to say that our conclusion as part of this group

was that we fully have just one more chance in Iraq. At the very

least, we ought to assume that they have only one more chance left

in Iraq. We may get more. The fact of the matter is we’ve already

had a number of bites at this apple and we have so far failed to

put reconstruction on a firm footing.

The problem that we face right now is that both the American

and—Iraqi and the American people are growing impatient. Ultimately this war can be lost in Washington. It can be lost in Baghdad. The problem is it can be lost in either capital, and we need

both to provide their full support.

Inside of Iraq, I think the problems that we face are particularly

acute and need to be taken into account. First, as you are well

aware, and as we have heard other Members in these hearings suggest, the Iraqis are increasingly unhappy. They are increasingly

frustrated, something that I know you know firsthand, Mr. Chairman.

They had great expectations with the fall of Saddam Hussein,

and they have been waiting to see those expectations fulfilled. And

increasingly Iraqis are fearful that the United States and that the

new Government of Iraq doesn’t know what it is doing or will be

unwilling to do what is necessary to actually give them the better

life that they ultimately deserve.

And we are seeing increasing numbers of Iraqis turning to these

vicious sectarian militias, turning to organized crime, turning to insurgent groups to provide them with the security and basic services

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that they don’t feel that the United States or the new Iraqi Government can provide them with.

Beyond that, there is another critical element in this, which is

that we now finally do have the formation of a permanent Iraqi

Government. In the past Iraqis felt these same frustrations, but

what we typically saw was when Iraqis became frustrated with the

current circumstances, they would shift their expectations to the

next government down the road. There was always another government coming down the road 6 months or 12 months out, and so it

was easy for Iraqis to say this government has failed us, but perhaps the next will do better.

Well, we are now in a situation where there isn’t going to be another government, at least not for another 4 years, and so this one

has to work. This one has to produce results.

Now, having said all of that, I don’t think that we should set the

bar too high either. The fact of the matter is Iraqis desperately

want reconstruction to succeed, and I think what they are looking

for in the next 6 months is some sign that the United States and

this new Iraqi Government actually know what we are doing and

are actually starting to move things in the right direction.

Our group was fairly confident if the Iraqis did get some signs

of that, they would remain committed, and they would remain supportive. But we have to start delivering in the next 6 months; we

as the United States of America as well as the new Iraqi Government.

With regard to the administration’s new strategy, what I will say

is that I think there was a lot in the new strategy that is very

good. And for me this goes beyond the printed documents and goes

to other efforts that I see the U.S. administration and the U.S.

military embarking on. The problem that I foresee is that what

matters is not how good the rhetoric is, not how good the plans are,

and I acknowledge that the rhetoric and the plans are much better

than we have seen in the past. All that matters is the implementation.

Unfortunately, my conclusion has been that this administration

has more often talked the talk than they have walked the walk

when it has come to Iraq. I have seen other administration rhetoric

that has been left unfulfilled.

I will give a number of different examples of things that I see

that are going on out there, but which, as I said, are all about the

implementation.

There is a new military plan, focused reconstruction developed by

Lieutenant General Corelli in Iraq. Mr. Chairman, I have been

briefed on this plan. It is the first plan that I have seen for the

military in Iraq that I have looked at and said this could work, this

could actually make a difference in the country. I think it is a brilliant plan. But ultimately all that matters is the implementation

of that plan.

I think that already we are beginning to see problems. The first

step in that plan is the new Baghdad security plan. That Baghdad

security plan is being—or we are trying to implement it with about

75,000 troops. We really need closer to 125,000 troops. That’s the

right number based on historical circumstances, both outside of

Iraq and inside it.

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Just to give an example, Tall Afar, where we are having some

degree of success because we are sitting on that city, we are doing

it with the right force ratio, a force ratio of 20 security personnel

per 1,000. The right number for Baghdad, applying that same

ratio, is about 125,000, not the 75,000 we have now. And I know

it may be possible—and Dr. Cordesman will be the first one to

point out, he is absolutely right—that numbers in war are very

troublesome. But the fact of the matter is that it is going to be very

difficult to make this Baghdad security plan work with only 75,000

troops.

In addition, the focused reconstruction plan is as much about

marrying up civilian, political and economic reconstruction with

this new emphasis on protecting Iraqi civilians, and both parts are

absolutely critical. But so far what we have seen in the Baghdad

security plan is that only the military has been able to implement

its part of a plan, and we have seen much less on the civilian side

that is an absolutely necessary complement to these changes on the

security side.

The amnesty, which you have already talked about, needs to be

general. The amnesty is very important, but if we do not apply it

to all Iraqis, it is going to be meaningless. The administration is

making new efforts to reach out to its neighbors. This is also a very

important effort. But at the end of the day, unless we are willing

to make some new real concessions to those neighbors, bring them

into the process and give them some sense that they are going to

have a stake in how Iraq develops, they are not going to provide

us anything more.

Finally, in light of the United Nations, I am heartened to see

that the Bush administration is making a new effort to try to engage the United Nations and is trying to gain some traction. We

had a member of the United Nations as part of that group, and

what we heard time and again from that member and from others

that we spoke to was the U.N. will only be there if you can provide

security and if you are willing to allow the U.N. a much greater

say and control over operations.

It is wonderful that the Bush administration has rediscovered

the U.N. and is trying to bring them into the process, but until we

are willing to make those concessions, to give them a greater say

in control, and to provide the security that their civilians need, it’s

not going to make any difference. Thank you, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Pollack follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Dr. Kubba.

STATEMENT OF LAITH KUBBA

Dr. KUBBA. Mr. Chairman, it’s my pleasure to be here. I have

had the pleasure of meeting you in Baghdad when I was a spokesman for Prime Minister al-Jaafari. And as an Iraqi American, I

very much appreciate and admire and salute the good work that

you have been doing not only from an American perspective, but

also very much appreciated by the Iraqis.

Mr. SHAYS. Well, it’s our privilege to have you here.

Dr. KUBBA. What I want to do is bring some insights into the

way ahead. Without question, the document that we have ahead of

us struck and highlighted a very clear purpose, and I just want to

underline that purpose. Failure in Iraq does mean expansion in al

Qaeda. It does mean many September 11ths worldwide, and it’s absolutely not an option to let Iraq go down.

I think the possibility of Iraq going down is real, and we should

brace ourselves for tough weeks or months ahead. And the only

way we can confront that reality is by clarity of purpose.

Looking at the document and its three main tracks and the plan

to integrate these tracks, the politics, the security and the economy, what I found the central piece that needs to be highlighted,

which is the key to making the plans work, those wishes being fulfilled, is an approach to state building.

We are in a catch–22 situation, where if you trace the causes for

nearly all the problems, all the failures in Iraq, it is the absent,

weak state. And if you try to trace why aren’t we trying to build

that state and succeeding in it, then you look back again into security problems and to gridlock on the political and into deteriorating

services in their country. And unless we break that deadlock on

how to approach state rebuilding, I don’t think that plan can materialize.

The key to making progress is to make progress on the political

process. We have already made advances in Iraq. There is a functioning Parliament elected, inclusive. There is a draft Constitution

that has the capacity to lend itself to many changes in the country.

However, having said that, what I see, a lack of vision or genuine

consensus between the three major blocks in the Iraqi Parliament,

the three blocks that constitute nearly 90 percent of the seats representing the Shi’a, Sunnis and Kurds, broadly speaking, they do

not have a shared vision on what state they really want.

I think unless this issue is addressed or at least approached on

how to address it is agreed to, then I feel our efforts will just go

around in circles. The good effort that has been put in trying to

boost the economy or even to train the police and army is not going

to pay dividends unless there is a genuinely agreed vision what

type of state the Iraqis want, and there is an opinion collectively

that they believe in it collectively on nation-state building.

Up until this moment we do not have that position, and I think

this issue needs to be addressed, because the Constitution is due

to be reviewed and amended, and there have not been shared views

or a process at least to go in that direction.

A second threat I see is that the political process is most important; then most urgent is the spread of sectarian violence that has

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started to sweep the country. Over the last 3 years, al Qaeda tried

and failed to stir up sectarian violence. It is not rooted in Iraq history. It is not rooted in Iraq history. In fact, the only reason why

there is a favorable climate today to sectarianism is because of the

absent state. We have handed millions of people to criminal networks, to militias, to local parties out there, and the state has been

absent.

Today, regretfully, after 3 years we see al Qaeda managed to stir

up sectarian violence. My biggest concern is if the government, the

Iraqi Government, does not come heavy on it right now, then we

would have little other than ashes left in Iraq to deal with. Even

our celebrated success, the political process, will go down the drain

because the politicians would be consumed by the fire of sectarianism that is out there.

I believe, despite what rhetoric is out there, the Iraqis by and

large appreciate the role of the United States. Maybe in the streets

Iraqis vent or are critical of the U.S. presence, but nearly all politicians in the Iraqi Parliament know the need for the U.S. role to

stabilize a very fragile condition that they have already.

In that respect, I suggest—and I believe the United States can

play a much bigger role, not necessarily by increasing soldiers on

the ground, but maybe by leveraging their influence on the political

process. There are a number of ideas that one cannot bring out

now, but certainly I feel that this is the way to go forward. Thank

you.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. We forgot to hit the clock. It was red the

whole time. Your statement was very appreciated. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Kubba follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. The insights you bring in particular, having been a

close adviser to a Prime Minister, the Prime Minister, will be very

helpful in our dialog, and thank you.

Dr. Cordesman.

STATEMENT OF ANTHONY CORDESMAN

Dr. CORDESMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and

thank you for the opportunity.

My colleagues made a lot of points that I would make. I have

prepared a detailed picture of the strategy that I think we need,

which I would ask to be put in the record, and also a very detailed

critique of some of the recent reporting on Iraq, because I think the

GAO is absolutely correct. The kind of reporting that has come out

of Iraq has not served the purpose of measuring whether we are

accomplishing our mission, whether we are implementing the strategy, and in some cases I think it has been so bad as to be totally

misleading. I have provided a detailed description of the reasons

why.

Mr. SHAYS. Maybe you could just give an example or two before

we start our questions of what you mean.

Dr. CORDESMAN. Well, I think one is the absolutely absurd estimate of the economy. It’s just a symbol of how bad the economic

reporting is in the recent quarterly report. It basically says that 74

percent of the gross domestic product of Iraq, a country with 27

million people, is the oil industry.

Frankly, if you look at any other U.S. Government reporting,

which isn’t designed to report on the strategy, it directly contradicts that. There is a statement made about the oil industry and

about oil exports, which gives the impression we are making real

progress.

In the last 2 weeks, the Energy Information Agency of the Department of Energy issued a country analysis brief on Iraq which

directly contradicts every aspect of that, talks about a steadily deteriorating situation, and refers to the fact that so much damage

is being done to Iraq’s producing oil fields, that they will only get

15 to 25 percent recovery versus an industrywide average of up to

60 percent.

You have the electric power generation measured in capacity

without any requirement or relevance to distribution based on demand as it was at the time of Saddam Hussein. Again, other U.S.

Government reporting says that you need at least 3,000 megawatts

more right now to meet demand as it currently exists than the

State Department report sets as a requirement.

When the U.S. Government has its experts directly contradicting

the kind of sort of spin-oriented reporting provided, it’s a dangerous warning that we need to do a much better and more realistic job.

But if I may, sir, make a few other points. Ken made the point

about implementation, and I think this is the right strategy. I wish

it had been the strategy from the start. But I think there are deep

concerns. One that Laith Kubba touched on is frankly the inability

to deal with the Constitution in any clear way. If there’s an implementation strategy to deal with those 58 extremely difficult divisive issues, it has not yet been described. Those have to either be

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dealt with in some way Iraqis can live with, or the Constitution can

be far more of a problem than a solution.

I look at the military side, and I do not see the resources being

provided to deal with the year of the police. I do not see the equipment going to the Iraqi military that either offers them the ability

to operate independently in many of the types of missions they

need to survive, or to operate as an independent force in the future,

and I see no plan to give them the capability to defend the country

against foreign enemies.

I do not see a clear plan for dealing with the problems within the

Ministry of Interior, special security forces, and the corruption and

problems in the ministries, where we have had very little advisory

presence, and we simply haven’t manned the effort. And these are

critical improvements. As a result, I just don’t believe at present

the year of the police will work.

The issue has been raised here several times about permanent

bases. What I do not see is a clear signal to the Iraqis of our intentions, and I think that is more important than any sort of strange

conspiracy theories about what we are going to do with the bases.

The worst dimension may be the least critical in time. I think

that there is a real need within the Congress to investigate specifically what has happened with the AID, with the Corps of Engineers and the contracting process. From the beginning I think this

has been a nightmare. I cannot conceive that the Iraqis could be

more inept or more corrupt than the U.S. Government and U.S.

contractors have been in using Iraqi AID money and the money the

Congress has appropriated, and we are running out of that money.

Basically it is virtually all obligated. It has not provided the services that we promised, and we have no way under current funding

to sustain the projects we began. That is a critical problem, and

there is no strategy to deal with it.

Let me say just a few other things about your questions. One

was, have we taken the actions to diffuse sectarian and ethnic differences and achieve national reconciliation? I think we have done

what we can. But I am deeply disturbed that the operation in

Baghdad right now seems to be creating more problems than it is

making things better.

It isn’t clear we have a phase between the political actions necessary to make military actions work. And it certainly isn’t clear

that we have done anything that interferes with the Sadr militia

and the other problems in Baghdad, which is the one area we have

operated in. We talk about neutralizing militias. We have a broad

plan, and we have rhetoric, and that is it.

Finally, on the international side, I agree with what has been

said. It’s always very nice to call in the international community.

It often helps, and it can’t do much harm. But your last question

asked about bringing countries in generally. Iran, Turkey and

Syria are going to remain serious problems, and either we act, or

they do.

Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much, Doctor.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Cordesman follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Dr. Katzman.

STATEMENT OF KENNETH KATZMAN

Dr. KATZMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for allowing me to appear. I am reading from a cleared CRS statement, which I hope

would be allowed to be put in the record.

Mr. SHAYS. It will be put in the record.

Dr. KATZMAN. Thank you, sir.

I guess I see the problems as a little more fundamental than I

think my colleagues do. My view is that the fundamental political

structure that we have put in place is unacceptable to the Sunni

population, and they will not accept it under these circumstances.

My view is that basically the United States and the Iraqi leaders

set up a transition plan based on one man, one vote. To have that

work you have to have a system where each faction, each sect, accepts the results of the election such that the winner wins and the

loser hopes to win maybe the next election.

But by setting up this transition plan, we have put in place a

system where the Shi’a Arabs are always going to win the election.

There is no way for the Sunnis ever to prevail in this type of system. In my view, it has entrenched the Sunni sense that they have

been humiliated, that they are an underclass, that they have been

essentially dispossessed.

Now, the administration has tried in the strategy to address this.

Ambassador Khalilzad has been very active trying to bring Sunnis

into the political process, and he has succeeded to a point. Part of

his success was in persuading the Sunnis and promising them that

there would be a review of the Constitution, as Tony said.

I am now—that was to take place, the process was to start, 4

months after the new government is seated; and then 2 months

after that a referendum. What I am hearing now is that is basically

the review of the Constitution has been virtually put off indefinitely. It will not even be started—to negotiate until September,

when all of the parliamentarians are back in Baghdad in December. So then you have 4 months and then another 2 months, if they

reach an agreement.

I would also say the Sunnis that have bought in—that Khalilzad

has in the process, some of them really do not represent, I would

say, the majority of Sunni opinion. We have not yet brought in the

Muslim Scholars Association, which is a very hard-line Sunni organization, demands a timetable for the United States to leave, and

which does have credibility with the insurgents. It does have links

to the insurgents. And it’s important, I think, the strategy for victory figure out a way to bring the MSA into the process.

What I think the problem is, the political structure as it is,

where the Sunnis continue to feel humiliated, that is creating popular support for the insurgency. And I think there are a number

of indicators that suggest that the insurgents do have popular support among the Sunnis.

They are operating in urban areas. They are operating protected.

There are whole neighborhoods of Baghdad between the green zone

and the airport that are now very much penetrated by the insurgents. I am talking about the Amaria district, the Jihad district,

Amal and south of the—the Dura district, very violent districts.

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We have reports that even in Baghdad there are mortar crews

on the street corner lobbing mortars at the green zone. Nobody is

ratting them out. Nobody is reporting on them. They are just there.

Clearly this indicates, I think, that they have popular support.

The Sunnis in many ways see the insurgents as basically their

army. The United States has created an army which is largely

Shi’a and maybe to a lesser extent Kurdish. The Sunnis, they feel

they have no army, they have no protectors. So this is why, I believe, they are protecting the insurgents.

Then what has happened is the insurgents began attacking Shi’a.

For a while Ayatollah Sistani held off the Shi’a. He said, don’t retaliate, show restraint. They did for a while. But like any human

nature, that can only hold back so long if you keep hitting somebody, eventually they will not be restrained. They will punch back

eventually.

This is why I believe the Shi’as and the Shi’a militias, particularly Sadr’s Moqtiar Army, began striking back, and that is where

we are now is this internecine sectarian conflict, which I think is

not limited to army or militia versus militia. I believe it is elements

of a population against each other, which I find quite troubling.

Anyway, to be positive, however, if I were to recommend anything, my recommendation is that the strategy, any strategy for

victory, needs to really get to the roots of the political structure of

Iraq right now. I think the only thing that would really satisfy the

Sunnis and end their sense of humiliation would be a very, very

major restructuring of the political process right now.

There are some ideas out there, Senator Biden and Gelb-Biden

on forming three autonomous regions. There are other ideas. One

is to basically throw out the results of the 2005 elections and start

over, put together some sort of factional bargain, as happened in

Afghanistan.

Mr. SHAYS. You have to be positive. Jeez. I mean, this is an election with 76 percent participation, which puts to shame anything

in the United States. Well, anyway——

Dr. KATZMAN. Correct.

Mr. SHAYS. I can only interrupt him, by the way. That is one of

the privileges of a Congressman.

Dr. KATZMAN. That may be extreme. But Khalilzad actually has

tried in certain ways. He tried—one way what he did was he tried

to create this National Security Council outside of the Constitution.

In other words, he is trying to find ways to amend the political

structure because it’s part of his strategy. Also, he came in realizing that the Sunnis felt very disenfranchised, and he has tried to

find ways to bring the Sunnis in.

I think, as I said, he has had some success, but I think not complete success. If he had complete success, I think we would see a

substantial diminution of the violence. If we do not see a diminution of the violence, then that suggests to me that there is more

work to do to amend the political structure. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Katzman follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. At this time the Chair would recognize Mr. Van

Hollen.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I thank all of you gentlemen for your testimony. I think it’s very

helpful and raises lots of questions and concerns.

I think there was a common thread. Dr. Kubba, you mentioned

the fact that you think the greatest danger to moving forward in

Iraq is the sectarian violence. Of course, that raises the multitude

of other questions it really raised.

You mentioned the fact that we need to create a situation, if possible, where Iraqis have a shared vision, and that shared vision is

somehow going to have to be translated into the constitutional

changes that Dr. Katzman talks about, and raises lots of questions

about whether or not there is the political will among the different

groups to do that; whether people are going to see themselves as

Iraqis first, rather than as Kurds and as Sunnis and Shi’a.

We can have a big debate here with respect to history in Iraq

and to what extent the current sectarian violence was predictable

and foreseeable. I believe it was. I think many members of our intelligence agency who had long-term associations with Iraq predicted this was a very likely outcome, or very possible outcome. But

be that as it may, that is the situation on the ground.

The question is how do we get to that shared vision? Before we

get to a shared vision, we in the United States at least have to

have a recognition of the problem.

I would like, if you would, Dr. Cordesman, among some of the

other facts that you talk about in your report is the fact that we

have not really accounted for the sectarian violence in terms of the

numbers. You point out that they don’t include numbers from

Basra and Kirkuk. You observe, and I have to agree with you, that

the spin on the Golden Mosque episode that the administration

gave is somehow a positive incidence, because Iraqis went to the

brink and looked back. I think we know from the last weekend that

is not true.

So let’s at least start with the facts. If you could just elaborate

on your statement, on the degree and nature of the sectarian violence, and just how big a problem it is.

Dr. CORDESMAN. Congressman, I wish I could give you precise

numbers, but the fact is no one really can account. I can’t give you

precise numbers. Nobody can account for an awful lot of the violence. What is happening, if it is not going into the morgues in

Baghdad, basically often doesn’t have a record. If people stay in the

country, they are kidnapped, they are blackmailed, if they have to

change neighborhoods, there is no record.

But all of the reporting that comes out that I see indicates that

this is a truly major problem, and it’s a problem in the greater

Baghdad area, and it is not limited to Baghdad. All the reporting

I see on Kirkuk indicates that you have a steady buildup of militias

there, and that the level of violence is not high in direct terms, but

soft ethnic cleansing is a constant problem.

Basra is an illustration of the fact that sectarian violence can

occur between Shiites and between various Shiite factions, some of

which are religious, and some of which are secular, but it’s obvious

that the British lost control of Basra sometime in early 2005, and

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at this point there is very little chance that someone can reestablish it by force.

We talked about having eliminated this, but one other great

problem here is we don’t have people out in the field to really

measure what is happening in smaller towns and cities.

I would note that there are province-by-province reports, and

they do describe some of these, and there are maps of Baghdad,

Mosul, Kirkuk and other cities that show red zones and yellow

zones, but these are not things distributed broadly. You can’t tie

them to numbers to show exactly how violent things are.

The one punchline to all of this, though, is I think everyone is

worried that we may be drifting toward a large-scale civil war, and

that if the Iraqi political process doesn’t hold together, that could

easily happen in the next few months.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Well, I think that seems to be the trend, and

the question is whether we can do anything to reverse that trend.

As you point out, one of the big concerns is the sectarian violence

is spilling beyond Baghdad to other areas. I think Kirkuk is a possible ticking time bomb and an issue that has to be addressed in

the Constitution. Whether it can be or not, we will find out.

But, Dr. Katzman, you raised the issue of the make-up of the

military pointed out that many of the military units are largely

Shi’a, other than the Kurdish units.

We, I think, all well know reality given the history of the Kurdish people. There was never any question as to whether or not they

were going to give up their own control over the military, the

Peshmerga. I think that was going to be a nonstarter from the beginning.

So as you observed from the Sunni’s perspective, there are only

armed forces to defend themselves or, in fact, the insurgency. If

you could just give us a little more statistics, because I think the

picture the Americans have of the American military are these

units that are integrated where you have Kurds and Sunnis and

Shi’as operating together under a general command.

If you are going to have a central government, if you are going

to have a democratically elected government that has any kind of

credibility, they will have to be able to order the military to do

things, and the military will have to see the central government as

the primary authority, rather than the Shi’a leader or the Sunni

leader or the Kurdish leader.

But I think if you could talk about the make-up of the army, because we hear the numbers, this many new units in the military,

this and that. But if you sort of look beneath it and look at the

make-up, I think it tells a different story and one that is troubling.

If you could elaborate.

Dr. KATZMAN. I may have to get back to you with more precise

statistics, but my understanding is that of the army units deployed

in the Sunni areas, about 70 percent are Shi’a. When you get a little further up north into Mosul, north of Tikrit, north of Samarra,

there’s more of a Kurdish—many of the units have more Kurds; not

necessarily more Kurds than Shi’a, but it’s more Kurdish. The

Kurds are deployed, Mosul and north, Kirkuk, etc.; and mainly the

Shi’a units in the Sunni areas.

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In the Shi’a areas, it’s not really that relevant, because the Shi’a

areas are peaceful anyway. It’s not that big an issue. The issue is

Shi’a-dominated units, policing and securing the Sunni areas. That

is very sensitive to the Sunnis, and it has made them feel that they

are basically being pressed.

Mr. SHAYS. I would like each of you to define success in Iraq and

failure in Iraq, and that is what I am going to have you do. But

I am first going to make a comment to Dr. Kubba.

Doctor, when I have gone to Iraq, I felt like I have been the typical American who goes in and says to—when I am sitting down

with Shi’a, Sunnis and Kurds, as I am asked to do in the government, I say, are you a Shi’a? They will say, I am a Shi’a, but I am

married to a Sunni. Then I will ask someone, are you a Sunni or

a Shi’a or a Kurd? And they will say, I am a Sunni, but my son

or my daughter is married to a Shi’a. I mean, they are constantly

kind of like correcting me. Then I will ask a Kurd, and he will say,

well, I am a Kurd, but I am a Sunni. So I find myself being lectured in a way by Iraqis that they are Iraqis. Yet in this country

we divide you into these three parts.

I will say to you that when I was in Arbil for the first vote of

January 2005, I finally—I was watching the celebration as the

Kurdish women were bringing their husbands to vote, and their

children in their arms, dressed up, celebrating. After about 2 hours

of watching this, I wanted to kind of stick my finger in the ink jar

for about a week as proof that I had witnessed one of the greatest

experiences in my life, seeing people vote for the first time and, in

many cases, under great duress.

I asked this Iraqi woman I was there—the Kurdish woman who

was there if I could stick my finger in that ink jar. She looked at

me. She looked down, she looked up. Then she yelled, no, you are

not an Iraqi, and I got a chill. I was embarrassed, but I got a chill.

She didn’t say because I wasn’t a Kurd.

Do we tend to overemphasize the difference between Shi’a,

Sunnis and Kurds, or are there real distinct differences, and are

we foolish not to know that?

Dr. KUBBA. Well, I am glad you asked this question. Regretfully,

Saddam Hussein had played communities against each other and

raised temptation among them. But Iraqis are by and large

intermixed marriages. At the same time you will see half are Shi’a,

half are Sunnis. Religion has not really played a big role, and people were comfortable to integrate within Iraq through universities,

through the army, like the bureaucracies, like any other modern

state.

Regretfully, the politics, the recent politics, have led a group of

politicians or political parties to build their power base by playing

ethnic differences. It just gave them new entry. I think recently we

have institutionalized these differences by creating a quota system

within the government, creating ministries so that we have exactly

the right balance of Arabs, Kurds, Shi’as, Turkmens, Assyrians.

And by and large with the elections that we have put in Iraq, we

have created an environment that people have started to drift to

these affiliations, this is at the political level. But most importantly

at the street level when the government force is absent, there is

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rally will take refuge if their sub or secondary identity, not their

main identity—because the state represents the main identity, and

that is absent.

So the state has created the environment, and it has taken a

while today to see Iraq the way it is. I think there is a lot of reserve in Iraq. I think in essence other than the Kurdish region, the

Kurds have struggled for a national identity in an autonomous region. But the rest of Iraq, which shares more or less the same language, culture, space, they really do not have an inherent problem,

and I think what we are seeing today primarily is not the cause

of the problems, their diversity in Iraq, but it is the consequence

or the fact Iraq is being the absent state or the weak state. We

have handed just streets, districts and people to different groups,

and the state is absent.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. Now, you have given your three colleagues an opportunity to think of what is success in Iraq and what

is failure, so I will ask you go fourth.

Dr. Pollack, do you want to go first, define success, define failure?

Dr. POLLACK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Let me first by defining failure because it’s much easier. Failure

is all-out civil war in Iraq. What we have now is low-level civil war,

not all-out civil war, and the differences matter. They matter a lot.

I agree with my colleagues that the trend lines, unfortunately,

are toward all-out civil war. I don’t believe we have reached the

point of no return, but that is where we have headed.

Success, therefore, to a certain extent, is avoiding failure. It’s

avoiding all-out civil war. I would like to be able to say that we

ought to consider the bright shining city on a hill that the administration conceived of as being the goal of the—the initial invasion

of Iraq as being a possibility. It may still be, but it’s a long-term

one at this point in time.

This effort that we undertook at Brookings, we basically defined

avoiding failure. We defined success as what we called sustainable

stability, which is a stable situation in Iraq, where Iraq has the

military, political and economic institutions that are capable of sustaining that stability in the absence of massive American assistance.

It is effectively going to the point that Laith just made, which I

think is right on the money. The principal problem that we have

in Iraq today is that it is a failed state and a security vacuum, and

we need to create Iraqi institutions that are capable of dealing with

that failed state and that security vacuum. And if we can do that,

we will have achieved sustainability, stability, and that will be success.

Mr. SHAYS. Dr. Cordesman.

Dr. CORDESMAN. Let me just define victory. I think it is if by

2010 you have available political compromise in Iraq that preserves

most elements of pluralism, but above all creates a rule of law that

protects minorities in the individual. It is if Iraqis have assumed

responsibilities for their security in virtually all missions. It is if

the economy has begun to grow again, you have eliminated the

worst pockets of unemployment, and you have found some way to

agree on the sharing of oil revenues and resources. Finally, it is if

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the United States is reduced to an advisory role, with only a very

limited contribution in aid and direct military support.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Dr. Katzman.

Dr. KATZMAN. Thank you.

I also wanted to say when General Garner was put in to conduct

the reconstruction, he was talking about a process I spoke about

before. He gathered the people in Baghdad, in Nasiriya. He put together a national compromise that was then canceled. And the new

transition plan was reviewed, and my view was Garner’s process

could have succeeded had it continued.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me ask you, Dr. Garner had been successful

in——

Dr. KATZMAN. Northern Iraq.

Mr. SHAYS. Northern Iraq, with the Kurds.

Dr. KATZMAN. What he was trying to do, what I was getting at

before, is putting together this factional bargain, as was done in Afghanistan extremely successfully. A factional bargain was put together, the Pashtuns, the Tajiks, etc., that was canceled in Iraq,

and we went with this other process that inevitably favored one

group over the other. That is where I think it went, as it is going.

I agree, the key to success is successful sustaining, and I think

if we had this compromise forged, I think we would have success

tonight. I think we would have it tomorrow morning. I think it

would be instantaneous that the violence would decline, if we had

this true compromise that I think is needed.

Mr. SHAYS. Dr. Kubba.

Dr. KUBBA. Well, from an Iraqi perspective, I think they have

lowered their expectations a great deal. All they want now is basically life to get better. But I think from our perspective, an American perspective, success at this moment is basically creating a secure environment, making sure that Iraq is on the path of recovery.

Basically we are going to have a democratic government in that

country. But in the short term, I would say I think I agree with

the expression sustainable stability.

Mr. SHAYS. Dr. Kubba, I have to respond to an emotion I am feeling—looking at your beautiful face—and that is how impressed I

am with so many Iraqis that I meet. And they aren’t asking for a

lot, and they are hoping and praying that we don’t let them down.

But I just want to say to you, when I come back, I tell people

I have met the Madisons, the Benjamin Franklins, I have met people who want the same opportunity that our Founding Fathers

had, and they want to do something great. They want to succeed,

and it’s been a very impressive thing.

I have met people who risk their lives every day for this unbelievable opportunity, from their standpoint, and I am in awe of

your fellow countrymen in Iraq who have done so much to try to

move this country forward. So I just pray we succeed.

Mr. Van Hollen, you have the floor.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Just to pursue this discussion, and the goal of trying to get to

this vision of a united Iraq, and how you go about achieving it, and

how you overcome the obstacles.

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Dr. Kubba, in response to one of the chairman’s question, you

pointed out how people see themselves in identity as the Iraqis. I

do believe that many of the leaders in the current government do

genuinely believe that.

I guess the question is to what extent the general populations especially view it that way, especially under the increasing cycle of

violence. You did sort of provide what I thought was one very important caveat at the end of your statement with respect to the

Kurds.

I think you can all agree—and if you go back to the elections that

were held last year, as you well know, I am sure, there was a referendum taken in the northern area, in the Kurdistan region—and

the question posed to the people going to the polls was a very simple one: Would you support an independent area for the Kurds, or

would you rather be part of the united Iraq? By 95 percent the people in Kurdistan said they wanted an independent area. In fact,

Masoud Barzani, who, as you well know, is one of the leaders of

one of the Kurdish factions—not the Talabani, who is—was

present, but one of the other factions who said, ‘‘when the right

time comes, it will become a reality.’’

Look, the whole issue of Kirkuk is tied up very closely with the

question of what the Kurds perceive to be their area and with regard to revenues. Dr. Cordesman talked about the fact that there

was this sort of soft ethnic cleansing going on. We know that Saddam Hussein made a big effort to sort of populate the Kirkuk region. These are the obstacles we have to overcome.

You have identified the challenge, but I guess—I haven’t heard

how we are going to forge this common identity, how we are going

to tackle the 58 divisive issues in the Constitution. Unless we can

overcome that, you are going to continue to have a growing resentment, a cycle of violence.

I have some other questions, but I guess I would put to all of

you, what is the compromise? If you are sort of a neutral arbiter,

what is the compromise? We heard sort of the Gelb-Biden proposal.

Well, that is a proposal. It has problems with it, but it’s an idea

out there for trying to resolve the issue. I think in Baghdad if it’s

way too messy, it could lead to more ethnic cleansing. I guess my

question is what is the compromise? It works.

Dr. KUBBA. May I? I think there is room for ideas that will work.

The politics at the moment makes it impossible, because the groups

are entrenched so much in self-interest, unaccountable money

going into their pockets, a zero-sum game where one winner means

the other loses. Unless we change some of the dynamics, we are not

going to have breakthroughs.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I am sorry, because that was a very pessimistic answer. I know you said it’s impossible to have a compromise

under the current political conditions. What do we need to do to

change those current political conditions?

Dr. KUBBA. Couple of things. The Kurdish region is in good

shape, so if we take that out of the equation and focus more on

where Iraq is suffering, which is all the way from Kirkuk to Mosul,

which is the Arab region basically—and the only problem that remains with the Kurds are Kirkuk.

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As you know, Kirkuk is more complex. There are Turkmens,

there are Syrians, and there are Arabs in the Kirkuk province.

There is room to look at Kirkuk, ultimately, maybe as Ottawa;

it is a joint capital for two regions. That is one possible way of diffusing the issue of laying claim, exclusive, either/or. For the Arab

region, Mosul to Basra, the violence that we have currently is due

to the absent state, total mistrust, and that region can, like the

Kurdish region, draw its own Constitution.

There is a built-in mechanism in the current Constitution allowing regions to outline their own Constitutions, and that means the

Arab region can pull itself together more or less in a centralized

form that will please the Sunnis, because that is what the Sunnis

want, a united Iraq. And it will please the Shiites because they are

a majority Arab in that part, and they want a Presidential system

to say they will always be guaranteed a seat in power. If that

doesn’t suit the Sunnis, then they will argue positively the Federal

option.

I am trying to point out there are ideas out there, but you need

to create a better negotiating environment, and maybe the United

States needs to put pressure on the different players.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you.

If I could have a response from the other members.

Dr. CORDESMAN. If I may, I think first the key here is the Iraqis.

They will reach a political compromise within the system they now

have or they won’t. It doesn’t matter what people in the Council

on Foreign Relations or the CSIS or anywhere else propose at this

point.

You have to make what is there work, because there simply is

no time or option. I think that is a point that Ken made to start

with, but how can we help that?

One is I think to support the Ambassador in the efforts that he

is making to reach these political compromises by encouraging the

Iraqis. Another is to reach out to those countries around Iraq which

will be helpful and see, perhaps, we can get them to use more leverage. A third is to make a guarantee that we are not going to

cut and run or leave because this is difficult. As long as there is

real progress and real hope, we will give them time, and history

takes time. It is not measured in months or elections.

It is to reach, after November, when it is more politic, the honest

answer that we put a lot of money into the wrong kinds of aid, and

if we are going to make this work, we are going to have to provide

money for the Iraqis in the right kinds of aid to provide economic

support to put this together. It means, too, accepting the fact that

a U.S. advisory and military presence is going to be needed over

time, not over a few years. It won’t be a matter of out at the end

of 2007.

I think those are really the key issues. Will they guarantee success? Of course not. But what we really need, among other things,

is a bipartisan support for helping the Iraqis as long as there’s a

reasonable chance of progress.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I thank you.

Any other comments on that?

Mr. SHAYS. We are drawing to a close here. My question is not

intended in any way, in any even little way, to be critical of the

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critics of the war, because I think there is reason to be critical of

the conduct of the war, and obviously we went in and have not

found weapons of mass destruction.

But I would like to, because you raised it, Dr. Cordesman, by

your point about finding agreement in this community as well over

in Iraq for a policy—at least that is what I felt you are saying. Republican and Democrats need to speak ultimately with one voice

about where we can agree. Maybe there has to be a compromise on

this policy that the administration has to get us to speak with one

voice.

Dr. Kubba, I would like to know how people react when they—

you are able to sift through the criticism as an American and sort

out when you see disagreements in the United States. But how do

Iraqis tend to view what they see on CNN and what they hear in

this country? Is there a way you could define that?

Dr. KUBBA. It varies because I think with Iraq there different

parts—different Iraqs, say, in a different way, but by and large

those who follow and can grasp the essence of what has been communicated here, I think people are assured to hear of commitment

of the United States to see Iraq as a success.

I think they are alarmed to hear the idea of—and, of course, they

are alarmed to hear the ideas of, say, letting Iraq be divided if we

cannot fix it, but by and large, I think Iraqis currently, especially

those who know the country, pin their hopes that the United States

would fulfill its role, and I think very much what is expected is a

prolonged advisory and maybe planning role, but certainly not in

terms of soldiers carrying out duties in Iraqi streets. I think that

is something that we have passed.

Mr. SHAYS. Would you care to pass judgment on the fact that we

basically did not allow—we told the military that if they laid down

their arms, we would work with them. We told divisions that were

along the Iraqi—along the Iranian border just keep facing Iran and

don’t engage in this fight, and they didn’t engage in the fight. Then

we proceeded to not allow the army to exist.

I am left with the feeling that some felt that we didn’t live up

to our commitment in terms of, say, lay down your arms and we

will work with you. Is that a false impression I have or a mixed

impression?

Dr. KUBBA. I think I would describe it in a much different way.

There were much higher expectations of a more well-planned,

maybe thoughtful approach, and how to address Iraq’s needs. I

think by and large your description is accurate. The Iraqi Army did

not fight, and more or less, to the American military credit, Iraq

was more or less intact when Hussein fell.

I think maybe problems started then when there was a vacuum

and decisions needed to be made, and maybe, as I said, that period

will be looked at by scientists and historians in a more critical way.

Mr. SHAYS. There’s lots more I would love to ask you, I could ask

you, later in informal conversations as well as others.

Is there any point that we need to put on the record before we

adjourn? As you listen to your colleagues here, is there any point

that you may take exception to or just want to emphasize differently? I am talking to all of you here, that you heard said; this

is not your view, or it is your view, and you feel it even more

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strongly? Anything that we should have put on the record finally

before you leave?

Why don’t I start with you, Dr. Katzman, and we will end with

you, Dr. Pollack.

Dr. KATZMAN. Nothing I would add. I think my view, to just encapsulate it, is we need to find a way to bring these factions into

balance. If we do that, everything else follows. There will be no

need for U.S. troops. There will be no need to buildup the Iraqi security. Once these factions are in balance, and they all buy into

this political—the polity, the political structure, we find that political structure, everything else, I think we have instant success.

Mr. SHAYS. I was just going to go down the line. You are shaking

your head, Dr. Cordesman, but I would like to know if you agree,

each of you. So I am waiting, I am leaving the question I just

asked, to have you comment on what you just heard. Maybe, Dr.

Pollack, do you agree with this comment that was just made?

Dr. POLLACK. I don’t agree actually. I do disagree with my colleague Dr. Katzman on this.

Mr. SHAYS. I want to agree with him.

Dr. POLLACK. I know. I think what he is talking about is an important element of progress in Iraq. I do not believe for a second

that if we were to reach this kind of a compromise, the violence

would go away overnight. I think that the roots of the violence

have become far more complicated. I think that we have

intracommunal fighting as well as intercommunal fighting. I think

that we greatly exaggerate the degree of enmity and unity there is

both within the Shi’a and Sunni communities.

We talk about the Shi’a as if that is somehow meaningful. I don’t

know who the Shi’a are. Reminds me of Henry Kissinger’s famous

line: What is Europe’s phone number.

I think they hate each other far more than they hate anyone on

the Sunni side. Basra is nothing but a cesspool of intra-Shi’a violence. I think that the problems we have there go much deeper;

and I think to a great extent the point that both Tony Cordesman

and Laith Kubba made is very important, which is to a certain extent there is only so much we can do to effect a reconciliation

among these different groups, both among the communities and

within them.

But I think that the most important thing that we can do is to

try to start changing the context; and that is where our efforts to

bring greater security to parts of Iraq, to revive local political processes, to begin to deliver for Iraqi personnel and to revive the local

economy is absolutely critical.

One of the biggest problems we have in Iraq right now is that

Iraqis are beholden to their representatives in Baghdad for everything. In a democracy, as you both well know, it needs to be the

other way around for it to work.

Mr. SHAYS. Any comments. Dr. Katzman.

Dr. KATZMAN. No. I mean, I tend to agree that all violence

wouldn’t end, but I think violence that threatens U.S. interests

would end. And I do believe that if we do forge this compromise

that I’m talking about, the Iraqis will ask al Qaeda in Iraq to

leave. Once the Sunnis are in control of their own areas, they don’t

need the Zarkawi faction, they don’t need the foreign fighters any

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more, and I believe they will politely or perhaps impolitely ask

them to leave.

Mr. SHAYS. Dr. Cordesman, anything that we need to put on the

record?

Dr. CORDESMAN. I think, Mr. Chairman, that there is no—you

asked a question on the previous panel, which parameter is the

critical parameter; what’s No. 1? And I think they all tried to tell

you in various ways that you have to deal with all of these at once.

You can’t solve this with a political compromise alone.

You face very real military problems, police problems, court problems. You can’t solve it through the central government. You have

to help in the governance in the provinces. You can’t solve it by

hoping there will be clearer ethnic divisions because they don’t

exist in Iraq, and all of the voting showed that.

You can’t dodge around the need for the economic dimension and

future economic aid. Right now, in a country where you have a

labor force of 7 million, the latest report on our aid is we are hiring

92,000 and we have 40 percent unemployment in high-sensitive

areas. A political compromise in Baghdad doesn’t solve that.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just inject very quickly, the way I basically

went into Iraq outside the umbrella of the military was through

the nongovernment organizations; and these nongovernment organizations had very few Americans or Europeans. They hired mostly

Iraqis to be part of their organization, and then they hired entirely

Iraqis and—I am told. And then when the violence became even

stronger, the Westerners basically left and Iraqis ran the whole

show in these nongovernment organizations. I’m basically told that

most of what they built was never destroyed, was allowed to

stand—schools, roads, bridges and so on done with Iraqis. So we

had a model, but it was not treated with much respect, frankly, by

the government. They got a small—much smaller part of that

budget.

I did interrupt you. Any last closing comment?

Dr. CORDESMAN. One last comment. The point was raised in the

first panel of measures of effectiveness. I came to Government

when the United States lied to itself systematically about Vietnam,

when its measures of effectiveness and measures of progress were

false. And we paid an immense price for that, but the Vietnamese

paid an immensely higher one.

I think what you are trying to do in getting the kinds of measures of effectiveness and progress for this strategy that could build

some kind of bipartisan consensus, it would allow the American

people to reestablish confidence. End the spin and tell the truth

would I guess be my final comment.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Any last comments.

Dr. KUBBA. While the economy is very much subject to politics,

it is doable, feasible and small successes, incremental, would help

us build the success we want in Iraq. But the key and most important is reviving the state, a nation state that transcends ethnic

identities; and to do that we need to push the political process further. To do that, we need to dislodge the positions of the three

major blocks under parliament.

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The most urgent issue that needs to be addressed now is the

issue of sectarian violence. It has the capacity, the potential to

spread and consume all of what we’ve achieved; and this is what

worries me most.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Let me just say you all are such experts, and to have sat around

for the amount of time you did is a compliment to your concern

about this issue. Obviously, the committee is gratified that you

showed up whenever we began this part of the hearing. Thank you

for not leaving, thank you for participating, and I consider it a very

helpful testimony to the committee. It was a privilege to have all

four of you here. Thank you.

Any last comment?

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. No. I’d just like to thank all of the members

of the panel, too, and say, as you suggested, Mr. Chairman, it

would be nice if we could arrive at some bipartisan national consensus on how to proceed in Iraq. One of the beauties of our democracy is that people are free to speak with many voices, but to the

extent we can forge some kind of consensus, obviously, it would be

good.

I’m one who was very much opposed to the decision to go to war

in Iraq, but I also believe that it would be a mistake for us to leave

Iraq and pull out totally today for many of the reasons that Dr.

Cordesman and others have stated.

On the other hand, there is a serious amount of distrust with the

way that the administration has handled Iraq from the very beginning; and overcoming that distrust, given the fact that nobody in

this administration seems to be held accountable for the many,

many mistakes that have been made, I think in itself sends a terrible signal.

So we can hope that people can come to some greater consensus

with respect to Iraq. I’m not sure I see it happening. In the meantime, I do believe there are things that we can do as a Nation to

try and as best as possible salvage the situation; and that’s what

this hearing was about, trying to raise the fundamental questions

about what we can do in this country. As you, Dr. Cordesman,

pointed out, there are limited things we can do here from Washington. But if there are things we can do, we want to know about

them; and we thank all of you for your testimony.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you gentlemen very, very much.

This hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 8:01 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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