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IRAQ: DEMOCRACY OR CIVIL WAR?

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY,

EMERGING THREATS, AND INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

SEPTEMBER 15, 2006

Serial No. 109–250

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

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

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio

BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

DAVID MARIN, Staff Director

LAWRENCE HALLORAN, Deputy Staff Director

BENJAMIN CHANCE, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, EMERGING THREATS, AND INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut, Chairman

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

TOM LANTOS, California

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

R. NICHOLAS PALARINO, Staff Director and Counsel

KALEB REDDEN, Professional Staff Member

ROBERT A. BRIGGS, Clerk

ANDREW SU, Minority Professional Staff Member

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on September 15, 2006 ..................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Ajami, Dr. Fouad, Director of Middle East Studies, School of Advanced

International Studies, Johns Hopkins University; Dr. Jim Fearon,

Gabelle professor in the School of Humanities and Social Science, and

professor of political science, Stanford University; Ambassador Peter

Galbraith, senior diplomatic fellow, Center for Arms Control and Nuclear Non-Proliferation, former U.S. Ambassador to Croatia ................... 43

Ajami, Dr. Fouad ....................................................................................... 43

Fearon, Dr. Jim ......................................................................................... 54

Galbraith, Ambassador Peter ................................................................... 69

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

Ajami, Dr. Fouad, Director of Middle East Studies, School of Advanced

International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 46

Fearon, Dr. Jim, Gabelle professor in the School of Humanities and

Social Science, and professor of political science, Stanford University,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 57

Galbraith, Ambassador Peter, senior diplomatic fellow, Center for Arms

Control and Nuclear Non-Proliferation, former U.S. Ambassador to Croatia, prepared statement of .......................................................................... 72

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

of Ohio, prepared statement of .................................................................... 12

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

of California, prepared statement of ........................................................... 4

(1)

IRAQ: DEMOCRACY OR CIVIL WAR?

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2006

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, EMERGING

THREATS, AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher Shays

(chairman of the subcommittee) Presiding.

Present: Representatives Shays, Kucinich, and Van Hollen.

Staff present: J. Vincent Chase, chief investigator; R. Nicholas

Palarino, Ph.D., staff director; Kaleb Redden and Alex Manning,

professional staff members; Robert A. Briggs, analyst; Robert

Kelley, chief counsel; Michael Girbov, graduate assistant; Andrew

Su, minority professional staff member; and Jean Gosa, minority

assistant clerk.

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

hearing entitled, ‘‘Iraq: Democracy or Civil War? What are the Consequences of Leaving Iraq,’’ is called back to order. This is an extremely important topic, as I think we all can agree, and thus we

want the record to be complete.

Today’s hearing is a continuation of both Monday and Wednesday’s hearing, but a continuation of Wednesday’s hearing. At the

end of today we will adjourn. At the start of each reconvening session, Members have the opportunity to make opening statements

and I will begin with my statement.

Today we convene for the final day of our 3-day hearing, ‘‘Iraq:

Democracy or Civil War?’’ examining security force levels, prospects

for national reconciliation and the consequence of leaving Iraq immediately, later but still prematurely, or when Iraqis are capable

of taking over for Coalition forces.

The conflict in Iraq finds United States and Coalition forces up

against increasing insurgent sectarian and terrorist violence.

Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, who has supported the

U.S.’ objective to foster progressive democracy in the Middle East,

bluntly stated, ‘‘it is now obvious that we are not midwifing democracy in Iraq, we are baby-sitting a civil war.’’

While some may take issue with Mr. Friedman’s choice of words,

the broad contours of his point are clear: The violence in Iraq continues, if not increases; the new Iraqi leadership has not yet shown

the political will to confront it, and efforts to promote peace and democracy are stalled.

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Our witnesses this past Monday came to different conclusions

about security in Iraq, but one thing was clear from their testimony. Our current baseline for overall security forces is inadequate. We do not have enough Coalition forces in Iraq.

In addition, it is clear to me, based on my 14 visits to Iraq and

all our hearings, the 325,500 projected Iraqi security force level to

be reached in December of this year will be inadequate and not

allow us to bring most of our troops home.

At our second session this past Wednesday, officials from the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development and a panel of distinguished Iraqis testified on the prospects,

timing, and conditions for achieving national reconciliation and a

permanent constitution. Ambassador David Satterfield, the senior

advisor on Iraq to the Secretary of State, told us that quashing

military violence is a priority—excuse me, told us that quashing

militia violence is a priority, but that all of the tough decisions currently facing Iraqis, standing down militias, sharing the oil wealth,

federalism and the rollback of debaathification are parts of the solution. He concluded that a grand bargain incorporating all of the

parts would be required to achieve lasting reconciliation.

Our second panel on Wednesday comprised of Dr. Hajim AlHasani, former Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament and currently a

Sunni member of Parliament; Mr. Karim Al-Musawi, Washington

representative of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution

in Iraq; and Mr. Qubad Talabany, Washington representative of

the Kurdish Region Government and son of Iraqi’s President Jalal

Talabany, identified what they saw as key mistakes that have led

to sectarian violence in Iraq.

While they didn’t agree on all of them, all of these were mentioned: permitting the looting that followed the U.S. invasion; allowing Iraqis to divide and identify by distinct groups; inadequate

vetting of new volunteers for new security forces, especially in the

national police, leading to corruption within the ranks; dissolving

Iraqi security forces and not subsequently reconstituting them

more quickly; creating a political vacuum by not having a provisional government prepared to take over when Hussein’s government dissolved; and devoting insufficient attention to economic development.

We begin today by continuing the national reconciliation discussion with our second panel from Wednesday. Following the conclusion of this panel, we will hear testimony from today’s panel discussing the consequence of leaving Iraq immediately, later but still

prematurely, or when Iraqis are capable of taking over for Coalition forces.

For all the talk of U.S. withdrawal, serious consideration of the

consequences of leaving Iraq has received relatively little attention.

The administration has made clear its view that the consequences

of leaving Iraq prematurely would be disastrous. It believes removing U.S. forces before Iraqis can defend themselves would abandon

the Iraqi people to an environment of death and uncertainty, destabilize the Middle East, embolden terrorists around the globe, and

leave the world a more dangerous place for generations to come.

I believe leaving Iraq prematurely would result in a full-scale

civil war, Islamic terrorists winning a huge victory, and Iran being

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the dominant power where two-thirds of the world’s energy resides.

That is my opinion. And this is why we are having our hearing

today: What will be the consequences of leaving Iraq whenever we

leave it?

I struggle with the fact that since we invaded Iraq and dissolved

their entire security force, I also believe it would be immoral to

leave Iraq before we replace these security forces. Again, I also

struggle with the fact that President Bush said: As the Iraqis stand

up, we will stand down.

But the fact is, this has not happened. As of August 30, 2006

there were 294,000 trained and equipped Iraqi security forces, and

yet no Coalition forces have stepped down.

Debate will become more pronounced in the coming weeks and

months over when the United States can withdraw forces in Iraq.

Engaging in serious debate is healthy, it is exactly the sort of dialog our country needs to be having about Iraq right now, but this

debate should be informed by serious consideration of the impact

of our leaving Iraq, not by partisan politics.

We will hear testimony on this topic today from Dr. Fouad

Ajami, Director of Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies; Dr. James Fearon,

Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, an expert on

ethic conflict and civil war; and Ambassador Peter Galbraith, Senior Diplomatic Fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation.

We thank all our witnesses for sharing their perspectives with us

today and hope that this hearing will help illuminate the consequences of the paths our Nation may choose in Iraq. Iraq’s future

and our own hangs in the balance. Thank you.

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

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Mr. SHAYS. At this time I would recognize our distinguished

ranking member, thank him for staying along with our other two

colleagues, and Mr. Kucinich staying for this hearing.

Mr. Kucinich, you have the floor.

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

Mr. Chairman, this committee and this House, I am hopeful, appreciates the effort that you have made, Mr. Chairman, to create

a forum where we could have this discussion. And while the Chair

and I have come to different conclusions based on the facts that we

are discussing today, I want you to know that I have the utmost

confidence in your integrity and in your commitment to this country.

Today’s hearing seeks to explore the question, what are the consequences of leaving Iraq? I think a better question to ask is, what

are the consequences of our staying in Iraq? Despite the rosy assessments of the administration, the facts on the ground in Iraq

are dismal. Iraq is mired in an increasingly bloody civil war, with

U.S. troops and innocent Iraqis caught in the crossfire. The civilian

death toll continues to rise at a staggering and gruesome pace. Attacks on our troops have not subsided.

In 31⁄2 years, $380 billion later, most Iraqis still suffer daily,

without the most basic of needs such as electricity, clean water,

sewage or working hospitals. Every day as many as a 120, sometimes more, Iraqis die at the hands of execution-style death squads,

kidnappings, murders, IEDs and sectarian violence.

Al Qaeda, which prior to the U.S. invasion had no influence, has

now grown in influence and numbers of recruits in Iraq, and has

become a breeding and training ground for terrorists who want to

kill Americans.

Our own military intelligence officials have given up on Anbar

Province, and 3 years after the invasion, our occupation is not even

able to secure the capital of Baghdad. The civil war in Iraq cannot

and will not be won by the administration’s military occupation of

Iraq. Repeatedly, our own generals have told us that the war in

Iraq cannot be won by military force alone. There are currently just

over 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, yet within the government we installed—the Ministry of Interior, according to a published report,

is employing death-squad tactics. Hundreds of Iraqi bodies are

showing up with signs of torture and execution, with published reports linking this to the Ministry of Interior.

How is it possible that our military presence is not sufficient to

deter Iraqi Government-sponsored terror? Shouldn’t this subcommittee investigate that question?

As I said, Mr. Chairman, the question today should not be the

consequences of leaving Iraq, but the consequences of staying. The

consequences of staying, as the President has already stated, will

be the case at least until the end of his Presidency. This will mean

we will not only compound past failures but we will make our Nation less safe.

Our continued occupation will ensure most of our bravest and

finest will come home in flag-draped coffins. Our continued occupation will ensure that more of our young soldiers will return injured

and maimed. Our continued occupation will ensure the bloody civil

war will continue. Our continued occupation will ensure the death

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squads continue. Our continued occupation will ensure taxpayer

dollars will be subject to waste, fraud and abuse at the hands of

Halliburton and other defense contractors. And our continued occupation will ensure al Qaeda continues to grow.

Our Bible says, ‘‘That which is crooked cannot be made straight.’’

I think that those words would characterize our occupation presence in Iraq, because the administration manipulated intelligence,

deliberately misled the public and Congress, and issued a false

campaign of fear to sell this phony policy.

The war in Iraq has been a grave and tragic mistake. It has cost

us blood and treasure. It has damaged our reputation in the world,

it has squandered the world’s goodwill after 9/11, and it has been

a tremendous distraction from our efforts to challenge terrorism

worldwide and to seek justice of those responsible for 9/11.

We have lost over 2,671 U.S. soldiers, tens of thousands more

have been injured, many of them severely maimed; 100,000 to

200,000 innocent Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S. invasion.

We have squandered over $380 billion of taxpayers’ money, all of

it in deficit spending. Over half of this deficit spending is derived

from foreign sources. Think about it: We have to borrow from Beijing to occupy Baghdad.

The consequences of staying are that our troops remain bogged

down in an unwinnable war, with no exit strategy, a rising death

toll, and a country growing bloody and deadly as we create more

terrorists, while politicians in Washington continue to ignore the

advice of generals and pursue ideological and political agendas.

Stay the course? I believe our colleague and my friend Congressman Duncan said it best the other day, and I am paraphrasing. He

said, When you are headed down a highway in the wrong direction,

you take the exit ramp. We are headed in the wrong direction in

Iraq.

Over 3 years after the administration’s misguided war of choice,

failed occupation, and disastrous reconstruction effort, Iraq is our

quagmire. The consequences of staying are far more dangerous

than the consequence of taking the exit ramp from Iraq.

I believe it is time we end this grave misadventure in Iraq and

bring our troops home with the honor and dignity they deserve.

Mr. Chairman, I just handed you a letter requesting the committee examine the role of our intelligence apparatus in the current

march to armed conflict with Iran. History appears to be repeating

itself. The administration is using the same phony tactics to try to

launch the next war as it did 4 years ago to mislead us into the

current quagmire.

According to the Washington Post of September 14, 2006, article

entitled ‘‘U.N. Inspectors Dispute Iran Report by House Panel,’’ the

Director of National Intelligence, DNI, conducted a pre-publication

review of the House Intelligence Committee staff report on Iran

which has come under scrutiny for making false, misleading, and

unsubstantiated assertions about Iran’s nuclear program. In the article a spokesperson for the DNI confirmed the agency did review

the report prior to its publication, yet the final committee staff report, ‘‘included at least a dozen claims that were either demonstrably wrong or impossible to substantiate,’’ including the gross

exaggeration that the level of uranium enriched by nuclear plants

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has now reached, ‘‘weapons grade,’’ levels of 90 percent, when in reality the correct enrichment level found by the International Atomic Energy Agency was 3.6 percent.

This is a letter from the IAEA, Director of External Relations

and Policy Coordination, Mr. Vilmos Cserveny to Chairman Hoekstra, September 12, 2006.

The publication of false, misleading and unsubstantiated statements by the House committee is regrettable, but the role of the

DNI raises important questions. Was the text of the report given

to DNI for review identical to the text later released to the public

by the committee? Did the DNI recognize those claims made in the

report that were wrong or impossible to substantiate at the time

the DNI conducted its pre-publication review? During its review

did DNI also note the same false, misleading, and unsubstantiated

statements as those deemed by the IAEA in its letter to the committee to be wrong or impossible to substantiate? In its response

to the committee did DNI state the inaccuracies it found and seek

correction or clarification of those parts of the prepublication report? No. 5, did the DNI approve the report in spite of false and

exaggerated claims made in the report?

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, these are troubling signs which

this subcommittee has attempted to investigate, and the administration is heading the United States toward a military conflict with

Iran.

In June our subcommittee held a classified Members’ briefing, at

my request, to investigate independent reports published in The

New Yorker magazine and The Guardian that U.S. military personnel have been or are already deployed inside and around Iran,

gathering intelligence and targeting information; and reports published in Newsweek, ABC News, and GQ magazine that the United

States has been planning and is now recruiting members of MEK

to conduct lethal operations and destabilizing operations inside of

Iran. Unfortunately, despite your efforts, neither the Department

of State nor the Department of Defense chose to appear for the

classified briefing. Three months later this subcommittee has been

unable to question State or the Department of Defense directly on

these reports.

However, this subcommittee was briefed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and I believe the subcommittee

should use its oversight authority to compare the statements and

information provided the Members about Iran’s nuclear program at

the briefing with information provided to the House Intelligence

Committee for their report.

These are precisely the sort of questions this subcommittee is designed to pursue. The latest report indicating DNI passivity or

complicity in embellishing the danger of Iranian nuclear programs

should be aggressively investigated by our subcommittee immediately. We cannot and must not permit this administration to

build a case for war against Iran on falsehoods and pretext, as they

did with Iraq.

We have seen similar patterns with the twisting of intelligence

to create a war against Iraq. We must not let this happen again.

I ask this subcommittee to invite the DNI to appear immediately

before the committee. It’s imperative our questions be answered in

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an expeditious manner. Once again, Mr. Chairman, I want to

thank you for holding these series of hearings and I look forward

to hearing from the witnesses.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentlemen. Let me just comment on the

letter, and I thank him for showing us the letter. What I’m going

to suggest is that we first have a briefing with the Intelligence

Committee, and we’ll do that next week, and then you and I can

decide where we go from there.

In reference to the meeting you described where the Defense Department did not show up, the State Department did not show up,

but the DNI did, we had a classified briefing with the DNI. The

State Department provided us classified materials. The Defense

Department said they would give us a letter stating why they did

not come and so on, and why they do not come, and we have yet

to get that letter.

What we’ll first do is, this week we’ll schedule a meeting to go

over that information, try to do it toward the beginning of the week

so we can decide how to followup.

Mr. KUCINICH. I appreciate your help on this, Mr. Chairman.

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

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Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Lynch, thank you for being here.

If I could interrupt and say to our witnesses, this is how we do

things in Congress. We make statements before the start of every

hearing. And we hope that it has some value to our witnesses as

well, so that they can in their questions respond to what concerns

us. And I do think there is value in all three of you knowing that

there is very real division in our own country about how we deal

with Iraq, and having your input is helpful.

I want to thank the gentlemen who are here to be able to interact with the Iraqis, who can share their feelings, so I’m really

grateful you’re here.

Mr. Lynch, sorry for interrupting you. You can have as much

time as you need.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank you

for your willingness to hold these hearings and also thank Ranking

Member Kucinich for his work as well. I want to welcome back Mr.

Talabany, Dr. Al-Hasani and Mr. AlMusawi and thank them and

all the panelists here today to help the committee with its work.

Yesterday’s media reports detailing the Iraqi police’s discovery of

nearly 100 death squad victims in Baghdad over just a 2-day span

evidence the new nature of the conflict in Iraq. What began as a

direct military operation to oust Saddam Hussein from military

power in the interest of national and global security, and then later

became a war against a durable and underestimated terrorist insurgency, is now primarily defined by heightened sectarian violence

and the early evidence of a full-blown civil war.

According to the Department of Defense’s most recent quarterly

report to Congress on measuring stability and security in Iraq, I’ll

quote from it here:

‘‘rising sectarian strife defines the emerging nature of violence in

mid-2006 in Iraq as evidenced by an increasing number of execution-style killings, kidnappings and attacks on civilians, and a 51

percent increase in Iraqi casualties over the previous reporting period.’’

Now, as a result, our brave men and women in uniform who are

already shouldering a massive effort against the insurgency are

now being asked—and this has been the topic of our hearings here,

the issue of reconciliation between Sunni and Shia in Iraq. That

has become the defining conflict in Iraq, and yet we have committed our sons and daughters and enormous resources to that effort.

I don’t think that there would have been many people in this

body if, back in 2002, we were asked to commit our sons and

daughters and enormous resources of this country for the purpose

of reconciling the differences between Shia and Sunni. It would

have been overreaching on our part. I don’t think there was any

appetite for that purpose. But that is where we are right now in

Iraq.

Even now, U.S. force levels in Baghdad have had to be increased

dramatically because of sectarian violence, with an additional 7,000

troops recently sent to the Iraqi capital.

Mr. Chairman, simply put, given the dramatic change in the nature of the conflict in Iraq, the administration’s longstanding ‘‘stay

the course’’ strategy is not working given that our course has significantly diverged since March 2003. We have failed to empower

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the newly elected Iraqi Government and we have now overloaded

our own Armed Forces with primary responsibility over all government services, from training Iraqi police officers to repairing public

utilities and to engendering national reconciliation between the

Shia and Sunni sects, the differences between which date back to

632 after the death of the Prophet Mohammed. That is not a realistic goal in my mind for U.S. troops.

I have been to Iraq five times and I have had dozens of meetings

with your colleagues in the Iraqi Parliament, and also with General George Casey as well as President Talabany—your dad, Mr.

Talabany, a good man—and members of the Iraqi Council of Representatives and other United States and Iraqi officials. I strongly

believe that our Iraq strategy could be best served by implementing

a transparent and fully accountable mechanism by which to transition the country’s government operations to the elected Iraqi civilian government, thereby facilitating the safe and prompt return of

our military forces and decreasing the detrimental consequences

that our departure could have on Iraq.

To this end, I have actually filed and drafted legislation, the Iraq

Transition Act, to establish a national bipartisan commission to

guide and accomplish Iraq’s transition to civilian control and also

to report that progress when it happens to the Congress.

This legislation is rooted in a successful historical precedent;

namely, the 1944 Filipino Rehabilitation Act. At the end of World

War II, the latter part of World War II, this country found itself

in the possession of the Philippine Islands, and by default, because

we had just driven out the Japanese, we found that the military—

the U.S. military was in control of every aspect of the government

in the Philippines. And what we did then I think was instructive.

President Roosevelt established a national commission made up

of representatives of the White House, the House and the Senate

for the sole and singular purpose of transferring the military’s control of that country to its civilian population.

Now, there are obviously great differences between the Philippines in 1944 and Iraq today, but the job that needs to be done

is the same. The only way we can get our troops out of there in

a deliberate and orderly and safe fashion is to transfer significantly

and substantially the government operations from our military over

to your civilian government. That has to happen. That is a necessary precondition to our withdrawal, and we seek it now.

There has been much talk about the Iraqis stepping up. You’re

here now. I want you to take this message back: We need to see

you step up; we need to see you take responsibility.

I spoke with President Talabany back in April in the convention

center during the first session of the Iraqi—the new Iraqi Council.

He said—he admitted the overwhelming military presence of the

United States in our country is not good, it’s not good for our future, not good for the independence of Iraq. He said we need you

to leave, but not just now.

The patience of the American people is growing thin and the nature of the conflict is not something that we can solve. It’s a political solution that needs to be accomplished by Sunni and Shia. Your

people will lose faith in the elected government that they’ve chosen.

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Mr. Chairman, I am thankful that we have these panelists, not

only this group but the ones to follow. Mr. Chairman, I welcome

our panelists’ thoughts on these suggestions and I look forward to

their perspectives on the current political and security environment

in Iraq. And I yield back the balance of my time. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentlemen. I just want to say to our panelists, we are so grateful you’re here and we have such respect for

all three of you. So this dialog is so that we have an honest exchange with each other. We know that your presence here is very

helpful, and I just want to say how grateful we are that you are

in fact here. You will have the opportunity to tell us what you

think in response to what you’re hearing. Thank you.

The gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for

holding this hearing. This is the third hearing we’ve had this week.

The first hearing was on Monday, September 11th, and given the

fact this is the week where we are remembering the attacks that

took place in the United States September 11, 2001, I do think it

is important that we go back and remember that there was absolutely no connection between the attacks that took place on the

United States September 11, 2001 and Iraq. There was no connection between Saddam Hussein and the attacks that took place on

the United States on September 11, 2001.

So as we passed that solemn occasion last Monday, we need to

take a look at how we’re doing with respect to our efforts against

those who perpetrated those attacks and, unfortunately, despite

the fact that the President of the United States in May 2003,

aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Lincoln proclaimed behind a banner that read ‘‘Mission Accomplished,’’ that we had met our objectives, we have not yet begun to meet our objectives with respect to

those who attacked this country on September 11, 2001.

The fact of the matter is Osama bin Laden remains alive and

well somewhere along the Afghan-Pakistan border. Al Qaeda is

still active and plotting attacks against the United States and others. In fact, what we we’ve seen is a resurgence of Taliban activity

in Afghanistan, especially in southern Afghanistan, which is the

heartland of the Taliban. They have seen—we have seen increased

attacks. General Maples, the head of the DIA, testified earlier before the Senate with respect to the increased threat posed by the

Taliban. Despite the increase, the United States has actually reduced the number of American forces in southern Afghanistan.

We’ve also seen recently the Pakistani Government has essentially entered into a nonaggression pact with those in the northwest frontier area, in the Waziristan area, essentially saying the

Pakistani forces won’t come after the Taliban.

We’ve learned recently that we’ve seen a record high opium crop,

historical high opium crop in Afghanistan. Things are not going as

well as they should in Afghanistan and the United States has not

kept its eye on the ball and we have not completed the mission in

Afghanistan.

This country was united, absolutely united in taking forceful action to get Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. The international community was behind us. NATO, the United Nations, unanimously

passed a resolution condemning the attacks on the United States

20

and joining us in the fight against terror. And yet today, just a little more than 5 years after those attacks, we have not completed

that mission. Osama bin Laden is out there, al Qaeda is still plotting, and we are now having a hearing dealing with Iraq, which

had nothing to do with September 11th. And what happened was

the United States took its eye off the ball and we decided to take

military action in Iraq. And we know what the consequences have

been.

There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was, as I said,

no connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. We knew

that before, but now we have a bipartisan report out of the Senate

Select Committee on Intelligence confirming that. And I would just

like to read, Mr. Chairman, Walter Pincus has a piece in the Washington Post today, the first paragraph which reads: ‘‘the CIA

learned in late September 2002 from a high member of Saddam

Hussein’s inner circle that Iraq had no past or present contact with

Osama bin Laden and that the Iraqi leader considered bin Laden

an enemy of the Baghdad regime.’’ That’s according to that report.

I think anyone who followed Iraq and Afghanistan understood

that. Saddam Hussein was the ideological opposite of Osama bin

Laden. The consequence of our going into Iraq has, in fact, been

to take the lid off the Pandora’s box and unleash many forces that

the United States has not been able to control and cannot control.

And yet we constantly hear from the administration, despite the

difficult situation in Iraq, trust us, stay the course.

These are the same people that told us last year that the insurgency was in, ‘‘its last throes.’’ In June of last year Vice President

Cheney said on the Larry King show that the insurgency was in

its last throes. And yet just last week, we had a Pentagon report

that came out—a report that was required, I might add, by the

Congress—that said that in fact the insurgency remains, ‘‘potent

and viable.’’ Not only that, but the insurgency is no longer the

worst of our problems. But the worst of our problems now is a civil

war, emerging civil war, current civil war, call it what you want,

thousands of people are being killed in Iraq in sectarian violence.

And yet I think back to last November. President Bush again,

this time at the Naval Academy, big speech, big placard—this administration loves these placards—said, ‘‘Plan for Victory.’’ And despite that, 6 months later we have a Pentagon report saying things

are even worse today than they were back then, and yet these

same people who say mission accomplished, plan for victory, that

say trust us, they say let’s stay the course. But stay the course is

a slogan, it’s not a strategy. More of the same. More of the same.

Let’s open up our newspapers and ask if we want more of the

same, the same killing that’s going on.

So we really need a national conversation. The President says he

wants a national conversation. He says that 1 day, and then he

goes out and the Vice President goes out and they finger-point at

anyone who raises questions about their approach, engage in name

calling. The President says he wants a national conversation, but

he comes up here to Congress this week, he only talks to the Republican Caucus. So let’s have a serious dialog about how we’re

going to address these issues and move forward in Iraq.

21

I’m very pleased, Mr. Chairman, you have these panelists here.

We’re probably not going to have another chance to say another

word before the next panel is introduced, so I want to welcome

them and give a special welcome to my good friend and former colleague, Peter Galbraith, Ambassador Galbraith who is here. And

during this past week’s hearing I have asked many of the panelists

to come before us to comment on the book that Ambassador Galbraith wrote, The End of Iraq.

And what I would say is whether people agree or disagree with

the particular prescription he puts forward, or they agree or disagree with the proposal Senator Biden has put forward, or others,

at least these people are putting forward ideas on how to deal with

the terrible political situation and challenges in Iraq. They’re

thinking about solutions, not just coming up with slogans like stay

the course, without anything behind them, when we know things

have not been getting better despite what we’ve heard.

I thank you again, Mr. Chairman, and I’m looking forward to the

testimony from the Representatives at the dais now. Thank you for

coming back.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman very much. Again, I want to

thank the panelists for agreeing to come back. I think, frankly, it’s

very beneficial since you have more Members to address and have

an interaction with, so that is going to be very helpful.

I would just say to our panelists—first let me introduce them officially. Dr. Hajim Al-Hasani, member of Parliament and former

Speaker, Iraqi Parliament. Sometimes, Dr. Al-Hasani, I will refer

to you as Speaker, a habit we have in this country, once a Speaker,

always a Speaker. Mr. Karim AlMusawi, Washington representative, Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and we appreciate very much your being here. And Mr. Qubad Talabany, representative of the Kurdish Regional Government of Iraq to the

United States. Again, we thank you.

I’m going to ask, given there are so many of my Democratic colleagues who are here, I’m going to have them start out. But I

would like to say it’s the hope of the committee that we will, during

the course of your opportunity here, have you speak to the issues

involved with reconciliation, like oil revenue sharing,

debaathification reform, federalism; are we going to see autonomous regions, see a much more centralized government; militia

control and the value of militia and how you deal with militia; the

issue of amnesty.

Then, after we have done that, I hope that before you leave you

would then address what this panel is—today, I’ll say it my way

and I will say it Mr. Kucinich’s way—the consequence of leaving,

the consequence of staying, however you want to. I think it will

bring out the same debate.

So I would like you to, if you would like to, just since you’re back

on the panel, to maybe make like a 2-minute opening statement if

you choose to, just some reaction you want. And then we will have

Mr. Kucinich start the questioning, then go to Mr. Lynch and Mr.

Van Hollen, and I’ll conclude. We’ll do 10-minute rounds and get

to our next panel.

Any opening statement that any you would like, preferably not

read, but just shared with us?

22

Mr. Speaker.

Dr. AL-HASANI. Thank you. First of all, let me appreciate all the

concerns both Democrats and Republicans have about what’s going

on in Iraq, concerns about the people here in the United States and

the troops over there and the Iraqi people.

Let me again reiterate that I’m here as Iraqi nationalist and I

would prefer to be referred to as Iraqi nationalist rather than

Sunni. And I think the number of Iraqi nationalists are increasing

since the change happened in Iraq.

I want to touch on some points that some of the Members made.

Whether there was a relationship between Saddam Hussein and

September 11, I don’t know whether there was a relationship between Saddam Hussein and the September 11 incident specifically,

but I think there was a relationship between Saddam Hussein and

al Qaeda.

There is a road in Baghdad called Airport Road. It was packed

by close to 3,000 Arab fighters and foreign fighters when American

troops got into Baghdad, and hundreds of them, they died on that

road. So I am sure there was some kind of connection between Saddam Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda.

I think it’s important for us to remember why we went to Iraq.

It wasn’t just to liberate Iraq. I think we went to Iraq to fight terrorism. Have we accomplished that? I don’t think so. Terrorism is

still there, and I think if we do not stay the course fighting terrorism—I’m not talking about just what’s happening in Iraq fighting

terrorism—I think terrorism will be coming back at us again.

There are certain turnarounds in Iraq in the last 6–8 months. I

would like to mention some of these things because these are some

important events, positive events that’s happening in Iraq and people are not paying attention to them.

There is right now, because so many people talked about the failure in Anbar Province, in Anbar Province there are a lot of things,

lot of positive things are happening. Today in Washington Post

there was an interview with an Arab Sheik from Al-Anbar whose

tribe is fighting along with American troops fighting al Qaeda and

Saddam in Anbar. There are certain insurgency groups right now

fighting with al Qaeda and Saddamist groups in Anbar.

I would like also here to mention, since Ambassador Khalilzad

came to Iraq, I think he played a very important critical role in getting Iraqi closer, and I praise that role and I think he’s doing wonderful job in that regard. He did a wonderful job when we were

working on the constitution. He is doing a good job right now in

Iraq.

Another positive thing that’s happening in Iraq: For the first

time most of the Iraqis, they agree on the personality of the Prime

Minister. Today Sunni Arabs, Shias and Kurds, they don’t have a

problem with the Prime Minister. That wasn’t the case with Allawi

or Jaffi. That’s a positive thing. We have a leader that we can talk

to and agree with him on his reconciliation initiative.

There is an Iraqi national government today. Sunnis, Shia,

Kurds, everybody is participating in that government, even the

Iraqi nationalists are part of that government. That’s a positive

thing that nobody is paying attention to it.

23

People talked about we need to transfer here the power to the

Iraqi Government. Absolutely. We want that. But on what condition do we want that? With the current situation, no. We need to

have some kind of balance in the government which is not there

yet. I said we have a national unity government but a lot of the

institution is not balanced yet.

You are talking about some of these institutions like the army

and the police forces. You don’t have real representation of the

Iraqi societies in both these institutions. We need to fix that before

the troops leave Iraq and then, yes, we need the Iraqis to get the

power.

This fight that’s going on in Iraq, it’s not Iraq’s specific fight.

We’ve got to remember that. All these killings that’s happening, it’s

happening by the proxies of other countries in Iraq. And I don’t

mean any specific country. There are many countries involved in

Iraq, supporting this group or other group. This is a fight between

the United States and other countries in Iraq. So it isn’t just a

fight between Iraqis themselves. It’s not Shia and Sunni fights.

I think the fights that you are seeing, it’s between the political

parties that claim that they represent this side or the other side.

Iraqi people are normal people, and I say that honestly, and I

swear in this committee, they don’t have problems between themselves, Shia and Sunni. I have many friends who are Shia, I have

many friends who are Sunni. I defend the Kurds and Shia more

than I defend the Sunnis if they are oppressed.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me have you end on that nice note.

Mr. AlMusawi.

Mr. ALMUSAWI. I would like to also comment about progress in—

the political progress in Iraq. We have right now Council of

Representatives——

Mr. SHAYS. I’ll ask you to speak a little louder.

Mr. ALMUSAWI. We have Council of Representatives today in

Iraq, we have a constitution, we have an elected government, we

have Prime Minister, and we have national unity government.

Regarding to the balance in the government, I believe there is a

balance in the government today. And we took two issues to work

on: the national unity and also the consequences of the last election

in Iraq.

I would agree with Dr. Al-Hasani about the links between al

Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Besides that we have to talk about

the human rights in Iraq. I think there is an ethical commitment

for the United States to help Iraqis to get rid of this brutal regime.

Also, there is mutual mission today. We have to achieve, we have

to accomplish this mission together. We shouldn’t talk about the

past, which was right or wrong. We are right now in a very serious

condition in Iraq. We need some help from our partners, from the

international community, in particular from the United States, because we believe we have a mutual mission and we have to have

some partners to help us there.

Regarding the security situation, I would also comment that we

have a problem with our neighbors and, unfortunately, this is the

frankness—that transferring Iraq from centralization to decentralization, this is a huge and very serious transfer. Some other

24

countries, unfortunately, are fueling the violence and they don’t accept the serious participation of the Shia in the government.

This is my advice to all Iraqis—and I think we are working on

this—that we have to get along with each other, we have to accept

each other, we have to accept the new reality in Iraq, we have to

understand that democracy is the only solution. We have to understand that the diversity, diversity of the Iraqis will not be content

only by federalism.

These issues are the most crucial issues, debatable issues in Iraq

right now. We have to accept them and then we will for sure make

some good progress in Iraq.

The problem actually also about the death squads, we have to

understand there is some problems between Iraq and other countries with our neighbors, and from that we need as Iraqis the help

of the international community to talk or to see some commitments

through the United Nations or through other institutions that

could help Iraqis to protect borders.

I think there is serious interference from all our neighbors, there

is no exception. And actually the visit of the Prime Minister

Maliki—one of these signals that he’s talking to the Iranians and

other countries—they are also fueling the violence.

The death squads, we do not have any evidence so far about

those death squads. Some of our—some Iraqis whom accusing, unfortunately, without any evidence. I would be very frank with you,

that organization since 2003 dismantled from military brigade to a

civilian organization, civil organization, and right now it’s concern

about reconstruction and development.

We have to stop accusing each other as Iraqis, if we don’t give

up, from this kind of accusation and we have to get along with each

other and to accept each other, or we will not reach an agreement

in Iraq. I think we still need the help of our partners, Americans.

We believe they are doing a great job there and we believe together

we will achieve our mission in Iraq.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Talabany.

Mr. TALABANY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for allowing us to come back and continue this very important discussion.

I agree with most of what my esteemed colleagues said, so I won’t

repeat them. But I would like to repeat one thing that Speaker

Hasani said regarding the role of Ambassador Khalilzad: I think

your Ambassador in Iraq has played a remarkable role in most of

the discussions that have been going on and have served your

country and people very well and we would like to thank him for

his efforts and his role.

I think what’s happening in Iraq today is a mixed bag where we

cannot just continue to focus on the negative. We cannot belittle

the negative, we cannot belittle the challenges that we face. We

face serious and grave challenges in this country. But I think my

two colleagues have highlighted some of the successes and some of

the progresses that Iraq has had since liberation.

Iraq is a large country with a large population, and not the entirety of this country is in turmoil. There are large portions of this

country that are stable and secure, where people can go about their

25

daily lives. The Kurdistan region is an example. Many parts of the

south are calm and quiet. Even certain areas of Baghdad are even

today calm and quiet.

Unfortunately, there is violence and it is important to note the

violence and it’s important to address the violence, but this violence is happening in targeted areas of the country, and this is the

violence that is making the airwaves, this is the violence that is

making the news and is dominating the debate on Iraq.

Sectarian violence is hurting this country called Iraq, and the

hurt is painful. And we cannot ignore it and we cannot think that

it is not existing. It does exist and we must tackle it. But we

mustn’t take our eye off the real challenge and the real danger Iraq

faces and that is al Qaeda, that is the threat of extremism on all

sides, all forms of extremism. It is al Qaeda and the remnants of

Saddam’s former regime that are fueling what has now become the

sectarian violence in the country, and we are too quick to change

focus and focus our efforts on the sectarian violence while sometimes forgetting the real, real danger to the United States, to the

Middle East at large, and to Iraq in particular, and that is al

Qaeda and the former Ba’athists of Saddam Hussein.

I think in my opinion it may be more useful for me to end my

talk here and engage in a dialog.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. The Peace Corps volunteer in me is just

so grateful that the three of you are here and I am so grateful that

my colleagues are here as well.

Mr. Kucinich, you have 10 minutes. If you need a little more,

that’s fine too.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you very much, again, Mr. Chairman, for

holding these hearings and providing this opportunity to hear from

representatives of the people of Iraq. I want to welcome the witnesses and say that whatever our views are on the politics of the

United States, I think that all of us have a great deal of compassion for the struggle of the people of Iraq, for the losses which the

people of Iraq have incurred, for the suffering and the pain of the

people of Iraq over many generations, for the difficulties you find

yourself in right now trying to figure out how you can achieve stability under extraordinarily difficult circumstances.

The people of Iraq did not choose this war. This war was chosen

by the Government of the United States. Therefore, I think that

there is a tremendous amount of compassion which flows to you

from people everywhere. We recognize the difficulty you find yourself in and we join you in longing for a reconciliation.

This is a process we have to go through in our own country because of the divisions which this war has created in our own society. In South Africa the process of reconciliation, which was so important to ending the tradition of apartheid, was preceded by an

insistence on truth, so that truth and reconciliation was presented

simultaneously as the imperative for rebuilding the society.

This is something that we’re faced with in the United States as

we try to once again unite our country. And I’m sure it’s the same

kind of difficulties that you will find. For example, we grapple with

the concerns that you expressed about the connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. However, just recently a report of the

Select Committee on Intelligence, which I have a copy of here, was

26

very detailed in discounting those connections, which, in this country, was given as one of the causes of war. We were told that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in the context of

them representing an eminent threat.

I have to tell you how my heart went out to the people of Iraq

when I saw the initial bombing campaign.

I don’t know if any of you were in Baghdad or in Iraq at the

time, but I can only imagine the terror that struck the hearts of

people who were undergoing a massive bombing campaign. I think

that it’s important for us to find ways in which we can be supportive.

I happen to be convinced that the long-term presence of our

troops there, despite the desire of you to see them stay for a while,

may not be productive, but I want to ask you these questions, and

maybe we could start with Dr. Al-Hasani.

What is the percentage of Iraqis now who have water throughout

the day? How many Iraqis have access to water 24 hours a day?

Dr. AL-HASANI. I think water is not a big issue in Iraq. I think,

probably more than 70 percent of Iraqis, they have access to water.

Mr. KUCINICH. And what about access to electricity——

Dr. AL-HASANI. That’s a problem.

Mr. KUCINICH [continuing]. 24 hours a day?

Dr. AL-HASANI. That’s a problem. That’s a big problem.

Mr. KUCINICH. Can you explain to us how it’s a problem?

Dr. AL-HASANI. Well, most of the Iraqis probably wouldn’t get 4

hours of electricity per day. We tried very hard from the beginning

to fix that problem, electricity problem in Iraq; and I think we

couldn’t do it for different reasons. One of them was terrorists attacking, you know, the electricity lines or generators. The other

problem was corruption. Definitely, millions of dollars went, you

know, through corruption which was supposed to be spent on electricity.

Mr. KUCINICH. One of the hearings that this subcommittee had was concerning the accountability for $10.8 billion in Iraq reconstruction funds.

Have you seen evidence of substantial reconstruction in Iraq that

has helped to stabilize the society in Iraq?

Dr. AL-HASANI. To stabilize regarding reconstruction?

Mr. KUCINICH. Yes, reconstruction.

Dr. AL-HASANI. Yes.

Mr. KUCINICH. What have you seen?

Dr. AL-HASANI. I’ve seen it in places like Somalia and Fallujah.

I was heading the committee of reconstructing Fallujah. It definitely, you know, had a very positive effect on Fallujahns. There

were other efforts in other places, some of them failed; and, you

know, as I mentioned, it failed mainly because of the corruption of

the Iraqipeople who were responsible for the reconstruction and

those also were headed by Americans, American companies. There

was also corruption in that regard, too.

Mr. KUCINICH. We just had a report which has been alluded to

with respect to Anbar Province, how, according to a senior Marine

intelligence official, the situation in Anbar Province has deteriorated to the point of where it’s considered militarily not sustainable

at this point. My question to you is: If Fallujah is in Anbar ProvVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:51 Jun 16, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00030 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\39536.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
27

ince, how does the progress that you report on square with the instability which we hear being reported?

Dr. AL-HASANI. Let me say, first, I disagree totally with that report. I don’t think there is in this room someone who has experience with Anbar or even the Iraqi Government, in that regard, as

I do. I was leading the negotiation at the time in 2004 when the

Fallujah thing, you know, erupted. I’ve been involved in Anbar

Province since then. I think things in Anbar, although it is not to

my likingness, but it is getting much better than it was before.

I’m very surprised of reports saying that we are losing Anbar.

We are gaining Anbar. We had, you know, places that—you know,

tribes. As I said, even some of the insurgency groups who are national insurgents, you know, people call them ‘‘resistance’’. These—

even these people are turning their guns against al Qaeda and

Saddam’s loyalists. I say that for a fact. I know these facts. I live

these facts every day in Anbar.

Mr. KUCINICH. Doctor, you started off in your brief testimony indicating your feelings about the connection between Saddam and al

Qaeda; and I appreciate hearing your sentiments. We, however,

have a report by our Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that

indicates that there was no connection.

I appreciate your observation about Anbar. We have a report by

a senior Marine intelligence expert saying that the situation is out

of control. I appreciate what you say about the situation improving

in Anbar, but we’re getting reports that the level of violence and

the actual incidence of violence are increasing and, actually, that

it appears to be higher in Anbar than perhaps any other province,

especially in the last few months.

So I think that it’s important for us to hear from you; and, at

the same time, we’re presented with this challenge, Mr. Chairman,

of squaring information that we get from people who are on the

ground there with the testimony of the witnesses. And this is the

difficulty because, in order to arrive at the truth, we have to get

some symmetry; and we’re having difficulty getting that. The best

information we get, Mr. Chairman, is that there’s information that

is at a variance from what the esteemed Dr. Al-Hasani says. I

know that we have to go on to other Members, and I’m not—would

I be permitted to ask any of the others’ questions?

Mr. SHAYS. I think it would be good to invite the two other gentlemen to respond to your questions, and I’m happy to have you

have more time.

Dr. AL-HASANI. Can I make just one point regarding Anbar?

Mr. KUCINICH. Sure.

Dr. AL-HASANI. I said in my testimony at the beginning, you

know, there were mistakes that has been done by the United

States when they went over there; and I explained those mistakes,

you know, what were these mistakes.

I think sometimes, you know, I’m getting the feeling there is

some kind of conspiracy against Anbar when people are reporting

reports like this. This is—I know for a fact this report is not true

because I’m involved in Anbar. I know what’s going on in Anbar;

and I’m very, very surprised to hear a report saying that, you

know, we are failing in Anbar; Anbar is uncontrollable. I know we

have problems in Anbar, but I think the improvement we are seeVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:51 Jun 16, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00031 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\39536.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
28

ing in Anbar—you know, it’s much bigger than what people are

thinking about it. That’s why I’m surprised someone from the Marine writes a report like this one; and I say that, you know, honestly; and I’m ready to testify in other forms to tell you more information about what’s going on in Anbar.

Mr. KUCINICH. Again, in response to Dr. Al-Hasani, I take what

you’re saying in this light, that you have much courage and a passion that is informed by optimism; and I respect that. At the same

time, I’m confronted with a report that says that the influence of

al Qaeda is actually being increased in Anbar, that now we’re going

to—I know, Mr. Chairman, you have indicated an interest in kind

of going into that a little bit deeper, and I don’t in any way intend

to, you know, want to denigrate your assertions. I’m just saying

this is the information we’re getting.

Now, I wanted to, if I may, Mr. Chairman, ask Mr. AlMusawi:

We’ve been getting some—actually, numerous reports, and there’s

published reports now of death squads that occupied Iraq. I’m particularly concerned about the role of the Ministry of Interior. Are

you familiar with a brigade called the ‘‘Wolf Brigade’’? Have you

ever heard of that?

Mr. ALMUSAWI. Yes.

Mr. KUCINICH. And have concerns been expressed inside Iraq

about the activities of the Wolf Brigade with respect to whether or

not they truly represent the aspirations of the people of Iraq?

Mr. ALMUSAWI. There is no—as I mentioned before, there is no

certain evidences that—whom those death squads are, belong to

which party or to which sect. So, again, I would say that the death

squads is unknown people right now, but what I could assure you

that, after the explosion of Samawa, there is some Shia extremists

take that initiative and try to reaction against the Sunnis, and this

is—again, this is the law and again is the religious leaders’ statements and degrees—degrees.

The death squads, again, this is unknown people, and we have

to focus on moving the interior and defense secure ministries to

take the initiative all over Iraq. There is some problem there and

some Governorates, and I think the government should be—should

have full power in all the Governorates, and this is belong to how

to equip the Iraqi troops, how to recruit them and then how to let

them control the city. We propose that maybe the people’s community could help—communities—could help and decide to let the

Iraqis, themselves, help themselves to protect their cities and

towns.

One of the issue I would like to comment also about, how to

make progress in Iraq and security on other sites, also. I think it’s

very important in this case to work on setting—or set priorities in

Iraq. For example, some cities, we have to work on the security

side, but the security isn’t priority in some southern cities, but the

security is very crucial, important and, for example, in Anbar or in

Diyala or in Baghdad. Setting the priorities is very important to

help some progress here.

Mr. KUCINICH. I thank you.

I just want to ask a followup question to Mr. Talabany; and that

is that we get various reports here of, on one hand, a number of

killings have been attributed to Shia militias. On the other hand,

29

we get reports saying the attribution to Shia militias is

unsustainable and that a major element in these killings would be

what could be called ‘‘state sponsored’’ coming from the apparatus

of the Iraqi state through the Interior Ministry. This is of great

concern to us because, when you see all of this carnage, these reports of so many people dying, do you have any sense of where this

is coming from?

Mr. TALABANY. Sir, I disagree with the statement that the killing

is a state-sponsored killing. I think—excuse me—Prime Minister

Maliki has made it one of his top priorities to stamp out the actions

of the death squads, and the new Minister of Interior is trying very

hard to clean up his ministry.

I think in the past there were clearly elements within the Interior Ministry that were carrying out attacks against Iraqi civilians.

Mr. KUCINICH. But you’re saying that’s not happening now.

Mr. TALABANY. I think it is a priority of the Maliki-led government to end this activity, and the focus is on the international communities watching. We know that this cannot go on; and this is an

issue, I think, that the Iraqi Government has to address and address firmly.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you, Mr. Talabany; and thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman very, very much. Thank you.

Mr. Lynch has the floor.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Just on that note, Mr. Talabany, I do know from when I met

with your dad that your cousin was gunned down as well in 2004,

so we understand, you know, how this whole conflict has affected

your own families. That is not lost on us; and we do acknowledge

the courage that has been shown by the Iraqi people in trying to

fight for democracy, 8 million Iraqis coming out under the threat

of execution to come out and vote. Sometimes in this country we

can’t get them to come out when it rains, so we understand the

courage that is being exhibited there.

While I’ll acknowledge that—the establishment of the parliament, and I was in Fallujah not too long ago, back in April. I

got to meet with some of the members of the Fallujah city council,

newly established. There has been progress.

However, also, I got to spend a couple of days there because of

one of your sandstorms, and during my stay, the electricity went

out, and the U.S. Marines’ Civil Affairs Unit had to go out and get

the electricity back on. I was in Tikrit. In some of the circumstances, the army engineers had to go out and get the water

back on. It just seems to me that some of those basic services—and

I’ve heard it from Iraqis as well—that they would like more power

to provide basic services to the people who elected them.

I know what would happen in my district if I was elected and

yet every time the water went out and all the electricity went out

I was powerless and my constituents had to go to some other group

or government in order to get basic services restored. I would lose

credibility very quickly. And that’s sort of the anxiety that I heard

among the Iraqi-elected leadership, that they weren’t being given

enough opportunity to do the things that governments should be

doing.

30

I was also up on the border with Syria in Alheim, and there’s a

checkpoint there, a port of entry between Syria and Iraq, and I was

surprised to find that most of the laborers there building that

checkpoint were actually Indian. They had been hired by the contractors there, so there were Indian laborers. Here we are with 60-

percent unemployment in Iraq, and we have Indian laborers building the checkpoint on the border with Iraq, between Syria and

Iraq.

Just a point on democracy, and it’s sort of a sidelight. There is

nothing that makes my constituents happier or more content than

when I can put them to work. If you can give them jobs, that will

go a long way. So we need to figure out a way during this reconstruction process.

If we’re spending money there, for God sakes, we should be putting Iraqis to work and not—you know, not otherwise. I think that

would be a simple but constructive way to reduce some of the tension there. With such high unemployment, it just creates a ripe situation for insurgency and for unrest, I guess.

I just want to ask the three of you in no particular order, would

it not be helpful—let me just back up a little bit.

I’ve been to see General Casey—I think I’ve seen him five or six

times when I’ve been over there, and his job is—his No. 1 job—he

has many jobs, and he’s performing them all very well, and he’s

very courageous, but his No. 1 job is dealing with the military situation in Iraq. That’s his prime responsibility. He is also responsible—he’s been given the responsibility of transitioning the power

from the military to the Iraqi civilian government.

However, every time we have a renewed insurgency—and most

recently in Baghdad but there have been other examples as well.

When I was there, it was Rhamadi. Fallujah was very quiet, but

Rhamadi was exhibiting very high unrest, a lot of violence.

Would it not be to your benefit to have a body, to have a commission established whose primary and specific responsibility would be

to move government operations, the responsibility for government

operations, from the U.S. military to the Iraqi civilian government

in areas like electricity production, transmission, generation, water

systems, schools, hospitals, those things that we’re doing right now

with tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel? Would it not

help you in terms of credibility and, I think, a maturing

government——

I know the framework is there. The framework is there. We’ve

established the framework of government there through the elective process. But would it not be helpful—and I’ve sponsored legislation to make this happen from our end, that we create a panel

to see this transition of power. Wouldn’t it help if, you know, the

Iraqi Council of Representatives and the local government there

had a corresponding body to accept the transfer of power?

I’ll leave it to you to answer.

Dr. AL-HASANI. It would be very good, you know, to transfer this

thing to the Iraqi side provided there is an accountability system.

The problem we have in Iraq—and I think you have the same

problem with the American projects over there. There is no accountability system there. That’s why corruption continues. We

31

need to have a system where we can hold people responsible if they

misuse the money.

The projects that you are talking about are not Iraqi projects because, Iraqi projects, we do it. The Iraqi Government carries the

Iraqi projects. You are talking about the money donated by the

United States or other countries; and, long ago, I thought it would

be better to give that money to the Iraqis provided you have accountability system and let them do that job.

You also have to followup where the money’s going. It’s your

money. When I donate money, I want to know where that money

is spent. You don’t have that system. We don’t have that system.

We are trying to put a system that will make people accountable

for what they are doing with the money invested in electricity

projects or health projects or building road projects or other, you

know, economic projects in Iraq, but, until now, I don’t think we

have done a good job.

Three-and-a-half years of different governments, Iraq’s electricity

system is deteriorating. We have less electricity than we used to

have before. Water is a problem, but it’s not as big problem as electricity. Health system, we have problem with that. We don’t have

hospitals enough that can treat many illnesses, including cancer,

which is spreading like rain in Iraq because of different reasons.

We don’t have enough hospitals to treat, you know, cancer patients

and other illnesses that we never experienced before.

So, yes, I think it will be good for the Iraqis to take that responsibility, provided that you and us, Iraqis, have an accountability

system that can followup on this one.

Thank you.

Mr. LYNCH. Mr. AlMusawi.

Mr. ALMUSAWI. I had a meeting yesterday with one of al Maliki’s

advisors—he’s here in the States—and he informed me that al

Maliki is willing to make some changes in his cabinet to get some

more competent ministers, and I think he is willing to do so, and

this is one of his projects to make some progress in his time as

prime minister.

I will give you an example about the corruption and about the

accountability that Dr. Al-Hasani mentioned.

The last—the former electricity minister imported big generations—generators—sorry—for electricity. Those generators working

with special oil should be imported also from Turkey. This kind of

corruption in Iraq could have—I don’t know how many oil in Iraq

we have, what this is, and so the corruption is—right now, we do

not have a qualified anti-corruption community. We do not have a

powerful authority, judicial authority, so I think all these should

go—should work together. Otherwise, I don’t think we can make

transfer just overnight.

Al Maliki is willing to do some changes. Al Maliki cabinet and

Maliki, himself, should find some support, and we should enable

him to work together with him. I mean, the United States should

give al Maliki chance to improve his government practicing.

Al Maliki also mentioned that one of his problem, actually, is

that some political parties that didn’t supported him or enabling

him to get rid of some obstacles, and one of these obstacles he

couldn’t do the changes in the government.

32

So, from that, I would say just there is—we have, again, to activate the political community of the National Security Council.

Those are the leaders of Iraqi—the leaders—the political leadership

of Iraq, and they have to enable Maliki to do some progress. It is

not only al Maliki’s duty. It is all Iraqis’ duty and also the Iraqi

political parties as well.

That’s it. Thank you.

Mr. LYNCH. OK. Thank you.

Mr. Talabany.

Mr. TALABANY. Congressman, there has been gross mismanagement of Iraq’s reconstruction, since Operation Iraqi Freedom, on

both sides. I think we haven’t proven to be capable to administer

the kinds of funds that we have received, and I think there has

been too little oversight into the funds that U.S. contractors have

been implementing in the country. This has led to a worsening of

the security situation in the country.

The economic development goes hand in hand with political and

security development, and I think we have focused too much of our

efforts on building up the political process and building up our security forces without really looking into the impact of economic development in Iraq. It’s important that we build solid, transparent

and accountable institutions in the country.

We have focused on finding the right ministers to run that ministry, but we haven’t looked into building up the institution of the

ministry. A good Minister of Interior alone cannot turn that ministry into a functioning, effective and professional military. It’s

going to require a cadre of offices, mid-level and low-level offices,

that aren’t there at the moment.

Whether we’re not looking hard enough, whether they’ve left the

country, whether there’s too much political interference from different political parties, there are a variety of reasons why the situation is as it is, but I think we need to—in order to effectively govern and effectively spend our resources—which there are plenty of

resources in the country. Iraq does not lack money, but it lacks an

ability to effectively spend that money, and that is, I think, something that we still need assistance from the United States on, we

still need a partnership on in training and building up our capacity

to be able to administer our resources.

Mr. LYNCH. OK. In closing, I just want to say, as Mr. Kucinich

talked about earlier, we had—at the end of the Coalition Provisional Authority before the Iraqi interim government came into effect and actually received power from the Coalitional Authority, we

had between $9 and $10 billion, most of that in cash. We’re doing

additional hearings in this committee on the mismanagement on

the U.S. side, the largest single cash shipment in the history of the

Federal Reserve Bank out of New York. We’ve tracked it, because

we have very good records, when it left New York, planeloads of

cash, and we can track it when it arrives in Iraq. We have the testimony of individuals on the ground who received the shipment,

and then we have stories of Humvees and vehicles with duffel bags

full of cash bouncing through the desert, and then we have about

$9 billion not accounted for. So, you know, those——

33

We’ve also got stories of corruption, of Halliburton employees and

bribes being paid to Kuwaiti businessmen; and there’s a long, sordid story there that we’re going to have to get to the bottom of.

But, in the meantime, the American people are losing patience.

You know, the financial cost here, as significant as it is, is secondary to the loss of life that we’re experiencing among our sons and

daughters; and I think unless we see some accountability, if you

will, some examples of success and of an opportunity for us in the

near term to withdraw our troops and bring them home, unless we

see that——

You know, we’re hearing from the President that, during his administration, he does not intend to bring troops home, in other

words, stay the course; and that is—as my colleague from Maryland said, that ‘‘stay the course’’ is a slogan; it’s not a plan. And

there’s a significant body of opinion in this country that the plan

has to change.

So my recommendation to you would be you need to help us help

you in a hurry, in a hurry, and take that back to your government,

please. But we need the Iraqi Government with all its challenges—

and I appreciate the courage and the leadership you’ve shown

under very difficult circumstances—but the clock is ticking here,

and we need to see significant assumption of responsibility by the

elected Iraqi Government, and we need to see the very real possibility of reducing our troop levels in Iraq in the near term.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman very much and say to our next

panel, we do really deeply appreciate your patience. We have Mr.

Van Hollen and myself, and then we’ll be going to our next panel.

Mr. Van Hollen.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I do want to thank all the witnesses here, again, and just a comment to start with to Dr. Al-Hasani with respect to the issue of collaboration between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

I can tell you that I think that the Bush administration would

welcome any information you have. We’ve had some exhaustive

panels and hearings in this country. We had a bipartisan 9/11

Commission report looking into this question. Let me just read

from their report with respect to this issue.

They found bin Laden had, in fact, been tampering in Iraq. He

was tampering in Iraq by, ‘‘sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in

Iraqi Kurdistan and sought to attract them into his Islamic army.’’

He goes on to point out that bin Laden continued to aid a group

of Islamist extremists operating in part of Iraq and Kurdistan outside of Baghdad’s control. In other words, Osama bin Laden was

tampering in Iraq, but he was tampering in Iraq in a way in opposition to the regime of Saddam Hussein, not in collaboration with

it.

We’ve just had another report out of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s bipartisan group exhaustively looking at this

question for many, many years; and their conclusion is that there

was no collaboration between the two.

Now, you cited some, you know—I don’t know—Arab fighters on

the streets. I’m not trying to be—I think it’s important that we get

our facts straight, and I hope one of the lessons that this country

34

learns is that we need to make our foreign policy and national security decisions based on facts and not on speculation.

All I can say is we’ve now had two exhaustive bipartisan looks

at this very question, and both of them have concluded that there

was no collaboration between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda; and,

in fact, to the extent that al Qaeda was active in Iraq, they were

doing so in opposition to Saddam Hussein.

Just a comment, Mr. AlMusawi. You mentioned the issue of

human rights, and I couldn’t agree with you more on the issue.

Mr. ALMUSAWI. Say again, sir.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. You mentioned the sort of moral imperative

with respect to the human rights situation in Iraq, and there’s absolutely no doubt about it, that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator. I would just recall—and I don’t want to go into this in great

detail—back in the 1980’s, when Saddam Hussein was using chemical weapons against the Kurds at the end of the Iran-Iraq War,

my former colleague on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations

here, Peter Galbraith and I, traveled to the Turkish-Iraq border

and interviewed thousands of the Kurdish refugees who were crossing that border because they’d been gassed by Saddam Hussein.

We documented that. We came back to Washington. We urged

Members of the Senate to introduce legislation to impose economic

sanctions against the government of Saddam Hussein to punish

him for his use of chemical weapons—this is in 1988—and the Senate did that on a bipartisan basis, but the Reagan administration

that was in power at the time actually opposed that legislation.

They opposed legislation to impose economic sanctions against Saddam Hussein for his use of chemical weapons against the Kurds.

So I’ve always found it quite hypocritical for Members of this administration, some of whom were there during the Reagan administration, to say today that the reason we went into Iraq with our

military forces this time was, in fact, for human rights reasons and

pointing to the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds when

they weren’t willing to impose even economic sanctions at the time.

And let me also say this. At the end of the Persian Gulf War in

1991, it was an absolute tragedy that the United States did not do

more to protect the Shia in the south at the end of that war. I

couldn’t agree with you more. We did create a no fly zone in the

north; and, in fact, the north was fairly stable, as you know, from

that time on.

So I couldn’t agree with you more that there have been human

rights tragedies in Iraq, and it’s a very important part of this conversation. But for this administration to claim that as a justification for military action does not hold water given their past conduct and the conduct of others in the administration in that regard.

Now if I could just ask all of you. We’re going to hear from a

later panel here. Two of them have recently written books with regard to Iraq. We have Dr. Fouad Ajami, who is here, and Ambassador Peter Galbraith; and I just want to read a little piece out of

a review that jointly reviewed those two books. In The New York

Times, it was a review written by Noah Feldman, and he titled it

‘‘Out of One, Many,’’ and the first paragraph of that review reads

as follows:

35

‘‘critics of American policy in Iraq since 2003 have sometimes

charged that the United States created the sectarian divisions in

the country by treating Iraqis as Shiites, Sunnis or Kurds rather

than simply as Iraqis, but the opposite has, in fact, been the case.

Under the influence of exiles like Ahmad Chalabi, administration

officials anachronistically insisted that Iraq was cosmopolitan and

post-ethnic. The most serious intellectual deficit that has plagued

the American presence in Iraq and a crucial reason for our repeated failure to predict Iraqis’ behavior has been insufficient

awareness of the conflicting perspectives of Iraqis from different

backgrounds and communities.’’

Now, I understand that the testimony you’ve given today and

other days sort of contradicts that essential message, but I’ll ask

you if you could each respond, and I’m going to—one to an issue

raised through Dr. Ajami’s book and then one Ambassador Galbraith’s; and it’s a little bit unfair to Dr. Ajami, because I’m essentially putting forth the position of his book as expressed through

someone who reviewed the book.

But he says the core argument is that the trouble we’re seeing

in Iraq results from a profound unwillingness of Sunni Arabs in

Iraq and elsewhere to accept the rise of power of Shiites in what

is, after all, their own country. Shia Arabs have long been secondclass citizens, repressed and kept from political power even where,

as in Iraq, they are the numerical majority. And he goes on to say

that is the fundamental issue here.

If you could please each respond to that, that the fundamental

issue is the unwillingness of a Sunni minority to accept the fact

that Iraq is a majority Shia and essentially will be governed by a

majority that is Shia. That whole theme has been interwoven in

the statements that all of you have made earlier, and I’m curious

as to what your response would be.

Dr. AL-HASANI. First, a comment on the relationship between al

Qaeda and Saddam.

I was in Baghdad on April 10th, 1 day after American troops captured Baghdad; and I don’t care whether Saddam Hussein had relationship with al Qaeda or not. Right now, I don’t care about it,

because I know al Qaeda is very dangerous to Iraq. More than anybody else in Iraq, al Qaeda are the most dangerous group in Iraq.

And I don’t think you will find many people from a certain group

in Iraq can come where the public can say something like this because we know the situation in Iraq and how dangerous it is, you

know, to talk about al Qaeda or other groups, but I know——

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Just on that point—and I want to make it

clear. I wasn’t saying that al Qaeda is not present and active in

Iraq today. I think they—I think, in fact, al Qaeda is present in

Iraq today, and I think they’ve taken advantage of the situation in

Iraq that resulted from the invasion. So you have no argument

with respect to that.

Dr. AL-HASANI. Anyway, my information is al Qaeda was there

on April 9th. They were fighting the Americans in Baghdad.

Regarding the issue of whether there was a Shia and Sunni division in Iraq before American troops came, I think Iraq never experienced such a division between Shia and Sunni until 1991 when

Saddam Hussein attacked Shia provinces in brutal way. That’s

36

when this thing started to appear, but I think America contributed

to that one. Ask me how. I will tell you how.

When Ambassador Bremer came to Iraq and formed the governing council, it was formed based on this division—Shia, Sunni,

Kurd—and you can go and look at 25 members of the governing

council. You will see how it was formed. So that was—and since

then, all the governments after that were formed based on that

one. I don’t want to talk about the majority issue.

As I said, I don’t care whether Shia are majority or Sunni are

majority in Iraq because, in my eyes, these are all citizens of Iraq.

I don’t look at them, you know, whether they are majority or minority.

But, again, when you talk in majority sense, there is political

consequences of that one as if you are trying to say this country,

at the end, has to be ruled by this sect or other sect. This is not

the right way to build the new state of Iraq. Citizenry is much

more important than pointing finger to someone, saying he’s a Shia

or he is a Sunni. That’s what I don’t want in Iraq.

Who is the majority? We don’t know. I don’t think anyone can

point and say that Shia are majority or the Sunni are majority because, when you exclude Kurds from the Sunni Arab, of course Shiite becomes majority in Iraq, but Kurds are Sunni. We don’t have

census that says who is majority; and, again, I end up by saying

I really don’t care who is majority in Iraq as long as they are loyal

to Iraqi state, they are loyal to Iraqi people, and they care as much

about their sect, the other sects, you know, as much as they care

for their sect.

Thank you.

Mr. ALMUSAWI. I would say that, during the Saddam Hussein

time, there was sectarian elimination, but under Saddam Hussein

and his ownership to the Shia and the Kurds, that was unclear for

some people in Iraq. But the reality is there was sectarian and ethnic discrimination, and the Shia, at least, they were not first-class

people in there at that time, and this is the truth.

I could say that the saying of Dr. Ajami is the crucial part of the

reality. I would give you an example about this case and how the

Arab countries, some sectarian countries, who are fueling this kind

of sectarian, still is fueling, one of high-level official from our

neighbors telling one of senior official—senior, senior official from

my party—was not good for you guys, Saddam Hussein and somebody like that, to fuel this kind of situation.

This is the mentality of these countries. They are really sectarian

mentalities. They would not like to see a Shia in the power.

I disagree 100 percent with my brother, Dr. Hajim Al-Hasani,

that he doesn’t care who is the majority in Iraq. We don’t need

who’s the majority, but the majority is the Shia. There is no question about it. But this is a privilege for the Shia? I would say this

is not a privilege for the Shia to be majority or minority. We should

accept each other again. We should work together to rebuild our

country, and we should rebuild the democracy. The democracy is

the only option, the only answer for all our questions.

Thank you, sir.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you.

37

Mr. TALABANY. Congressman, I’d like to take this opportunity to

thank you and Ambassador Galbraith for caring about the Kurds

back in the days when very few people cared about the Kurds and

few joined efforts to bring to the attention of the international community the crimes that were committed against my people. So, on

behalf of the people of Kurdistan, I thank you both for your efforts.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Talabany.

Mr. TALABANY. We cannot ignore the Sunni-Shia divide, not in

Iraq, not in the Middle East. This is an historic divide that has existed, and tensions have existed and will continue to exist, and if

we continue to ignore that these things exist in Iraq, we’ll fail in

our mission.

It is not for me as a Kurd to tell you what my Shia brother

thinks or feels or what his—or his insecurities are. We each have

insecurities, and all of our insecurities are valid. The Sunnis, they

have insecurities. The Kurds have many insecurities.

We have to over-—the way we overcome these insecurities is by

building a political process that can begin to address the main concerns of each community, and we haven’t done that yet. We do

have a national unity government where everybody is participating

in the political process, but we’re still coming to deal with the

major issues that will ultimately bring these people together or polarize them even more.

We couldn’t have formed the governing council under the CPA

days without addressing the quota system. Had we had a predominantly Sunni governing council, the Shia and the Kurds would

have felt out. Had it been the other way, the Sunnis would have

been left out and would have felt left out. And Saddam and successive Iraqi governments, not just Saddam’s government, alienated

Shia and Kurds from participating in the top level of government,

did not make Kurds and Shia feel like Iraqis.

The Iraqi army is a perfect example of this. Look at the officer

corps of the Iraqi army, and let’s find out what the percentages

were, and you cannot tell our Shia brothers that this is insignificant. This is significant, and this is the core of the problems that

we see today. It is that Iraq was founded on faulty logic 80 years

ago, on the logic that everybody was Iraqi without anyone asking

those people ‘‘do you want to be Iraqi?’’ we have an historic opportunity to address a mistake that was made 80 years ago today; and

we should not let this opportunity pass by, ignoring realities on the

ground.

Thank you.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Talabany. Thank

you for your remarks, and thank you for your assessment.

Mr. Chairman, in the interest of time, I have another question,

but I think, in the interest of time, I can save it for the next panel.

I want to thank all of you gentlemen for your testimony. Thank

you.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, gentlemen, very much.

I’m going to ask—and I’m going to do something that I’m not

comfortable doing. I’m going to be asking you to give some very

short answers so we don’t hold our next panel up, but I have a lot

to cover, and if we don’t have you respond to this, we will have

failed to achieve one of our objectives.

38

I’ll preface my point by saying I felt the United States made

huge mistakes in the first 12 months. We started to rectify those

mistakes. The mistakes were all the things we’ve talked about—the

disbanding of the army, the police, the border patrol, the looting,

the lack of cultural respect for Iraq in general—but we started to

turn it around, having now dug a deep hole when we transferred

power to you, the Iraqis, in June where the Allawi government,

even though it was—you know, it was formed not by an election,

but it was a huge start in the right direction.

We saw you in Iraq make huge, I think, huge progress, but there

were deadlines that got you to do it, a deadline to elect a transitional government, a deadline to start the constitutional talks, a

deadline to finish the constitutional talks, and you did it remarkably, a deadline to have an election to ratify that constitution, and

met a deadline to elect that government.

But, candidly, since January of this year, I see no deadlines, and

I see no action, no action to set provisional elections, no action to

really begin, in earnest, reconciliation, no action to complete the

constitution. I know we’re asking you to complete a constitution in

2 years when it took us 13, I know that, but the fact is I don’t

know if you have the time, and I fear you don’t. So this is what

I want to talk about, reconciliation.

I happen to believe that we need to set some deadlines of transferring power. We said when the Iraqi troops stood up we would

be able to take our troops out, and we haven’t done it, clearly, because we didn’t have enough security. But now we have 294,000

Iraqis who are trained and equipped, not all of them experienced,

so we won’t say that ‘‘everyone,’’ but there has been no step down.

I don’t believe we’re going to see a step down until Sunnis and

Shias, in particular, work out their differences. I pray as hard as

I can pray that the Kurdish community is not going to see this as

an opportunity to claim and want more in a landlocked region, because I see all hell breaking lose if that happens. I think your leadership knows that. I’m not sure your people do, and I fear that, and

I want to say parenthetically how grateful I am to have you explain

about not flying the Kurdish—the Iraqi flag because that was a

flag of domination.

My first question to all of you—I need a short answer—isn’t

there logic in changing the flag? I mean, hasn’t the flag been the

flag of Saddam, and wouldn’t it make sense to have a flag that all

of you could feel proud to fly under?

Let me start with you, Mr. Speaker.

Dr. AL-HASANI. I, personally, don’t have a problem changing the

flag, but I think the problem is how are you going to change the

flag.

Mr. SHAYS. OK.

Dr. AL-HASANI. Right now, the flag, the Iraqi flag, is the current

flag.

Mr. SHAYS. This is a minimal one of——

Dr. AL-HASANI. The parliament will have to work on that one.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. I have—there’ll be other questions where

you’ll need to go in greater depth.

Mr. ALMUSAWI. It’s part of the constitution, article 12, talking

about changing the flag. So that’s——

39

Mr. SHAYS. Fair enough. OK, and, you know, I don’t know——

Mr. ALMUSAWI. So it is no big deal for us to change the flag.

Mr. SHAYS. OK, but we shouldn’t misinterpret what has happened in the Kurdish area of Iraq by not wanting to fly that flag

based on—it seems to me I understand a little better. Thank you.

Let me ask you to tell me what is the hardest area of reconciliation. Is it the oil revenue sharing? Is it dealing with electricity?

Is it debaatification? Is it federalism? Is it—you know, maybe,

frankly, having more contractors be Iraqis as opposed to outsiders.

Is it the militia control? Is it amnesty? Is it corruption?

Tell me the hardest thing that you have to deal with internally

with each other and the easiest. I want the hardest and the easiest.

And I’m not looking for long answers again. And if you don’t

know—Mr. Speaker, just because I think we give Mr. Talabany a

good opportunity to perfect his answer while the rest of you speak,

I’m going to go in reverse order and start and end with our sitting

member of the parliament. Mr. Talabany.

Mr. TALABANY. Mr. Chairman, thank you.

It really is difficult to highlight one of these issues——

Mr. SHAYS. Give me two of them.

Mr. TALABANY. —as more important. I think they’re all important. You cannot have reconciliation without having a viable oil

policy, without getting the citizens of the country to understand the

importance and the significance of federalism, without having a

reconstruction——

Mr. SHAYS. Fair enough. Which will be the most difficult to resolve then? I’ll take that one.

Mr. TALABANY. I think the militia issue will be one of the most

difficult to resolve because this is dealing with armed units, where

sometimes it’s not as easy to sit down at a table with and come up

with a diplomatic and peaceful solution to, and I think it is addressing the militia issue that is ultimately going to lead to more

bloodshed before we ultimately come up with a solution to this

problem.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Mr. AlMusawi.

Mr. ALMUSAWI. Federalism could be——

Mr. SHAYS. Which is? I’m sorry.

Mr. ALMUSAWI. Federalism. Federalism. Federalism. Yeah. It’s

one of the crucial issues that maybe make some troubles, maybe,

in the coming days. Maybe next week we will see some also talks

in the Council of Representatives. About the 21st of this month

should be the second reading of the proposal, of the federalism proposal.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just go quickly back to you, Mr. Talabany.

You didn’t tell me the easiest thing to resolve.

Mr. TALABANY. Unfortunately, sir, in Iraq, nothing is easy.

Mr. SHAYS. Tell me, Mr. AlMusawi.

Mr. ALMUSAWI. Maybe I could say that the oil revenues is the

easiest one because all the Iraqis agree to distribute the Iraqi

wealth fairly among them.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. Mr. Speaker.

Dr. AL-HASANI. I think it’s a package deal. It’s very difficult to

say which one is more difficult and which one is much easier. Although I probably think the federalism is going to be one of the top

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issues, the nature of federalism. Nobody has problem with

Kurdistan region, so my fellow Kurdish president, he has not to

worry about that. We have problem in our——

Mr. SHAYS. You just want a safe place to visit.

Dr. AL-HASANI. Yeah, but I think, you know, federalism is—and

then militia issue are the biggest problem, but it has to be a package deal on all these things.

We need to fast form the committee to revise the constitution. It

is like what happened in United States. The constitution you have

in the United States is not the original constitution. You differed

on that constitution, and then you had a committee, you know, revise the constitution, and you have this constitution. The same

thing should happen in Iraq. We should reach a deal on the constitution which has to do with how the future state of Iraq should

look like.

Mr. SHAYS. Yes, sir. Go ahead.

Mr. ALMUSAWI. Federalism—actually, we have in Iraq—we have

to have one governing style in Iraq. We shouldn’t say Kurdistan

should have federalism and the rest of Iraq shouldn’t. We should

have one federalism. We should have one flag. We should have one

so Iraq should be one state. So, within Iraq, we should have one

governing style.

Mr. SHAYS. Bunker Hunt, obviously a very successful oilman and

comes from a pretty distinguished family in that area, came into

my office and spread out a huge map of Iraq. He showed us all the

areas where there was oil now, and then he showed me all the

areas where there was potential oil. He said that when he looks at

this map as an oilman, he says Iraq is awash with oil, and there

are areas that have not been yet developed or investigated. But he

says, on a scale of 1 to 10, the likelihood of finding oil is there. He

said—and I said, well, Iraq has 10 percent of the world’s oil and

Saudi Arabia, you know, 20 to 25 percent, and his opinion was that

Iraq has far more than 10 percent of the world’s oil.

But he said and it wasn’t just in a Shia area or the Kurdish area.

It was all around. Tell me what the ultimate agreement you all

think will be with oil, if that is the easiest to resolve. What do you

think will it ultimately be? If you were to estimate, and I’ll start

with you this time, Mr. Al-Hasani.

Dr. AL-HASANI. Mr. Chairman, take all the oil and give us peace.

Oil, it’s a problem in Iraq.

Mr. SHAYS. I just want to say when you say take, you don’t mean

foreigners take. In other words, among the area.

Dr. AL-HASANI. Whoever wants to take the oil, let them take it.

Peace is more important.

Mr. SHAYS. But don’t you agree that oil is one way to give peace?

Dr. AL-HASANI. Let me be realistic about it. I think oil should be

controlled by the Federal Government and distributed equally

among Iraqi population.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. AlMusawi.

Mr. ALMUSAWI. That is what the Constitution was saying, the oil

should be in the control of the Federal or the central government.

So there is no big deal. I don’t think we in the south, there is a

huge amount of oil in the south. This is not for the Shia, for examVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:51 Jun 16, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00044 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\39536.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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ple. This is for all Iraq. This is for Sunnis, for all Iraqis. We

shouldn’t concern about oil. Oil for all Iraqis.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Talabany.

Mr. TALABANY. History is instructive and we need to have systems in place in the country that can ensure that each and every

Iraqi citizen—the way, Kurdish, Shia or Sunni benefits from the

Nation’s oil to this date it is—it has not been the state. Iraq has

failed as a state to deliver its natural wealth proportionally and equitably throughout the country and people are insecure. It comes

back to Iraq being a failed state, its inception. We need to address

these insecurities and constitutions alone cannot do. We need actions and executions and checks and balances to do it in order to

do so.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me say this. My 10 minutes have ended and I

know we have a panel that thought that it would be starting at 10

o’clock. We told them that there would be another panel that we

had continued. But I feel we need to move on. I would like you all

to just end with maybe, if any brief comment you want to make,

and then we will get on to our next panel. Is there anything we

should have asked you that we didn’t, and then we will get on with

our next panel. And Mr. Speaker, we allow the speaker to go first

but usually the speaker is the closer in our Chamber. So we are

going to let you be the closer to Mr. Talabany. We are going to

have you go first.

Mr. TALABANY. Mr. Chairman and distinguished Members of

Congress, again we would like to thank you for putting this panel

together. I think the one thing that if we can ask or request of you

is that while we understand that this debate that is going on in

this country is a valid debate and that clearly there are divisions

in how you all see what is going on in Iraq, it is important and

critical for us that this debate in this division not be translated as

a wavering of your commitment to seeing the project through in

Iraq and ensuring a viable state emerges from the ashes of tyranny

in Iraq, and that is all I have to say.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

Mr. ALMUSAWI. I think this is a very healthy debate about the

Iraqi issues and I would insist on the cooperation between Americans and Iraqis to achieve the mutual goal of democratizing Iraq

and stabilizing Iraq. We appreciate the help of Americans to liberate Iraqis there. There is no question about it. Most Iraqis have admitted that Americans did a great job for Iraq. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. Mr. Speaker.

Dr. AL-HASANI. Well, let me thank you, Mr. Chairman, and

thank all of the members of the committee for inviting us here to

exchange information, ideas about, you know, how we can fix the

problem of Iraq. I wish just to say that please don’t make Iraq’s

issue an election issue. Don’t hurt us, you know. I think we are in

this thing together. It is a nation building in Iraq. It is—we are

building new states. It is, you know, we are in transitional period.

It is very—this transitional period is difficult period. We’ve got to

understand that. And we need to work together as partners to

bring Iraq back to the international community and to bring peace

to Iraq and its origin and spread democracy in Iraq. I wouldn’t say

any place else. I want to have democracy in Iraq because I think

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that is the future of Iraq. And that is the future of the United

States in the region. Thank you very much.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much. I am going to just conclude

by saying that in my visits to Iraq I leave in awe of what the Iraqi

people are trying to do. Sunni, Shia, Kurds and others. And I feel

that I’m in the presence of great men and women and I’ll just end

with a gentleman that I have come to know and love, Mr. AlAlousi, who decided to go to Israel and when he came back, all of

his security was taken from him. And after the first election, there

was a second attempt to kill him. They didn’t kill him. They killed

his two sons. And he was visiting with me 2 or 3 months later and

I said to him you can’t go back. You need to stay in this country.

And I will do everything I can to have you stay and be safe because

he is a marked man. And he looked at me in horror that I would

suggest such a thing. And he said my country needs me. And he’s

now part of your national assembly. He’s now part of, I believe, of

your council of representatives.

When I met with him in my last visit, I was in his home. He had

no pictures of his family on the walls and I said could I see a picture of your two sons. And he brought out this picture that wasn’t

in a frame and two beautiful young men taller than him and he

had his shoulder, his head on the shoulder of one of his children

and then he said to me my wife can’t—doesn’t allow me to keep

this picture open because she can’t bear to look at it. And I recognize that every one of you in a sense is a marked person because

you want a country under democracy and I know you do want to

find common ground. My prayers are with you each and every day,

and I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you have come here

today. I am so grateful.

We are going to have a 2-minute recess and then we will start

with our next panel.

Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. I want to announce our second panel and tell each

of them directly that I’m very grateful for your patience and am extremely grateful for your participation. I have been looking forward

so much to this panel. I think I am going to learn a lot.

We have Dr. Fouad Ajami, Director of Middle East Studies,

School of Advanced International Studies, John Hopkins; Dr. Jim

Fearon, Gabelle professor in the School of Humanities and Social

Sciences and Professor of Political Science, Stanford University. We

have Ambassador Peter Galbraith, Senior Diplomatic Fellow, Center for Arms Control and Nuclear Non-Proliferation, former U.S.

Ambassador to Croatia.

I’ll just note, Ambassador, that you as well have a famous father

who I appreciated getting to interact on occasion and you happen

to be sitting in the same seat where Mr. Talabany sat with his famous father. So I thank you all three of you for being here. I think

you know we do swear in our witnesses and the only one in my 10

years of chairing a committee, this committee, we didn’t swear in

was the senior Senator from West Virginia. I chickened out, but I

am not chickening out with you gentlemen.

If you’ll stand. I’ll swear you in.

[Witnesses sworn.]

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Mr. SHAYS. I’ll note for the record all three of you have responded in the affirmative. What we are going to do is we are going

to do 5 minutes and roll over for 5 minutes if we need to. We would

like you to not be more than 10. But we really need to hear from

you, and Dr. Ajami, I just want to say that I didn’t know you a

number of years ago, and I heard you speak before the Aspen

Group for breakfast and it was one of the most impressive meetings that I have had. I called up my wife afterwards and said I was

there for an hour and I learned every minute this gentleman spoke.

I consider you a tremendous gift. And I don’t know our two other

witnesses all that well, but I’ll never forget that day when I had

the opportunity to hear from you. Thank you so much for being

here, all three of you.

Ambassador GALBRAITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

STATEMENTS OF DR. FOUAD AJAMI, DIRECTOR OF MIDDLE

EAST STUDIES, SCHOOL OF ADVANCED INTERNATIONAL

STUDIES, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY; DR. JIM FEARON,

GABELLE PROFESSOR IN THE SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES AND

SOCIAL SCIENCE, AND PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE,

STANFORD UNIVERSITY; AMBASSADOR PETER GALBRAITH,

SENIOR DIPLOMATIC FELLOW, CENTER FOR ARMS CONTROL AND NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION, FORMER U.S.

AMBASSADOR TO CROATIA

STATEMENT OF DR. FOUAD AJAMI

Dr. AJAMI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a great honor to be

here and I think in the exchange that preceded our panel I learned

a lot from all four of you and any time you have some free time

on your hands, you are definitely welcome to go down the hill to

Johns Hopkins and meet with my students. Since those of you, you

can’t get paid, we will have free lecturing from you.

It is really a great privilege to be here. And I think Congressman

Shays, I think it is hard to bring something new to you about Iraq.

You have been in and out of that country for so many times. You

have invested so much of your energy and your effort in that, in

the great project in Iraq, driven in my belief by the most decent

of motives, which is success for our country in Iraq and deliverance

for the Iraqis and the same is true of all of your colleagues. I am—

even the fact that you are on the ballot in Connecticut and Senator

Lieberman is on the ballot, I regret being a voter in New York. I

would have loved to cast my ballot for both of you.

Per your guidelines my assignment is really going to be in fact

to just say something about the meaning of Iraq to the region

around Iraq. The regional setting, if you will, of Iraq warrants the

regional consequences of the decisions we will make in Iraq in the

term to come.

For me, one way of highlighting the meaning and implications of

this project in Iraq is a remark made by the mayor of Baghdad on

the eve of the country’s first national election of January 3, 2005,

and the quotation is memorable, that particular quotation is memorable. The rulers of the region, he said, are nervous. The people of

the region are envious. Now there is no denying of course that was

a more hopeful time. And it is fair to ask as we must ask that

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question periodically are the rulers of the region around Iraq still

nervous and are the neighboring populations envious of the Iraqis

or have the populations come to a different kind of conclusion

about the play of things in Iraq?

The answer to this question is quite complex, and I would love

to take it up in the question and answer with the distinguished

members of the subcommittee, and just to focus on the question

that you have put before us. And you, the panel, sharpened this

question. As you and your colleagues weigh the consequences of

withdrawal versus the consequences of staying on, it should be conceded that no one can say with confidence how long the American

body politic will tolerate the expense in blood and pressure incurred in Iraq. It will be safe to say that this President will stay

with this war, that this burden is likely to be passed on to his successor. But the Iraqis are approaching reckoning time for America’s

leaders are under pressure to force the pace, and I heard this from

all four of you today.

The political process here at home in the United States is not

likely to impose a precise deadline for American withdrawal. But

the Iraqis should not be lulled into complacency, for the political

process is more likely to draw parameters on this commitment in

Iraq, limits of tolerance, limits of tolerance, and I think supporters

and opponents of this war will have to concede that we are reaching these limits of tolerance on Iraq.

No great commitment can be abandoned without commensurate

costs. It has to be understood. History works its will in unpredictable ways. This American debacle, for example, in Vietnam it

should be recalled some 3 decades ago issued in the most unexpected of outcomes. That domino in Vietnam fell. There was horror

in Cambodia but in fact the peace in Asia held. So the battle for

Vietnam was lost but the wider war for the future of Asia was won.

It is unlikely—and this is in thinking about, if you will, a comparison between Iraq and Vietnam because we are prone to make that

kind of comparison. It is unlikely that the freedom in Iraq will be

as forgiving as the freedom in Vietnam was because this region,

the Arab-Islamic world differs from East Asia. The doctrines of

radicalism are stronger in Iraq’s neighborhood. There is no Japanlike power that will anchor peaceful change and provide help that

success can stick on Muslim lands in the manner that Japan did

in its own Asian worlds. We needn’t give credence to the assertion

of President Bush that the jihadists will turn up in our cities if we

pull up stakes in Baghdad to recognize that the terrible price will

be paid will be to opt for a hasty and unseemly withdrawal from

Iraq. This is a region with a keen and unmerciful eye for the weakness of strangers. They watch strangers and they can see when

strangers blink. Iraq may have tested our patience and been a disappointment to many who signed up for an easier campaign. We

did not always possess the skills of imperial rule nor did we have

an eye for the cunning and ambiguities of Arab-Iranian ways, but

the heated debates about the origins of our drive into Iraq would

surely pale by comparison to the debate that would erupt were we

to give in to pessimism and despair and to cast Iraqis adrift.

The Arab-Muslim land has proven quite difficult to reform but

look again at the spectacle, if you will, in the region around Iraq

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and look what we have been able to do in this region in the last

several years. Hezbollah notwithstanding, Lebanon has found its

way out of the Syrian captivity. I know that now because of the

troubles of the Cedar revolution it has become fashionable to say

we should invite the Syrians back into Lebanon but we should do

nothing of the sort because at that time Lebanon freedom is worthwhile Egyptians had come to question the Pharaonic system, because if Congress would like to take up a very serious debate, we

should take up the debate of what we get out of the investment we

make in the Egyptian autocracy of Mubarak. The Saudis now own

up to the deeds of the prophets and the sermons of their preachers,

not as much as we like them to but more now than some years ago.

Kadhafi struck a plea bargain, turned in his deadly technology and

material in the aftermath of Saddam’s fall. And anyone who thinks

that Kadhafi would have made that concession without watching

Saddam being flushed out of the spider hole and without watching

the soldiers of David Petraeus kill the two sons and one grandson

of Saddam Hussein, I think really would have to think again about

that.

We have not deterred every rogue in the region. We paid a high

price in Iraq. We pay by the day and I know all of us are concerned

about this. With our mission in Iraq, notice has been served that

the Pax Americana are not free, that there are consequences for regimes that play with fire.

I have summarized, Mr. Chairman, the statement that I have

with me which I very much seek your permission to be included in

the record, and I look forward to the exchange. I thought I would

lead with these brief set of remarks.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Ajami follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. No. You woke me up. This is a continuation of a

hearing. So we already have our unanimous consent in terms of

opening up and making sure that we make that clear. And your

statement will be in the record, any statement of the Members as

well.

Dr. Fearon. Thank you so much, Dr. Ajami.

STATEMENT OF DR. JIM FEARON

Dr. FEARON. Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity

to speak with you today about this important and quite intractable

problem. I have been doing research and publishing articles on civil

wars since the early 1990’s. I can’t claim specific expertise on Iraq

although I have tried to follow this case closely over the last several years. What I think I can do that might be useful for the committee is to put the conflict in Iraq into some context provided by

research on civil wars in general.

Since my time is very short, I’ll boil my written testimony down

into three main points. First, by standards used by political scientists and others who study civil war and in my opinion by any

reasonable definition, there is a civil war going on now in Iraq. The

scale and extent of the civil war is somewhat limited by the U.S.

military presence. I would be happy to get into the definitional

issues with you in the question period if you wish, but to save time

for more substantive stuff, I am going to skip over these now. Suffice to say, if we are willing to call conflicts in Algeria, Colombia,

Guatemala, or Sri Lanka or Lebanon after 1975 civil wars, then we

really ought to call this a civil war as well.

The second set of points I want to make concerns how civil wars

evolve, how they typically end and why. Civil wars usually last a

long time. The median duration for civil wars that began since

1945 is about 7 years and the average duration has been a little

more than 10 years. When they do end, civil wars typically end

with decisive military victories. In at least three-quarters of the

cases since 1945 either the government crushes the rebels or the

rebels take over the government. By contrast, successful power

sharing agreements to end civil wars have occurred far less often,

and at best I would say 17 percent of the cases or at about one in

six and I would say that is actually kind of a generous coding of

what a power sharing agreement is.

Mr. SHAYS. Could you make that statement again? You are

speaking so quickly.

Dr. FEARON. So when civil wars end they usually end with decisive military victories and that would be about three-quarters of

the civil wars that started since 1945. So either in those cases the

government crushes the rebels or the rebels take over the government. On the other hand, successful power sharing agreements to

end civil wars are much more rare and have occurred by my reckoning in at best 17 percent of the cases since 1945 or about one

in 6, and I would say that is actually a somewhat generous reading

of what a power sharing agreement is.

In other words, in some of those cases it really looked like one

side basically won and offered some concessions to, you know minor

concessions.

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Why are power sharing agreements so unusual, successful ones?

It is definitely not for lack of trying. Combatants in civil wars often

try to negotiate them but they usually fail. They tend to fail because once the parties to a conflict are organized for violence, it is

extremely difficult for them to trust that the other side will observe

the terms of a written agreement such as a constitution that tries

to share power by dividing up control of political offices, tax or oil

revenues or the state’s military. Basically each side knows that the

other will be tempted to use force to grab power or change the deal.

Mutual fears and temptations for power then create a self-fulfilling

prophecy of violence. When power sharing agreements have succeeded in ending civil wars, it has usually been after years of intense fighting that has clarified that neither side can win outright.

And it is required that the combatants not be internally fractionalized. Otherwise if they are highly fractionalized, you can’t trust

that the other side would be—even be able to stick to a deal if you

managed to reach one at the table.

Iraq does not satisfy these conditions. The parties are highly

fractionalized and they have not fought to a stalemate, something

the U.S. troops essentially prevents.

My third and final point is that this historical record on how civil

war ends suggests unfortunately that in terms of achieving a

peaceful democratic Iraq whose government can stand on its own,

it probably doesn’t matter much whether U.S. troops stay in Iraq

for 1 more year, 5 more years or even 10 more years. Foreign

troops can enforce power sharing and limit violence while they are

present, but once we go, lack of trust, factionalization and the fact

that lots of the players are organized for violent conflict means that

the deals we backed are likely to fall apart as groups scramble for

power and security.

Think of Bosnia where there is still an international sovereign

guaranteeing power sharing more than 10 years after the war

ended. And in that case as compared to Iraq the combatants had

already fought to a stalemate when the agreement was struck in

1995, and they were not highly fractionalized internally.

Or think of Afghanistan now. Very hard to imagine that removal

of NATO and U.S. troops would not lead to rapid escalation of the

civil war and disintegration of the current political order. Iraq is

likely to be a much harder and more costly case on this score than

Bosnia and certainly no easier than Afghanistan.

In short, I think the administration core political strategy, the

strategy for victory as well as the common argument these days

that saving the Iraq mission requires that we get them to renegotiate the Constitution or otherwise get a fair deal on the sharing

of oil revenues are both fundamentally unrealistic. Staying the

course and even ramping up by increasing our troop presence are

delay tactics rather than strategies likely to achieve the goal of a

democratic Iraq that can stand on its own.

So what can be done at this point? Rapid withdrawal of the U.S.

force I think would be a big mistake. Rapid withdrawal would pretty clearly lead, as Mr. Chairman, you suggested in your opening remarks, to a rapid escalation of Sunni, Shia militia conflict in Baghdad and some other cities and to levels of killing of civilians far

higher than the current rates that are already dreadfully high.

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Rapid withdrawal could also lead to an intra-Shiite war between

militias loosely affiliated with Muqtada al-Sadr, the Badr Brigades

and possibly some other Shiite militia grouping. Rapid withdrawal

would also allow the organization that’s known in English as alQaeda in Iraq to take fuller control in Anbar and the other Sunni

majority provinces than it already has, which is fairly extensive, it

seems. If mishandled, this can become a zone for exporting terrorist attacks within the region, possibly the world.

I think these considerations all point to gradual redeployment

and repositioning of our forces within the regime as a better option

by gradual—I mean roughly say 18 months to 3 years depending

on how the conflict evolves. It would be very much needed to be

keyed to events as they develop. Gradual redeployment would

allow more gradual and less explosively violent sorting of Sunnis

and Shias out of mixed neighborhoods and would lessen the risks

of an intra-Shiite war resulting from an all out power grab by one

or another Shiite faction. Intelligently pursued, gradual redeployment could allow us to influence the evolution of what I imagine

will be a Lebanon-like conflict in Iraq in a way that minimizes the

risk from al-Qaeda in Iraq and prevent any wholesale takeover of

the country by Iran which I think at any rate is extremely unlikely.

In sum, we should not completely give up on the prospect that

Iraqi political leaders will manage to make deals and provide service in such a way as to gain peace and security for the country as

a whole, but we should make it clear at least privately that their

time to do so is limited. In the interim, we need to plan for the possibility that a democratic Iraq that can stand on its own is not

going to take root while we are there. This means planning to put

ourselves in the best position to influence for the good the evolution

of a civil conflict that only the Iraqis have an ability to end at this

point.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Fearon follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much, Dr. Fearon.

Ambassador, you have the floor. Thank you.

STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR PETER GALBRAITH

Ambassador GALBRAITH. Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity of testifying before you

this afternoon.

Mr. Chairman, the dire consequences of withdrawal that you described earlier today have in fact already taken place without there

being a withdrawal. That is to say, there is a civil war. Iran is the

dominant power and terrorists already have a base from which

they operate and in fact have gained strength.

Further, the solution that has been discussed at great length

today, which is the will of the Iraqi government, is in my view

largely irrelevant.

Iraq’s government of national unity does not represent a single

nation. It is not unified but, most importantly, it doesn’t govern

anything. Iraq’s south is governed by Shiite religious parties, not

the government in Baghdad, who run the region as theocratic

fiefdoms with elements borrowed from the Iranian model.

In Iraq, however, the Shiite militias enforce a form of Islamic

rule that is more severe than that which exists in neighboring Iran.

The Sunni center is a battleground and we have already discussed

today the report about the largest and most Sunni province, Anbar.

Baghdad is the front line of a brutal civil war between the Sunnis

and the Shiites that is on average taking 100 lives a day. The city

is divided between a Shia east which is controlled by the most radical of the Shiite militias, Mahdi Army, and the Sunni west which

is under the control of al-Qaeda, its offshoots and former Baathists.

Government ministers rarely risk going to their ministries outside

the Green Zone and most of them spend their time visiting each

other designing policies that in fact never leave the paper on which

they are written.

Kurdistan in the north is for all practical purposes an independent country. It has its own democratically elected parliament,

president, prime minister and cabinet. The Kurdistan regional government has its army, the peshmerga, the exclusive power of taxation within Kurdistan and full control over all natural resources

in the territory of Kurdistan, including oil and water, and as we

speak the Kurdistan parliament is considering a Kurdistan law on

the exportation of petroleum in Kurdistan.

The Iraqi army is banned from Kurdistan except with the approval of the Kurdistan National Assembly and, as has already

been discussed, the Iraq flag does not fly in Kurdistan. Further in

January 2005, 98 percent of the Kurds participating in a formal

referendum, which was virtually everybody participating in the

regular elections, voted for an independent Kurdistan, 2 percent

voted to remain in Iraq. Kurdistan’s powers, as I described them,

are recognized in the Iraqi Constitution, which makes Kurdistan

law superior to Iraqi law except for the very few matters that are

wholly within the jurisdiction of the Federal Government as defined in Article 110 of the Constitution. These exclusive powers do

not include human rights, natural resources, religion or taxation.

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The important point here is that the Constitution permits other

parts of Iraq to form regions with the same powers as Kurdistan

and, as you know, SCIRI is pushing to do precisely that to create

a nine-government Shiite region that would have its own army and

substantial control over the petroleum.

Iraq’s constitutional design with virtually independent regions

and a powerless central government is no accident. It reflects the

deep divisions within Iraq and resembles much more a peace treaty

among at least two sovereignties that were the parties, the Kurds

and the Shiites, and not a blueprint for a common state that is not

desired by the Kurds and about which the Shiites are at best ambivalent. The Iraqi police and army who are key to our strategy for

exit are also a reflection of a divided country. The army is divided

into Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite battalions which are basically loyal

to their own communities.

According to Iraq’s top defense ministry officials, a third of the

army consists of ghost soldiers, names that are used to collect salaries and only about 10 percent actually show up for combat on

given occasions. Iraq’s police are participants in the civil war responsible for many of the abductions and killings. In my judgment,

it is virtually impossible to build national institutions such as an

army and a police when there is no nation.

Let’s face up to the reality. Iraq has broken up and is in the

midst of a civil war. Recognizing this clarifies our policy options.

To achieve President Bush’s goal of a unified democratic Iraq, the

United States would have to put Iraq back together again. This

would require two military missions that we are not now undertaking. First, we would have to use force to disarm Shiite militias and

dismantle the southern theocracies. Second, we would have to end

the Sunni-Shiite civil war being fought in Baghdad and other

mixed areas. The first task would involve taking on an enemy more

numerous and better armed than the Sunni insurgents, an enemy

with a powerful ally nextdoor, Iran. Ending the civil war would require U.S. troops to become the police in Baghdad and other mixed

areas. It is not a task that the Iraqi security forces can undertake

because they are either Shiite or Sunni and therefore partisans in

the civil war.

Either mission would mean many more troops than we have now

and many more casualties.

In fact, the United States is not committed to the unity of Iraq

except in a rhetorical way. During the occupation, it was we who

allowed the Shiite militias to grow from a few thousand to the

number that exists now. And it was Ambassador Khalilzad last

summer who brokered the provisions of the Iraqi Constitution that

basically created powerful regions and a powerless central government. That then comes to our choice. If the United States is not

prepared to build a unified Iraq and personally I see no reason to

expand American lives and treasures to put back together a country that is not desired by a large part of its inhabitants, then the

alternative is to work with the reality of a divided land.

If we are not going to disarm the Shiite militias and dismantle

the theocracies, what purpose is served by our presence in the

south? It is true that if we withdraw, the south would be pro-Iranian and theocratic, but that is equally the case with our current

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mission. And if we are not going to help end the civil war, what

purpose is served by continued military presence in Baghdad? It is

true that if we withdraw, there will be horrific sectarian killing

and widespread sectarian cleansing but that is going on right now.

The current strategy for combating the insurgency has also clearly failed. It involves handing off combat duties to the Iraqi army.

Mostly the Shiite battalions that fight in Sunni Arab areas as the

Sunni unit are not reliable. The consequences of course the more

we Iraqisize, the more opposition there is in Sunni areas. The alternative is to encourage the formation of a Sunni Arab region with

its own army as allowed under Iraq’s Constitution. At and upon its

formation I would urge a U.S. military withdrawal so that the new

Sunni authorities as they develop their own military are not seen

as collaborators.

Mr. Chairman, in my view, the United States is one overwhelming interest in Iraq today to keep al-Qaeda from having a base

from which it can attack the United States and the West. If the

Sunni Arabs can not provide for their own security, then the

United States must be prepared to reengage. And this in my view

is best accomplished by placing a small over the horizon force in

pro-American Kurdistan. It would discharge a moral debt to people

who were our allies and it would enable us to move rapidly back

into the Sunni areas with a powerful ally, the Kurdistan army, the

Peshmerga, who are the most significant militarily capable force

within Iraq.

The choices are stark. We can try to win as defined by President

Bush, but that would require more resources than the President or

I believe the Congress is prepared to commit. Or we can reshape

the mission in Iraq to the resources we are prepared to commit. I

think I have outlined a three-part program that is achievable:

Withdraw from parts of Iraq where we will accomplish nothing,

focus on the threat from al-Qaeda and other salafi jihadis, and support our friends.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ambassador Galbraith follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, all three of you, for your very, very helpful testimony and it is very provocative. So you give us a tremendous opportunity to have some very interesting dialog.

I know that Mr. Kucinich needs to get on his way fairly soon and

our colleague from Massachusetts just wanted to explain that he’s

visiting with some of his constituents who have been injured in

Iraq and Afghanistan and so he’s visiting the hospital.

Mr. Kucinich, you have the floor.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and before

I ask a few questions I just want to once again thank you for creating a forum on one of the most crucial issues of our time and I

must say that you know you have created these forums in a Congress which has not been particularly hospitable to these kind of

discussions. And you have done it at some political risk and I think

that needs to be acknowledged and that needs to be appreciated.

Thank you.

I want to ask Ambassador Galbraith, you made a point of saying

something I think was extremely important. You said that there is

large number of Iraqis, including Kurds, all the Kurds you said,

who do not want a unified country. Under those circumstances,

would U.S. presence with the intention of forcing a unified country

be in effect a prescription for endless war?

Ambassador GALBRAITH. Yes.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you. To Mr. Fearon, are we in a civil nuclear in Iraq right now?

Dr. FEARON. Yes, I would say by pretty much any reasonable definition there is a civil war going on and I would say it’s been going

on for a couple of years now.

Mr. KUCINICH. If we stay will the civil war continue?

Dr. FEARON. Yes, at a lower level than it would if we were to precipitously withdraw.

Mr. KUCINICH. If we leave, it will continue?

Dr. FEARON. Yes. It will escalate, I would expect.

Mr. KUCINICH. It will continue whether we stay or whether we

go?

Dr. FEARON. Yeah. I think the question is at what level and what

would it exactly look like.

Mr. KUCINICH. If the United States stays in Iraq based on your

study of civil wars and how long they last, would you want to make

a prediction as to how long this war could go on?

Dr. FEARON. Well, it depends on our policies. In principle, if we

went up to half a million troops or something, that is not going to

happen, and undertook an incredibly ambitious campaign to kind

of take back ground that’s been lost, we could get some level of

peace and quiet. The main point of my testimony was that I think

that even if you did that, it wouldn’t lead to a situation where we

could leave without it returning to a high probability of violence

like we see now or something worse.

Mr. KUCINICH. So you are saying that whether we are there for

6 months or 6 years we are still looking at a level of violence occurring once we leave.

Dr. FEARON. Yes. I think that the basic problem that power sharing agreements, we—while we are there we can help people keep

to it and not fear that the other side will try to take over everyVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:51 Jun 16, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00080 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\39536.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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thing, but when we leave that will fall apart and that is why we

are basically stuck in the same kind of situation in Afghanistan

and why Bosnia still 10 years later, although as I said, I think that

is a much easier and less costly case for various reasons than Iraq,

which is still basically not a sovereign state.

Mr. KUCINICH. I have to say that each member of the panel has

very important testimony, and I am hopeful that this hearing is

going to get wide publication.

You have said, Mr. Fearon, that civil wars typically last a long

time with the average duration of post-1945 civil wars being over

a decade. You have said that we are in a civil war in Iraq right

now and have been for a few years. So would it be fair so say that

if the United States continues with the intention of trying to monitor the civil war that we could be there at least another 10 years?

Dr. FEARON. I think that if the goal is as stated, that we will

stay there until we can leave and have a high expectation that the

government will survive and not fall apart into internal war or

higher levels of conflict, I think we need to be there for many,

many, many years and you have to—so what was the strategy in

Bosnia? The strategy in Bosnia was to basically have, you know,

an office of the high representative, an international sovereign

power as it were, backing the Dayton agreements and providing a

kind of implicit threat that kept the parties from falling into squabbling over governance.

Mr. KUCINICH. And then there was Srebrenica.

Dr. FEARON. I am talking about since the Dayton agreement

since 1995. The theory was that by staying in a long time in this

capacity economic reconstruction would occur and a set of new interests and institutions would develop that would tie people together and make it in their interest to keep the place together after

the office of the high representative closes up, and that has actually been somewhat successful. It looks like this theory may ultimately work.

You know it’s been costly. I think you have to ask, you know,

could such an approach work in Iraq and it seems to me the

chances—it is a very different case in a bunch of ways and it is

hard to imagine that it wouldn’t be vastly more costly and very unlikely to succeed. The reason being that as long as we are there,

we are going to be—our troops are there, they are going to be shot

at and they are going to be attracting foreign fighters and attracting a lot of opposition. It’s just going to be a vastly more costly

proposition. It’s not right next to the European Union, which has

tons of enticements. I think it is pretty much an open-ended commitment if we keep with the goal that the administration has set.

Mr. KUCINICH. I am going to wrap this up, Mr. Chairman, and

just say there is an intersection between what I have heard Dr.

Fearon say and Ambassador Galbraith say and here it is in his

written testimony. Dr. Fearon says that ramping up or staying the

course had delay tactics, not a strategy for victory. The United

States has three options in Iraq. Ramp up, increasing our military

presence and activities; second, stay the course, that is adapt and

win; or three, gradual redeployment and repositioning our force in

the region so as to limit our cause while remaining to influence the

conflict as it resolves. It goes on to say the analysis above suggests

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that none of these options, none of these options is likely to

produce a peaceful democratic Iraq that can stand on its own after

U.S. troops leave.

And Ambassador Galbraith makes the case that there are forces

that are pulling Iraq apart or will work against its unity whether

we are there or not. Dr. Fearon makes the case that with the three

options that are under discussion as of late, it is unlikely to

produce a peaceful democratic Iraq that can stand on its own after

our troops leave.

So Mr. Chairman, without your involvement and initiation, we

wouldn’t even have had the opportunity to hear this kind of testimony. I thank you once again. I thank the witnesses. You have

given us a lot to think about, and I am hopeful that the transcript

of this hearing will be made available soon to other Members of

Congress so this can be the basis for some deeper thinking about

what our path needs to be. I want to thank all of the witnesses.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank the gentleman. I’m going to yield myself 10

minutes. We are going to do a second round. So we will go through

this.

I am wrestling with the testimony of all three of you because all

three of you I agree with. So and it seems like a contradiction. I

don’t agree with every fact. Maybe I will after the panel is over.

I want to ask you, Dr. Ajami, what is your reaction to the testimony of Dr. Fearon and Ambassador Galbraith?

Dr. AJAMI. Now Peter and I have books out at the same time,

so but I wish his book well and I have great esteem for him as an

analyst, and it was just a pleasure to meet Dr. Fearon and I think

on Peter’s point about how Peter sketched the landscape in Iraq,

consider Iraq today. It has a Kurdish President, Jalal Talabani,

who has brought the Kurds from, if you will, from Kurdistan to

Baghdad. It has a very talented Deputy Prime Minister Barham

Salih, a friend of all of us, I suspect. It has a Kurdish Foreign Minister. So when meetings with the legate out of state now take place,

the man who represents Iraq is not an Arab but he’s a Kurd. That

is progress because indeed part of the debacle of Arab life has been

the destruction of the pluralism of the region. That Arab nationalism insisted on this ethnic supremacy of the Arab’s read on the

ethnic supremacy of the Sunni Arabs and the Sunni will lead. We

can talk about it at another time. There is also the Chief of Staff

of the armed forces, again, comes from the Kurds. So the Kurds are

well represented in Baghdad. And I don’t think they want the independence that Ambassador Galbraith wants for them. I do know

the man who was responsible for the referendum in Kurdistan

Shirka Bacas who put a question to the Kurds who said would you

want to live in independent Kurdistan or do you want to be part

of Iraq. And emotionally and overwhelmingly the Kurds opted for

a show of hands in favor of independence. But the Kurds know the

world as it is, and the Kurds know that Iraq is a better bargain

for them. I have talked to many, many Kurdish intellectuals and

leaders, not as in as much depth as Peter. Peter knows the world

of the Kurds with a great intimacy and great depth. The Kurds

know this Iraq is the best deal that they can have against the designs of Turkey, against the designs of Iran, and against the designs of Syria.

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And then finally there is the issue of separating Kurdistan from

its region and protecting it with American forces and wrapping it,

if you will, with an American flag. I tell you civilization, Mr. Chairman, culturally for the Kurds, nothing could be worse. We are not

going to do it. We will never do it. We will never choose Kurdistan

and ditch the Arabs. Let’s be realistic about it. It is a large Arab

world. We will never ditch the Arab world and adopt a Kurdish

state and we will never ditch the Turks.

Now personally, I would rather ditch the Turks in favor of the

Kurds. That is my own politics based on my own sense of how the

Turks treated us in the prelude to the war. So I don’t think we

should wish for the Kurds what they themselves don’t want and

what they can’t handle. Indeed, the Kurds have a place in Iraq.

Iraq has become a binational state. It is a gift to the Kurds. It is

a gift to the Iraqis. It is really also an example to the other Arabs,

a message to the other Arabs to handle pluralism and to handle

diversity. And finally we turn to the Shia, and it is a world I know

with great dependence. I have written—you know, for the record I

grew up in a Shia family in Lebanon, very secular. I have written

a book about a man named Musa Sadr before the name al-Sadr

and Muqtada became such a legendary name, and I am very interested in the place of the Shia Arab. If you take a look at the Shia,

while Peter brushes them with the argument that they are all

seeking theocracy, the nemesis is not theocracy. It’s disorder. It’s

drift. It really is drift. And healthy debate has just broken out

within the Shia community about the bid of Sayyid Abdulaziz alHakim for a big Shia federated region. And guess what happened.

He was rejected and he was frustrated and fought by Muqtada alSadr, by the virtual party, by the Daawa Party and the Shia

secularists. So oddly and as we are saying that the Iraqi Shia want

out of Iraq and want to drift toward Iran. Indeed the Iraqi Shia

being the majority population of the country are reconciled to being

in Iraq and want Iraq to stay whole and intact and indeed Hakim’s

bid for this big superior region in which he would be the uncrowned king of that region did not work.

My final point is that there is this kind of argument making the

rounds. The Jordanians make it under the Shia crescent. The

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak says that the Shia Arabs are

loyal to Iran, not to their government. This is really quite in my

opinion a very pernicious doctrine. Wherever they are, the Shia are

loyal to the land and where they live. The idea that this big Shia

community of Iraq will somehow be drifting toward Iran, that Iran

will be able to erase the Arab Persian divide, the linguistic divide,

the philosophical divide between the Arabs and the Iranians is

really quite in my opinion really a smear on the Shia Arabs.

We are falling for the representations made to us by the Sunni

rulers who are falling for these representations. I had the great

honor of meeting Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani and he is of Iranian

birth and if you go to Najaf and meet with the seminarians and

the clerics in Najaf, what you hear from them behind closed doors

and when you talk to many of them, they have no use for Iran’s

mullah factions. They have no use for the clerical state of the Iranians. So we should understand the Shias of Iraq are Arabs

through and through. There is nothing that separates them, by the

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way, ethnically or linguistically, from the Sunni Arabs in Iraq. It

just happened that they went to the market towns of Najaf and

Karbala and they were converted to Shiism rather than to the

Sunni doctrine. They are Arabs. They are Iraqis. There are deep

philosophical and linguistic differences between the Iraqis and the

Iranis, and many, many, many of the Iraqi exiles who spent time

in Iran who have returned with a deep animus toward the Iranians

with memories of the persecution by the Iranians with tales of Iranian puerilism toward them. And we talk a lot about how the

Americans betrayed and abandoned the Shia and Kurdish rebellions in 1991. That was a disgraceful thing that we did, but guess

who else did not come to the rescue of the Shia of the southern

Iraq? The Iranians, nor did they allow Iraqis who were living in

Iran to cross the border to fight with their kinsmen. So we should

just be done with this idea that you know that Iran is going to run

away with 25 million Iraqis, carry them and just put them in this

big Persian imperium and make them clones of the Iranians. It

isn’t—it’s ahistorical. It is not deep. It is not deep. This linguistic

divide between Arab and Persian, this temperamental divide, this

ethnic divide is very important and I think we should describe Iraq

as the Kurds want to stay in Iraq not because they love Iraq. There

is no other choice. The Shia want to stay in Iraq because they are

the majority.

The Sunnis, we can talk about them. They are supremacists,

many of them. They ruled Iraq and for them Iraq is now a stolen

country. We came and took it away from them and you know, I

think they’re coming to the recognition that their supremacy cannot be maintained and I think perhaps they are coming to their

senses.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. I am going to go to you, Mr. Galbraith,

Ambassador Galbraith, because I do want to make sure that there

is some response. But I want to ask you, Dr. Fearon, and it will

probably be for my second questioning because I am going to try

to stay 10 minutes and we can go back and forth with my colleague, Mr. Van Hollen. I am going to ask you where you found the

most successful resolutions of civil war. I am going to ask you to

tell me what I would have seen and say like South Africa and is

there any—are there any areas where we can find some hope that

while you are using the percentages, you know, where have we

seen some successes and can we draw parallels or not. Because I

happen to see some extraordinarily good faith efforts on the part

of Iranians, or excuse me, Iraqis to sort out their differences.

I just want to ask you, Dr. Ajami, to speak before I go to the Ambassador. Is the—does Iraq break up, so you have these three

units, because I look at Baghdad and I look at other areas and I

don’t see it so clean and neat where you can just have these different, you know, a Shia, a Sunni and a Kurdish area.

Dr. AJAMI. Mr. Chairman, there is no clean breakup in Iraq, as

you know. And I think the prospects would be the Iraqis will live

unhappily together for quite some time. And again as a child of

Lebanon and a student of Lebanon, there is something stubborn of

our nation states: They persevere. They continue to exist because

they are almost—usually they are just kind of a convenience. People can’t find another form of life. And I think Iraq will continue

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in this fashion. And I think Baghdad itself, I mean, the great question would be what becomes of that city. And who would have it

and would it be partitioned along sectarian and ethnic lines. It

could be a catastrophe for the Iraqis. If that is the future they end

up with then indeed this war would have been a terrible, terrible

war. We’ve rolled history’s dice and it would be that we lost, and

the Iraqis lost.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Galbraith, I am going to go to Mr. Van Hollen,

but when I start my second round, this is the question that I’ll ask:

I would like you to speak to what you heard with Dr. Ajami. But

also I would like you to speak to what I heard when I visited other

nations in the region and I was lectured by other Arabs that Iran

would not tolerate three separate states for more than one reason.

The Kurdish area, obviously the Turks would have a challenge.

The Syrians, I am told, and I would like your—I am told that Iran

would have huge problems with the Kurdish state. But I am also

told that the Iranians would have a hard time with a Shia Arab

community given they also have a fairly large Arab Shia community in Iran, that they fear not just a Kurdish state but a Shia

Arab state. And so I’ll be coming to ask you to comment on that

and anything else you would like to but, Mr. Van Hollen, you have

the floor.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me thank all

of you for your excellent testimony and just pick up, Mr. Ajami,

where you left off, which is that if you see the outcome that you

painted with a partition essentially that Iraq is lost, and of course

the title of Mr. Galbraith’s book is the End of Iraq. And I don’t

think he says it with any satisfaction. I think it’s more a portrait

of how he portrays the reality in the ground. In your statement,

you say Iraq seems ungovernable. I think clearly the facts on the

ground show that the situation is getting worse, not better. You

quote the outgoing British Ambassador and said, just quote from

your testimony, ‘‘the prospect of a low intensity civil war and a de

facti division of Iraq is probably more likely at this stage than a

successful transition to a stable democracy,’’ according to his government. So I mean, the issue we are all grappling with I guess

is what really do the Iraqi people want because I think we would

all agree that it is not what we all wish really for Iraq at this

point. It is really a decision for the Iraqi people. And we heard the

testimony of Mr. Talabany, and I agree with you that those who

are part of the current government, that they do want a united

Iraq. I think that is absolutely true. Mr. Talabany, Karim

AlMusawi, others you mentioned, both Kurds, Sunni and Shia. The

question really Mr. Galbraith has raised, are they really governing.

What do they govern? Are really, are these other groups more in

control of the future of Iraq than those who are in the government

today? And if in fact Mr. Galbraith is right and Mr. Fearon is right,

who I understood his testimony also we have a civil war, and the

question as I understand his testimony is really quite how do you

manage that to a position where you can reduce as much as possible the violence. But maybe at the end of the day I think you

would agree that the result may also be some kind of de facto partition.

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So I guess the question for all of us, and, Mr. Ajami, I ask you,

how do we know when we have reached the point where Iraq has

fallen apart? Mr. Galbraith’s testimony, as I say, he said well, we

are now already at the point where we are fighting to put it back

together, not holding it together. I understand from your testimony

you think that we are still holding it together but it increasingly

is falling apart. How do we know when we have reached that

point?

Dr. AJAMI. I wish I knew the answer, Congressman Van Hollen.

I think it’s a very good question, and I think we understand that

Iraq has been full of surprises and full of disappointment and full

of heartbreak. I mean, we—and there is a question had we known

then, if you will, what we now know, would we still have pulled

the trigger in 2003. I really don’t know the answer. I have written

a book. I have spent these last 3 years in and out of Iraq. I have

and even Congressman Shays have forgotten, but we hung around

on one trip with the incomparable General Petraeus when the

chairman was there.

We just—we are—all we roll history’s dice and I have this very

philosophical attitude about this war in Iraq, the Arabs have a

word, which I like very much called Maktoob, ‘‘written.’’ I think

this war was written, was fated. Once 9/11 happened, I can tell you

it really, it is not an attempt to kind of claim now what I didn’t

think then. Immediately I knew that we would end up, we would

go and I even had an expression, there was a highway that would

lead from Kabul to Baghdad because I just understood that Kabul

would not give us satisfaction for what happened to us on 9/11,

that subliminally nations sometimes do things subliminally.

We concluded that it was Arabs who attacked us and we were

going to shoot Arab targets, and Saddam. He drew the short straw,

and we wanted to take on Arab radicalism and we went from

Kabul, which the Arabs had rented out for $20 million a year as

we know. We went from Kabul to Baghdad to take a swipe as this

Arab radicalism, to try to reform the Arab world.

Was that the right place to make a stand against Arab radicalism? I don’t know. Has it been frustrating in the extreme? Absolutely. Were there some real stakes in Iraq? I think so. I really

think so. And one day, I very much would like to spend some time

trying to explain at least my—not now because the time here is

limited—my sense of how Iraq emerged out of 9/11. The Senate report, which I read very, very carefully, tries to establish and tries

to question whether there is this link, if you will, between Saddam

and 9/11 in kind of a Anglo Saxon way of inquiry, rules of evidence.

That, I think, is doomed. You know, we don’t need to spend time

thinking. Did Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker, meet with Iraqi

intelligence? It is idle. I didn’t really dwell on that.

My concern was different. My concern was Arabs attacked us on

9/11, young Arabs who came right from the mainstream of Arab society, Saudis, Lebanese, Egyptians and that we tried, in some way,

to go at this phenomenon, and Iraq was the place, this return address, if you will, that we chose. It might not have been perfect,

but it gave us a place and gave us a kind of a battleground to take

on the furies of the Arab world. It is not perfect.

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Well, now, I appreciate the philosophical context from your own perspective that you just outlined. I guess I

would clearly disagree that this was a fated decision. I think it was

a very intentional decision that we didn’t have to fall into through

any kind of fate, and I would just point out, as you well know, that

if the intention was to go after people who attacked us based on

a form of Islamic extremism, that the one target, Saddam Hussein,

would not be the appropriate target, because he was many bad

things, and he was a brutal dictator, but one thing he was not was

a purveyor of Islamic extremism.

And let me just get back to my question of my panelists. Dr.

Fearon, do you believe, as Mr. Galbraith does, and I understand—

I think I read your testimony, you suggest we are in a civil war.

You make that very clear. And where do you see—where do you see

the end game of the civil war going?

In other words do you think we have gotten to the point where

the clear result of this will be some form of partition? We already

have these internal migrations within Baghdad. I agree with the

chairman and others. Baghdad is a city of 5 million people, people

of all different backgrounds, but unfortunately, given the violence,

you are seeing this day-to-day migration and a de facto separation

on the ground.

So I guess I would ask, with respect to you, Dr. Fearon, do you

also see the end result of this civil war—and again based on your

look at the situation in the former Yugoslavia, the Balkans, being

some form of partition where the best the United States can do is

to try and manage the—manage the violence so it doesn’t spiral

even more out of control as this partition happens?

Dr. FEARON. Actually, no. I am very much against pushing for

the United States to push for partition of Iraq. I think that is an

absolutely terrible idea.

I think it could happen over time that the Iraqis come to that.

It is possible. I don’t think it is necessarily the case that it is necessarily going to happen or somehow inevitable or fated by the fact

that these are three natural distinct nations. I don’t think that is

true. But it could—you know, there are lots of ways things could

play out, and that is one of the ways things could play out.

But for us, to try and push this on them, first of all, I think it

is none of our business. It is for them to decide.

Second, I think it is abundantly evident that while, you know, almost all Kurds would, in some notion of their best possible world,

have an independent state in the north there, this is not at all the

case for Sunnis and Shias who say, over and over again, and you

read it from reporting, good reporting by U.S. reporters, and if you

talk, from talking to people who visit the region and know people

there, they say we are Iraqis. And I think they believe that passionately that they disagree on what that implies about politics.

So I think, you know, what is the problem with pushing this on

them? Well for one thing—there is a number of problems. But one

of them is that it would basically confirm—confirm very damaging

conventional wisdom among Arabs in the region about to why

things are going badly in Iraq. When I talk to people who talk to

people in the streets around the Arab world or in Iraq and say,

well, what do they think about what is going on and why are

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things going badly, their theory—and this may be surprising to

you, us here—and their theory, a very common theory is that the

United States is an incredibly powerful country.

If things are going badly, it has to be because they want it to go

badly. And why do they want it to go badly? Because they want to

keep the Arabs down, they want to break us up, they are serving

the interests of their Israeli masters. Now, that is crazy from our

perspective, and especially the last part is just kind of nuts. But

that is an extremely common perspective.

If we go in and start pushing for partition, what will it do? It

will just leave people to say, there, absolutely confirms what our

theory was.

Let me say, a tiny bit more about long run outcomes. I think the

model here really shouldn’t be—it is not Yugoslavia. It is much

more. Lebanon, I think, is a much more appropriate historical analogy. And what we are likely to see pretty much, whether we stay

or go, is a gradual or depending on how fast we go rapid transition

to a Lebanon-like situation where you have basically a political authority insofar as its exists, devolves down to region, city, even

neighborhood levels, there are lots of militias, there is at lot of

fighting between militias off and on, a great deal of the fighting is

not across sectarian lines but within it.

It is important to remember about the Lebanese conflict there

was a huge amount of fighting among the Christian militias and

among the Muslim militias. There’s going to be a ton of foreign

intervention just like there was in Lebanon, that will periodically

escalate they a lot, will help things de-escalate but I think we are

looking at a long run conflict that will be quite messy. Hopefully,

it will settle down to a fairly—not high intensity conflict for a long

period of time.

In the long run, is there a possibility of a stable Iraq? Yes, I

think so. I think there is actually a basis there which is based on

economic efficiency. There is common interests of all these people

there in efficiently producing, controlling, and distributing and selling oil.

I don’t understand. Maybe Ambassador Galbraith can explain

what is the Kurdish theory, if they were independent, what is the

theory about how they are going to be able to profit from the oil

if they have to export it across countries that can basically tax

away their profits? It seems to me there is a very good interest in

having an Iraqi central government to manage kind of efficient exploitation of the oil resources there.

But how do you get there? What is the—the only kind of longrun stable basis for Iraq that I can see is that the Sunnis, and to

some extent, the Kurds, recognize that there is—they need to make

significant concessions on oil share, on revenue sharing, and in government to the Sunnis on the implicit recognition that if they don’t,

they are going to face a disabling long run insurgency that will

make it hard for them to have peace and economic prosperity.

But I just don’t think we can get there quickly because there are

all these Sunnis who believe, that have guns and believe they can

take power if the United States leaves, and there are Shia leaders

who think like Muktada al-Sadr, I believe, that they can grab

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power and the dictators, if the United States leaves, and it is very

hard to disabuse them of those beliefs while we are there.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I think we got to the heart of the issue here,

and I would welcome Ambassador Galbraith’s response to that, because the fault lines in this hearing.

Ambassador GALBRAITH. Thank you very much, and I think I will

note that actually I, in addition to knowing something about Iraq,

I actually also know something about Yugoslavia. And perhaps the

best way to describe Iraq is the combination of Yugoslavia and Lebanon. Clearly, Kurdistan is a Slovenia, Croatia, Lithuania, Latvia,

Estonia kind of situation.

And I have great respect for Dr. Ajami. I reviewed his book,

and—very favorably in the New York review of books.

But I don’t think it is—I don’t think that one can justly dismiss

a vote of 2 million Kurds, 98 percent voting for independence is

meaningless sentimentality. Why are the Kurds given less credit

than Croatians or Slovenians who voted on independence? I think

they are serious about it.

And the truth is, in more than a quarter century of visiting

Kurdistan and knowing the Kurds, I have not met one who has

told me that he would prefer to be—he or she would prefer to be

part of Iraq if he had the option of an independent Kurdistan.

And it is in my judgment—and I suppose this is my experience

in Yugoslavia—that it is very hard to get people to commit to a

state that they actually don’t believe in. And it is not just that the

Kurds don’t want to be independent. It is that they positively hate

Iraq.

Now, Barham Salih, Jalal Talabani, Hoshir Sofali, wonderful

close friends of mine of long standing. They are sincere. They are

doing everything in their power to end the violence. At a level

below that in Kurdistan, there is a lot of ambivalence because everything bad that happens in Iraq, is something that brings them

closer to what they want, which is independence.

And at a level below that, people don’t even disguise their feelings. And it is very understandable. What has Iraq meant to

Kurdistan? It has meant—not just Saddam Hussein, but 80 years

of repression culminating in the genocide that you and I documented in the 1980’s. That doesn’t escape from peoples’ memories,

plus of course, you have had the 15 years of independence, and

there is this growing confidence.

Now, you can seek speak of Kurdistan of the Kurds are well represented in Baghdad. That is absolutely true.

What are they doing in Baghdad? One of the things they are

doing, it is not the only thing they are doing, but one of them is

defending Kurdistan. And one of the things that they are defending

is that the government in Baghdad should have absolutely no presence, no authority, in Kurdistan.

So they are defending what they are doing—and it is a shrewd

strategy—they are defending the current de facto independence of

Kurdistan.

That is not a reflection of a commitment to a unified Iraq. That

is a reflection of a shrewd strategy. And what you also see from

these leaders, is a shrewd strategy in the fact sense that they are

not going to declare independence tomorrow and they have a public

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that understands that precisely for the reasons that Dr. Ajami has

described.

But we have to, when we look at the Kurdish situation, hasn’t

received a lot of attention because there have been fewer problems.

There are all sorts of things that can change if this if you want to

look ahead. Of course, there is a referendum on Kirkuk that is in

the constitution. If that referendum somehow isn’t held, you are

going to see a different situation. There is the Saddam trial.

Mr. SHAYS. Can you just explain, when you say different situation, I don’t know what that means. You said if there isn’t the election referendum, you said, different things, can you be for more

specific?

Ambassador GALBRAITH. Sure, I understand right now while

there is this popular desire for independence, which I believe is

every bit as strong as in Croatia, Slovenia, or any of these other

countries that became independent, the leaders are not pushing for

independence right now.

But I am suggesting there are events that could trigger

Kurdistan’s independence.

And I was just citing a couple of them, one of which would be

if, for some reason, the referendum was not held in accordance to

the constitution.

Mr. SHAYS. So then your point was that then there would be a

movement toward independence?

Ambassador GALBRAITH. It could be. I am just giving an example.

There was another example in today’s paper which I think is brilliant. You have the judge in the Saddam trial saying—the judge in

the trial of Saddam Hussein for the Kurdish genocide saying that

Saddam Hussein was not a dictator.

Now imagine a situation in which Saddam Hussein is a acquitted

of the crimes against the Kurds and convicted of the crimes against

the Shiites.

These are the kinds of events that can take the next step, which

is, I think, a question you have, had that can take it the next step,

in a country where there is no shared identity as between Arabs

and Kurds. Now I will readily agree that the situation in the, between the Sunni Arabs and the Shiites is different. There are elements of nationalism among the Shiites. But it is by no means the

notion that is a parallel situation.

Just a point about the oil because this is a—oh, 2 more points

I want to make. First, I want to be clear. I do not believe the

United States should push for the partition of Iraq.

I am not an advocate of the partition of Iraq.

I believe that Iraq has already broken up. And I am an opponent

of putting it back together, of using, of sending American troops,

American treasure, to try to do something that is in any event not

desired by a significant part of the population. And I think that is

a critical distinction. I could not agree with Dr. Fearon more that

the United States should not be in the business of breaking up

Iraq. But the fact is, this has happened. Kurdistan I have already

described.

You have this terrible civil war in Baghdad. If there were some

feasible way to prevent it, I would urge—I would do it just as a

humanitarian matter. But there isn’t. And we are not doing it. And

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we can have—we can send a few more troops to Baghdad and it

makes a temporary difference, especially if you turn out not to

count the car bombings in the casualty tolls. But the fact is that

if this sectarian violence comes back, we are not going to use our

troops as policemen. It would require the kind of major foreign

intervention such as Syria and Lebanon or NATO in Bosnia to

bring this to an end. And it is not going to happen.

So this division, including the division in Baghdad, between a

Shiite east and a Sunni west and the ending of mixed areas that

even the breakup of mixed marriages, is already happening. And

nobody can be advocating that. But in the end, it is my judgment

that a Shiite-governed region and a Sunni-governed region perhaps

in some kind of federation, is a better result than an endless power

struggle between these two groups for domination.

Oil is the other point worth commenting on.

First, there are pipelines that go out of Iraq, and there are set

tariffs so I don’t think as a practical matter an independent, a

land-locked independent Kurdistan would be able to export its oil.

This is fairly standard. It is also likely that if Kurdistan were to

become independent, it would be through a process of negotiation

with the Arabs, many of whom, including one of the Arab panelists

today, say bluntly, yes, I can understand why the Kurds want to

be independent, and I think we should let them if that is what they

want. So it is likely if there were an independent Kurdistan its

best relationship would be with Arab Iraq.

The issue of, as you know, the Iraqi constitution has a complicated formula on oil.

Actually, technically, oil is not an exclusive power of the central

Government, meaning that regional law applies and regional power

both producing fields and new fields.

But new fields are clearly under the control of the region. And

this is why I can say that Kurdistan—all of Kurdistan’s oil is controlled by Kurdistan because there are no existing fields if you exclude Kirkuk.

But then there is the separate issue of revenue sharing to which

the Iraqis have reached an agreement on revenue sharing with

each of these—not a constitutional deal, which is not a good idea,

but a law in which each region will get revenues from oil according

to their population, if it, in fact, is implemented. It is very complicated.

One of the complications is how much to the central government.

After all, the Kurds would say nothing of our share because the

central Government doesn’t do anything in Kurdistan.

But this is a complicated issue.

But the second issue is, does the revenue sharing formula fix the

problem for the Sunni Arabs? And there are people who believe, oh,

yes if only they get their 20 percent the problem will be fixed. If

fact is that in 2003, before the invasion and for years before, they

were getting 70 percent of the oil—or more.

And so the notion that from their point of view they will be

happy with a mere 20 percent, however just that might be, it still

represents a major cut in income for them.

Mr. SHAYS. It is a good segue for me to claim time since 24 minutes have gone by. I, basically, when I met with Sunni representaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:51 Jun 16, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00091 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\39536.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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tives, they will say to me, we are willing to compromise. We only

want 50 percent. And you know, since they had 100 percent, seems

like a compromise.

But it is very clear as well that the whole issue of what their

population is, they would not concede, even if it were true it seems

to me that they are 20 percent of the population. Therefore, getting

20 percent of the oil, it strikes me as a challenge for them.

Ambassador Galbraith, I mean nothing other than the observation here, and take it for what it is, I was absolutely riveted by the

book, Trading Places by Mr. Prestowitz. And it was that Japan—

we had traded places with Japan, or Japan basically had traded

places with us, and now they were the dominant power, and it

would happen in a certain period of time. And that book is on a

book shelf and he may have written another book of why he was

wrong, but he was dead wrong.

And yet I gave that book to everybody I could find. And I am

frankly riveted as well by your comments. I find them very compelling.

And then, Dr. Fearon, I thought you were like over there in

terms of your analysis and you are—I just smile thinking about it,

you enacted a mission in the highest sense and you go where those

facts take you. And I thought my gosh, we are going to fail in Iraq,

and we better just kind of give up and walk away and so on, but

your facts didn’t lead you to that, but I made that assumption that

is where you are going. And you didn’t volunteer it because we

didn’t ask you. And I have to tell you, this is the most fascinating

panel I have had before us in a long time, and we have had great

panels.

I want to ask you, Dr. Galbraith, to comment on whether you

have heard the same concern that Iran is not—I am going to give

you a few things to answer—is not concerned about even a Shia

Arab state, as much as we know Iran is concerned about a Kurdish

state.

And so that is one of the issues that I would like you to address.

Ambassador GALBRAITH. I think to be honest, I cannot speak to

the degree of Iranian concern about the impact of a Iraqi specific

to your question of a Shiite state in Iraq, that it would have on

‘‘Arabstan’’ across the—and on their Arab population.

Mr. SHAYS. Maybe you could expand it to tell me how Turkey

would react to a Kurdish state and how Syria would react? I would

be interested to know that.

Ambassador GALBRAITH. Yes this is a critical question but——

Mr. SHAYS. I am going to add one more part to it just so you can

integrate it—and what the impact is of a Kurdish region that is

completely land-locked?

Ambassador GALBRAITH. Of course, Syria, Turkey and Iran do

not wish to see an independent Kurdistan, because they all have

Kurdish populations. Frankly, Syria is not an important—doesn’t

have a lot of say on it. Iran is opposed. It has some tools—notably

sabotage, assassinations, terrorism, exploiting divisions among the

Iraqi Kurds, but the Iranians, interestingly, basically took a decision that what they wanted was—what they wanted was the success of the Shiites in the south, that they saw in this constitution,

which, in my view, is a road map for partition, and, so initially

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they opposed some of the autonomy for the Kurds in the constitutional negotiations last August.

And then when it became clear that the Kurds wouldn’t agree to

the constitution, basically they said OK, a de facto independent

Kurdistan is better, is a price we are prepared to pay to have the

Shiite dominated rest of Iraq. And I think that is still their view.

So the critical country is Turkey.

And frankly, in America, we tend to see Turkey as monolithic on

this, but it definitely is not. There is, of course, a strong body in

Turkey that considers an independent Kurdistan a great threat,

but they don’t actually know what to do about it.

There is another body of opinion in Turkey who advances an argument that goes basically like this. Yes, we would prefer it didn’t

happen, but we don’t have a military option. After all, it took us

15 years to defeat the PKK, and that was in Turkey, and the most

they had was 5,000 guerrillas.

This would be going into a foreign country with a well armed

Peshmerger force of 100,000. Further, if we did that, we would you

know say goodbye to our chances of joining the European Union for

the rest of this century, and it would cause a big rift in the United

States. So this recognition actually across the board that there isn’t

a good military option.

That said, there is a body now that basically argues something

different which is, who are the Kurds? Well, they are white people

who are in Turkey, they are secular, they are western oriented,

they aspire to be democratic, and they are not Arabs. In short,

Kurdistan is a good buffer as against an Iranian dominated Arab

Iraq, or pro Iranian Arab Iraq.

And the reality of Turkish policy toward Kurdistan reflects that.

The largest investor in Iraqi Kurdistan is Turkey.

There are increasingly good relations between Kurdistan’s leaders and Turkish leaders.

And the Turkish government has been actively promoting oil

deals that were made by Turkish companies, not with Baghdad,

but with the Kurdistan regional Government.

So, Turkey—I don’t want to overstate this, but it is a more

nuanced situation than the conventional view here in Washington

that, you know, Kurds is just a red flag before the Turks. It had

a more sophisticated position to their credit.

Mr. SHAYS. Can I make an assumption that the Kurds are pretty

astute negotiators, have become somewhat sophisticated in relationships? Can I make an assumption that 12 years of dealing with

an embargo and secret relations with Turkey have helped relationships?

Ambassador GALBRAITH. Very much so. And there has also been

conscious policy, Barham Salih was an architect of it when he was

the Kurdistan prime minister, of the Sulimaner region involving

Turkey and I think it has had payoffs.

Mr. SHAYS. Dr. Fearon, let me have you react. I am going to

come back to you on the most successful south African, the issue

of where you have seen some success.

But I am going to also ask you to just think about, when we became a country, if there had been an academician who had come

before us and said, you know, this is going to be an absolute failure

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there has never been a democratic state who has rid itself of the

greatest power in the world, and so on, would that have been a deflating message to Americans who were trying to be free? And does

it prove a point that there may be other elements to this picture

that are unique and different? And I would ask you to tell me if

there are some unique and different issues. Because it was a miracle in 1776. And when we talk about all the things that could go

wrong, the list was longer than we could list of what could have

gone wrong when we became a Nation.

If you could have gotten Virginia and Massachusetts to agree on

anything, you know, I mean, but you had then, you had extraordinary leaders who were able to break through that. You know,

Washington deciding to go north just as a Virginian to be north.

But we also had the help of the French, who landed in Rhode Island, took troops to New York, and convinced Washington not to

attack the Brits in New York even though he wanted to redeem

himself, convinced him to have a month-long March to Yorktown,

and then we fought in Yorktown and the French lost more—had

greater deaths than Americans had.

I just look at this and say, you know, so I am going to ask you

to tell me, do you see any leaders in Iraq or anyone that can break

this mold that you see, and so then I can say there is hope and

promise. And Dr. Ajami, I would like you to comment to the things

you have heard today.

Dr. Ajami I am going to go to you and then come back to Dr.

Fearon. I am giving him a chance to think about that.

Dr. AJAMI. Which part would you like?

Mr. SHAYS. Any comments, Ambassador Galbraith said, I found

as he was saying some points, I saw you nodding your head. And

then I would just like to know where you might disagree, relations

with Iran and Turkey and all those things.

Dr. AJAMI. Yes, I would be quite thrilled to see Kurdish independence. I think Iraq was a travesty. I think the way the Kurds

were brought into Iraq in 1920 and beyond, they were simply

brought in for one reason, to balance the demographic power of the

Shia. That was it. The Brits were bringing the HASHMATs, to look

at the country and they said, oh, too many Shia. What do we do?

Force the Kurds into Iraq. It was a debacle. I think the Kurds are

a proud and good people. Peter is absolutely right. And Congressman Van Hollen, these people are—they have endured so much

suffering and there remains in them such decency.

The problem in Iraq, I think—and I don’t want to pile on the

Sunni Arabs here. The Sunni Arabs simply were unreconciled to

this new Iraq. And though they are a minority in Iraq, they have

a more sectarian mindset, because they look at the region and say,

oh, we live in a region of Sunni Arabs, the neighborhood around

us. But actually, if you really think about it, and this is one of the

great ironies of Iraq, the possible borders, the borders which have

human habitation for Iraq, not across the——

Mr. SHAYS. Bring the mic a little closer.

Dr. AJAMI. There is a great irony which I savor about Iraq and

about its Arab legend, insisting on the very and Arabness of Iraq,

the Iraq shares possible borders across human habitations with

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Turkey and Iran. Its borders with Saudi Arabia, with Jordan with

the Arab countries, are very difficult to reign.

So, but nevertheless, the Sunni Arabs insisted this country belongs to them. And I just have few sentences, if you would permit

me, in terms of how the Sunni Arabs view this American war. We

had whether, we intended it or not, emancipated the Shia stepchildren of the Arab world and the Kurds as well. We had sinned

against the order of the universe. Our innocence was astounding.

We were overturning the order of a millennium, but calling on

the region to celebrate and to bless our work. This is in the written

part of my testimony, that in fact, the Sunni Arabs, insisted and

the region around them, supported that whether, it is in Jordan or

Saudi Arabia or Egypt or whether it is in Sunni Arab communities

beyond—they insisted on the right of the Sunni Arabs to the bounty of Iraq, and I think that day is over.

That is it.

Now, Iraq has been, I think, in the last few years, it has been

blessed with some good leaders. I think they are lucky to have

Jalal Talibani. And I don’t know what Talibani’s ultimate intentions are. I just think he really would like to hold Iraq together.

And I think there is room for ambiguity. Peter would like to clarify things. But I am a child of them where we never name things.

You know there is a Persian tradition if you allow me where, if a

dog rubs up against you, and you are on your way to prayer, and

renders you, if you will, impure and you have to go wash again,

you look away from the dog and you say, God willing, it is a goat

and Peter would like to say—Peter insists that we call it a dog.

And of course, everybody knows it is a—you know he wants to

call it a dog, and the person calling it a goat knows it is a dog. And

it is so.

I think if the Kurds could have an independent state in all but

name, that ambiguity is a saving ambiguity. Now Peter would like

to tear the veil of ambiguity.

But Middle Eastern life, that is what you do. You, in fact, live

with this ambiguity.

So, you know, I like Sulaimani, I like Kurdistan, I am on the

board of trustees of an American University which our friend

Barham Salih is putting up in Sulaimani and Kurdistan. Great.

Whatever the Kurds can get out of this federalism arrangement, I

think the more, the better and they deserve it. They deserve it. But

I am not sure naming the State, the government of Kurdistan, is

what really serves the interests of the Kurds.

Mr. SHAYS. I am struck by the fact that the danger of all three

of you is that you are so darned interesting that I would keep you

here all day. But we are not going to do that. But I do not, Dr.

Fearon, I do want you to just kind of help me out a little bit. I find

your testimony fascinating, and but I want to know what I should

draw from it in the end, if, in fact, you don’t think we should be

leaving Iraq prematurely and so on.

And I want you to tell me, again, just to remind you, where there

has been you know really violent fighting and remarkable willingness to come together, where would that be?

Dr. FEARON. You mentioned the South Africa case. I wrote down

a list of the cases that I had coded as power sharing agreements,

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successful power sharing agreements, and it is a short list and a

number of them are kind of dubious, so one side really won the

war, pretty much all of them occur after quite long conflicts.

South Africa is, in many ways, the most promising, or I don’t

know, optimistic example, and there you had a long, costly fight

that wore both sides down. You had remarkable leadership from—

and very not the kind of leadership you could just count on appearing somewhere else, in Nelson Mandela, who used that leadership

in part to put together a very dominant ANC which, you know

there was some factionalization, but it really helped a great deal

that he had, that there was this dominant organization on the African side.

And then another thing which was really important and for the

success in South Africa was, I think, that basically the main parties, the white regime and the whites and the Africans needed each

other economically.

And that provided a real glue in the end and a reason for the

outgoing regime to have some trust that they wouldn’t just be expropriated out of hand.

But you know leadership was also very important and it is important that this took time for the regime to come to the belief that

it really had to settle.

Now if you look at Iraq, I am just worried that we just don’t see

those kind of conditions. I am worried that there is, you know great

factionalization on the Shiite and Sunni sides, and that on each of

those sides you have parties who I think really believe very much

that they can take power if the United States were gone by using

force.

And the problem is that is a very hard belief to change while we

are there because their theory is, well, when the United States

goes we will be able to take over.

Mr. SHAYS. I am going to just react to one point and then Mr.

Van Hollen, I am going to go to you here and this will be our last

round. We will go one more time here, but if I ask the Iraqis, what

is their biggest fear, almost to a person they say that you will

leave, that you will leave us. And some say that you will leave us

before we can grab hold of democracy. That is what they tell me.

They may say it differently but that you will leave us too soon. And

then I think, well, no wonder they think that because we have a

debate where we are talking about leaving now or prematurely or

some time, and then some of them even make reference, and a lot

of them are educated over elsewhere, they make the analogy just

like you did in Vietnam.

And you know when I hear people say, Vietnam didn’t cause

what we thought, it still had impact over us over a long period of

time. Saddam never would have gone into Kuwait if we he really

believed we would get him out. He just thought that because of

Vietnam we never would go. In fact, he never thought we would

get him out and remove him from power in part because the

French and others convinced him we wouldn’t.

And so what we are trying to deal with is the consequence of

leaving and when we leave. And so I still want to kind of get a

sense of that. I am going to ask you, Dr. Fearon, tell me in spite

of the fact that you say it takes a long time, and then I don’t hear

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you say, get out, I don’t hear you take the position Ambassador

Galbraith has basically suggested, that it is a fait accompli and

let’s just acknowledge it and leave. And if I am not saying that

right, Ambassador I, do want you to clarify, that is kind of the message I am hearing.

So could you comment on that?

Dr. FEARON. I can try. You know, first of all, it is just an extremely, as you know, our discussion has, you know, I think,

showed, it is an extremely difficult intractable problem where I

think you are very well aware I think of the enormous costs we are

paying for being there.

And I think Congress needs to ask itself is it, and I am saying

this is an easy question, either, you know, is it worth $60 billion

a year and a constant stream of loss of American lives, to—for a

mission that has, I think, you know, quite low prospects of leading

to the end point that was the point of departure or has been the

argument that the administration has set as the goal?

You have to ask yourself, are those costs, not to mention a whole

bunch of other costs——

Mr. SHAYS. What is your conclusion? Because I thought basically

earlier, your conclusion was that for better or worse, it is worse—

it is better than the alternative so——

Dr. FEARON. Let me cut to the chase. I think that the costs of

rapid withdrawal would be too high and we shouldn’t do that, but

that the U.S. Government and the administration and Congress

need to actively begin and much more creatively, more creatively

and actively than we have been doing planning for a gradual exit,

where we kind of go step by step and see how circumstances develop, and basically have as our aim well, you know, we hope for

the best and try to and aim for the best but basically accept the

possibility that what we will be doing is trying to manage a gradual evolution of a Lebanon like conflict where we do our best to

leave troops in the region and position them in as much a way so

as to prevent really big and threatening al Qaeda bases in western

Iraq, and prevent a really rapid escalation or genocidal escalation

in the cities in Iraq.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me say this. I want to go to Mr. Van Hollen. I

am just going to make 1 or 2 points, and then I will have a last

round which won’t be long as to get you to be able to answer any

other question.

What I have seen, as I said, the big mistakes, first 12 months,

what I thought was real and noticeable progress for the next 18,

since January of this year, wrestling with who the government

would be, 41⁄2 months of stagnation and therefore, I think, going in

the opposite direction, and then, 31⁄2 months, where I haven’t seen

any real heavy lifting on the part of the leadership, Sistani even

telling the leaders to come back home. And so that is what I see.

And I knew that I would have to come back home and report

that because that is the one promise I have made, whenever I go,

I come back and I say the truth and let the truth take me where

it takes me, no matter the consequences.

And when I was there in July, the new government had been had

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thing. I saw them talking. And I knew I was going to have to come

back in not my usual 31⁄2 months or 3 months.

When I came back, I just saw a continuation. So I came to the

conclusion that we needed to light a fire under the Iraqi politicians.

My way of doing it was to say, we know there is a certain point

where when the Iraqis step up, we can step down.

We should be able to know that.

Now the president said that we have enough troops but now we

have 264,000—294,000 Iraqi security and they haven’t resulted in

any stepdown.

So whenever we get to that point where we have enough, because

when you combine the 264, I think we are up to then, and the

American 150,000 plus the 20,000 contractors, we are up to about

494,000 security.

The administration, it seems to me, has to tell us when we are

at that point that in a worst-case scenario, the Iraqis we can deal

with, with the challenge of they will still be fighting but we can

respond to it, and that we then tell the Iraqis that we are going

to, when we reach that number, every Iraqi who has had a year’s

worth of training on the line, on the firing line, we bring down an

American troop.

And my point and my logic is to say, we need to let them know

there is a point where they are going to have to take over. And we

don’t want to leave a day before they are capable, but we don’t

want to leave, stay a day later than we have to. That still, I have

to say, suggests to me, Mr. Galbraith, that it is not going to be

troops in Kurdistan—I mean, you didn’t say Kurdistan, you said,

you were going to locate the troops where?

Ambassador GALBRAITH. In Kurdistan, as an over-the-horizon

force that could move back into the Sunni Arab areas.

Mr. SHAYS. And I was going to ask you why not Kuwait? But I

am struck by the fact that we need troops there, however small,

they need to be an operational troop for us. We also will have to

provide air, fixed and helicopter support, medics and so on. That

is kind of how I am wrestling with this issue. And it is because I

do think there has to be this point.

And the interesting thing—and I am sorry to go on—but the interesting thing is by my suggesting it, it somehow wrapped me in

with the group that wants to leave now or arbitrarily, and I don’t

want to do that. And it is almost like we don’t have any room to

have a discussion between those who want, you know, to leave

right now or arbitrarily, and those who say stay the course and just

keep plugging away. It seems to me there has to be something else.

And my last point is, I realize that I am preaching to Sunni,

Shias and Kurds why can’t they work together, but Mr. Van Hollen

and I and everyone else aren’t working together—I don’t mean that

as a criticism to him or me, but bottom line with this election it

is just not happening. It will have to wait until after the election.

But there is going to have to be a point where Republicans and

Democrats can say is there a way we, in this country, can find the

common ground and give a common message to the Iraqis so they

know what they are in for, whatever that is?

That is kind of the wrestling I have been doing now after 14 trips

and the 3 days of hearings that I have heard. And what I will want

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you to just respond to, and I won’t take 10, even 10 minutes my

next round, I am going to want you to tell me, with the reconciliation, shall I know it is a package, but is there any one that is a

key, with oil, debaathification, federalism, militia, amnesty whatever, that is what I will want in my next round and last round.

And it will be short. You have the floor.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. This has been

a terrific hearing, and again, thank all the witnesses here. And I

would just note that Mr. Talabani, in his sort of final statement

that he made, went back, took us back to the creation of Iraq and

the fact that the Kurds were put into Iraq, and he said we now

have to correct the historic mistake. Those were his words.

Now how we do that is, of course, central question here, Mr.

Talabani wasn’t proposing any kind of partition. But he was suggesting that as part of national reconciliation, we have to, whatever

we do, it has to somehow reflect the will of all the different groups

within Iraq and trying to decipher what the will of those different

groups in Iraq is, is obviously a difficult task.

Now, I would agree that from a U.S. perspective, the idea of having a United democratic state of Iraq is probably in the United

States best interests. But as we have learned, the question is not

only what we want, because we have learned I think very clearly

over the last many years in Iraq, we cannot impose our will on

Iraq.

And the question is, what is going to be the task for the Iraqi

people in the days ahead? What are they going to decide and what

will our role be while they make those decisions and how long are

we going to stay in Iraq while they make those decisions?

Now, Dr. Fearon, I happen to agree with you and maybe others

on the panel that an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces in Iraq

would lead to a greater blood bath, even greater civil war, than we

see today and I have opposed that kind of immediate withdrawal.

At the same time, we do, I think, need to lay out a plan for the

American people that shows them how this is going to come to an

end. It is messy, Dr. Ajami, you are absolutely right. It is a very

messy situation. And it may not be easy to come up with a neat

solution. But we have to come up with, there has to be some evolution of this that allows us to have a plan for ultimate U.S. withdrawal, sooner rather than later.

And I think what, and Mr. Galbraith, as, I understand what the

Ambassador said, and I think he wants to make this clear, is he

is not proposing partition. It is his analysis that we have sort of

already gotten there, that is the reality on the ground, and that the

question is, rather, how much more time are we going to keep U.S.

forces there in the middle of a civil war where the parties have

agreed, at least among themselves to sort of decide if Iraq is going

to break up.

So these are all difficult questions, Dr. Fearon, and I guess my

question to you and the others on the panel is, you say we

shouldn’t push the Iraqis toward partition. I agree. I think we all

agree. No one should be pushing them toward partition.

At what point do we make a decision? What are the sort of the

political milestones we need to look at to determine when the

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cause as you have said, laid out here, we should sort of be there

to prevent the blood bath as developments progress.

But we need to have some milestones. We need to say, if this

doesn’t happen by this date, we need to make a determination that

maybe the Iraqis have decided for themselves that Iraq shouldn’t

be all together. Ambassador Galbraith already reached that conclusion. He has a lot of great facts to support that. And let me end

with this because then the question for you, Ambassador Galbraith,

is if that is the fact, would not the immediate withdrawal of U.S.

forces out of areas like Baghdad for example into Kurdistan, would

that not need lead you to believe to an increase in the blood bath

in the Baghdad area and other areas? So I throw that out to everybody.

I will begin where I ended, with Ambassador Galbraith.

Ambassador GALBRAITH. Well, perhaps to speak a bit more

broadly if I may both to what you said and to what the chairman

said, because it really is of a peace. I have known the Iraqi opposition, obviously the Kurds best but secular Arabs, secular Shiites,

religious Shiites for a very long time as Congressman Van Hollen

knows from our time together 20 years ago on the Foreign Relations Committee. And these are the people who are saying that we

should stay. They are my friends. And so it is somewhat painful

for me to come to a different conclusion.

But I think that we have to focus on two things: First on the interests of the United States, and second, on what is achievable?

The interests of the United States, it seems to me—and actually

President Bush partially defined this when he said keeping of

weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of the most dangerous states. I would refine that. It is nuclear weapons, because

the others are not in the same category.

And while we have been tied up in Iraq, North Korea has become

the only country to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation

Treaty, it is clearly reprocessed plutonium into nuclear weapons,

and we have talked tough and done nothing. Iran had suspended

its uranium enrichment. It has gone away from that. It has reserved its uranium enrichment. And again we have tough rhetoric

but we don’t actually have a military option.

And Iran is a particular problem. First, it is the fact that our

Army is tied up in Iraq, our military; but second that as long as

we are in the south of Iraq, and I mean not just us but the British,

our coalition partners, should we take any military action against

Iran, the Iranians can retaliate, and they have allies who will retaliate against us, and whether Fouad and I agree about just how

theocratic it is, I think he would agree there are plenty of forces

in the south who would respond to an American attack on Iran by

attacking the United States and there would be Iranian forces in

there as well.

So I am not in favor of military action on Iran, but I do believe

it is tough to negotiate when you don’t have a military option and

the Iranians know we don’t.

So plus—basically, my argument for getting out quickly is based

on our other foreign policy priorities, that is the first point.

The second point is that I don’t believe we are accomplishing

anything in the south. I won’t elaborate and I don’t believe we are

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actually preventing any blood bath in Baghdad. I don’t think it will

be any worse or significantly worse if we withdraw. I don’t actually

think we are doing any good because we are not doing the kind of

activities that would really stop a blood bath. So if we are not accomplishing anything, and if it is diverting resources from the real

threats to our national security then the answer is, yes, I am in

favor of very rapid withdraw from those parts of Iraq.

I would focus again on the remaining threat, al Qaeda. And the

reason I say Mr. Chairman, Kurdistan as opposed to Kuwait—well,

there are several reasons. First, if Kurdistan is adjacent to the

Sunni areas whereas Kuwait is not, second it is still inside Iraq

and I think you can imagine if we pulled completely out of Iraq,

the political problems in this country, as well as in Iraq, should we

intervene, third the Kuwaitis, there is a lot of anti-Americanism

there, whereas the Kurds are basically very pro American.

So those are the arguments for the over-the-horizon force in

Kurdistan.

The final point I would make has to do with the math of the security forces, because I think this is so critical. We talk about

294,000 security forces. But let’s go. It is 115,000 in the Army. According to the top Iraqi defense ministers, I have spent a lot of

time talking to them, 10 percent of those will show up in combat.

So it is not 115,000, it is 12,000. And of the Iraqi police, the

180,000, well, many of them, of course, are, we exclude Kurdistan,

they have their own police force. But many of them are, of course,

are Sunnis in Sunni areas, Shiite in Shiite areas, but where they

are in mixed areas—and those areas are reasonably stable, or at

least the Shiite areas are, the Sunni areas are a separate problem,

the Shiite areas are stable. But where they are in the mixed areas,

the police are not the answer. They are the problem. They are the

partisans in the civil war. The army is a bit too.

So, it is not an answer to civil war to say if Iraqis stand up we

will stand down. As Iraqis stand up, the civil war gets worse. I will

leave it at that.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Dr. Fearon.

Dr. FEARON. Let me address briefly your question about political

milestones, and at the same time, Congressman Shays’s comments

about looking for a course between rapid withdrawal and, you

know, staying forever. I think that we, the historical experience

suggests and a lot of realities on the ground suggests that it is extremely unlikely that we are going to reach a point with training

and helping the government in the various ways we are trying to

where drawing down troops doesn’t pose a very significant risk of

the conflict increasing significantly.

So I think what that means we just have to face up to the fact

that if we are not willing to kind of stay for a decade or decades,

kind of back stopping a decent Iraqi government or a government

that has people trying to make for a decent government, then we

simply have to take a graduated approach where we are, we tell

them I don’t know how you do this diplomatically, it is going to be

private, I would hope that we are going to draw down in steps, and

we will take a step—and we have to just expect that there is a high

likelihood that things could then get worse. I think the, at least

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temporarily, I think we want to move in steps or gradually and see

how things evolve.

It is an extremely complicated situation with lots of players, lots

of interests involved. We will not be just disappearing. We are still

going to be an incredibly important player there with a lot of

means of leverage, economic, military, diplomatic.

One of the advantages, Mr. Chairman, you were talking about

the government not really moving fast, it is possible that taking

these kind of steps would help to bring a greater sense of urgency.

It could also cause things to get worse. It is hard to say. But it

could, you know, it could very well light a fire under the politicians

as it were, and make them make some hopefully not a last ditch,

but maybe last ditch efforts to make the current situation work.

I think we ought to get more economic resources flowing where

we ought to get economic resources flowing, because I think in the

longer run, or the medium run, for us to continue to play a, you

know, a constructive role we are going to be wanting to say, we

want you guys to come to an agreement, and we are going to support the people who we think are working in a positive way for that

and punish or not help the people who aren’t.

And I think we will find people of those predilections on all sides

of the conflict and it is going to be a very complicated situation.

Dr. AJAMI. Mr. Chairman, first a personal note, and then a policy

conclusion. The personal note, I think some members of my family

are among your constituents, I believe, if I am not, you can correct

me, that, Norwalk and Groton are your constituency, and two of

them are twins who went into West Point and into the military and

one of them is on his way to Kuwait and most likely Iraq.

Both of them, one of them is in Korea, and one of them is on his

way to, we believe, Iraq, trust me, they will be casting absentee

ballots for Congressman Shays. So at least that front is secure.

Now on the balance, the good news, if you will from Iraq, something has happened in Iraq. And it will give us our deliverance in

the medium run, a balance of terror has been arrived at in Iraq.

A lot of this war in Iraq was motivated and triggered by the Sunni

Arab belief that they are a martial race, and that Shia are not.

They even had an expression. They would say for us, ‘‘hukm’’ which

means ruling for you, self flagellation. They had disdain for them.

And now the Mahdi army and the Badr brigade, the Sunnis are

looking into the abyss. And they now understand if war were to

come, if they persist, they may not win.

This is the first time in the history of Iraq that this conclusion

has been arrived at by the Sunni Arabs, that two can kill, and that

actually there is a rough balance of terror in the country, that they

can’t go north because they will meet the Peshmergas and they

can’t come south because eventually they will want to fight it out

with Muktada al Sadr and the Badr brigade maybe the outcome is

not so good.

So we are on the road to deliverance. It has never been—it is a

scourge to our souls, and I know, for you, Mr. Chairman and I

know Congressman Van Hollen, this has been a very, very serious

engagement because you both have much invested in this question

and it is really a great honor to be here with you.

Thank you.

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Mr. SHAYS. I think we’re done. So, by this, if there is any comments that you want to make, Ambassador, Dr. Fearon, since I so

appreciated Dr. Ajami’s last comments, I don’t want him to make

any more.

But, no, is there anything we should have brought up in this

hearing that we didn’t bring up, any dialog that we should have

had?

Ambassador GALBRAITH. I have one final substantive comment

which is simply I’m afraid that lighting a fire under the Iraqi politicians isn’t going to work because they can’t actually do anything.

They don’t govern anything. They are good people, but even if they

could agree, and quite often they do agree, it doesn’t actually translate beyond the Green Zone; it doesn’t translate into action.

The second point I would say, Mr. Chairman, is that you referred

to passing out to everybody the book Trading Places, and then, of

course, it all turning out wrong. I think I would be remiss if I

didn’t tell that you my publisher would be quite happy if you

passed out this book, even if I turned out to be wrong.

Mr. SHAYS. You know what, I would like you both to tell us your

book and just hold it up a second so I can see it again. This book

is The End of Iraq, and when did it come out?

Ambassador GALBRAITH. It came out in July of this year.

Mr. SHAYS. And your book?

Dr. AJAMI. It’s called The Foreigner’s Gift. By the way, a wisecrack said the two should have one title, The Foreigner’s Gift, subtitled The End of Iraq. It came out by the same publisher, we have

the same publisher, the same month. So we have had this friendly

rivalry. I wish Peter well as his is a great read. I have actually

with your permission, I have inscribed this book for you. I think

it’s actually under the Federal guidelines of accepting—it is not

$25.

Mr. SHAYS. If it was worth more than I’m allowed, I would actually buy it from you.

Dr. AJAMI. It is inscribed. It’s here for you.

Mr. SHAYS. Dr. Fearon.

Dr. FEARON. On the books, I would have had more intelligent

things to say in the dialog with these guys but both were sold out

at the Stanford book store last week.

I just want to thank the committee very much for inviting me to

talk, and it’s been absolutely fascinating and I appreciate your

questions and I deeply appreciate your intense involvement and interest in this.

I guess the closing comments I want to make is that I’m worried

that it’s not just kind of a stasis or worries—nothing is happening,

say, in the Iraqi Parliament or among Iraqi leaders. In the last

some months I have been worried there’s a certain stasis on Iraq

on the U.S. Government side, the administration side in particular.

It seems like it is a very, very difficult situation and we need some

creative thinking and some initiatives. I don’t know how much this

has to do with the outcome of the election, but it would be a shame

if that were the case, because we need to be thinking about and

planning for multiple possible outcomes and not just the kind of

most optimistic scenario in the coming months.

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Mr. SHAYS. I’ll just make this last point in doing something I

don’t always do enough of, and that’s to thank my committee.

When I told them about a month ago we were going to have a set

of three hearings in 1 week just shortly after having a hearing next

week, they looked at me, and I said this is really important, and

they knew it was. I want to thank Dr. Nicholas Palarino, my staff

director. He has been to Iraq 14 times, 13 with me and once on his

own. My wife doesn’t like me going if he’s not with me. He was a

former colonel and has earned his doctorate.

I want to point out the gentleman sitting next to me, Mr. Robert

Kelley, the chief counsel, has been in Iraq for 20 months. He did

something so unusual working for the State Department, he would

help us in our travels but he would tell me candidly, kind of, when

I was getting the straight story and when I wasn’t. He would once

in a while say, you may need to ask this question to draw out the

answers that you need as a Member of Congress. He’s done a fabulous job in putting together this.

And Mr. Robert Briggs, analyst of the subcommittee, and Mr. Michael Girbov, a Georgetown University graduate student, and Mr.

Kaleb Redden, the Presidential management fellow. A lot of work

has gone into these hearings and I’m very grateful to my committee. And I’ll just again say I just can’t thank you enough for the

dialog and the challenging information you presented us with that

we need to wrestle with. I’m just so grateful.

Mr. Van Hollen, any last comment that you’d like to make before

we go?

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Just to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding

these hearings and to thank the last panel for their very insightful

comments.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much. This hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 12:19 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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