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24–302 2007

[H.A.S.C. No. 109–5]

HEARINGS

ON

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT

FOR FISCAL YEAR 2006

AND

OVERSIGHT OF PREVIOUSLY AUTHORIZED

PROGRAMS

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

FULL COMMITTEE HEARING

ON

BUDGET REQUEST FROM U.S.

CENTRAL COMMAND AND U.S.

SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND

HEARING HELD

MARCH 2, 2005

(II)

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

DUNCAN HUNTER, California, Chairman

CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania

JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado

JIM SAXTON, New Jersey

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

TERRY EVERETT, Alabama

ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland

HOWARD P. ‘‘BUCK’’ MCKEON, California

MAC THORNBERRY, Texas

JOHN N. HOSTETTLER, Indiana

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina

JIM RYUN, Kansas

JIM GIBBONS, Nevada

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina

KEN CALVERT, California

ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

W. TODD AKIN, Missouri

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia

JEFF MILLER, Florida

JOE WILSON, South Carolina

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey

JEB BRADLEY, New Hampshire

MICHAEL TURNER, Ohio

JOHN KLINE, Minnesota

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania

THELMA DRAKE, Virginia

JOE SCHWARZ, Michigan

CATHY MCMORRIS, Washington

MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas

GEOFF DAVIS, Kentucky

IKE SKELTON, Missouri

JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina

SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas

LANE EVANS, Illinois

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi

NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii

MARTY MEEHAN, Massachusetts

SILVESTRE REYES, Texas

VIC SNYDER, Arkansas

ADAM SMITH, Washington

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California

MIKE MCINTYRE, North Carolina

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California

ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania

ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California

JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island

STEVE ISRAEL, New York

RICK LARSEN, Washington

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

JIM MARSHALL, Georgia

KENDRICK B. MEEK, Florida

MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam

TIM RYAN, Ohio

MARK UDALL, Colorado

G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY, Georgia

DAN BOREN, Oklahoma

ROBERT L. SIMMONS, Staff Director

ERIC R. STERNER, Counsel

JEFFERY A. GREEN, Counsel

JORDAN REDMOND, Intern

(III)

C O N T E N T S

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS

2005

Page

HEARING:

Wednesday, March 2, 2005, Fiscal Year 2006 National Defense Authorization

Act—Budget Request from U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command .................................................................................................. 1

APPENDIX:

Wednesday, March 2, 2005 ..................................................................................... 57

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2005

FISCAL YEAR 2006, NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT—

BUDGET REQUEST FROM U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND AND U.S. SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

Hunter, Hon. Duncan, a Representative from California, Chairman, Committee on Armed Services ......................................................................................... 1

Skelton, Hon. Ike, a Representative from Missouri, Ranking Member, Committee on Armed Services .................................................................................... 2

WITNESSES

Abizaid, Gen. John P., Combatant Commander, U.S. Central Command, U.S.

Army ...................................................................................................................... 5

Brown, Gen. Bryan D., Combatant Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command, U.S. Army .................................................................................................. 7

APPENDIX

PREPARED STATEMENTS:

Abizaid, Gen. John P. ....................................................................................... 61

Brown, Gen. Bryan D. ...................................................................................... 116

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:

Strategic Communications Briefing ................................................................ 137

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:

Mr. Hostettler ................................................................................................... 165

Mr. Ryan ........................................................................................................... 168

Mr. Ryun ........................................................................................................... 167

Mr. Skelton ....................................................................................................... 165

Mr. Taylor ......................................................................................................... 165

Mr. Turner ........................................................................................................ 167

(1)

FISCAL YEAR 2006, NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT—BUDGET REQUEST FROM U.S. CENTRAL

COMMAND AND U.S. SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, Washington, DC, Wednesday, March 2, 2005.

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:09 a.m., in room

2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Duncan Hunter (chairman of the committee) presiding.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DUNCAN HUNTER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE

ON ARMED SERVICES

The CHAIRMAN.The hearing will come to order.

This morning the committee continues its review of the President’s fiscal year 2006 budget request. And although we have not

finished with all the services, we are going to start hearing from

the combatant commanders.

And today we are combining Central Command and Special Operations Command because they lie at the center of the Global War

on Terrorism. And our witnesses today are General John Abizaid,

United States Army, Commander, U.S. Central Command

(CENTCOM); and General Bryan Brown, United States Army,

Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM).

And, gentlemen, I am going to forego any lengthy statement because I think we understand how critical your leadership role is in

the ongoing war against terror, and specifically the war-fighting

theaters in Afghanistan and Iraq. We are going to have lots of

questions, and we are going to try to ensure that all of our members have a chance to ask questions. And so we will go to you very

quickly.

Before we did that, I wanted to mention to my colleagues that

we are all aware that our great former colleague, a wonderful

member of this committee, Tillie Fowler, has had a stroke, that we

are all aware of. And I can simply tell the committee that we are

awaiting news that will update Tillie’s situation. And so we do not

have a definitive report at this time; at least I do not have one. But

she is in our prayers. And Buck, her husband, a great guy, wonderful guy, and her daughters, Elizabeth and Tillie, are with her right

now. And we want the family to know that we are thinking of

Tillie.

And she was a wonderful member of this committee, a wonderful

leader for our country. And she, along with several of our other

great defense leaders, headed up in recent times a panel on issues

in the war-fighting theaters. It was very, very important to us. She

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undertook many important legislative initiatives as a member of

this committee and as a member of the House leadership.

And so our prayers are with Tillie and with Buck and Elizabeth

and little Tillie.

And so, at this time, let me go to the Ranking Member, the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Skelton, and then we will go right to

our witnesses. The gentleman is recognized.

STATEMENT OF HON. IKE SKELTON, A REPRESENTATIVE

FROM MISSOURI, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON

ARMED SERVICES

Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Chairman, thank you. Let me join you in your

comments about Tillie Fowler. She was an excellent member of this

committee, a good friend through the years, and she did, even after

she left, she stayed in touch quite well. And as you mentioned, our

thoughts and our prayers are truly with her, as well as her family.

She is a lovely lady.

Let me join you, Mr. Chairman, in welcoming General Abizaid,

General Brown.

I thank both of you, as we begin, for the men and women that

you lead. Perhaps more than any combatant commands, the troops

who serve in your commands really are at the pointy edge of the

spear. Every day they uphold the highest standards of service, professionalism, courage. We are grateful for the extraordinary sacrifices that they and their families are making. We commend them

for their service.

General Abizaid, I do not think it is an understatement to say

that you have the most challenging single area of responsibility of

a combatant commander in many, many decades. A look at the

map shows ongoing hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, a brewing

cauldron in Iran, and pockets of instability from the gulf to the

Horn of Africa.

And, General Brown, your highly trained special operations

forces are being asked to take on more and more missions as time

goes by.

As we approach the two-year mark since the commencement of

the Operation Iraqi Freedom, it is a time to reflect upon what is

going well and what we still need to accomplish. Certainly there

have been successes, and I commend both of you for your contributions.

But I want to focus on what we still need to do in order to

achieve success in Iraq.

Before I do, let me say that we ask questions in this room on behalf of those we represent. Specifically, Article I, Section 8 of the

Constitution gives us the responsibility to raise and support armies

and provide and maintain a navy.

In pursuit of that constitutional responsibility, we must conduct

oversight. Simply put, we ask questions.

I used to be a country lawyer before coming to Congress, and I

talk to a lot of folks back home. Their questions are straightforward, but they are pretty important.

What does winning mean in Iraq?

3

How will we know when we have won and when we can leave,

especially when, for every insurgent we kill, there seems to be another to take his place?

What are the signs along the road that let you know we are making progress? Are we trying to win more Iraqi hearts and minds,

and if so, how?

Seventy five billion dollars is a lot of money to continue the war.

What exactly will this money buy within your commands?

When will the Iraqis be ready to take over their own security?

When will they be able to sustain their own forces?

These are tough questions, and I know a lot of them do not have

simple answers, but they are important questions that should be

held together by a unified strategy. And I understand that General

Casey’s campaign plan has some detail on how to answer many of

these questions and is periodically updating it to reflect the new realities.

We needed a detailed campaign plan that brought together the

military, reconstruction and political tasks for the development of

Iraq in those first few critical months after Saddam fell. And needless to say, I am disappointed as we did not have an adequate one

then, but I am anxious to hear about the evolution of one now.

In particular, we know that the readiness of the Iraqi security

forces to provide Iraq’s security will be critical to our success. Many

in the Administration have said that we cannot put a timetable on

our withdrawal, and I have not argued for a fixed deadline for removing our troops. But we must have goals that Iraqi forces can

reach and attain. And how are you measuring the readiness of the

Iraqi units? How do we measure the progress of Iraqi units if there

are no goals to reach a certain level of capability by a certain date?

Our staff was told in briefings at the Joint Staff and the Comptroller’s office that the money requested in the supplemental would

be the last money that would be needed for the Iraqi security

forces, including funds for their own combat support capability. Is

this true? If so, should people at home see a connection between

the time and the money and how it is spent and the capability of

these forces?

I ask these questions on Iraq because, gentlemen, I wish us to

succeed. I want us to succeed because the stakes are so very, very

high, not only there, but throughout the region. The eyes of the

world are watching, and many may not wait to act.

Already, our European allies are actively engaged in trying to

deal with Iran’s nuclear weapons program. It looks like our Administration may join them in this effort. I applaud that. We must lead

from the front with diplomacy so that we do not have to lead with

our military in the end.

We must also succeed in the Global War on Terror, as the stakes

there are so high. Without question, the sustained pursuit and defeat of the al Qaeda network protects our freedom.

Yet, I must also questions about the use of one of our premier

capabilities to combat terror: the special operations forces.

Even as individuals, Special Operation Forces (SOF) personnel

excel and perform admirably—and they do, with valor and honor.

Recent reports bring into question the use and accountability of

special operation assets, resources and personnel. Taken together,

4

reports portray a Defense Department determined to utilize Special

Operations Forces personnel absent adequate guidelines, accountability or proper coordination with other parts of our government.

The most recent article suggests the Department hopes to receive

approval from the Department of special operation personnel into

foreign nations without the knowledge of American ambassadors in

residence.

An early article suggests that the Department is intent on creating an in-house human intelligence capability in support of

SOCOM activities, without the knowledge of congressional oversight committees, General Brown.

Again, I ask, is this true? Is any of it true? These questions have

been posed by my constituents at home, and indeed been posed by

the constituents many on this committee. And while my rural roots

and instinct tell me that these articles are perhaps misleading, if

not inaccurate—and I hope they are—I still have the responsibility

to inquire, to pursue, in pursuit of my duties.

Gentlemen, thank you for your service. We appreciate it more

than we can say. Thank you for being with us.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentlemen. And before we proceed,

the gentleman from Pennsylvania, the vice chairman of the committee, Mr. Weldon, has an introduction he would like to make to

the committee.

Mr. WELDON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and distinguished members.

Many of you have traveled to Russia over the period of years for

various trips to interact with the Russian military leaders. One of

our members, Trent Franks, was with us on a trip to Beslan and

gave a prayer at that site of the terrible tragedy at the school, two

weeks after it happened.

Today, we are pleased to welcome one of Vladimir Putin’s closest

advisers on homeland security issues. He is the Chairman in the

Parliament, the Duma, state Duma, of the security committee. He

is a retired general in the military and is making his first visit to

the U.S. to talk about joint Russian-American homeland security

cooperation.

So I would ask my colleagues and friends on both sides to join

us in welcoming Chairman Vladimir Vasiliev. Thank you.

[Applause.]

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentlemen. And, Mr. Chairman, good

to have you with us. Well, gentlemen, thank you for being with us

today. Obviously, you are in critical leadership roles and the focus

of the Nation is on your areas of operation, both operationally and

geographically.

The elections were remarkable, and I think it is very clear that

those elections came about, were carried on the shoulders of America’s fighting forces, and you have a lot to be proud of. And everyone, right down to the squad and special operations team level, has

a lot to be proud of in terms of that exercise in representative government that was carried out because of the Americans.

So thank you. You obviously have enormous challenges. And I

think at the top of all of our lists, in terms of issues that must be

met, is this threshold issue, and that is the hand-off of the security

5

obligation and responsibilities to the Iraqi forces, the stand-up of

the Iraqi forces.

I will just tell my colleagues, we want to make sure that all

members get a chance to ask questions. I am going to forego my

questions until we get to the end of the session. We are going to

enforce the five-minute rule.

And to our witnesses—and I am probably one of the most skilled

at this—we are able ask five-minute questions, sometimes threeand four-part questions, and for two witnesses that means maybe

eight answers worth of questions, and then we leave you 15 minutes to respond. And ultimately that ends up inviting mean looks

from guys like Mr. Kline, who has waited for a long time to ask

his question.

So we are going to do five minutes per member, and that means

I ask my members to ask one question and give the witnesses a

chance to answer it.

And to my witnesses, please wrap up your answer as quickly as

possible so we can move on to the next Member of Congress.

I thank all the members for cooperating in making sure that everybody gets a fighting chance to ask a question and get a response.

And, with that, I am going to forego my question until we get to

the end of this thing.

So we are going to start. When we start out, I am going to go—

and I want to lay this out before you gentleman give you opening

statement—I am going to yield my first question to the gentleman

very front row, Geoff Davis, who has a good military background.

So, Geoff, you be ready. You are going to be first out of the box.

Do not sleep.

And he will have, I am sure, have some very thorough questions

for you.

So thanks for being with us. Appreciate you. And, General

Abizaid, how is it going?

STATEMENT OF GEN. JOHN P. ABIZAID, COMBATANT

COMMANDER, U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND, U.S. ARMY

General ABIZAID. Mr. Chairman, it is going well. And I thank you

for the opportunity to appear before the committee. I have a very

short statement I would like to make.

Chairman Hunter, Representative Skelton, members of the committee, thanks for the opportunity to be here today. Most importantly, thanks for your support of the young men and women in the

field. They cannot be successful without your help.

I am also honored today to be here with my colleague, Doug

Brown. His forces that he provides in our Central Command area

of operations do absolutely amazing work, and any success that we

have is attributable to their incredibly high state of training, morale and readiness.

Over 1,500 U.S. soldiers have given their lives in the CENTCOM

area of operations. Thousands more have been wounded. And over

one million have served in the region in over three years of continuous combat.

What can we say other than thank you to their families, thank

you to them, thank you for the tremendous service that they have

6

given to the United States of America. We are eternally grateful to

them, and we are ever mindful of their sacrifices.

We can only look with a certain degree of amazement as to what

is happening in the CENTCOM region over the past year in particular.

Who would have thought we would be here where we are now,

where we have had over eight million people vote in Afghanistan.

A Palestinian election. A Palestinian-Israeli process moving forward. Over 8.5 million people in Iraq voting for a national assembly. Local elections taken place in Saudi Arabia. Lebanese taking

to the streets to ask the Syrians to leave. Egypt, the President

talking about multi-party candidates being able to run against him

in the next election.

These things that are happening in the Middle East have never

happened like this before, and we should be very, very mindful of

what is happening. And I believe that our forces in the region have

not only been protecting the United States from attack, but has

also done much to help the region move forward in a direction of

moderation that is so important in the region’s struggle against extremism.

I am optimistic about future opportunities. I think 2005 can be

a decisive year. We have an opportunity for progress in the Middle

East peace process.

We have an opportunity to move forward by having Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, an opportunity to establish greater stability

in Afghanistan and Iraq, an opportunity for Iraqi and Afghan

forces to take more and more of the responsibility of fighting the

insurgencies within their own country, opportunity for Pakistan

and Saudi Arabia to be helped more in their own fights against the

extremists that are so important to getting the job done in the Middle East.

But we also have to be mindful of the dangers. There are no

straight lines in the Middle East. There are ongoing political processes all over the region, and all of these can lead to more violence.

There is a prospect for unpredictable actions from Iran and

Syria. There is possible instability that can result as a result of

what is happening between Lebanon and Syria.

The extremist enemy that we face throughout the region will not

surrender. They will not move away. They will continue their attacks.

And we need to understand that this battle between moderation

and extremism in the region is one that the people of the region

have chosen to fight, and they cannot win it without our help.

The year ahead will require patience. We must continue our military operations against the terrorists and insurgents. We must

help friends in the region build military capacity to defeat the extremists. And we have to ensure that as we move forward in the

region, we harness not only all power within our own national capabilities, economic, diplomatic and political, but we also seek

greater opportunity for the international community to participate.

Mr. Chairman, rather than going on, I yield to your questions.

And again, I appreciate the opportunity to be here.

[The prepared statement of General Abizaid can be found in the

Appendix on page 61.]

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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, General. General Brown,

good morning.

STATEMENT OF GEN. BRYAN D. BROWN, COMBATANT COMMANDER, U.S. SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND, U.S. ARMY

General BROWN. Good morning. Mr. Chairman, Congressman

Skelton, distinguished Members of the Congress, it is an honor to

be here before the committee today to report on our posture on the

Special Operation Forces.

It is also a privilege to be here with the commander of the

United States Central Command, a leader for whom I have great

respect. I enjoy a tremendous working relationship with General

Abizaid as we aggressively fight the Global War on Terror, as I do

with all of the combatant commanders.

I have a prepared statement, Mr. Chairman. If it would be all

right, I would like to forego it and just enter it for the record and

go directly to answer Mr. Skelton’s first question to me this morning.

The CHAIRMAN. I think you get the prize, General. Is that it?

[Laughter.]

General BROWN. Sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Very good. That is exactly what we need.

General BROWN. Mr. Skelton, SOF is accountable. And they

should be accountable. I am familiar with the press article that you

were referring to, and I can tell you that interagency coordination,

specifically when SOF enters into a country, is total. It is complete.

Every team, every person deploys with an approved, fully coordinated deployment order and a country clearance, not only from the

country team in that country, but from the geographic combatant

commander in the area of responsibility (AOR) that they are going

into with that team.

Interagency coordination is the best it has ever been. It could be

a lot better. It needs to continue to work at it. And we are working

very good at it, but it is the best I have seen.

But I can tell you from that article that SOF has never, ever entered a foreign country without full coordination and approval of

the chief of mission in the country team and the geographic combatant commander.

[The prepared statement of General Brown can be found in the

Appendix on page 116.]

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, General.

And once again, we are going to try to make sure everybody gets

an opportunity to ask a question.

And the very distinguished gentleman from Kentucky, one of our

newest members of the committee sitting in front of our witnesses

here, Mr. Davis, is recognized.

Mr. DAVIS OF KENTUCKY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And just as

both of us being former Rangers, I appreciate you making sure I

did not fall asleep on the watch here.

I would like to begin by welcoming Colonel Lynch. We served as

cadets together 25 years ago.

It is a privilege to have you both before the committee today. I

have witnessed in both of your careers a tremendous transformation that has taken place in the military.

8

General Abizaid, you have to be part of the first public display

of that with your leadership as a Ranger in Grenada.

It is great to see an army aviator commanding the Special Operations Command. That personally means a lot to me, and we are

grateful for that.

But as we are facing the challenges that you alluded to in your

opening statement, many of the questions as well that the uninformed public hears from time to time, you are facing extremely serious, complex problems in the region.

And as the Army is going through its process of transforming to

deal with asymmetric warfare, adopting more and more the small

wars doctrine, becoming more culturally relevant, focusing on

changing the force, you are also effectively fighting two wars simultaneously.

And I would appreciate, first General Abizaid and then General

Brown if you could give a short perspective from the SOF community, if you could comment on force levels right now, if you feel you

have the capability to surge if another threat were to emerge, either in the region or at another part of the world, in a public and

general sense, how you would adapt to that. And do you feel that

you have currently the level of forces necessary to be able to plan

for such a contingency?

General ABIZAID. Thank you, Congressman.

First of all, I believe that when you look at the total military

power of the United States of America, in the CENTCOM, the Central Command area of responsibility, it is very, very substantial.

We need to look at it in all of its components.

The air component is unequaled. The naval component is unequaled. The special operations component is unequaled. And the

ground conventional component is adequate for doing the tasks at

hand and able to deal with other threats that could emerge, provided that we can bring in additional capability to deal with them.

So I am satisfied that the levels of United States military power

in the Central Command region is adequate. I am also satisfied

that there is no power in the region that can challenge our military

might. And that is a very important statement to make.

In terms of transformation, we are just starting to see some of

the new Army designed units, brigades that are coming into the

field, with the 3rd Infantry Division arrived. And it is my impression in looking at them that their design, which is not necessarily

more in combat power, it is certainly more in reconnaissance

power.

And in this particular campaign that we are fighting, the reconnaissance power adds to the overall intelligence capability. It

should make our precision targeting capability better. And so, I am

very excited about the direction in which the Army is moving in relation to improving this capability in their units.

General BROWN. Sir, I think special operations is meeting all the

requirements that General Abizaid has for us right now. Our force

structure in the CENTCOM AOR I think is doing a good job, and

it is the appropriate level of force structure.

It does not mean we are without stress. We are stressing the

force to continue operating at the level we are operating at.

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When I testified last year, we had the biggest deployment of special operations in history. We still are. We are about 6,100 people

deployed around the world today. For us, that is a large portion of

our force deployed.

So we have some stress points. Our Green Berets, our SEALs are

deployed at a pretty high OPSTEMPO right now. Our combat controllers. Our civil affairs is probably our biggest issue right now.

Twenty-six of those battalions are in the Army Reserve, and we

are working through some answers to do that, to fix that. And by

the end of the year, about 90 percent of my psychological operation

(PSYOPS) forces that are in the reserves will have deployed into

General Abizaid’s AOR. So we have some stress points.

What we are doing about it is, the good news is, that we are

growing. Special operations forces are growing. We will grow about

1,405 spaces this year. We will grow 500 Green Berets over the

next couple years.

We are already in the process of growing. One of the things we

have done is put a lot of money and energy into our schools so that

we would then have the wherewithal to allow the force to grow

without cutting the standard, which we think is pretty important.

So I would tell you our force levels today are probably not where

they should be, but we believe they will be as we continue to grow.

We have added 1,300 civil affairs people over the last 3 years.

So in the CENTCOM AOR, I think our force levels are good. I

think we are doing what we are supposed to do over there. And I

think we can sustain it.

We are sustaining it by managing the forces, quite frankly, that

would be doing things in other AORs around the world. We are

having to very carefully manage who does joint combined exercise

training in another AOR to move it into this, into John’s AOR, so

that we get some rotation on our forces.

And what that means, quite frankly, is, as you know, all of our

forces, our special operating forces, particularly the Green Berets,

have to have a language capability. You cannot graduate from the

school without a language capability. And so you can be a great

shooter and you can do a thousand pushups, but you have to be

able to speak a foreign language before you graduate.

So if you went in and talked to some of the special forces guys

today in the CENTCOM AOR, they may be speaking Spanish. And

that is because we are having to rotate our forces through there.

But we are taking care of it. We have a good plan to grow in the

future. And we have the authorities to grow. We are adding two

SEAL team equivalent. I will not go into the great details about

how the number of aircraft, 10 C–130’s, four AC–130 gunships, but

SOF is on an upward scale, growing to where we need to be.

Mr. DAVIS OF KENTUCKY. Great. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank

you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman from Kentucky, and I

thank him for the military expertise he brings to the committee.

And the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Skelton.

Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Chairman, thank you. General Brown, I will

have a question regarding your force levels with you a bit later, so

let me just take up my few moments, if I may, asking General

Abizaid.

10

Every one in this room and, I think, every American joins with

you in wanting success in Iraq. Second place does not count there.

The possibility of failure there, we do not even want to think about,

because it could very well, as you know, be a snake pit for many,

many evils.

So, you know, I hate to even turn the news on in the morning

when I hear the deaths, more recently of Iraqi deaths, in addition

to American deaths.

And we all know that success will depend upon the Iraqi forces

being in charge of their own country eventually.

So my two questions of you, General: How do we measure success in Iraq? And where are the markers that you have set out

with General Casey for the commanders so that you know you are

making progress toward the ultimate goal?

Measure of success and your goal for us, would you please, General?

General ABIZAID. I thank you, Congressman Skelton.

The most important term of military success that we have to

measure and we must be very mindful of is the progress of Iraqi

security forces, and it is the ability of Iraqi security forces to take

the lead in the counterinsurgency fight.

There are three fights that are going on in Iraq right now: there

is the counterterrorist fight, there is the counterinsurgency fight,

and there is the fight for stability.

The fight that the Iraqis need to take the lead in as soon as possible and that we are working very hard to make sure that they

are capable of doing as soon as possible is the one that takes the

most time, resources, and energy, and it is the counterinsurgency

fight.

As far as markers on the road to success for Iraq, I think the single most important thing, Congressman, is that we have a political

process that continues to move forward, shielded by coalition military forces and Iraqi military forces that continues to move toward

a more representative Iraqi government.

And if you look at what is ahead of us in 2005, the most important thing we have to do is to protect the political process. Some

people think, well, we got through the elections; getting through

the elections means that the political process will continue to move

in a positive direction.

But the truth of the matter is that the political process is just

beginning.

Right now, there is a debate as to who is going to be prime minister. They have to form a government. They have to name ministries. Then they have to seat the National Assembly. Then they

have to write the constitution. Then they have to have a referendum on the constitution. And then there is going to be another national election. And all of this is going to happen between now and

December.

And while this happens, we have to figure out between us and

the Iraqis how to get Iraqi security forces in the lead on

counterinsurgency operations.

Clearly, training and equipping Iraqi security forces is one of the

key metrics we look at. And I know you know this, but I would ask

11

the committee to understand that the metric of the numbers can

be misleading.

What is important is whether or not the leadership and the loyalty of the Iraqi security forces is sufficient enough to take on the

insurgency and ultimately defeat it without us being there.

It is my opinion, it is General Petraeus’ opinion, it is General

Casey’s opinion that while we are on the right track, they are not

ready to take over all the responsibilities yet.

But in 2005, we will make the move to transition those responsibilities; for example, giving them territory.

We have yet to assign territorial boundaries to Iraqi units in

which to operate. That is very, very important.

We have started to do it in Baghdad with one brigade, and over

time we will do it more and more.

We have had great success in certain units, especially those in

which our special operations people have been embedded. We look

to build on that success.

We have also had some pretty bad failures, and we have looked

to understand why we have had those failures and look for ways

to improve leadership in particular.

There must be in this period of great political process, activity,

and change, an opportunity for the Iraqi chain of command to look

to the prime minister, to take orders from an Iraqi chain of command, and to respond in an efficient and in a complete manner

with regard to military requirements in Iraq.

I believe that the success, then, is twofold that we must achieve

this year.

Number one, a legitimate political process must emerge in the

December elections. That would mean that the Sunni community

needs to be part of the future.

And number two, Iraqi security forces must be more and more

responsible for the conduct of the war, especially the

counterinsurgency points.

Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Chairman, I will reserve my other questions

until a later moment.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Hefley.

Mr. HEFLEY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. General

Abizaid, I am concerned that in the supplemental there is a considerable amount of money for military construction in Iraq. And I am

concerned that we certainly want you to have what you need there

for our troops.

You need force protection. We want you to have force protection,

whatever.

But I am also concerned that we not build a lot of permanent facilities because of the message that sends. We are not there permanently.

We do not know how long we are going to be there, but we are

not there permanently. So we do not create that impression that

we are planning to stay.

And second, that we walk away from a lot of brand new facilities

in a few months or a few years, just walk away from them and

leave them standing there for their troops to occupy.

12

It seems to me that that country is a rich country and can build

their own facilities that they want.

So could you tell us a little bit about what you are wanting there

in terms of military construction and why we are doing so much

building, or planning to do so much building?

General ABIZAID. Congressman, the building that we are doing in

Iraq is designed primarily for operational requirements for force

protection and for quality-of-life for our troops.

I do not regard what we are doing, regardless of the way it may

be characterized in the various budgetary categorizations, I do not

regard it as being permanent.

As a matter of fact, I could not tell you that there is a desire either in Iraq or in the United States government for permanent

bases in Iraq. And I think that that is a level of discussion that

probably will not emerge until after a new Iraqi government is

completely formed and functional.

The bases and the money that we are spending are designed to

enable the fight for the counterinsurgency to succeed, and it is our

opinion that over time as forces transition that the facilities that

we build can be turned over to Iraqi security forces.

The Iraqi government does have its own budget. They have designated quite a bit of their own funds for security. Their number

one budgetary consideration is security.

But I think it will be some time before the Iraqi security institutions are able to get organized, get established, and move forward

in a way that enables them to defeat the insurgency without our

help.

So I believe that we are trying to be as prudent as possible. We

are looking at areas where we can achieve some savings. We are

very mindful of the taxpayers’ dollars that are going into Iraq.

As a matter of fact, right now we have a joint staff logistics team

that is looking at how we are supporting operations in both Iraq

and Kuwait with an eye to getting much more efficient in the way

that we are doing our logistics business. So we are mindful of the

need to protect the funding that is going in there and do the work

right.

Mr. HEFLEY. Thank you very much.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from

Texas, Mr. Ortiz.

Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And welcome to our committee. We appreciate your service and your leadership.

One of the things that worry me, and I hope that we are looking

at a way that we can protect the Iraqi personnel that is trying to

become police officers or national guards when they are trying to

recruit or graduate.

We see that on February 28th a suicide bomber killed 125 Iraqi

recruits who were standing in line at a health center—125 of them

killed. Now today, two more cars targeting Iraqi military efforts.

One car bomber killed, six Iraqis in the Iraqi army. And I could

go on and on and on.

You know, if we do not train them and if they cannot recruit, the

day will never come when they will be able to lead their own country in defending their own country.

13

Do we have any strategy to protect the recruits while they are

trying to recruit into the military, into the police, or when they

graduate from being targeted and killing them? Because I know

hundreds of them have been killed trying to do the job that they

would like to do in defending their country. But it seems that every

day recruits are killed. They are graduating from police school or

military school, and they are killed. What strategy do we have in

place to protect these people so that they can take over? Because

as long as they are being killed, they will never be able to take the

position of our soldiers in Iraq.

Maybe you can enlighten me a little bit as to what is being done

to protect them.

General ABIZAID. Of course, any armed force that develops is responsible for its own protection. And I believe that the Iraqis are

as professional as any force in the Middle East, at least in the Arab

countries, in terms of understanding what they have to do to protect themselves.

As you know, Congressman, against this terrorist enemy in particular, they are very patient, they are very deadly, and they are

very capable of spotting the weak points and getting the bomb to

the target. And it is difficult not only for Iraqis to defend against,

but it is also difficult for Americans to defend against.

On the other hand, when I look at the work that the Iraqi security forces did in protecting 5,000 polling sites during election day,

they showed not only a capacity for organizing themselves nationally, but they also very well protected the people of their country

in being able to exercise the right to vote, which was an amazing

thing to see in its own right.

We certainly have been working with the Iraqis in trying to increase their level of understanding about force protection. We send

teams around to inspect. We hold various types of training activities. We have provided them, to the extent that we can, with force

protection materials. And while we have made progress, it is obviously true that we need to do better.

We need to help people protect themselves any way that we can.

But on the other hand, we also need to understand that when a

terrorist bomb hits in an area, it was not one that they hit in an

area that was completely unprotected, but they happened to find

the flaw in where people were lining up. It also happened to be outside a market area, and it was not just soldiers that were killed.

There was a lot of innocent civilians as well.

So the society is vulnerable to terrorism. It is a combination of

offensive action and force protection that we will help move forward.

I am very mindful of the fact that more Iraqis have been killed

since the Iraqi interim government has come to power than American soldiers. And we should appreciate their willingness to fight

for their country. And we understand that we are going to have to

help them think differently about the way to protect themselves

under this type of a threat. And we are trying to do that.

Mr. ORTIZ. Just one last thing: Do you think that somebody is

getting inside information, because it appears that they know exactly where to go and when to do it?

14

General ABIZAID. In this particular case, on this particular bombing, I believe that it was well-scouted. It showed itself to be vulnerable. They figured out that it was vulnerable. They figured out how

to get the suicide bomb into place. And a combination of reconnaissance, a combination of safe houses and a combination of the execution of the mission on the part of the terrorists showed that they

had taken the patience necessary to find the target.

And it also should be noted that reports say that the suicide

bomber was chained to the car at the time when it was exploded.

Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from New

Jersey, chairman of the Special Operations Committee, Mr. Saxton.

Mr. SAXTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. General

Abizaid, General Brown, thank you so much for the leadership that

you have provided for our folks in the Middle East. And I have the

opportunity to work on an ongoing basis with General Brown and

Senior Command Master Chief Martens, who is here today, so we

have come a long way in this endeavor in the Middle East. And

thank you and the people that work with your for your great effort.

General Abizaid, I was interested in something you said in your

opening statement. And that is, not only is the situation in Iraq

evolving and a government being stood up and a security force to

support the government being stood up. And General Dave

Petreaus, of course, is doing a great job in leading that security

force stand-up effort.

But you mentioned some other evolutionary events that are taking place in the Middle East. And we see it on television. And my

opinion has always been if we see good news on television, it must

be great news, because it is unusual for us to get much good news

over the network.

And I noticed over the last few days, as many of us have on the

committee, that there are some changes taking place in Lebanon,

there are some changes taking place in Egypt. There are even some

changes taking place underneath, I believe, in Iran. The changes

that of course have taken place in Afghanistan.

Could you talk a little bit about not only Iraq but the region and

some of these changes that we seem to be experiencing?

General ABIZAID. Yes, Congressman. The region is really in a period of tumultuous change. It is really revolutionary change. I have

studied the region and served in the region an awful lot over my

career, and I have never seen anything quite like this.

To me, it is unbelievable to think of Lebanese in the streets in

peaceful demonstration against the Syrians and a Lebanese government resigning. It is unthinkable to have the people in the region talking about elections, talking about representative government, to see the various media outlets having an open and somewhat candid discussion about the need for reform.

And it all takes place at a time when the extremist ideology, the

ideology that is espoused by people like bin Laden, Zawahiri and

Zarqawi, is in competition with the people that want a moderate

and better future for their people.

It is a clear truth to me that the vast majority of people in the

27 countries in the Central Command region do not want to let the

extremists win. They understand the extremists’ ideology. They

15

know how dangerous it is. It is not one that they desire to have

be successful.

They know what Afghanistan looked like under these people.

They know what the Taliban did, where women were sequestered,

where executions took place in soccer stadiums, where music was

banned, where there was no good vision of life other than returning

to the good old days of the 650s or so.

And people do not want that; they want a better way forward.

And all of these activities that are taking place are not unlike what

we saw in Europe in the 1840s or so, where there is just a wave

of discussion that is an internal discussion that is happening.

Now, in the middle of all this, we have 225,000 Americans, which

creates an interesting dynamic on its own. And I would only tell

you that we do share two things in common with the people of the

region.

Number one is we certainly have an ideal for a better future and

hopes for a better future, and number two is we have a common

enemy that we want to defeat.

So I believe that our actions in the region over time make a difference, but I also believe that it is not necessary to continue the

very large numbers of troops and military activities in the region

over time to allow the people to be successful. That can start coming down as they help themselves more.

Mr. SAXTON. In the couple of seconds that I have left, I would

just like to say that it seems to me that everybody being human—

human beings living in the Middle East being able to observe what

has happened in Afghanistan, being able to observe what has happened governmentally in Iraq sets an example which may be fueling some of these changes that are taking place elsewhere in the

Middle East.

Would you comment on that?

General ABIZAID. I would say people look to what has happened

in Afghanistan and what has happened in Iraq and they say that

this level of participatory government, if it can happen in those two

countries—one, the most poor in the region, and the other coming

out of the worst dictatorship in the region—then it can happen

anywhere.

Mr. SAXTON. Thank you, General.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from Mississippi, Mr. Taylor.

Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank both you gentlemen for being with us today.

General Abizaid, on a trip about 6 weeks ago—and I realize

things change by the day—we were at the embassy in Baghdad and

apparently our nation has been paying for polling over there.

One of the poll numbers—and my memory is not perfect, but I

checked with several of my colleagues—one of the questions that

was asked is: Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the

Americans? And those who were in the room—we cannot remember

the exact number, but it was substantially over half of the Iraqis—

had an unfavorable view of Americans. I do not say that happily.

But I am reporting what I was told.

The question is, in a counterinsurgency, can you win a

counterinsurgency when over half of the people have an unfavorVerDate 22-MAR-2001 14:55 Nov 13, 2007 Jkt 024302 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\109-5\061000.000 HNS1 PsN: HNS1
16

able view? The second question is, how do you turn that around?

What steps are we taking to turn that around? Because obviously

you have to turn it around.

General ABIZAID. Thanks, Congressman Taylor. I think the answer to the first part—can you win a counterinsurgency with an

unfavorable view that the population holds about coalition

forces?—I think the answer is yes, especially as you transition

Iraqi security forces to take the lead.

It is true, I think, if you survey the people in the Middle East

that years and years of bad press out there has created an unfavorable view of the United States, and I think those polling results in

most of the countries of the Central Command area of operations

would be somewhat similar—all depends.

But I would also say that people in the Middle East respect what

we are doing and respect the opportunities that have been provided

to the Iraqis and know that it would not have happened without

us.

I believe that the counterinsurgency fight is dependent upon not

only having successful military operations, but also convincing people that they are going to have a better future.

And as long as they know that the better future is within the

Iraqi context and not within the American context, I believe they

will fight against the insurgency and they will not allow it to be

victorious.

Mr. TAYLOR. If I may, General, I had asked the same question

I think a year ago September and the number then was 80 percent

favorable. So it is a rather—politically speaking, a rather dramatic

shift in the wrong direction.

My question was what steps can we take, what steps are we taking as a nation to turn that around? Because I think it is of great

importance that that somehow gets turned around.

General ABIZAID. Well, I think one of the most important steps

that we can take, Congressman, is staying the course in Iraq to

allow Iraq to be successful in the political process that it is undergoing and to be on the road to defeating the insurgency and the

terrorists that they are facing there.

And I think there is a classified CIA report that General Casey

told me about a couple of days ago that showed a marked change

in the favorable/unfavorable rating in terms of the Iraqi people as

a result of the elections.

So with your permission, I will endeavor to get that to you.

Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BARTLETT. Mr. Chairman——

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. BARTLETT. Can I bank that minute that I have left for a future hearing?

The CHAIRMAN. Absolutely.

Mr. BARTLETT. Okay.

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Bartlett, has

graciously yielded his time to the gentleman from Michigan, Mr.

Schwarz. Mr. Schwarz, that $20 you slipped Roscoe worked.

[Laughter.]

And you have his time.

Dr. SCHWARZ. Apparently so, Mr. Chairman.

17

I would like to thank the gentleman from Maryland.

And thank you, Mr. Chairman, for yielding your time.

This question I believe is more properly addressed to General

Brown, although, General Abizaid, I expect both of you are very

knowledgeable about it.

It would be a concern, I think, to most people that despite the

fact we have done so well in starting to democratize a country like

Afghanistan, which has never been democratized before in its entire history, that its biggest cash crop and its biggest export is

opium alkaloid. And I do not believe—I think most Americans do

not believe you can build a country or an economy on that sort of

an export.

I would like to know—and perhaps it is not appropriate for this

hearing, and maybe we would have to have a closed hearing on

this—but in general what special ops is doing and perhaps, General Abizaid, what CENTCOM is doing to try to disabuse our

Afghani friends from the cultivation of opium poppies and to move

on to something else, understanding that this is something that is

inherent in their culture, but nevertheless should be unacceptable

to us as the democratizers of that country.

And if you would both comment on that I would be most appreciate, General Brown perhaps.

General BROWN. I think you are right, Congressman.

The narcotics problem is a big problem over there. I do not think

they intend to build their government based on the narcotics problem.

From a tactical, special operations point of view, we are operating in small teams out in the outer lands. As we come upon drugs,

we report it. We destroy it where it should be destroyed and where

we have that capability. We destroy the drug equipment that they

are using to do—we train Afghani forces to do counternarcotics

missions.

At a higher level, we contribute with our psychological operations

forces to the information campaign that is run to disavow them of

the drug culture.

So from a tactical point of view, that is where we—the special

operations forces contribute.

General ABIZAID. Congressman, I would add that there is no

doubt that we have to be very concerned about Afghanistan and

poppy cultivation and the drug trade.

If, in 2004, our primary military focus was counterterrorism,

counterinsurgency, countermilitia, I think that in 2005, while we

will never have the lead because of the laws that you have passed,

counterdrug needs to be up on the overall strategy list for Afghanistan for 2005.

We provide a supporting role within capabilities. We continue

our military operations against the Taliban and al Qaeda that we

find in the region.

And I have personally talked to President Karzai on numerous

occasions about the need to move forward.

You know that in the Bonn Conference process the U.K. was

given counternarcotics international lead, and you also know that

within our own interagency that it does not fall to the Department

of Defense to be in the lead on counternarcotics operations.

18

All that having been said, all of us need to be very concerned

about where the narcotics trade is heading.

We need to work with President Karzai. He has, over the past

three months, energized his own small, newly beginning counternarcotics forces to go out and seize, I think, it is something like

64,000 pounds of narcotics.

And so, he is committed to it. He convened the ‘‘loya jirga,’’ a

group of notables, to talk about it.

It will be difficult to wean the Nation off of it, but what we do

not want to do is adopt a program that is going to send the country

back into insurgency.

We have to have a smart, well-organized strategy that does not

penalize the poor farmer who has no other choice. We have to have

some sort of an alternative livelihood program, in addition to the

other activities that the law enforcement agencies will take.

And so, 2005, we have to be very careful about moving forward

in the right direction in this regard.

Dr. SCHWARZ. Thank you very much, Generals. Thank you, Mr.

Bartlett. And thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. I appreciate the gentleman. The gentleman from

Hawaii, Mr. Abercrombie.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General Abizaid,

next year will be 20 years since the publication of this book called

‘‘The Army and Vietnam’’ by now-Major Andrew Krepinevich, Jr. I

am going to assume for conversation’s sake you are familiar with

it.

Page 10 of the book, it talks about the—following on the Army

concept about taking on insurgencies, it talks about resource allocation and then goes on under the title of ‘‘Guerrillas: How to Beat

Them’’—I will not go into all of it, but ‘‘the way to destroy an insurgent is attack him at the source of his strength, the population.’’

He goes on to talk about counterinsurgency, the necessity of

being able to handle initiative against the guerrillas with a—even

paramilitary forces—assertion of government control over the population, winning itself, winning its support, the forces having to be

ground mobile, able to patrol intensively in and around population

areas.

They say—let me quote it directly—‘‘While it is a relatively easy

matter for government forces to drive guerrilla bands away from a

given area, it is far more difficult for the military to work hand in

hand with local police and paramilitary forces over a prolonged period to complete the destruction of insurgent forces that have

mixed with the population.’’

Yet that is exactly what must be done.

Without quoting further from it, it goes to—and the entire doctrine outlined here, and history outlined here, goes to what you

termed the transitioning of responsibility: training, equipping, leadership of the Iraqi forces and whether they are sufficient or not.

Now, this is the third year of transitioning. The Chairman and

I happened to be in Baghdad the day that we made one transition

from General Garner to Ambassador Bremer, and the discussion

that day was exactly the discussion we are having today.

19

This is the third year of transitioning, and yet as far as I can

tell, the transitioning is not taking place despite the optimistic

tenor of your testimony.

For example, is it or is it not true that the peshmerga, essentially the Kurdish fighters, outnumber the Iraqi forces that you

have referred to today to the tune of about between 85,000 and

95,000 to approximately, according to your briefing this week, the

Iraq Weekly Status Report, 57,658 Ministry of Defense forces?

Do the Kurdish ‘‘peshmerga’’ fighters now outnumber them about

85,000 to 95,000 to approximately 57,000?

General ABIZAID. Of course, Congressman, it all comes into the

way that you look at how the ‘‘peshmerga’’ have been organized.

Some of the ‘‘peshmerga’’ units have become Iraqi national guard

units. Some of the ‘‘peshmerga’’ units have worked for the border

enforcement organization.

And so——

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Well, let me ask you then, General, how

many of the 57,000 Iraqi troops consist of ‘‘peshmerga’’ units?

General ABIZAID. Well, I do not think that looking at the numbers the way that you are looking at them answers your basic question about transitioning to Iraqi lead.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Well, let me ask it another way.

Are you tracking the ethnic makeup of the Iraqi forces?

General ABIZAID. General Petraeus can say how the ethnic makeup is working in various locations in the national army.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Well, I am glad to hear that, because I have

been making inquiries for the past couple weeks and my information was that you are not tracking this.

General ABIZAID. I think we can give you a fairly accurate appreciation of where units are local units, where units are nationally

units, and the national units are, of course, ethnically mixed.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Are you going to integrate——

General ABIZAID. The question is—if you had let me answer, I

will answer.

The question that I understand from you is whether or not Iraqis

are making progress in transitioning to being able to take control

of the areas that they need to take control of?

In 14 out of the 18 provinces, Iraqi security forces essentially are

in the lead already.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. What does that mean?

General ABIZAID. In the four provinces, where the insurgency is

the most difficult, the four Sunni provinces, coalition forces are

clearly in the lead.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. What does the 14 mean?

General ABIZAID. Fourteen——

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Does that mean United States troops are not

involved there in a leadership role, or is the support role minimal?

General ABIZAID. It means that the United States forces are very

minimal in the areas where the insurgency is actually not taking

place.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. How many of the 57,000 soldiers are—how

many of them involve what are called these pop-up units, these private armies, these paramilitary militias?

20

General ABIZAID. There is no doubt that there are militias, and

you talked about one of the militias, the ‘‘peshmerga’’ militia. And

as you remember, during the offensive operations into Iraq, the

‘‘peshmerga’’ fought with us.

There is a plan that the Iraqis are working for the demobilization

and integration of militias that is not unlike the plan that exists

in Afghanistan for the demobilization and integration of militias

into the national force.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Is it your contention, then, that the

‘‘peshmerga’’ forces will become the—integrated into the Iraqi army

and not defend Kurdistan?

General ABIZAID. I think that over time there is no doubt that

there is no such thing as Kurdistan, there is only Iraq. And Iraqi

forces will become national forces, and militias will be organized at

the local level in accordance with the desire——

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. That is the position of the United States now

as you direct these armies, that there is no Kurdistan?

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask my colleague if we can—we will answer this next one and then if we can move on down the line, we

will give him a shot at a second round of questioning.

Go ahead and answer this last one.

What is your last question, Neil?

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Well, if you think—you say there is no

Kurdistan, so I assume, then, that you mean that it is the position

of the United States that the ‘‘peshmerga’’ will be integrated into

the Iraqi army.

And if that is the case, will they be used in the four provinces

that you have cited? Because over 40 percent of the population of

Iraq is in those four provinces.

General ABIZAID. Certainly, the decision of how the ‘‘peshmerga’’

will be used is not a decision for the United States of America

other than for advisement. The Iraqi government will make that

decision.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. So the Iraqi government is going to be making decisions about what the future of the United States forces are

going to be with regard to——

General ABIZAID. You did not say anything about the United

States forces. You asked me about Kurdish ‘‘peshmerga’’. I answered your question.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me——

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. You did not answer the question.

General ABIZAID. Yes, I did.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. And you are avoiding the question.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Abercrombie——

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Avoiding what the responsibility of the

United States Army is going to be and the United States government if these two entities, the ‘‘peshmerga’’ and other Iraqi forces,

are merged and expected to take the lead, let alone the responsibility in the 40 percent of the country that you say is currently now

infested with counterinsurgency.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Abercrombie, we are going to have move

down the line. We will let you extract the answer to that last one

at the end of the line here.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

21

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Hayes.

Mr. HAYES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thank you

and the troops that serve under you for an incredible job.

General Brown, we all know that special operators cannot be

mass produced. It is clearly obvious.

General BROWN. Yes, sir.

Mr. HAYES. A lot of competing forces that are trying to draw

these incredibly capable individuals away.

I know there are a number of efforts being made with some

progress recently on ways to retain these folks. Could you speak to

the committee about what is being done, what has happened, how

the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) has responded, and

what is the reaction to the special operators in the field to these

new incentives?

General BROWN. Thank you, Congressman.

Last year, when I testified, I spoke about the fact that we had

a drain on our very highly skilled personnel, specifically our Green

Berets and special forces, our SEAL community, and our combat

controllers, based on the security environment, where there were

very lucrative jobs for them to go to.

We came up with a series of plans to try and keep them, make

it worthwhile for them to stay in the service.

Number one thing that keeps somebody in the service is job satisfaction. Our folks have great job satisfaction. But there is a part

B, and that is taking care of your family.

So what we have come up with, and what the OSD has supported us with, and Dr. Chu specifically in helping us get this

across, is a soft bonus for specific military occupational specialties

(MOSs) at the 19-year point of service.

Now, there are some actions that we had that were working earlier that were not approved earlier in the time frame of 0 years to

19. But the one we have, which we are very happy about, is at the

19 year of service a Green Beret, a combat controller or a SEAL

that will sign up for 6 years to stay in the force will get a $150,000

bonus lump sum payment.

That has been very positive so far. We do not know what the

final outcome will be, if it will help us sustain the force in the manner we need to sustain it. But, quite frankly, it started on 1 January, and I am told we have already had 112 people sign up for it,

mostly from our Army component.

So we are looking forward to seeing if this is going to help us

solve some of our problem to retain our seasoned operator.

Additionally, real quickly, we started a whole series of SOF

unique education opportunities for our operators. I will not go into

great detail about what they are, but they include online degrees

and actually bootstrap programs where they can come back and go

to college and some other stuff.

All of this started with a meeting I had in Tampa to meet with

the spouses of our special operators to get their feedback on what

we can do to help keep their service member in the service.

Quite frankly, I am encouraged. I think it is a great initiative.

We have great support out of the OSD to help us do the bonus

part. And we are looking forward to seeing how it pans out. First

reports are pretty good, 112 since January 1.

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Mr. HAYES. Sounds like a lot of money, and it is, but I think it

is a tremendous investment that pays tremendous returns, both in

terms of rewarding the folks, and incentive for folks to stay.

Just a quick follow-up. I was traveling east recently and ran into

a planeload of our soldiers, who were traveling west. We talked a

little bit in the confines of the terminal. And, you know, you could

thank them a little bit, but it is sort of hard. They did not know

who we were.

But kind of wandered back to the plane as they loaded up, and

wanted to talk to some more of them, and the guy said, ‘‘Well, here,

get on the intercom.’’

So I got on the intercom, not knowing really what to say except,

‘‘Men, America, my district and everybody, appreciates what you

have done. You are fabulous. We love you.’’

The plane just erupted. And it is such a clear indication of morale, that people need to know that they appreciate when we tell

them, and we cannot tell them enough.

So our thanks through you to them every time you get a chance.

I know you will. Thanks.

General BROWN. Congressman, thank you very much. And thank

you for your visits out to the field. And thank you for coming to

see our special forces troops, specifically at Fort Bragg in that area.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. And the gentleman from

Texas yielded his time to Mr. Abercrombie, so you have 30 seconds

left. So the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Reyes.

Mr. REYES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, gentleman, welcome

to the committee, and thank you for your service.

As you know, our time is brief when we ask questions, but there

are two areas, General Abizaid, that I would like for you to comment on.

The first one is, I was curious, a report in this morning’s newspaper, that in yesterday’s testimony you said the size of the insurgency was greatly reduced. And so I wanted to get your perspective

on exactly how you determine that.

And then the other question, I referred to your written statements where on page 43 you say: ‘‘Finally, we must close the cultural gap between us and the extremist enemies that we face. We

must invest far more in the human capital that will empower our

joint forces to better understand the enemy in the years ahead.

‘‘During the Cold War, the U.S. military could boast of literally

tens of thousands of experts on the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact

and the ideology of communism. Today, we are lucky to find even

a few hundred in our own ranks who know about Islam, the Middle

East and the ideological forces that fuel terrorism.’’

So my question is, as a result of our experience to date in Afghanistan and Iraq and in the region, what kinds of training activities or courses are you developing or have you developed so that

as troops continue to rotate into theater they do not have to learn

the hard way based on the experience that we have had to date?

And what are we doing to make sure that in the future, in a case

like Latin America, we will not be in the same kind of situation as

we are today in the Middle East?

If you could comment on those two, I would appreciate it.

General ABIZAID. Thank you, Congressman.

23

The size of the insurgency, of course, is always a matter for great

speculation and it is always very difficult to come to grips with it

militarily, and giving numbers never quite does it justice, because

it changes.

Sometimes when people feel that there are political activities

going on that need to be either reinforced or fought against, then

you have increases or decreases in what is going on in the country.

I think there are three categories that General Casey and I try

to look at when we try to understand what is happening within the

Sunni Arab insurgency, which is the most active and certainly the

most dangerous right now for the future of Iraq.

The first are the trigger pullers, the people that are actually out

there fighting day after day that are engaging our troops and engaging the Iraqi security forces.

The second are the supporters, the people that provide safe

houses, provide ammunition, provide money, provide direct support.

And the third group happens to be the sympathizers. It is very,

very difficult to say numbers of sympathizers, but it is also clear

that after the elections, that there was a positive impact in that

more people were coming forward to tell our forces and the Iraqi

security forces where the enemy was storing equipment, who some

of the leaders of the insurgency were in particular locations. So

that was a good sign.

But, again, my comments yesterday were really an intelligence

analysis of the enemy coming forward on election day. They enemy

stated that it was their most important military activity to disrupt

the election. And so we assumed from that that would put a major

effort forward.

And as we looked at the numbers of attacks that took place,

where the engagements were, what the numbers of people that

happened to be, and then did whatever analysis we could, we said

there were about no more than 3,500 people in the field that day.

Now, that does not mean that that is the size of the insurgency,

but it does show you, if that is their best shot, we need to not overestimate what they are capable of doing.

And so I think what I concluded from that is the multinational

forces and the combination of them and the Iraqis are not going to

be defeated by the insurgents.

Of course, the insurgents have a long time line. They just try to

avoid losing. And what really needs to take place is a lot of political

activity now to take out the political underpinnings for the insurgency in the Sunni Arab community.

With regard to the human capital issue, I very much appreciate

the fact that you read my posture statement and that you found

that particular point, because I think it is very, very important.

We will be involved in the Middle East for a long time, and the

Middle East will be a seat of conflict for a long time. And this extremist problem with regard to the extremist ideology will be with

us for a long time.

Yet we are always talking past one another in the Middle East.

Congressman Taylor talked about the unfavorable ratings that we

receive.

24

Well, also in the United States people from the Middle East do

not receive favorable ratings either.

And there is this big cultural gap that I believe can be crossed

much better by training more of our officers professionally, in language skill, sending them to universities to learn the culture, learn

about the religion, and then changing our own mentality within

our own services so that we value that service and not think it is

something off to the side that is not mainstream.

In other words, what I am saying is that mainstream line officers

need to know about the Middle East as much today as we used to

know about the Soviet Union back in the Cold War.

There is another side to the human investment necessary, and

that is to reach out to the Middle East and bring their officers forward.

When I look at Pakistan, for example, we used to have a very

robust International Military Education and Training (IMET), program with them that brought their officers forward for training.

And then we stopped it for years. And it is precisely that group of

officers in the middle that are not quite sure about this relationship with the United States.

Now, we are starting it again with the younger officers. But this

double investment in human capital, I think, on both sides of this

bridge that we are trying to cross, is very important and in the

long run is more important to us than raising a couple of extra brigades.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. And, Mr. Reyes, how

many trips have you made now to Afghanistan and Iraq combined?

Mr. REYES. Combined, about 14.

The CHAIRMAN. About 14. Mr. Reyes I think has traveled in the

theater, General Abizaid. In fact, we are working on family separation allowance for him for these trips.

But I want you to know, these members, Democrat and Republican, really care about you and about the troops and this mission.

And almost all of our members have been into theater multiple

times. I think Mr. Reyes more than anybody else. But I think it

represents our interest and our commitment.

So we appreciate you, Mr. Reyes. The gentleman from Virginia,

Mr. Forbes.

Mr. FORBES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, Generals, we appreciate you being here and the great job that you are doing.

And, General Abizaid, I have a question that is off of Iraq, which

I doubt will disappoint you to be able to address. But it is still

under CENTCOM’s area of responsibility. And that is that China

will soon have a special access to deep water ports in Pakistan, according to at least recent media reports that we have seen.

Does this affect our influence in the region? And specifically what

are the short-and long-term-range implications of increased Chinese naval and commercial capabilities in the Gulf region? And

how will this strengthen China’s strategic influence with South

Asian and Gulf countries?

General ABIZAID. Congressman, that is a great question.

I would just like to thank Congressman Reyes, by the way, if you

would not mind, for the number of trips that he has made out

there. You can tell that he knows a lot about what we are doing.

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And I really appreciate his efforts and all of your efforts. I have

seen many of you over there, and I know General Casey has seen

even more of you. So thanks for that.

The question of China in the Middle East and China in the region is one of great long-term strategic importance for the United

States. It is clear to me that the increasing energy demands of both

China and India will over time probably cause a level of competition for resources that are available in the Middle East that people

need to be thinking about now.

I am not saying that that competition for resources needs to revert into any sort of military clash, but it is to say that their developing societies in both China and India, and their developing military and technological capabilities make it clear that in the long

range they are powers to be reckoned with.

China is already a power to be reckoned with in Central Asia.

And their relationship with Pakistan is well-known.

My impression of Chinese activities in the region is that they are

long term. They are strategic. They are built to think about the future of how China will increase its trade and its influence in the

region so that it increases over time.

And again, I am not saying that they are nefarious. I am saying

that it is apparent that they are very interested in the region, that

it is one of strategic importance to them, and they have key relationships that they have developed, especially with Pakistan, but

with other nations. And I think we will see ever increasing interest

and influence of China in the years ahead.

It is not necessarily increasing influence, though, that should

lead to conflict. I think China, like the United States, is a nation

that is interested in the stability of the region, because with stability and peace comes peace and prosperity.

Mr. FORBES. Thank you, General. Thank you, Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. I thank him for his recent trip in that area of operation (AO). And the gentleman from

Arkansas, Dr. Snyder.

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen,

for being here.

General Abizaid, I wanted to ask a question about Iran. In your

written statement, you state that, Iran has ‘‘obvious aspirations to

acquire nuclear weapons,’’ is the way you phrased it.

I want to ask you a question from your personal opinion, because

I want you to—because I do not think there is any right or wrong

answer to my question—but I want you to put yourself in the position, if you were a military person in the Iranian military, a highranking officer there. All these discussions that we have had on

Iran, and I see a lot of the things that are written about it, and

we are talking about some enticements that we are working with

Europeans on.

The topic I do not see that gets much discussion, if you were

from the Iranian military and defense perspective, where is the incentive not to want to acquire nuclear weapons? If you could put

yourself in the position there, when you look, you have Americans

on both sides, in Afghanistan and Iraq, with a nuclear force, not

in those countries, but with nuclear force. The Brits are in Iraq

with a substantial nuclear force, have nuclear weapons. Israel has

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a nuclear force. Russia, to the north, has a nuclear force, just

across the border with Azerbaijan. The Pakistanis have a nuclear

force. The Indians have a nuclear force. The Chinese have a nuclear force.

I mean, it is a very dangerous neighborhood. And when we talk

about trying to give incentives to Iran not to acquire a nuclear

force, would you put yourself, from your personal perspective in the

role as an Iranian military person, how do you go to your political

leadership and say, ‘‘Here is why we can be secure and why we

ought to not acquire nuclear weapons, from our purely selfish, defensive perspective’’?

General ABIZAID. I think if I am an Iranian military person, the

first thing, like any military person, that you are interested in

doing is defending your country. And you see a very great degree

of intellectual effort on the Iranian side to discuss how they would

deal with a conventional attack by the United States. And they always talk about how they need to develop an asymmetric capability

to deal with our very large conventional air and naval power.

And so, it is surprising to me that I do not see the discussion

about what it means for them strategically to gain a nuclear weapon. If I were a professional that was non-ideological, I would think

it would not be a good idea to develop a weapon because it puts

you behind the rest of the powers. It assumes that all of the powers

in the region, not the United States but the powers in the region,

can accept that fact that you will be nuclear armed. And you have

to ask the question whether or not achieving a nuclear weapon

does not invite attack by one of the regional powers.

And so, the question for a military person should be is a nucleararmed Iran more stable or less stable in the regional context. And

it is my view that it is less stable.

I think that they have to understand that our long-term presence

in the region, once stability is achieved in Iraq and Afghanistan,

is bound to go down, and that offensively, it does not appear from

our military movements, at least if I were an Iranian professional,

that we have any designs upon them.

From a strategic point of view, you look and you see where the

American flags are, but from a posture point of view, you know

clearly what is defensive and what is offensive. And our posture is

not offensively oriented.

So you are diverting an awful lot of national resources to develop

a nuclear program that could actually better be put into what

would pay off in an asymmetric conventional sense for defending

the country.

So from a resources point of view as a professional military man,

I would say, ‘‘I think we are wasting our money on this program,

and it actually makes life worse for us and less stable for us, not

better.’’

But I would also tell you, Congressman, that I believe that it is

not the professional military men that are driving the argument,

but the ideological politicians.

Dr. SNYDER. One final question, General Abizaid, General

Brown. I think there was discussion of the C–130J model that

came up, with your discussions with the Senate, and I think about

everybody that goes to Iraq, they end up riding around in C–130s,

27

and we now have had the problem with the aging force and the C–

130E models being grounded. It came as a surprise to a lot of us

when the President’s folks proposed cutbacks in the C–130J model

program. Would you share with us your thoughts about the C–130J

model as we look ahead to this defense bill here?

General BROWN. In Special Operations Command, of course we

have some C–130J models that are located up at the 193rd in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, our Commando Solo unit. And quite frankly,

the C–130J model is doing very well up there.

The rest of our MC–130 fleet is an aging fleet. We are getting

10 new C–130’s into our fleet. They will not be C–130J models. The

purpose that we did not set out to get C–130J models when we

started this initiative was that most of our aircraft are very, very

highly modified, with terrain following/terrain avoidance radar, aircraft survivability equipment.

And quite frankly, we did not want to put another style of aircraft in the fleet that would cause us to have unique pilots that

flew four or five different kinds of airplanes. So we went with the

standard. I think they are H2 C–130’s that we had before.

The C–130Js that we have up in Harrisburg, and I have looked

at the C–130J, and it is a great aircraft and very, very capable.

I really cannot comment on the budget or that activity that went

on with regard to the C–130J. I can only say it is a very capable

aircraft and that when I look at the C–130 fleet in my theater of

operations, we cannot exist and get our job done without the C–130

fleet.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from Minnesota, Mr. Kline.

Mr. KLINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, gentlemen, for being here and for your service.

I want to follow along with Mr. Forbes and talk about something

besides Iraq. I know that while I was attending another hearing

that one of my colleagues raised a question about the poppies in

Afghanistan. So sort of setting that aside, I would like to get some

of your thoughts about Afghanistan from both of you.

I was just over there about six weeks ago. And I know that President Karzai was very much aware of the poppy issue.

He was also very proud, it seemed to me, of the Afghan national

army and the progress they had made, the progress in getting the

warlords to turn in some equipment. And by the way, he took great

care to ask us to express his thanks to the American people for

what Americans have done for peace and democracy and any hope

in Afghanistan.

And so, I and my colleagues pledged to him that we would carry

that message forward. And I am trying to keep my pledge in that

regard everywhere I go.

But my question to both of you is: How are we doing with the

Afghan National Army, with training them, with them taking over

the responsibilities in Afghanistan?

And then for both of you, I suppose, how are we doing in the cooperation with Pakistan in the hunt in that just incredibly rugged

region that is there between Pakistan and Afghanistan?

Start with either one of you.

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General BROWN. How about if I take it from the tactical level and

then I will let John move up to the strategic level in his AOR.

I spent Christmas Eve with a Special Forces A-team, about 100

miles north of Kandahar. There was about 20 guys in a Special

Forces A camp. They have an Afghan company with them that they

work with every day. The Afghans that I met over there, the

Afghani army folks were dedicated, trying to learn their skills.

Were not anywhere near the level of our forces, of course, but they

were dedicated to trying to be good at what they were doing. They

were listening. They were doing what our Special Forces guys were

working with them.

That whole little area that this Special Forces A-team works in,

they are doing exactly what you would want a Special Forces team

doing. They have established a school just south of their little A

camp, about 135 kids going to it every day. They have a great relationship with the local mullahs. They are right at a traditional

Taliban avenue of movement to the north, where they are going out

and doing the direct action piece as well as all the other pieces.

So from an Afghan perspective—now, I am talking about one Ateam, but we have 24 more of those Special Forces A-teams and

then we have the conventional forces and additionally I have some

Rangers and other assets over on the ground.

Quite frankly, I was very, very encouraged what I saw, not just

from the military, tactical point of view of training Afghan army

and working with them to be more capable in the missions that we

wanted them to do, but in the relationship that the team had built

with the entire area, helping to improve the infrastructure, building the schools, running a medical clinic, and doing all this with

about maybe 20 total Americans up there.

And so, from a tactical point of view, I think it was going real

well. John.

General ABIZAID. When you look at what is going on in Afghanistan with regard to the training of the Afghan National Army and

their ability to operate throughout the country, it is actually going

along very well. I am very pleased with the progress that we have

made at the battalion level.

But just like in Iraq, the key is to make the chain of command

work all the way from the lowest private in the Afghan army up

to the Minister of Defense. And as you know from having been out

there, the ability of the Minister of Defense to command and control his units in the field is pretty slim. And so, we have to work

on enabling his command and control and getting the middle levels

of the Afghan National Army stood up.

Initially our strategy was to just concentrate in the Kabul area.

And it has only been recently where we have expanded our efforts

out.

Now, this also goes into the very important point that I think

Mr. Abercrombie was trying to get to as well, on militia. The militias need to be demobilized. The militias have to be reintegrated

into society. And the program for disarmament, demobilization and

reintegration in Afghanistan has gone along pretty well. It is internationally supervised. It is funded internationally.

I was recently at a weapons cantonment site in Herat, where I

was surprised that Ismail Khan’s forces have turned in so many

29

weapons of excellent capability, et cetera. And this process of building the Afghan force, while at the same time bringing down the militias, and then also expanding NATO influence throughout the

country, through ISAF, is one that is leading to greater and greater

stability.

To quickly get to your question about Pakistan and the activities

of the Pakistani army, it is remarkable when you think that about

a little over a year ago, there were zero Pakistani regular army

forces in the border provinces of Pakistan, specifically North and

South Waziristan. Today you have over 70,000.

They have engaged the terrorists. They have attacked the terrorists. They are squeezing the al Qaeda senior leadership into areas

that I think ultimately will pay off, because there are only so many

places you can go.

You are absolutely right. It is extremely rugged, extremely difficult. You have to have good, precise intelligence.

But our level of cooperation with Pakistan and their importance

in this fight against extremism, the broader fight, it is just very,

very important to maintain the good levels of training and capability and cooperation.

Mr. KLINE. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, my time has expired.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. And the gentlelady from

California, Ms. Sanchez.

Ms. SANCHEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, gentlemen, for being before us today.

I was in Iraq over the Christmas holiday and had a good chance

to talk to General Petraeus about the training of the Iraqi troops,

because obviously that is one of the key components of our ability

to get that place settled and actually to get America pulled out.

General Abizaid, I have a question for you. Two weeks ago when

I asked Secretary Rumsfeld to explain why his estimates of the

current strength of the Iraqi security forces have varied so wildly

over the past year and a half, first he denied that his estimates

had been unreliable and later he passed the buck by saying that

he gets these numbers from General Petraeus. So since General

Petraeus works for General Casey and you, I was hoping you could

help the secretary get his story straight.

Every member of this committee wants General Petraeus and the

Iraqi army to succeed, but some of us need to get some clear

metrics on where the mission stands and how you and General

Petraeus are measuring the numbers and the readiness of the Iraqi

forces.

For example, on 16 September 2003, Mr. Rumsfeld said there

were a total of 56,000 Iraqis under arms in the Army, police, border guards and civil defense corps. On 25 October 2003, Mr.

Wolfowitz said that there were 90,000 Iraqi troops. On 4 November

2003, Rumsfeld claimed there were over 100,000 trained. That was

a 40 percent increase in a month and a half.

On 19 November 2003, the DOD news release said that it was

138,600 Iraqis trained.

On 23 February 2004, at a daily Pentagon news briefing, Mr.

Rumsfeld said they had in excess of 210,000 Iraqi security forces.

In testimony two weeks ago, Mr. Rumsfeld claimed that there are

now 137,000 Iraqis serving. That is a decrease of 73,000 in the past

30

year, using Mr. Rumsfeld’s own claims. Yet he sat here and denied

that he is given unreliable estimates.

So my first question is: Have we actually lost 73,000 Iraqi troops

to desertion, combat, other causes between February 2004 and February 2005 or were the numbers wrong?

And if they were wrong, where was he getting his estimates?

Were they from your command?

And what have you done to obtain more reliable estimates so

that Mr. Rumsfeld does not look so helpless?

And generally speaking, the Iraqi police are not trained, organized or equipped to engage in counterinsurgency warfare. So when

we discuss the strength of the Iraqi security force as a strategy for

reducing U.S. forces in Iraq, our focus should really be on battleready Iraqi army and national guard battalions and brigades.

Using that standard, respected defense analyst Anthony

Cordesman estimates that there are only 7,000 to 11,000 Iraqi

troops assigned to battle-ready combat units. Do you agree with

those estimates? And using that standard, what would be your estimate?

General ABIZAID. I certainly have the greatest respect for our

Secretary of Defense and our other leadership in the Department

of Defense. They have fought the war honorably, and I believe

every step of the way they have tried to give answers that they believed to be correct.

The most important thing that I can say—and I know you are

familiar with it from having visited personally with General

Petraeus recently—is that there is a well-known and, I believe,

handed out to the various committees of Congress, report that

comes out biweekly on the status with Iraqi security forces.

Currently, I think the number is over 140,000 Iraqi security

forces that have been trained and equipped.

We have, over time, changed the way that we have counted, because we have had a disagreement about whether or not the facilities police would be added into the equation or not. And we came

to the conclusion that they were not really a military force. They

were a static security guard force and they contributed to security,

but not to the counterinsurgency or the counterterrorist fight, nor

did they really add much to the policing activities that were done.

So we have tried to concentrate on police and military forces. I

also understand that there are plenty of people with plenty of different ideas about Iraqi security forces.

The key issue, I think, that we need to really hone in on is

whether or not the Iraqi security forces are ready to take the lead

in the counterinsurgency action in Iraq.

And the answer is no, not yet. And it is because the leadership

and the chain of command has not solidified yet, but it will.

They are better now than they were a month ago. And they will

be better next month. They keep getting better. They get stronger.

Will they be able to take the lead against the insurgents? My belief is, as long as the political activity in Iraq takes place, they will

be able to do that.

I also believe that the goals that General Petraeus—that I know

he discussed personally with you—are reasonable and attainable. I

am pretty clear that all of us understand that we are not creating

31

the United States Army; we are creating the Iraqi army and that

they will be able to defend their country from external threats and,

over time, win in the insurgency.

The key for us this year is to transfer more and more responsibility to the Iraqis in taking the counterinsurgency fight to the

enemy, and I am confident we can do that.

When I look at the military results of the Iraqi armed forces in

the field during the election period, General Casey, myself and

General Petraeus are very encouraged by that. None of us have

ever said that the Iraqi security forces have been free of desertion

or difficulties in their formative stages any more so than we could

say that the American forces were free of difficulties in any war we

fought.

Ms. SANCHEZ. I am sorry. My first question, the issue of estimates. Were those coming from your command? Do you know what

happened to the discrepancy of 73,000 over a year?

General ABIZAID. I think I told you it was the facilities protection

police on the 73,000. We believe that it was not reasonable to add

that number to the overall counterinsurgency, counterterrorists

stability equation of the armed forces and police.

Ms. SANCHEZ. But you believe the police?

General ABIZAID. But those people are out there guarding things

for the various ministries.

Ms. SANCHEZ. Police are also in your estimates, but do they really do counterinsurgency?

General ABIZAID. Well, I mean, you know, there are all sorts of

different levels of counterinsurgency and counterterrorist action.

The Iraqis have counterterrorist forces that fight it directly. They

have special police commandos that fight it directly.

The police in the precinct add to stability in the local region, but

they are not capable of standing up against a dedicated, determined insurgent force that would attack them.

So there are various levels of security provided by the forces.

The most important thing we can do is to get the chain of command and the Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Defense fighting

properly, so they can coordinate all of the various levels of activity

against the insurgency.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentlelady. The gentleman from

Texas, Mr. Conaway.

Mr. CONAWAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General Brown, thank

you, and General Abizaid, for being here today. You had mentioned

earlier in some testimony that you had met with the spouses for

special ops folks in Florida, in Tampa, I guess. And out of that

came some suggestions that were implemented.

If you could flesh that out a little bit for us and also—and I will

ask all my questions, then I will quit—one of the comments that

was made about the bonus, the sign-on bonus, for the 19-year veterans to stay for another 6 years and the size of that bonus—help

us put that in perspective as to what does it take to train a special

ops individual, about how long apprenticeship does it take to get

to they are fully operational? What do we have invested in each

one of those people to make that happen?

General BROWN. Thank you very much for the question.

32

First of all, I brought the spouses in of about 20 families across

our force, because when we talk about special operations—I have

SEALs; I have Green Berets; I have Combat Controllers; I have air

crews—but we particularly focused on those skills that we were losing, those that were going out of the force.

We brought them in and discussed predictability so that they

would know when their husbands were deploy and when he would

come back, the length of deployments. We discussed a full range of

issues, but quite frankly, mostly we let them do the talking and we

listened.

Several of the things they came up with that we thought we

could implement fairly quickly was the bonus I already talked

about and then some educational opportunities that are also available to the families as well as the service members.

Today, to become a Green Beret it takes about 14 to 18 months

and the same with our SEALs. To get a qualified guy that you can

put out in the field up in a small group, operating in very, very

small groups to do these incredible things we ask them to do, it

takes about 14 to 18 months.

Some of the numbers change depending upon what particular

skill, whether he is a medic, it is a little longer; if he is a demo

guy, it is a little less; or communicator.

It takes us about $320,000 just in training costs to train that one

individual if he is a Green Beret. A SEAL is pretty close to the

same. A Combat Controller is a little bit less, but they are all pretty good just to train in one year.

That is not counting the fact that he is already getting paid. We

had to go recruit him and do a whole bunch of other stuff. So the

benefits of keeping these guys are pretty dynamic.

Once we take that guy and he finishes his language school, in

special forces, particularly—and we are getting a little bit that way

in the SEALS and we are moving that way in some of our other

forces—we put him in one unit where he will get the cultural

awareness that is required to have the kind of cultural awareness

skills that we would expect from him.

So a guy that will go to the 5th Special Forces Group will always

deploy to General Abizaid’s AOR.

So a guy that you will run into over there has probably done

eight or nine rotations, knows a lot of the people over there, can

speak the language well enough to get by.

So we have a tremendous investment in these guys and so that

is why the bonus.

The size of the bonus, quite frankly, sounds pretty astounding to

me, but the truth is when you look at the civilian contracts that

these individuals are able to get—because they are very capable of

operating around the world—they are security specialists, they are

handgun, long-gun experts, they are out-of-the-box thinkers, and

they have a language skill—they can sign some pretty big contracts

with the civilian industry.

Mr. CONAWAY. Let me ask—we have a little time left.

You mentioned that in addition to the bonus, there were some

other things that you had thought about doing for folks from 2

years to 19 that did not implement it. Or is there anything in it

33

that you would like to continue to be an advocate for that would

help?

I suspect replacing a 10-year veteran is a whole lot easier than

a 19-year veteran.

General BROWN. No, I think you are exactly right.

What we did is we turned—the services run the selective reenlistment bonus, and so they are all a little different.

We attempted to standardize those. And then your reenlistment

bonuses and NCO goes away about the 14-year point.

So you have a little gap there where, if you are anybody in the

service, but particularly in S.F. or SEAL or Ranger or a combat

controller, you are not getting a bonus for a certain period of time,

waiting for that 19th year to then sign up.

So we are back working some initiatives to try and draw a little

bit of that bonus forward so that we can give them some sort of

sustainment instead of just asking them to hold on until the 19-

year point.

Mr. CONAWAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank the gentleman. The gentlelady from California, Ms. Davis.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr.

Chairman.

And General Abizaid and General Brown, thank you very much

for your extraordinary service to the country.

I wanted to go back and just ask you a little bit about a former

hearing that we had, on February 16th, when Secretary Rumsfeld

and General Myers presented us with the six strategic objectives.

And I am sure you do not have these, necessarily, in front of you,

but ranging from neutralizing the insurgents, ensuring legitimate

elections, increasing international engagement and support, and

basically they suggested that these are six strategic objectives that

they were not really in a position in an open session to tell us

where we were on those objectives.

But I also know that there is a plan. General Casey has a new

strategic plan, as I understand it, or a new plan, and I am wondering, can you give us some idea of how these are interacting?

This is not going to be a military victory, certainly not alone a

military victory. And I would like to know more about the interaction that you have with the State Department. Where is that

now? How is that going? Could you be specific about where you

interact in those areas?

I know, in visits that I have made, there seems to be a bit of a

disconnect, perhaps, in terms of the kinds of work that is being

done on the ground in communities with the efforts that are needed to gather intelligence and to work with the local population.

Could you speak to that? Give us some example where this is

working well and, perhaps, where we have really missed it and

how we can bring those two together in a more concerted fashion.

General ABIZAID. Thank you, Congresswoman.

I really believe that interagency and, also, for that matter, international cooperation are essential to success, not only in Iraq, but

also in Afghanistan.

34

I would say that international cooperation in Afghanistan has

been particularly good and international cooperation in Iraq has

left a lot to be desired.

We would always appreciate having more international activity

to assist in the difficult work that is going on there, which is one

of the reasons why we welcome NATO getting involved now in

Iraqi training and the institution-building of the armed forces.

I believe that the linkage between Ambassador Negroponte and

General Casey and their two organizations in Iraq are very good.

I also believe that the linkage that we have with the Central Intelligence Agency there is good.

We have more work to do with other agencies of the U.S. Government that can add capability. For example, we do have people from

the Department of Homeland Security that assist on the borders.

We have people in the Drug Enforcement Agency that try to understand the drug flows that take place and the money flows that take

place throughout the region.

So the interagency coordination is very good.

An example of where it is working well—I think if you look up

into some of the projects that have taken place in Baghdad, a combination of United States Agency for International Development,

our State Department friends and our commanders in the field,

that they have been very successful.

In other areas, we have had a hard time organizing the interagency to really move ahead in a way that brings together the full

power and capability of the U.S. Government and also organizes

the Iraqi government in a way that is very, very efficient.

I think, for example——

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. What would make a difference in

those areas?

General ABIZAID. I think an example where more interagency activity would be very beneficial would be in the area of Fallujah or

Ramadi, et cetera. But the security situation there makes it difficult for the other agencies to operate with us in the same sort of

security atmosphere as exists elsewhere.

But I think more effort in those areas in particular will be helpful. We have certainly good diplomatic efforts from the State Department in working with the various political entities that are in

evidence in Fallujah.

But there is always better work that we could do.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. And are those objectives ones that are

being reviewed constantly? Are they in a chart somewhere?

How much validity, I guess, is put into those specific objectives?

General ABIZAID. Well, certainly, we know that security and politics have to move together in Iraq. And I think that the success of

the most recent election shows that politics and security are inextricably linked.

We could not have had the election without the security forces

enabling it, and yet the election has enhanced the security situation.

And so the continuation of the political process, the linkages of

the security line of operations, which General Casey works, is very,

very important with the political process that goes on there.

35

If we were to step back and say, ‘‘Where can we do more?’’ It is

certainly figuring out how to get the angry young men off the

streets in Iraq and to work in the economy or in the security forces

or somewhere so that they are occupied doing something productive

for the country as opposed to moving toward insurgency.

So if there was an area that I say we should be better internationally with the Iraqis and in the interagency, it would be enabling the economic process—although, even in our own country,

that is a slow, sort of, activity that goes on.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you. With our just remaining

moment, I think when the Commandant testified, he said that the

military was using the intelligence that it was getting and suggesting that they were using it as best they could.

But out of that response, I wonder whether you feel—and, perhaps, General Brown, you could respond to this—if you are getting

the intelligence that you would expect by this time, having been in

the country for as long as you have and with special forces.

General ABIZAID. I think that the intelligence and the

counterterrorist effort in particular against Zarqawi’s organization

is quite good.

I think the intelligence at the counterinsurgency level is adequate, but needs improvement. And a lot of that needs to come

from developing sources of Iraqi intelligence, which I believe will

manifest themselves as the Iraqi security forces become more capable.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. General Brown, is that——

General BROWN. I agree. [Laughter.]

The CHAIRMAN. The time has expired.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Ranking Member Skelton would like to ask a

question of——

Mr. SKELTON. Yes, let me interpose very, very briefly, General.

During the testimony of the secretary a number of days ago, I

asked about the possibility of seeing a copy of the General Luck report. And as I understand, his comment was in oral, but it was

going to you for your comments, recommendations.

And I would just hope and reiterate the fact that we, here on this

committee, would certainly appreciate having the benefit of the finished product when that comes back, hopefully, in a few days.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Skelton. We now turn to Mr. Andrews, from New Jersey, five minutes.

Mr. ANDREWS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think we meet at a

very momentous time. I am hopeful and heartened that we are living in the midst of sea-change in the area of the world that you

have responsibility for, where the forces of moderation—as you describe them—people want to settle their differences by votes and

debates or defeating people who want to settle their differences by

violence.

The men and women you lead are playing an irreplaceable role

in that change, and we thank you for it and we thank them for it.

I believe that what happens in Iraq is absolutely pivotal to

whether the struggle that you have described and I have echoed

turns out the way we want it to. I think that if five years from now

36

there is a stable, democratic government in Baghdad, the Middle

East will be a wholly different and wholly better place.

I think whether or not that happens hangs in the balance. I

think by no means is it a foregone conclusion. And I think that one

of the things that will determine that outcome is the quality of intelligence that you have and that the men and women you lead

have.

General Abizaid said just a minute ago that he would characterize intelligence at the counterinsurgency level as, ‘‘adequate but

needing improvement.’’

We have had a lot of questions today about the quantity of the

insurgency. I would like to ask a question about the quality.

General Abizaid, on page 11 of your testimony today—written

testimony—you discussed the Iraqi insurgency, particularly the

Former Regime Elements (FRE), and it is your observation that

they loosely coordinate anti-coalition attacks but do not display

centralized command and control or a shared vision for Iraq’s future.

There was a report in the New York Times about 10 days ago describing a systematic series of attacks upon the infrastructure—the

energy infrastructure, in particular—of Iraq. And the Iraqi oil minister, Thamir Ghadban, is quoted as saying that ‘‘There is an organization’’—sort of a command room operation in his area of responsibility. He said, ‘‘The scheme of the saboteurs is to isolate Baghdad from the sources of crude oil and oil products,’’ and he goes on

to discuss bringing Baghdad to its knees.

Are you satisfied with the quality of the intelligence you are getting, not simply the quantity about how many resistance fighters

there are, but are you satisfied with the quality of intelligence

about the nature of the organization of the insurgents?

General ABIZAID. I am never satisfied with the intelligence. To

be honest with you, and I do not think any field commander ever

has been.

And yes, General Casey, there are plenty of questions that we

have that we put demands against our troops in the field, our own

intelligence sources from DOD, the international community intelligence sources, and also the sources from the Iraqis and elsewhere.

The command and control of the insurgency I do not believe is

centralized. I believe it is the remnants of the ex-Baathist structure.

I believe that, in the past year, we have been fortunate to see

coordination nodes appearing in places such as Syria, which has

caused us, diplomatically, to put pressure on the Syrians which

has, I think, to a certain extent, probably had some effect, although

not enough effect.

And so there are definitely coordination nodes that are going on,

and there are certainly cells that are linked.

But it is interesting, as our people talk to the people that they

bring in that are considered leaders, that their knowledge of what

the other cells are doing it is pretty classic. I mean, they have little

knowledge of what the other cells are doing and how they are being

organized, financed, et cetera.

And that is——

37

Mr. ANDREWS. Do you disagree with the characterization by the

Iraqi oil minister that there is a sort of command and control of

the attacks on the infrastructure?

General ABIZAID. I think there are many reasons for the attack

on the infrastructure. I think some of them are insurgent, some of

them are criminal.

But I think that the infrastructure attacks are as much a problem with criminal activity as they are with insurgent activity.

Mr. ANDREWS. Thank you very much.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from

North Carolina, Mr. McIntyre.

Mr. MCINTYRE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, gentlemen, for your testimony and your commitment to our country

and your great service.

General Brown, as you know, Congressman Hayes, who was here

earlier, and I, along with Congressman Jeff Miller and Jim Davis,

co-chair the Special Operations Forces Caucus. And we are hoping

to set up a time with you, in the near future, to have you come to

one of our meetings to speak to the caucus and help increase

awareness among all of our colleagues here on Capitol Hill in appreciation for what you and special operations forces do.

And I hope that we will be able to work out a mutually convenient time for you to come and meet with the caucus here on the

Hill.

General BROWN. I will look forward to it, Congressman.

Mr. MCINTYRE. Thank you. Thank you very much.

On page 13 of your written testimony that you submitted today,

you addressed the issue of civil affairs forces and state that, quote,

‘‘They are key to our long-term success in the Global War on Terrorism.’’

Later on that page you say, also, and I quote in part, ‘‘Future rotations will be constrained by the number of personnel in these

specialties available.’’

I know there has been some talk about the Army moving some

of the civil affairs assets out of SOCOM and into the conventional

Army. And what would be the impact of such a move and what is

your recommendation?

General BROWN. First of all, let me talk about civil affairs real

quick.

We have 26 battalions in the Army Reserve. We have pretty well

used over 90 percent of them. As a matter of fact, I think the actual figure is about 98 percent of them.

What we are doing right now—we have taken some volunteers

and trained them in civil affairs tasks, and we will use them in

some key areas. Hopefully by the next rotation, we will have grown

some of the civil affairs infrastructure that we are growing—even

if temporarily—and get them through a civil affairs school at Fort

Bragg so that we can continue this important piece of the mission.

As you know, our civil affairs forces go in an categorize infrastructure development issues in an area. They prioritize them.

They then go back and kind of prioritize them at the higher level

and then try and get funds to support all the infrastructure development, which is key to defeat an insurgency because, as you

38

know, in fact they do then build legitimacy of the government and

provide services to the people in the field.

We own all the civil affairs. We are the proponent for civil affairs

in the Department of Defense.

There are three other battalions; those are in the United States

Marine Corps. We have just agreed to start training all the Marine

civil affairs forces down at Fort Bragg at our school, so that is a

positive thing.

Right now, we are looking at with the Army, and I just met with

General Schoomaker yesterday on what is the best for positioning

civil affairs in SOF or in the big Army, and what percentages

should it be? Or should it all just stay in SOF or should it all go

to the Army?

Quite frankly, civil affairs is a key portion of Special Operations

Command, and we will need civil affairs forces in special operations, I believe, no matter what decision we ultimately make.

But quite frankly, it is not about whether they should be in the

Army or in SOF; it is how to maximize the use of these very, very

skilled people out in the battlefield, in support of the conventional

force and special operating forces. Most of our battalions belong to

special operations, but they in fact work for the conventional force.

So General Schoomaker understands civil affairs, for obvious reasons, very well. And so him and I met yesterday, and we are going

to make sure we do what is right for civil affairs.

Mr. MCINTYRE. So is your leaning more toward, then, that that

should stay under the prerogative of the SOF?

General BROWN. I think that there is a portion of civil affairs

that supports special operations that should stay in special operations for sure.

I think there is another piece of civil affairs that we want to

make sure we put them where they can best support the conventional forces, but continue to have the flexibility that we currently

have with our civil affairs forces.

So we are into the discussions, and they are all good discussions,

and quite frankly, we will do what is right for civil affairs and

make sure that we are maximizing their capability on the battlefield to support the geographic combatant commanders and special

operations forces.

Mr. MCINTYRE. Thank you, sir.

General BROWN. Thank you, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from

Ohio, Mr. Ryan.

Mr. RYAN FROM OHIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for being here, withstanding this.

A couple of points that I just want to make before I ask any

questions: The issue of China came up, and I know—we all know—

that there is a strategic move in that region by the Chinese. And

I think that—and Chairman Hunter and I have been working on

a lot of different issues regarding the manufacturing side of this—

but I think it is that much more important for our reputation in

the Middle East to be stellar, because the Chinese will take advantage, in all the different countries in the Middle East, to play

against us in order to gain some kind of economic interest.

39

I would also like to put in a plug for the 9th, 10th Airlift out of

Youngstown, Ohio, which I know has been doing a lot of work and

moving a lot of vehicles and equipment around for you. And I just

want to say what a great job they are doing.

And I just received, General Abizaid, some photos of some vehicles from the 42nd Infantry Division of the Army National Guard.

And I want to share these with the committee to make some copies

maybe after. And I will bring these to you after the—but they are

pictures of vehicles that are being used from not only Kuwait to

Iraq but in missions in Tikrit, Samarra, Baghdad.

And I just want you to take a look at a couple of these pictures,

because these trucks do not have windows; they are not armored

at all. And there is one picture in here in particular that I want

to show. It has the gun mounted in the back of the truck on top

of an old oxygen tank.

And there are, you know, I guess several vehicles that this group

in particular is using. It seems to me very dangerous. And I was

just wondering if you can comment. Is this routine that they would

be using these kinds of vehicles, because I know Secretary Rumsfeld said that by February 15, no vehicles would be going on a mission if they were not armored in some fashion.

So I just wanted to give you an opportunity to clarify this somehow.

General ABIZAID. Thank you, Congressman.

I very much appreciate all of the service of our young men and

women out there. And I can assure you that their safety is foremost in the minds of all the commanders in the field.

General Casey has issued an order that no nonarmored vehicle

will operate in those areas that are clearly contested areas without

having a level of armor protection that we define as level three or

up.

And so if that is happening in this unit, it should not be happening.

And I appreciate the information. I will convey it to General

Casey and it is our intention to protect the troops as best we can.

Mr. RYAN FROM OHIO. Can you get back to us with some kind

of response?

General ABIZAID. Yes, I will.

Mr. RYAN FROM OHIO. I appreciate that. I am not trying to put

you on the spot, but just, to me, it seems like a very dangerous

situation——

The CHAIRMAN. And if the gentleman could share that with the

committee, too. We have a staff team that is dedicated to the armor

situation.

Congressman Ryan, do you know where those pictures are taken?

Mr. RYAN FROM OHIO. I believe—well, these vehicles were in

Tikrit, Samarra and Baghdad, the missions they were going on. As

easy as—last week, the lead vehicle was armored and ran over one

of the devices and it blew up, but it was only the lead vehicle that

was armored and the rest of the troops were in these kind of vehicles which, to me, at this stage of the war I think is unacceptable.

And I just hope that we can work through and figure out what

the problem is there as soon as possible.

But I will provide the picture——

40

General ABIZAID. Congressman, I agree that at this stage of the

war it is unacceptable and it is not our intent to have it be that

way. Largely with the help of this committee and your chairman

in particular, we have made an incredible move in armoring vehicles that were not designed to be armored. And I thank this committee for the help that they have given us.

Now, it is also true that within secured areas—for example, within the compound in Tikrit—theoretically, those vehicles could be

used.

But, look, I take it seriously. We will look into it. We are all—

these are our friends and our colleagues that are out there fighting

and our intention is to protect them.

Mr. RYAN FROM OHIO. We want to work with you to help whatever we have to do to make sure this happens.

One of the doors was actually secured with duct tape. So this is

a very serious issue.

I had a conversation with a young man who was on a lot of these

missions in a lot of the hot spots and just returned home a few

weeks back, and he was communicating to me about the attitude

and the morale of the troops, and how they would build a city council chamber and the chamber would get blown up; they would build

a hospital, they would be around and the hospital would get blown

up, and how that was affecting the morale of these guys.

And he told me, ‘‘At this point, we are just fighting for each other

to make sure that we get home.’’

And so one of the questions I had was: How many hospitals and

city council chambers or city halls, schools have we built over the

past year or two that we actually constructed and were blown up?

How often is this happening? And do you have any hard numbers

for us?

General ABIZAID. I would have to take that for the record, Congressman.

Mr. RYAN FROM OHIO. Can you get back to us?

Because, as far as the mentality of the troops seeing this over

and over and not seeing progress maybe in these four provinces, I

think is very important.

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page 168.]

Mr. RYAN FROM OHIO. One final question, Mr. Chairman, if I

might.

We were told originally when this whole war started that we

were going to be able to use the oil in the country for a lot of the

reconstruction. And now the President is coming back with another

$80 billion.

I am going to vote for it. I voted for the defense appropriations

and most of the supplementals.

And hearing from Senator McCain and some others that we may be there for another 8 to 10 years and that, you know, $80 billion

a pop plus the defense appropriations, we are talking a trillion dollars over the next 10 years, under enormous budget constraints

here.

How much more money are we going to need? How much more

are we going to have to ask the taxpayer for over the next 5 to 10

years, in your best estimation?

41

General ABIZAID. Well, Congressman, that is clearly out of my

lane.

But I do believe that the security situation over time becomes

more and more Iraqi, that as the security situation improves, that

is Iraqi-led, that there will be a boom in the economy, that there

will be a very robust capability of the Iraqis to fund more and more

of what they need to do for their own defense, and that already,

even operating below their current capacity, the Iraqis are putting

money back into their own economy.

In those areas of the country, in the south and in the north

where the security situation is essentially what I would call normal

for that part of the world, there is a great of economic activity.

I think Iraq, once stability occurs in the center of the country,

will become one of the richest countries in the Middle East.

Mr. RYAN FROM OHIO. And how far out do you see that?

General ABIZAID. Right now——

Mr. RYAN FROM OHIO. From what I am hearing from guys in the

field, I mean, the fact that the governmental chambers or buildings

are getting blown up—we saw the oil line the other day. I mean,

how long is this going to take?

General ABIZAID. Well, how long is it going to take? It depends

upon when the Iraqi security forces will be robust enough to take

the lead.

I think that our combat capability goes down over time. Our

training capability will probably stay fairly robust over time.

Mr. RYAN FROM OHIO. Are we talking in the next five years, do

you think?

General ABIZAID. I would say certainly training capability, next

five years, provided the Iraqi government wants it that way. They

are a sovereign country.

Mr. RYAN FROM OHIO. I appreciate all your efforts. And we want

to work with you.

If I can, Mr. Chairman, I just want to talk about Ukraine.

They said they were pulling out, phasing out their troops. How

much of an effect is that going to have on the overall mission?

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask the gentleman—we have some members that—at least one member here still has not asked a question.

Let me go to——

Mr. COOPER. I yield to my colleague.

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Mr. Cooper has yielded his time to you. Go

right ahead.

Mr. RYAN FROM OHIO. Thanks, Mr. Cooper.

Just on Ukraine—just 30 seconds.

General ABIZAID. The Ukrainian brigade is in the center eastern

portion of the country near the Iranian border in an area that is—

primary population center is Al Kut. That brigade is in an important place. It has done a good job in helping stability take place

there.

We will miss the brigade when it departs. We are hopeful that

other international forces will volunteer to come in there and help

in that area.

We would also say that the Iraqi security forces in that region

have done a pretty good job in exerting some control.

42

So General Casey is in the process now of looking at how that

will affect the overall force posture.

But you notice the other day we had the Dutch leave, for example. And we were very pleased when an Australian battalion

popped up to take their place.

So there is more international interest in the mission as the political process moves forward, so it is possible that there will be

some additional international help.

But I think a combination of the current multinational force set

plus the Iraqis with adjustments, we will be able to deal with the

adjustment, and we are very grateful for the work that the Ukrainians have done.

Mr. RYAN FROM OHIO. Great. Thank you for all your service. I

yield back to Mr. Cooper.

The CHAIRMAN. I tell you what? The Ranking Member has a

question.

And, Mr. Cooper, we will go to you and let you have your full

time here.

This is quite a deft performance by Mr. Ryan. He managed to get

through 10 minutes without a gavel here.

The Ranking Member is recognized.

Mr. SKELTON. Along the line of armored protection, I was able to

obtain a flag for the 92nd Engineering Combat Battalion, the heavy

of the 3rd Infantry Division, which is out of Fort Stewart. It is operating in Baghdad today.

And a memo from the commander of that unit reports that his

heavy equipment—graders, bulldozers, et cetera—which he uses to

rebuild Iraq, is unprotected as the heavy equipment transport

trucks he hauls them around with.

He is willing to replace at least the windshields with ballistic

glass, which he believes is available from the manufacturer, but

not available in theater.

A rather lengthy e-mail from him, but let me just give you a

quote: ‘‘I am not comfortable with the up-armor level of my heavy

engineering equipment or my heavy equipment transporters.’’ Are

these engineers being left out of the equation of up-armor?

General ABIZAID. No, sir. The engineers are—no one that is operating out in the areas where the insurgency is active is to be left

out.

Mr. SKELTON. They just were hit with an IED, the other day.

Would you ask your staff to take a look at that—the 97th Engineering Combat Battalion?

General ABIZAID. Yes, sir.

Mr. SKELTON. Thank you.

General ABIZAID. I will, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. On that point, one thing that we have done as

a committee is try to ensure that there is a stack of steel, because

there is lots of equipment over there, lots of units moving in and

out.

And when we have been over there in various times, we have

seen these trucks. Early on in the war, some of your five-tons were

double-hauled with plywood, when the IEDs first started popping

up.

43

So the first plan of armament, of course, was in the field, with

units welding on and tacking on steel that was there in the field.

And one thing that we have received, I think, a good strong actions from the Secretary of the Army on is to put a supply of

steel—just flat steel, high-hard or rolled homogeneous armor (RHA)

stuff that has good stopping capability for frag and bullets—at location in Ballad and other places where our guys, in the least, can

cut the stuff with plasma cutters and bolt it on or weld it on.

My understanding is that there is a supply in almost all these

places. But one thing we have been looking at—that we have been

working on as a committee—is to get a lot of ballistic glass over

there that is kind of generic.

And I was looking at the e-mail. We all get e-mails from our guys

in the field, plus all the members here have been over there several

times.

And we need to have a generic ballistic glass that we can put on

windshields that can be bolted on easily or snapped on, that we can

put right over the front panes on the big trucks and big pieces of

equipment. And I think that is something that is doable in the

same sense that we can get a stack of steel over there.

And if you get some of this—there are some species of this ballistic glass that you can cut pretty easily and you can put into place,

and we can either bolt them on or snap them on.

So we would hope you would work with us in terms of getting

that stuff in place.

And, Mr. Cooper, you are up next here. So do not take off on us.

Mr. COOPER. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. So let me talk to you afterwards, General, and

let’s talk about trying to get some piles of ballistic glass in-country,

too. Because I think that is one of the concerns that these operators of heavy equipment have.

The gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Cooper, is recognized.

Mr. COOPER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Generals.

I apologize for being late. We had Chairman Greenspan of the

Federal Reserve in my budget committee that I serve on. And I am

late for a speech to some Navy folks, right now.

But I was wondering if you saw an article last week in the Wall

Street Journal that talked about standing up Iraqi militias of socalled pop-up forces. Because at least according to that article, they

are standing them up with remarkable speed, with remarkable unit

cohesion, with remarkable cost effectiveness.

And are we able to use any of those techniques in our efforts to

Iraqify security forces?.

General ABIZAID. Sir, I saw the article.

I think it is somewhat accurate in the way that it describes militias. Although, I am more apt to describe a militia as being the

‘‘peshmerga’’, the Badr Corps, the more organized militias.

Some of what these units happen to be what I would call home

guard units that spring up for local protection—and some of this

happened during the time of the elections, because people wanted

to have more protection.

And sometimes it was sanctioned—most of the time it was sanctioned by local political authorities in Iraq.

44

There are also, in the Ministry of the Interior, the special police

commando units, that were not units that were designed by Americans or originally sanctioned by Americans, but they turned out to

be a good solution to fighting the insurgency.

And three units have been subsequently taken into the force

structure and given the necessary command and control to make

them more effective.

So we all have to keep in mind that Iraq is a sovereign country,

that the Ministry of the Interior and Defense have their own

money to spend on forces, and that one of the reasons that people

see a changing face on this American plan is that the Iraqis have

a say in the plan and certainly have a say in the plan when they

equip and train units on their own.

Very interestingly, other Arab countries contribute to the Iraqi

security equation, such as the United Arab Emirates and Jordan,

et cetera.

And so I think we just need to keep in mind that this is not an

American 100 percent controlled and sanctioned activity; it is a

partnership between a sovereign Iraqi government and a wellresourced multinational force responsible for training and equipping the part of the Iraqi forces that General Petraeus is working

on.

We have to be flexible in the way that we think about armed

forces there. And we have to be mindful of what Iraqi leaders want

to do there. And I think General Petraeus has been very flexible

in that regard. And when we have successes, we try to reinforce

them.

But when we have militia forces that are a threat to the peace,

ultimately militia forces—uncontrolled, unrecognized—worked

against the broader peace in the country. And ultimately, the Iraqi

national sovereign authorities have to decide what it will look like.

Mr. COOPER. The article in the Wall Street Journal reflected that

difficulty. Because on the one hand, you want efficiency; but on the

other hand, you want control.

I am increasingly worried that the American taxpayer will demand more cost effectiveness than we have seen so far. And I am

in no way critical of our troops or of your service. You have done

the best human beings could possibly do.

But especially if this becomes a trillion dollar war, people are

going to wonder where the money went.

So as we look at Iraqification, the cost-effective means of doing

so are going to be very important.

We do not want to pinch pennies here. And we are all going to

vote for the supplemental anyway. But I am worried about that

method of budgeting. Because technically, after September 30th of

this year, there is no money for the troops, and of course, there will

be some outlays that continue.

But this is the second year in a row we have suggested that this

process, even though most all of us know that we have to plan several years ahead.

So I hope in the next budget cycle, you could urge your civilian

masters at the Pentagon to try to put this in the normal budgeting

process, because we were confronted on this committee a couple of

weeks ago with a hearing on the Army, and we only had the PresiVerDate 22-MAR-2001 14:55 Nov 13, 2007 Jkt 024302 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\109-5\061000.000 HNS1 PsN: HNS1
45

dent’s budget. And he actually cut the Army of the United States

in that budget.

Now, if you add in the supplemental—which we were unable to

see at the time of the hearing—overall Army spending went up.

But here we were faced with incomplete information, a confused,

unsettling budget scenario, and nothing is more important than

supporting our troops at a time of war.

And yet, under the President’s own budget, we cut them off September 30th of this year. That is crazy. And it is the second year

in a row we have done that.

I know the Service Chiefs testified before the Senate last year

complaining about this, but they were quickly disciplined the next

day and they changed their tunes. But we have to do better.

And I do not want to get you in trouble with your bosses. But

I will be complaining at this end. If you complain at your end,

maybe we will have more effective budgeting for our military in the

next cycle.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. I thank the gentleman.

And I would just tell the gentleman, I look forward to the requirement of putting together another bridge package like the one

that we did last year. I think we bolted a $25 billion package on

for the last three calendar months of the year, last year.

I think that is probably going to be required this year.

Also, Mr. Abercrombie wanted to have another round of questions here, and I think also Dr. Snyder and Mr. Taylor.

The gentleman from Hawaii is recognized for five minutes.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A question for

General Brown and then a follow-up for General Abizaid.

General Brown, does the Special Operations Command support a

proposal that Special Operation Forces be able to enter a foreign

country to conduct military operations without the explicit support

of the United States ambassador or requisite assigned persons of

the State Department?

General BROWN. No, sir. I mentioned in my opening comments

that we have never deployed into a country without coordinating

with the ambassador and getting appropriate country clearance

through the country clearance process, which he has to approve.

We have never deployed into a foreign country in that manner

and we do not intend to.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. That is not my question. You say you do not

intend to. Is there a proposal extent now being discussed?

General BROWN. There is not one.

Let me put it this way: I do not know of any proposal at this

time for Special Operating Forces to go into a country without the

chief of mission or the ambassador’s knowledge.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. To the best of your knowledge, the position of

the Secretary of Defense, at least in terms of what has been expressed to you, is in opposition to such a proposal or any reports

of that kind of thing are erroneous.

The Secretary of Defense has not had any discussions or political

appointees in the Secretary’s office or in the Department of Defense

have not had discussions with the special command.

General BROWN. No, he has not. No, he has not.

46

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Are you aware of——

General BROWN. He has not had any discussions with me that

Special Operating Forces that work for me or any Special Operating Forces would go into a country without the notification of the

chief of mission or ambassador.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. And absent orders to the contrary from those

in authority over you, your position is that the Special Operations

Command opposes that kind of a process.

General BROWN. We do not. I see no purpose—I mean this—one

of the ways that we are going to make an impact on the Global

War on Terror is through coordination with the interagency.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you. I appreciate it, appreciate your directness.

General Abizaid, I think there may—I do not want to say there

is a contradiction in some of the testimony here. There may be

some paradoxes or the context of the questions may have given different answers.

But I want to get clear here on the militia side of things. You

stated in the course of your testimony—course of an answer, I believe, to one of the inquiries, ‘‘Militias need to be demobilized.’’

Now, to my mind demobilized is a lot different from being incorporated or integrated.

The militia question, then, is one that is serious, because as I

read through your testimony—and I have read through your testimony and I am going in particular to page 17 and 18—there is no

mention of militias other than this Muthanna Brigade, which was

the creation of Mr. Allawi.

In your testimony, then, does your citation of the forces incorporated into the regular army, aside from this Muthanna Brigade,

leave out these militias, and if your testimony does do that—that

is to say, leave them out—are you really so at ease with the idea

of these militias popping up all around the country, being paid

from sources I cannot quite figure out, being incorporated in some

fashion into your counterinsurgency operations that you are touting?

It strikes me that this is a very, very risky operation in the name

of sovereignty.

General ABIZAID. Congressman, I believe in the long term that

militias do not add to the security equation.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. You understand I am using the word militia

in a generic sense here.

General ABIZAID. I understand you, sir.

I believe that the program that we have in Afghanistan, where

we demobilize, disarm and reintegrate, is a program that could

work.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I am merely speaking about Iraq. Afghanistan

is a separate area of inquiry for purposes of my question.

General ABIZAID. I believe that what you said, that militias unregulated, uncontrolled, being paid by outside sources, is not good

for the sovereignty of Iraq is—I agree with that.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Do you see that, then, as a difficulty for these

forces, which you are attempting to encourage to confront—because

they are operating, as the article has been referred to, this Wall

Street Journal article—although there are other representations in

47

the press as well on this—that if the units of the Iraq army, which

you refer to here and the battalions that you refer to here, have

to confront these as well, what is being undertaken right now to

deal with that contingency?

General ABIZAID. There was a plan that was signed by the Iraqi

interim government about militia demobilization——

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. To be done by June?

General ABIZAID [continuing]. Last year, to be done by the Iraqi

sovereign government with the concurrence of the various parties

that had militias.

I do not regard that program as being either successful or, at this

time, practical. And I think it is important as the new Iraqi government emerges that the issue of militia reintegration, demobilization

and disarmament be dealt with.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I appreciate your candor.

Mr. Chairman, I suggest that this is an issue that we need to

pursue in another hearing perhaps—perhaps even under other circumstances, because I think that General Abizaid has stated quite

clearly that unless we come to grips with this in a manner that allows us to utilize the present capacity of the United States armed

forces or coalition forces, as it is referred to, we may undermine

that which we seek to accomplish to a degree that disenables us

from being able to succeed.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, I appreciate the gentleman’s thoughts.

And I would think that probably in a closed hearing we might

want to pursue with you, General, and perhaps with Secretary

Rumsfeld, this issue, because it is obviously a part of the fabric of

discussions from here on out.

So I appreciate the gentleman’s question.

We have the gentleman from Connecticut. Mr. Simmons has not

had an opportunity to ask a question, so the gentleman is recognized.

Mr. SIMMONS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I thank the two

witnesses for their testimony here today. They have worn the uniform for many years.

I know that every time we take a casualty it hurts, and it is a

matter of great concern. For those of us who serve on this committee—and I guess in particular for those of us who have also worn

the uniform—those casualties hurt back home too. And as a member of this body, I have made it a point to contact families that

have wounded and killed and to give them all the aid and comfort

that I can.

The issue of up-armored Humvee is not a new one, but I would

simply share with General Abizaid that if the field commanders

need acceleration of any deployment of equipment that might preserve and protect the lives and safety of our soldiers, I hope that

he will come to us to ask for our support.

And I just put that out there and I suspect that that is the case.

General Brown, I want to simply thank you for your courtesy in

hosting me down at Special Operations Command in Tampa. I had

already spent four years as a reservist at CENTCOM, so I focused

my attention with Special Operations Command.

I was impressed by what you are doing in the area of open-source

intelligence so that your all-source joint intelligence center is an

48

all-source joint intelligence center. There was discussion of plus-ups

and upgrades to make it even more capable, not at a tactical level,

but at a strategic level.

And I notice in our discussion of tactical intelligence you discussed the disciplines of signal intelligence (SIGINT), human intelligence (HUMINT) and imagery intelligence (IMINT). But at a strategic level, the discipline of OSINT, open-source intelligence, intelligence generated from openly acquired information, is critically

important, because it gets into the areas where we may not traditionally have gone.

And I will simply ask you, General Brown, are there areas in the

area of strengthening your joint intelligence center, your all-source

center, are there areas where we can be productive in plussing up

to make sure that your people have all the capabilities they need?

General BROWN. I appreciate the question, and I appreciate your

support of our troops and their families. And I appreciate your visit

down to Special Operations Command to look at all the things we

are doing down there.

As you know, and you visited our Special Operations Joint Interagency Collaboration Center, that that thing is off and running.

I think right now we have a good handle on where we see it

going in the future. It is going to grow. We are going to grow some

people in the physical location, as well as growing its capability to

reach out and touch other databases and everything.

So right now I think it is in good stead.

I do share your interest in open source intelligence. I think that

is important. I think we are really starting to get our arms around

it.

So thank you very much for your support.

Mr. SIMMONS. Thank you.

General ABIZAID. Congressman, you having been out in

CENTCOM for four years and having visited his headquarters, you

know how woefully in need of funding we are to improve our headquarters. [Laughter.]

Mr. SIMMONS. Looked pretty good to me. But I did not go inside.

General ABIZAID. Congressman, first of all, all of us are very,

very mindful of the need to protect our forces, but I do not want

to mislead this committee. This is a very dangerous environment

in which we operate. We have had M1 tanks knocked out. We have

had Bradleys knocked out.

We send soldiers without armored vehicles into battle. And this

is a deadly, dangerous type of combat, and we do everything that

we reasonably can to protect our soldiers and allow them to accomplish their mission.

And we do very much appreciate what this committee, in particular, has done to help resource us in protecting them even more.

We have to keep in mind—and I hope this committee keeps in

mind—that when we design our armed forces, we have to design

our armed forces for the 360-degree battlefield and not the linear

battlefield. And if there is a lesson to be learned about how we

were equipped going into this war, that is probably one that should

not be lost on us.

Mr. SIMMONS. I appreciate that response, and I would simply

say, as a comment, that I think the performance of the troops in

49

the field has been extraordinary. I think the leadership has been

excellent.

If I was to look to an area where I personally felt there was a

problem, it is making sure that the supply system—the supply system—is nimble enough and flexible enough to respond to the field

requirements without going through layers and layers of red tape

and testing.

That is the area that I am concerned about. And I can assure

you—I believe this is the case—that if field commanders say we

need something quickly and we have to bypass some of the red

tape, that members of this committee and Members of the Congress are more than happy to do that to save the lives of our young

men and women.

General ABIZAID. I appreciate that, sir. And, as matter of fact,

this committee has done that.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.

And I thought it might be appropriate at this time to tell the

committee that I have an Associated Press article here in front of

me that states that Tillie Fowler has passed away, a former member of the committee, a member of the Republican leadership in the

House, a great friend to many of us here.

Tillie Fowler was a wonderful, wonderful person who fought tirelessly for the folks that wear the uniform of the United States. And

she carried her leadership abilities after she left the House after

eight years to continue to serve in some pretty difficult and inconvenient places.

She worked the issue of sexual harassment at the Air Force

Academy, very tough and challenging issue, and she was one of the

troubleshooters on that panel. She worked on one of the investigative panels that did a thorough analysis of prisoner abuse.

Tiller Fowler worked on many, many issues while she was here

as a member of the House Armed Services Committee, to not only

make sure that our people were treated right and had good pay

and good benefits, and that the families were well treated, but also

worked on all the equipment issues.

She was a tireless worker for the armed services of the United

States. And it is with great sadness that we see the news about

Tillie and about the stroke that she had a couple of days ago, and

now the fact that she has passed away.

So our very deep condolences to Buck, her husband, and to her

daughters, Elizabeth and little Tillie.

We have a couple other gentlemen who would like to ask followup questions here, and then we will be wrapping up pretty shortly

here, Gentlemen. So thank you for hanging with us.

Mr. Taylor, did you have further questions?

Mr. TAYLOR. General, I do appreciate your service to our country.

I am respectful of your high rank.

But I was disappointed in your answer when I asked you what

steps we are doing to turn around the fact that the majority of the

Iraqis have an unfavorable view of Americans. I would hope that

you would give that some thought and get back to me on that, because I think we have to have some attainable goals there. I think

we have to have a road map to get there.

50

And I am going to disagree with you. I think you have to have

the people on your side to win a counterinsurgency. You are the

professional; I am not, but I am stating my opinion.

The second thing I would like to ask you is, we recently sent

about 4,000 Mississippians over to Iraq, National Guardsmen. One

of the failures, I think, in their training is that they had not had

a day of training with jammers for improvised explosive devices,

even though they had trained extensively at Camp Shelby, trained

at the National Training Center.

I would hope, as the CENTCOM commander, that you could use

your influence to see to it that that is changed for future units rotating into the theater.

I track this pretty closely. Over half of our casualties are the results of IEDs. I know the jammers are not perfect, and I know we

do not have them on every vehicle, but I think it is a key tool that

can prevent some fatalities, can prevent some wounds.

And I would kind of like to hear that something is being done

to get, A, enough jammers to where they can have them both in

theater and here in the States to train with; and that it becomes

a requirement like the other training they had before they get in

theater.

General ABIZAID. Congressman, I appreciate your concern that

they did not receive any training with regard to something that I

consider to be very important for force protection.

I will go find the unit in the field myself, the next time I am

there. I will go talk to their leaders. And in the meantime, I will

talk to General Casey here this evening about making sure that we

check when units are flowing through the theater to make sure

they have the tools at their disposal and the training on the tools

at their disposal to protect themselves.

I also very much appreciate your concern about the unfavorable

views that people hold of us in a region that I have been living in

and been part of for an awful lot of my professional life. And I also

happen to be an Arab American.

I mean, sometimes I do think that the problem we have with the

Middle East is the good old saying from that movie ‘‘Cool Hand

Luke’’: ‘‘What we have here is a failure to communicate.’’

So if I left you with the impression that I do not think we should

improve our communication skills, I very much do think we should.

I think part of the problem is that there is a lack of respect on both

sides that needs to be bridged.

And to the extent that the government of the United States can

help do that, and to the extent that the good actions of our armed

forces can help do that, then I am all in favor of changing the equation.

Mr. TAYLOR. Have you set a goal—General Brown touched on it,

and it was kind of reinforced last week when I visited with some

guys from Company C of the 7th. They normally operate in Latin

America. Probably 95 percent of them are fluent in Spanish. They

understand the way of life down there.

Have you set a goal as to what percentage of your force in Iraq

you would like to see that could speak the language?

General ABIZAID. I do not have a goal, but I know where we are

on it, and it is nowhere close to what it needs to be.

51

I do not believe you were here, Congressman, but Congressman

Reyes brought up the point in my written testimony about my

great desire to invest in the human capital to bridge this gap. That

means training people in languages and cultural requirements and

understanding the religion.

What the requirement is, is a good question. Where we are now

is not very far along. We certainly have to do more.

Mr. TAYLOR. Would it serve the interests of our nation to set that

goal? Well, apparently, we are going to be there another five years,

at the least. Are you in a position to get there——

General ABIZAID. Yes, sir, my staff is working with the OSD people to ascertain how we are going to do that, what that needs to

be, how much we are going to spend, what the requirements are.

And I have discussed it with all of the service chiefs personally.

Mr. TAYLOR. Is it something that this committee should budget

as a line item?

General ABIZAID. I think everybody thinks it is a good idea. You

know how it is, getting from the good idea to reality is something

else again.

But we need to, as a national goal, strategically, invest in the

human capital that understands this part of the world.

Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you again.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank the gentleman. The gentleman from Arkansas, Dr. Snyder.

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General Abizaid, I have

thought for a while now that one way to get at some of these issues

could be that we incorporate language training as part of boot

camp, to the extent that perhaps you have a fluent speaker, drill

instructors, day after day after day for three months, that it would

just be from the getgo being a soldier means you learn a foreign

language and start picking that up, so it does not have to be an

add-on later, but that is just a thought I had.

I wanted to ask you, General Abizaid, when we have had Secretary Rumsfeld before the committee over the last couple of years,

this discussion has come up—and it is been in the press quite a

bit—and on the Senate side, about the issue of troop strength in

Iraq and the adequacy of the troops.

And what Secretary Rumsfeld has told us is that any additional

requests for additional troops that he has have been responded to

and he has authorized additional troops.

When the Schlesinger report came out on some of the prisoner

abuse issues—I want to read just a couple sentences from it, if I

might. It says, ‘‘A system is in place for command to submit a formal request for forces, RFF. Earlier, Combined Joint Task Force–

7 (CJTF–7) had submitted a request for forces for an additional

judge advocate organization, but CENTCOM would not forward it

to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Perhaps this experience made CJTF–

7 reluctant to submit a request for forces for units,’’ and that is the

end of the quote. And this is, of course, before you were in your

position that you are in now.

My question and concern is, then—one reason that Secretary

Rumsfeld may not have the request for troops is nobody wanted or

desired any troops. This is one example where someone, a unit, did

want troops, and it never was forwarded to him. Has there been

52

an atmosphere created, do you think, over the last couple years,

that word has gotten around, ‘‘We really do not want to have any

additional requests for troops. Make do with what you have’’? Is

that a possibility or not?

General ABIZAID. Sir, it is a good question. I believe that we

have, in broad terms—in the specifics, of course—I mean, it is a big

organization. There are 225,000 people in the region. In broad

terms, do we have the combat capability necessary to accomplish

our missions? The answer is yes.

Specifically, are there some shortages out there? For example,

there are shortages of interrogators and translators and some intelligence specialists that just are not in the system.

As General Brown has testified today, he has shortages that he

is trying to work through in his force structure with regard to

PSYOPS people and civil affairs people.

But with regard to combat capability, there are a lot of different

ways that you solve the problem.

First of all, I would always expect my commander in the field,

General Casey, to look to see what he can do with his forces by

moving them around. We do not want to get in the occupation mentality.

Forces are mobile. They are meant to move in the battlefield, go

to where they can influence the action. And he was very creative

in the use of that during the November offensives in Fallujah.

Second, I have a reserve, and I have the capability to move forces

within my own theater to help influence the action militarily. And

on numerous occasions, our reserve, which is generally a MEU, a

Marine Expeditionary Unit, has been committed to General Casey

to use as he requested in a specific action.

And then third, we go to the secretary when we think that we

need additional force structure to accomplish the mission, which is

what we did for elections in Afghanistan, elections in Iraq and during the various major offensive operations we have had in Iraq.

Dr. SNYDER. I wanted to ask about the election, if I might, because it seemed like you all did a really good job, as you pointed

out earlier, I think in the discussion about the number of insurgency forces. You estimate they gave it their best shot during that

time. It is part of that. And the numbers you thought—I think you

said 3,500.

But that was also a time when you all had really focused on providing increased stability with it, and there was a temporary increase of the number of our troops in-country.

Another way to look at that would be to say, ‘‘Well, the number

of Iraqi troops stayed the same, the number of insurgents was

probably about the same, the number of Iraqi people was about the

same, the difference may have been the number of American troops

that were working overtime, kept on for that period of time.’’

Is that something you considered in your analysis, that maybe

additional U.S. troop strength did add to increased stability and

safety for that period of time? And if so, what does that mean for

the time period we are in now and the future weeks and months?

General ABIZAID. We looked at it very closely. We had, as you

know—or you may not know—20 brigades worth of combat power

53

in Iraq at the time. That is up from the base that had been established of 17.

We are just about back down to 17 again now. And it is my view

and General Casey’s view that the increasing capacity and capability of the Iraqi security forces have allowed us to go back down to

17.

And I think that the primary factor in the elections that made

them successful was the fact that the Iraqi security forces could

spread out throughout the country and do the close-in and the midlevel security around the polling stations and within the area that

gave people confidence.

So, do not get me wrong, our forces are very important for stability, but the forces that will win the insurgency and gain the confidence of the people will be Iraqi forces.

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen, for being here.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. And the gentleman from

Missouri, the Ranking Member, is recognized to wrap this thing

up.

Mr. SKELTON. Thank you so much.

I have two questions, one for each of the gentlemen.

General Abizaid, the Department’s Comptroller’s office and the

Joint Staff met with our committee staff recently, and they said

that the very last funding that would be required for the Iraqi security forces, including to build their combat support capability, is

the $5.7 billion, over and above the $5.2 billion that have been previously appropriated.

Is that correct? Is this the last penny that will be sought for the

Iraqi security forces, as they committed to our staff?

General ABIZAID. Congressman Skelton, I cannot speak for understanding the question, because I have not talked to the Comptroller about it or understand whether or not a policy decision

might have been made with regard to not asking for any more

money.

Mr. SKELTON. Is this news to you?

General ABIZAID. I do not know the context of the discussion with

the Comptroller.

Mr. SKELTON. Is this news to you that—well, the context is that

this is the last funding. Is this news to you?

General ABIZAID. I do not know how to answer the question.

Mr. SKELTON. Well, if it is news to you, say yes. If it is not news

to you, say no.

General ABIZAID. It is not as simple as you would like it to be,

Congressman.

Mr. SKELTON. Well, try your best.

General ABIZAID. I believe that the Iraqi security force requirement that we put in the supplemental is necessary. I cannot say

that we will never ask for anything ever again.

Mr. SKELTON. That answers my question. Thank you.

General Brown—well, first, thank you, General Abizaid, for your

service. It is not easy.

As I said at the outset, your command is one of the most important commands our country has had in decades. We wish you well

and we wish you success.

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General Brown, you said in your earlier statement that the force

levels for the Special Operations Forces are not now what they

should be. What are they now?

General BROWN. I do not have exactly what they are today. By

the end of 2005, with our current estimated growth, they will be

at 51,400.

Mr. SKELTON. And how much more would you desire on top of

that?

General BROWN. By the end of 2006, we will grow about another

1,400 people.

And then there is some growth laid in through our program objective memorandum (POM) that would take us up, a rough estimate of another 1,000 or so. But I would be glad to come back to

you and show you exactly what that is, but I think it is about, from

now and throughout the POM, about 3,000.

Mr. SKELTON. About 3,000. You do not go out and recruit these

folks off the street, do you?

General BROWN. Some, we do. We have an 18 X-ray program,

where we do take——

Mr. SKELTON. How many do you recruit off the street?

General BROWN. Well, we take 1,500 a year, to be a Green Beret,

off the street. Of that, about 1,200 show up at Fort Bragg, make

it through the first three phases to get into our training. I know

I am giving you a long answer. About 400 of those will ever be a

Green Beret.

So we get about 400 a year off the street.

Mr. SKELTON. So the remainder come from the——

General BROWN. Active forces.

Mr. SKELTON [continuing]. Active duty forces. Am I correct?

General BROWN. Yes, sir.

Mr. SKELTON. It takes a while to, A, grow a sergeant or a petty

officer that is capable of doing your strenuous——

General BROWN. You are exactly right.

Mr. SKELTON [continuing]. Missions. And I know you will say you

are taking the cream of the crop; although, I know a lot of the

cream of the crop you do not take, because they are left running

the divisions and the battalions and the companies. But you take

a lot of very, very able people. Am I correct?

General BROWN. Yes, sir.

What we try and take is the right people, people that fit into this

kind of a business.

Mr. SKELTON. And it took the Army or the Navy or whatever the

service may be a while to grow these people, did it not, before you

take them?

General BROWN. Yes, sir.

Mr. SKELTON. You take them when they are what, sergeants,

staff sergeants, that level?

General BROWN. Well, you can apply about the E–4 level, but

traditionally it is about an E–5, E–6 level.

Now, I am particularly talking about Green Berets, sir, because

the SEALs are totally different. We do not recruit them off the

street, but the SEAL comes directly out of his basic and advanced

training, right into the SEALs.

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That is a little different. They are a little younger force. I am

particularly talking about the Green Berets when I am talking

about the special force.

Mr. SKELTON. And the fact that they are taken from the regular

force lessens the number of the regular Army troops, is that not

correct?

General BROWN. Well, the standard—there is a certain amount

of Army forces. We count against those forces whether you are in

SOF or in a regular Army unit.

So we are authorized—my Army force is about 26,000. That is included in the Army’s end-strength numbers.

Mr. SKELTON. Okay. Thank you. And a special thanks to you for

your excellent leadership, General Brown. And it is good to have

both of you here. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. I want to thank the gentlemen. And gentlemen,

thank you for giving us a very complete and full hearing. We appreciate it.

And just one last question. You have, obviously, the supplemental that you sent up, that has been sent up. We are going to

vote on it shortly.

In your estimation, General Abizaid, General Brown, that supplemental meets the requirement for the 2005 period?

General BROWN. For Special Operations Command it does.

The CHAIRMAN. Okay.

General ABIZAID. For Central Command it does.

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Thank you very much. And the committee

stands adjourned here.

[Whereupon, at 1:14 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

A P P E N D I X

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE

RECORD

MARCH 2, 2005

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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. SKELTON

Mr. SKELTON. Are these engineers being left out of the equation of up-armor?

Would you ask your staff to take a look at the 97th Engineering Combat Battalion?

General ABIZAID. The Department of Defense has worked closely with Congress

and the industrial base over the last year to accelerate efforts to provide better protection for our service members. These efforts included increased production of body

armor, Up-Armored High Mobility Multi-Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWV’s) (UAH) and

vehicle Add on Armor (AoA). This focus has resulted in significant force protection

improvements for our deployed forces.

Providing armor protection for wheeled vehicles continues to be a top priority in

the theater and will continue until we have provided armor protection for every vehicle that requires it.

Directions from the services and the commanders responsible in both Kuwait and

Iraq have resulted in the institution of standard operating procedures, effective 15

February 2005, that require all vehicles operating off protected compounds to have

at least Level III armor protection. The armoring effort continues in both Iraq and

Kuwait.

Specifically addressing the unit in question, the 92nd Engineer Battalion possesses 255 pieces of armored equipment which includes: HMMWV’s, dump trucks,

bull dozers, medium (five ton) tractors, and heavy equipment transportation systems. The aforementioned equipment represents the majority of the battalion’s organic assets as well as additional, temporarily loaned equipment.

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. TAYLOR

Mr. TAYLOR. In a counterinsurgency, can you win a counterinsurgency when over

half of the people have an unfavorable view. What steps are we taking as a Nation

to turn that around?

General ABIZAID. United States Central Command (USCENTCOM) Strategic

Communications synchronizes and coordinates strategic themes, messages, and actions in support of USCENTCOM operations and national strategic goals.

USCENTCOM Strategic Communications also works with the National Security

Council, The Department of State, and other government agencies to assure coordination of efforts to influence perceptions within the Central Command Area of Responsibility. Inter-directorate efforts within USCENTCOM are conducted via a Joint

Synchronization Board chaired by the USCENTCOM Chief of Staff. USCENTCOM

Strategic Communications also provide Strategic Communications Guidance to Combined Joint Task Forces and USCENTCOM component commands. Please see the

attached file: Strategic Communications Brief, which reviews the above.

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on page 137.]

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. HOSTETTLER

Mr. HOSTETTLER. Explain how you use the US Coast Guard for your theater engagement purposes? Would you like more Coast Guard assets in your AOR?

General ABIZAID. USCENTCOM employs Coast Guard vessels in the CENTCOM

AOR to conduct the same Theater Security Cooperation (TSC) activities as the US

Navy. This includes engagement with regional maritime military and law enforcement agencies, Mobile Needs Assessment visits, Mobile Training Team (MTT) visits

that provide training in maritime law enforcement tactics, techniques and procedures, local receptions, Distinguished Visitor (DV) events, Captain’s Calls with local

officials, Community Relations events (COMREL), and various other Media events.

Additionally, USCG vessels and crews are actively engaged in operations at sea.

They provide critical expertise in maritime law enforcement that is essential to the

success of maritime security operations protecting key oil infrastructure, the policing of national territorial waters, and support for Kuwaiti and Iraqi maritime forces.

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The USCG’s presence in the CENTCOM AOR benefit’s our TSC activities and enhances our ability to carry out the operations described above. However, the current

deployment of one cutter per year is sufficient.

Mr. HOSTETTLER. What advantages does the Coast Guard bring you when dealing

with many small international navies in your AOR that are more like the Coast

Guard in force structure and missions than the US Navy?

General ABIZAID. Coast Guard personnel have extensive experience in littoral operations both in the defense and domestic law enforcement roles. Familiarity with

the complexity and nuances of small platform operations serves as common ground

with regional forces interaction and interoperability training. The USCG also provides unique insight to the challenges and advantages of exercising across departmental (ministry) boundaries in both day to day operations and in the face of large

scale disasters (i.e.: Environmental Response, Natural Disasters, Terrorist Alerts,

etc.). Additionally, the presence of a US Coast Guard Cutter in the ports of regional

nations often presents a less intimidating picture of US goodwill than that of a US

Naval warship.

Mr. HOSTETTLER. Should the Coast Guard be removed from participation in future

wars? If not, why not?

General ABIZAID. The Coast Guard brings important and unique capabilities to

the CENTCOM Area of Responsibility and their continued participation in current

and any future operations is important to our regional objectives. The USCG has

been an active participant in every major military campaign since World War II.

The 2002 National Fleet agreement between the USN and USCG cements this relationship and ensures that the USCG is capable of supporting a broad spectrum of

national security requirements from power projection to defense of the homeland.

Operations in the Arabian Gulf have highlighted the important synergies between

the USN and USCG. USCENTCOM relies on the unique expertise of the USCG in

areas including Port Security Teams, Patrol Craft, Law Enforcement Detachments

(LEDETs), and Environmental Response Planning & Management.

Mr. HOSTETTLER. What improvements/changes does the Coast Guard need to

make in order to be more useful to meet your mission objectives?

General ABIZAID. Current USCG acquisition efforts such as the Deepwater Program will greatly enhance the interoperability between USCG and USN units in the

CENTCOM AOR. Some of the smaller Coast Guard vessels have sea state limitations which impact operations while operating-in the rougher waters of the North

Arabian Sea, Gulf of Oman and the Gulf of Aden. These are areas where we intend

to focus our security assistance operations over the long term.

Current USCG Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence

(C4I) capabilities limit interoperability with US Navy and Coalition forces. Additionally, USCG Cutters that deploy to the CENTCOM AOR should have an embarked

helicopter and be equipped with all required communications equipment, including

CENTRIX and Battle Force E-mail, to more effectively integrate with U.S. and Coalition ships.

Mr. HOSTETTLER. Do you need to increase the number of Coast Guard personnel

on your staff?

General ABIZAID. The navies of most nations in the Central Command region have

missions that closely mirror those of the United States Coast Guard (USCG), yet,

there are only two USCG officers on the CENTCOM maritime component staff. The

duties of the presently assigned USCG personnel include liaison between United

States Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT) and the USCG Headquarters,

acting as the primary staff officers for USCG and law enforcement issues, providing

critical interface to U.S. Embassies for coordination and administration of USCG

international training initiatives with regional nations, and serving as the Territorial Water Operations training and assessment team for the Iraqi Navy.

Over the past year, NAVCENT has sought to expand Theater Security Cooperation (TSC) efforts with regional navies and leverage these similarities by increasing

the level of USCG participation in TSC initiatives. However, NAVCENT efforts have

been frustrated by the limited number and high workload of the presently assigned

USCG personnel. Additional USCG officers would greatly facilitate efforts to expand

maritime TSC initiatives and significantly bolster engagement with regional maritime law enforcement agencies, which USCG personnel are uniquely equipped and

trained to support. Moreover, these personnel would greatly improve NAVCENT’s

ability to develop and expand USCG Mobile Needs Assessment plans and visits and

provide a permanence that would facilitate enduring engagements with Regional

Maritime forces. Due to the significant role USCG personnel play in CENTCOM’s

TSC efforts, NAVCENT is working with the Coast Guard and has begun the process

to officially request and resource additional Coast Guard personnel for their staff.

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Mr. HOSTETTLER. Are you concerned about the Coast Guard’s ability to sustain

its readiness in the future given its antiquated fleet of aircraft, cutters, and communications systems?

General ABIZAID. Without an adequate modernization effort, the USCG will be

hard pressed to fulfill both its requirement in support of the U.S. Navy and its expanded role in homeland defense. The USCG Deepwater fleet modernization program is essential to ensure the continued viability of the USCG and to enhance

their ability to effectively contribute to our efforts in the GWOT.

Mr. HOSTETTLER. Would you like to see a Coast Guard training team assigned to

your Area of Responsibility on a permanent basis?

General ABIZAID. Employment of a permanently assigned Coast Guard training

team would provide a tremendous force multiplier to our Theater Security Cooperation efforts in this region. Current constraints on a permanent USCG training Team

include demands on USCG personnel resources and no dedicated authorized funding

for such a program. As you know, the Department of State is the custodian of all

funds authorized for military to military training with foreign nations.

Mr. HOSTETTLER. Do you feel that the Integrated Priority List (IPL) process directly addresses Coast Guard concerns?

General ABIZAID. It would be difficult to say this process directly addresses those

concerns. The Integrated Priority List process reflects capabilities based approach

to documenting needed enhancements vice a program/platform specific approach.

Additionally, there are often many competing requirements for scarce resources and

ultimately DoD leadership determines how best to address capability shortfalls.

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. RYUN

Mr. RYUN. As we are all aware, we have a lot of challenges facing us in the Middle East, particularly in Iran. In what ways will CENTCOM be working to address

these challenges?

General ABIZAID. USCENTCOM addresses Middle East challenges by continuously developing and assessing military contingency plans and by conducting Theater Security Cooperation activities throughout our Area of Responsibility (AOR).

Theater Security Cooperation activities create enduring bilateral relations which

deter destabilizing activities and contribute to the professionalization and reliability

of armed forces in Middle Eastern partner states. USCENTCOM strengthens military and governmental relationships throughout our AOR through the International

Military Education and Training (IMET) Program, bilateral and multilateral exercise programs, and Foreign Military Sales of US equipment which facilitates interoperability and paves the way for effective participation of regional nations in current and future coalition operations.

Mr. RYUN. Since September 11th, we have been searching for Osama Bin Laden.

Much of our effort has been focused on searching the mountains of Pakistan. To

what degree is the Pakistani government helping our search?

General ABIZIAD. [The information referred to is classified and is retained in the

committee files.]

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. TURNER

Mr. TURNER. In January, I traveled with Chairman Saxton to Afghanistan and

had the opportunity to speak with President Karzai. In our meeting, he stated the

need to encourage local farmers to refrain from opium production. In your testimony, you stated ‘‘Unchecked expansion of poppy cultivation and the drug trafficking culture that accompanies it poses a clear threat to Afghan and regional stability.

. . Creating viable alternate livelihoods to counter the ‘‘easy money’’ of poppy production will take time.’’ What plans are underway to support the request of President Karzai? Also, what resources in the FY05 Supplemental will be used to support

anti-narcotics activities?

General ABIZAID. USCENTCOM supports President Karzai’s Alternative Livelihoods (AL) initiatives with USAID acting as the lead U. S. Government (USG) agency for AL programs in Afghanistan. We assist USAID in this endeavor by coordinating the expenditure of Commanders Emergency Response Program (CERP) funds for

local relief and reconstruction projects and by providing an AL public awareness

campaign. To help counter the drug trade in Afghanistan, we provide International,

USG and Afghan law enforcement agencies intelligence, mobility support and training that actively support initiatives to build an indigenous Afghan counter narcotics

capability. The FY05 Supplemental provided USCENTCOM $854M in CERP authority, a significant increase from the previously authorized $500M. This will greatly

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accelerate our relief and reconstruction efforts and help bolster economic opportunities across the country. Additionally, the supplemental provided $242M for drug

interdiction/counter drug activities to support our operations, $34M of which will go

directly to the Afghan government to assist in the development of their indigenous

counter narcotics force.

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. RYAN FROM OHIO

Mr. RYAN. How many hospitals and city council chambers or city halls, schools

have we built over the past year or two that we actually constructed and were blown

up? How often is this happening? And do you have any hard numbers for us?

General ABIZAID. We do not track that type of data. I can tell you that some of

the structures that were repaired or rebuilt using coalition funds were subsequently

damaged during criminal or insurgent attacks. For example, insurgent attacks on

Iraqi police stations, government facilities, election offices, and oil infrastructure

undoubltly damaged buildings or other facilities that we paid to have repaired. It

is important to look at the larger picture, which shows Iraqi government, law enforcement, and oil distribution and export capabilities are improving to the point

where coalition oversight is no longer necessary. The money spent on the repair of

damaged infrastructure was absolutely necessary to insure this progress.

Æ