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38–265 2008

[H.A.S.C. No. 110–60]

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IRAQI

SECURITY FORCES

HEARING

BEFORE THE

OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

HEARING HELD

JUNE 12, 2007

(II)

OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE

MARTY MEEHAN, Massachusetts, Chairman

JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina

VIC SNYDER, Arkansas

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California

ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania

W. TODD AKIN, Missouri

ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina

JEFF MILLER, Florida

PHIL GINGREY, Georgia

K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas

GEOFF DAVIS, Kentucky

LORRY FENNER, Professional Staff Member

THOMAS HAWLEY, Professional Staff Member

ROGER ZAKHEIM, Professional Staff Member

SASHA ROGERS, Staff Assistant

(III)

C O N T E N T S

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS

2007

Page

HEARING:

Tuesday, June 12, 2007, The Development of the Iraqi Security Forces ............ 1

APPENDIXES:

Tuesday, June 12, 2007 ........................................................................................... 45

TUESDAY, JUNE 12, 2007

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IRAQI SECURITY FORCES

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

Akin, Hon. W. Todd a Representative from Missouri, Ranking Member, Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee ............................................................. 3

Meehan, Hon. Marty, a Representative from Massachusetts, Chairman, Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee ............................................................. 1

WITNESSES

Dempsey, Lt. Gen. Martin, Commander, Multi-National Security Transition

Command-Iraq, U.S. Army .................................................................................. 6

Kimmitt, Mark, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Near Eastern

and South Asian Affairs, Office of the Secretary of Defense ............................ 5

APPENDIX

PREPARED STATEMENTS:

Akin, Hon. W. Todd .......................................................................................... 52

Dempsey, Lt. Gen. Martin ............................................................................... 56

Meehan, Hon. Marty ........................................................................................ 49

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:

[There were no Documents submitted.]

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:

Mr. Andrews ..................................................................................................... 67

(1)

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IRAQI SECURITY FORCES

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE, Washington, DC, Tuesday, June 12, 2007.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9:11 a.m., in room

2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Martin Meehan (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARTY MEEHAN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM MASSACHUSETTS, CHAIRMAN, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE

Mr. MEEHAN. Welcome, General, Mr. Kimmitt. Welcome to the

Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

Today we will continue our examination of the most pressing

issue facing the country: the war in Iraq.

In past weeks the subcommittee has looked into a number of aspects of the complex mission to man, train and equip the Iraqi Security Forces. We have also looked at whatever plans we have been

able to obtain to turn over security to them.

We know how hard and difficult this work is, that our armed

services have put a lot of effort into this difficult and dangerous

project.

Today’s hearing will begin with a brief opening statement from

Mr. Mark Kimmitt of the Office of Assistant Secretary of Defense

for International Security Affairs. He is the deputy secretary for

the Middle East and South Asian affairs.

He will be followed by testimony from General Martin Dempsey,

who until recently was the commander of MNSTC–I.

I understand that you have been nominated to be the deputy

commander of U.S. Central Command.

In previous hearings, we had hoped to hear from witnesses on

the command relationships and the responsibility of the Multi-National Corps-Iraq, called MNC–I, and the Iraq Assistance Group,

called the IAG. We would have benefited from their operational

perspectives.

In today’s hearing, we will hear about the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq (MNSTC–I) and its Civilian Police

Advisory Training Team (CPATT). These organizations are charged

with training and equipping the Iraqi police service and military,

as well as managing transition advisory teams for the Ministries

of Defense (MOD) and Interior (MOI).

CPATT also supervises the contractors who are international police liaison officers and international police trainers working with

the Iraqi local police.

2

Other issues we want to address include the role that military

and police unit readiness and operational effectiveness reports play

in assessing the performance of Iraqi Security Forces, particularly

how they help commanders adjust to conditions on the ground.

More importantly, we want to hear about the actions generated

by these assessments and how the feedback is provided to Iraqi

leaders.

We want to hear from our guests frank appraisals of whether

these performance assessments, called TRAs, provide an accurate

picture of the operational competence of the Iraqi Security Forces.

And we would like to hear your view, General Dempsey, on

whether they are relevant and an adequate tool to help commanders judge whether the Iraqi forces are ready for transition.

Our sense is that the military has shown some progress, the

Iraqi police are not operating effectively, and the ministries are not

even close to taking over responsibility.

We are very surprised, given this impression, that the Iraqi police service responsibility has already been turned over to the MOI.

I hope that you can explain your perspective on these issues.

Part of the reason for this hearing is the Department of Defense

has been slow to get us relevant documents, and it has been difficult for the subcommittee to get our preferred witnesses.

The witnesses and briefers we have been offered have had to, on

numerous occasions, had questions for the record. The responses to

those questions have been very slow in coming to us. And I hope

that we don’t have the same problem today.

Our members and the public should know, without disrespect intended toward General Dempsey, it has taken a long time to get

him before us.

We appreciate his appearance at our hearing today, but I would

note that we have not been supported in our efforts to secure testimony from commanders of the Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF–I),

the Coalition Police Advisory Training Team and the Iraqi Assistance Group or their knowledgeable deputies, even by video teleconference.

General Dempsey, we were assured that you would be able to answer questions on these other organizations, but I trust that if you

can’t, you will take them for the record.

While we have been able to obtain the 2006 version of the Joint

Campaign Plan, there are specific questions about the contents of

a critical document that we have not been able to obtain—the 2007

Joint Campaign Plan, signed by the commander of the Multi-National Forces-Iraq and the Embassy—as it pertains to developing

Iraqi Security Forces.

We have been able to obtain the 2007 unclassified campaign plan

for MNSTC–I for developing the ISF. But we wonder how the new

joint plan may affect this strategy.

It is my understanding that Secretary Gates has not yet read

that plan, and at some point it will be provided to this committee.

Thank you for coming, Mr. Kimmitt.

I understand that you were advised that you may have some

questions, that we want to focus on General Dempsey’s experience

and observations from the theater. So I would hope that you would

make your remarks brief.

3

One question that I would like, if you could, in terms of addressing the committee—originally, the House Armed Services staff was

to be briefed yesterday on the department’s quarterly report on

Iraq, the 9010 report. Now that the briefing has been rescheduled

for this afternoon, and I believe the explanation that the director

of J5 Strategy Division was that he was on leave and no one else

could do it. I believe in the past that you and also the deputy J5

have briefed the staff.

Given the difficulty in getting the general here and the inability

of other witnesses who we wanted to talk to, it seems that we

would have benefited if we could have had that briefing before this

session.

I point that out because we have had an ongoing difficulty with

the department in terms of getting witnesses.

Today we have a lot of ground to cover, so we will run the subcommittee more formally than usual. We are going to use the gavel

and the 5-minute rule.

I would like to remind everyone that this is an open hearing, so

no classified information will discussed. If necessary, we have been

cleared and we can move to a separate room for a classified briefing, if the questions and the witnesses lead us down that road.

Again, welcome to our witnesses. We are looking forward to your

remarks. And we will take your whole text for the record, but we

ask you to give us briefer comments.

Now, I would like to turn to my colleague, Mr. Todd Akin, our

ranking member, for any opening remarks that he may have.[The

prepared statement of Mr. Meehan can be found in the Appendix

on page 49.]

STATEMENT OF HON. W. TODD AKIN, A REPRESENTATIVE

FROM MISSOURI, RANKING MEMBER, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE

Mr. AKIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Today is the last scheduled public hearing of our investigation of

the Iraqi Security Forces. I understand the subcommittee will issue

a report on this investigation in the coming weeks. And the report’s

release will close out the investigation.

As this may be the last public meeting of the subcommittee with

Mr. Meehan as chairman, I would like to take this opportunity to

commend the chairman for his exceptional leadership, to thank him

for steering his subcommittee in a bipartisan and professional manner.

I wish you the very best of luck in your new position, Mr. Chairman. I only have one piece of advice for you, and that is, don’t talk

about why there are more men than women in technical areas of

colleges. It is not politically helpful. [Laughter.]

Welcome to our witness General Dempsey. Thank you for your

great service overseas. It was a pleasure to be able to come visit

you. A number of us have made the trip. But we know the long

hours that you worked and everything. And we are just so thankful

that you came by and share some of your thoughts with us today.

As we close out the public record of this investigation, I would

like to focus my comments on what I view are key issues the investigation still needs to clarify.

4

Foremost, how does ISF’s mission fit into the Iraqi strategy? Over the past few years, we have spent $19 billion training and

equipping more than 348,000 ISF personnel, all for the purpose of

transitioning security responsibility over to the Iraqis.

My sense is that this remains our strategy. The only variable

that has changed is how and when we transition security responsibilities to the Iraqis.

One thing this investigation has demonstrated is that

transitioning security responsibilities simply for the sake of

transitioning will not stabilize Iraq. In fact, it may slow progress

down.

I do, however, want to make sure that, contrary to recent press

reports, our strategy continues to view ISF as the lynchpin to our

plan to eventually transition U.S. forces out of Iraq.

General Dempsey, I hope you can comment on this during your

testimony.

Another issue I would like our witness to clarify is how we are

progressing in developing a truly national Iraqi security force.

Again, there are an increasing number of press reports that elements of the ISF, particularly the Iraqi police service, suffer from

sectarian infiltration. Additionally, it seems problems of sectarian

influence continue to affect the ministries, particularly the Ministry of the Interior.

I would like to hear your assessment of the situation and understand what steps we are taking to resolve that problem.

I would also like to know how sectarianism is affecting the combat effectiveness of ISF. A rogue Iraqi unit that carries out sectarian reprisals is only one kind of sectarian problem. Sectarianism

can manifest in other ways.

This leads me to the general concern about our knowledge of ISF.

While this subcommittee has learned a lot about how we train,

transition teams and equip ISF, we have learned little about the

operational competency of ISF. I am concerned that the transitional readiness assessments (TRAs) do not tell us enough about

Iraqi units. Given the $19 billion the American people have spent

on ISF, we have a responsibility to monitor and track how the

forces we have trained and equipped are operating.

I look forward to hearing our witnesses’ statement and their

views on these matters.

Thank you for being here, again, General Dempsey, and welcome

back.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.[The prepared statement of Mr. Akin

can be found in the Appendix on page 52.]

Mr. MEEHAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Akin. And thank you

very much for that advice, as well.

We are honored to have the distinguished chair of the Armed

Services Committee, the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Ike Skelton,

here. And I would like to ask the chairman if he would like to

make some opening comments.

Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. First, let me

compliment you on having this hearing. It is very, very important,

and overdue.

We, first, though, wish to acknowledge your tremendous work in

the Congress and on this committee. And being the first chairman

5

in many, many years of this subcommittee, you are off to an excellent start. And as you leave to go on to become an educator and

you pass your baton on, you have done a wonderful job in getting

us going. And a heartfelt thanks to you, Marty Meehan.

The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that we were arming

some of the Sunni militia. Needless to say, this is of great deal of

concern to me. And as to where all this fits into the scheme of

things of Iraq, I hope the witnesses can touch on that, because it

is already an open tinderbox as it is, and I don’t think we should

be in the position of making it all the worst. I think that is very

important.

Mr. Chairman, I feel like I must vent my frustration on the fact

that we have not been able to obtain witnesses for proper and timely hearings in this all-important subcommittee.

We even offered to have hearings by way of videoconference and

that was declined. But at the same time, we saw videoconference

news conferences, news media conferences, and which, in my opinion, were lengthier than any hearing that we might have or require.

I hope that is in the past.

We in Congress have a duty and an obligation, just as those of

you in uniform have a duty and obligation. And our duty is that

of oversight, raising and maintaining the military. But we can’t do

a thorough job unless we have all the facts. And I think those in

the military fully understand that.

So I have been frustrated in the past. I hope that is well behind

us.

Mr. Chairman, thank you for your service. Thank you so much.

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

And I would like the witnesses to make opening statements.

STATEMENT OF MARK KIMMITT, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR NEAR EASTERN AND SOUTH

ASIAN AFFAIRS, OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

Mr. KIMMITT. Mr. Chairman, good morning. And thank you for

the opportunity to be here today.

I have a very short opening statement. And, frankly, it is simply

to publicly acknowledge the contributions and the success of General Dempsey. He is finishing, now, his second tour in Iraq, having

recently commanded the Multi-National Security and Transition

Command in Iraq.

In his first tour, he was the brilliant commander of the 1st Armored Division in some of the most important fighting that was

done in the 2003–2004 time period.

It is our fortune to have leaders such as General Dempsey commanding our troops and running our programs inside of Iraq. And

we are certainly honored by his presence here today.

I look forward to answering your questions.

Mr. MEEHAN. Thank you.

General.

6

STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. MARTIN DEMPSEY, COMMANDER,

MULTI-NATIONAL SECURITY TRANSITION COMMAND-IRAQ,

U.S. ARMY

General DEMPSEY. Good morning, Chairman Meehan, Ranking

Member Akin, honorable members of the subcommittee, especially

Congressman Skelton.

It is always good to see you again, sir.

I would like to actually begin this morning by introducing my

wife, Deanie, who is seated just over my left shoulder here. As you

know, we have been apart most of the last 6 years, and she told

me today that she wouldn’t allow me to go anyplace unless she

could accompany me. So I invited her. And I hope——

[Applause.]

She has been, for my entire 33-year career, a real champion for

soldiers and their families and, in particular, in the last 6 years,

through some very difficult times, has stood steadfast and loyal behind America’s soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. And I want

to thank her for that.

Also with us today is my aide de camp, who has stayed with me

for the last 16 months in Iraq, and his wife, Megan. And so, I want

to introduce them as well, the next generation of senior leaders of

our armed forces.

Thank you for the opportunity to come and speak with you, answer your questions and share my thoughts on the state of the

Iraqi Security Forces after three years of service in Iraq.

Let me first say that I am absolutely grateful for the opportunity

to spend some time on our wonderful American soil. I left the Pentagon on the 10th of September 2001, and except for a few weeks

of leave here and there and two opportunities to appear before the

Congress, I have not been home since.

I have spent nearly 2 years in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia as

the senior adviser to the Saudi Arabian national guard. And I have

spent almost 3 years in Iraq, the first 13 months as the commander

of the 1st Armored Division, and as the first commander of MNDBaghdad, and then for the last 22 months as the commander of

Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq.

I arrived back in the United States yesterday. And after a few

weeks’ leave, I will report to United States Central Command as

deputy commander.

And thank you for those of you that had a hand in confirming

me for that position.

My intent today is to speak frankly with you about my perspectives on the challenges we face in developing Iraq’s Security Forces.

Let me begin with a brief update on where we are now and how

we got there with regard to those security forces. And following

that I will, of course, be happy to take your questions.

The Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, or

MNSTC–I, as you know it, in coordination with coalition forces, the

North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the government of Iraq’s

Ministries of Defense and Interior, develop security forces along

three lines of operations.

The first is generating units and individual replacements. The

second is developing institutional systems and processes necessary

7

to support the fielded forces. And finally, professionalizing that

force and its leaders.

We achieved our initial target for Iraqi Security Forces generation of 134,700, what we call the objective counterinsurgency force,

or military forces, and 188,300 objective civil security forces, which

are police, in December of 2006. However, based on changes in the

security environment in the latter half of 2006, the two security

ministers, in consultation with MNSTC–I, adjusted our 2007 endstrength goals for both the army and the police.

I will discuss this in detail later in the statement and, of course,

during questioning.

We are now working to develop an Iraqi military of just over

190,000 and an Iraqi police forces of approximately 195,000. We

are on track to achieve these force levels by the end of this calendar year.

Currently we have trained and equipped 154,000 military forces

and 194,000 police forces. It is important to note that we are simultaneously building both new units and training individual replacements. Annual attribution is approximately 15 to 18 percent in the

army and 20 to 22 percent in the police.

MNSTC–I has a comprehensive four-phased plan to build, enhance, develop and transition the Iraqi Security Forces to the government of Iraq’s control as soon as possible. As you know now,

such phases are a useful concept in developing plans, but they are

rarely cleanly separated and never entirely sequential in execution.

Planning phases such as these almost always overlap one another as progress is made and as efficiencies are exploited in any

given phase. Stated another way, we work in multiple phases simultaneously.

Let me summarize the goals of each of these phases.

Phase one, the build phase, ensures that initial Iraqi Security

Forces are organized, trained, equipped and based.

Phase two, or enhance, makes the generated forces better, with

a focus on adding capabilities, including armor protection and increased weaponry, as well as advanced training to prepare them for

full operational control.

Phase three, or the development phase, ties the tactical formations to a developed, institutional architecture, thereby setting the

conditions for their transition to self-reliance.

And phase four, or transition, based on a common understanding

by both sides—that is, the government of Iraq and the government

of the United States—of our long-term security relationship, then

transitions internal security responsibility to them, while we also

assist Iraq begin to prepare to defend itself against external threat.

Now, we have learned many important lessons, and we have

made many adaptations along the way.

We have learned that the development of security forces is analogous to a three-legged stool. The first leg is a standard curriculum

of training so that every soldier and every unit gets the same

skills. The second leg is embedding transition teams. And the third

leg is partnering units with coalition forces.

And the distinction between the two—that is to say, the transition teams and the partner units—is very important. A partner

unit will provide instruction and education and expertise by menVerDate 22-MAR-2001 08:34 Jun 25, 2008 Jkt 038265 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-60\163160.000 HNS1 PsN: HNS1
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toring and role-modeling, but that is only one facet of that partner

unit’s broader mission. An embedded transition team, on the other

hand, in contrast, is dedicated completely to the development of

that Iraqi unit.

We have learned that transition is essentially a balancing act.

On one side, you have assimilation and one the other side is dependency. Transition too soon and the system falters. Transition

too late and the system becomes dependent on the coalition.

Through 2005, the United States government was paying the

bills for all Iraqi life support and for all Iraqi Security Forces. Now,

because we had helped them build their 2006 budget and knew

that they had the necessary funding, we made it a goal in 2006 to

transition responsibility for Iraqi soldiers and policemen over to

Iraqi control.

It was painstaking and difficult work for reasons that could, if

you like, come out in questioning. But by the middle of 2006, the

MOD and the MOI had assumed control of all life support across

the entire Iraqi army and police.

We learned the importance of developing both the tactical and

the institutional sectors of the military and police forces simultaneously. In Iraq today, soldiers and police are being paid by the

central government. Their life support is being provided by the central government.

The Ministries of Defense and Interior are functioning institutions who feel themselves accountable for the security of the Nation

and for their security forces.

Challenges remain, but we should not underestimate the importance of having a coherent, accountable and responsible Iraqi chain

of command from individual soldier and policeman to the ministers

of defense and interior.

We have learned that the business practices of the Iraqi government are horribly inefficient and ineffective, and that there is no

pool of skilled civil servants to overcome them in the near term.

Among our goals in 2007 is to transfer equipment, sustainment

and infrastructure costs or expenditures to the Iraqi responsibility.

To do that in an environment of unskilled bureaucrats and bad

business practices, we convinced the government of Iraq to reach

out to us as their acquisition and procurement agents, and to enter

into foreign military sales program with the United States.

Thus far, the Iraqis have invested about $1.7 billion into foreign

military sales. We anticipate they will invest another $1.6 billion

this year.

Let me put that into perspective. 2007 is the first year that the

government of Iraq will spend more on its security forces than the

United States government. And they will outspend us at a rate of

two to one. They are now spending more money on themselves than

we are spending on them in the security sector.

If the government feels itself accountable to the soldier and understands its responsibility to provide him resources, then the soldier in turn is going to feel his loyalty toward the central government. We consider this an important measure of progress.

Both tactical and institutional performance are improving. They

must now be tied together.

9

The big challenge in 2008 will be finding an adequate number of

leaders to lead this institution that is large and increasingly capable. We have been growing young second lieutenants through the

military academies for about 3 years. But it is very difficult to grow

majors, lieutenant colonels and brigadier generals; it simply can’t

be done overnight. So we have had to rely heavily on officer recalls

and retraining programs.

However, the pool of qualified recalls is beginning to thin out.

Several generations of Iraqi leaders, the kind of leaders we are

looking for, were culled out by the Saddam regime and the IranIraq War, and many fine Iraqi military and police leaders have

been killed and wounded in the ongoing fight. We are working with

both the minister of defense and the minister of interior to address

this challenge.

The Iraqi Security Forces have improved in their capability to assume a greater share of the responsibility for security and stability

in Iraq. My overall assessment is that many units, especially the

Iraqi army units, have become increasingly proficient and have

demonstrated both their improved capability and their resolve in

battle.

They continue to be hampered, however, by a lack of depth. Iraqi

army and police units do not have tactical staying power or sufficient capability to surge forces locally.

The ISF also have shortages of leaders from tactical to national

level, which I have already touched upon.

In addition, their logistics infrastructure is immature, which limits their ability to function effectively against a broad array of challenges, particularly when asked to move about the country.

In October 2006, the Iraqi prime minister determined that his security forces were insufficient in size and structure to support

Iraq’s security needs. He requested support for a 2007 growth plan

of 24 additional battalions and an increase in end strength of approximately 45,000.

Additionally, he requested assistance in procuring additional special capabilities, such as route clearance equipment and electronic

countermeasures, to meet the persistent challenge of terrorist

threats.

He also decided at that time that the tactical combat battalion

should be manned at 110 percent strength. This was to posture

them to be able to handle some of the unique aspects of this force.

For example, on average, about 25 percent of the force is on leave

at any given time, and they are not going on vacation. It may

sound simple, but a significant portion of this is for soldiers taking

leave to physically take money home to their families in the absence of things like direct deposit and electronic banking.

Another example is that seriously wounded soldiers are not

moved off unit rolls because there is no functioning retirement system in Iraq. Moving them off the rolls, therefore, would impose incredible hardships on soldiers and their families who have made

enormous sacrifices.

Within the past month, the commanding general of Multi-National Force-Iraq decided that based on lessons of Operation Fardh

Al-Qanoon in Baghdad, it indicated the clear need to increase manVerDate 22-MAR-2001 08:34 Jun 25, 2008 Jkt 038265 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-60\163160.000 HNS1 PsN: HNS1
10

ning levels of these combat battalions up to 120 percent strength,

or an additional 20,000 soldiers.

The ongoing 2007 growth plan addresses many, but not all, of

these structural gaps in the Iraqi Security Forces.

MNSTC–I’s current assessment is that the Iraqi Security Forces

will require growth in scope and scale similar to what we accomplished in 2007 in order to ensure sufficient force to protect the

population throughout Iraq, overmatch the enemy, provide depth

necessary to deploy forces around the country, and implement an

annual training and reconstitution program.

The threats faced by the government of Iraq have proven both

resilient and adaptive. We have identified key capability gaps in

the Iraqi Security Forces. MNSTC–I is working to improve the

quantity and the professionalism of the ISF’s leaders, address the

issues of logistics and sustainability, ensure combat overmatch, and

provide Iraq’s security leaders the ability to project power with sufficient rotational capability to meet the challenge facing them.

Coalition forces currently cover these capability gaps. Failure to

address these Iraqi security capability gaps will lock U.S. forces

into tactical battle space and greatly increase the risk to the Iraqi

Security Forces should the coalition presence decline in the near

future.

In reflecting on my time in Iraq, I think I can identify four key

decisions that we have made in the effort to build effective security

institutions.

The first was the formation of MNSTC–I to professionalize and

standardize the growth of Iraqi Security Forces.

The second was the decision to embed advisory teams by simply

partnering with them.

The third occurred on the 1st of October, 2005, when MNSTC–

I assumed responsibility for developing the Ministry of Defense and

the Ministry of Interior’s capacity and capabilities.

And the fourth and most recent was the recognition in late 2006

of the inability by the Iraqi government to execute their budget

and, therefore, successfully enrolling them into the United States

foreign military sales program in order to assist them in growing

the force and executing their budget.

I would like to close with some thoughts about the Iraqi leadership and about the Iraqi people.

The leaders of Iraq and their people are working in an incredibly

challenging environment and a dangerous environment. They risk

their lives every day as they carry out their nation’s business. And

they live with the constant fear of having their families attacked.

The people of Iraq have demonstrated both resolve and resiliency

in withstanding the assaults of extremists, and seem to be committed to make a better life for themselves, their families and their

nation.

The leaders and the people of Iraq have not given up on themselves. We should not give up on them.

I again thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today.

And I am now prepared to take your questions.

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

Appendix on page 56.]

11

Mr. MEEHAN. Thank you very much, General. And thank you

very much for your service to our country.

General, would you be surprised to hear that in our interviews

and surveys, younger transition team members oftentimes express

frustration with either good Iraqi police service commanders who

were transferred or fired without any explanation, or with bad ones

who if removed were transferred or promoted by MOI?

We just heard a lot of these stories about good people that all of

a sudden are gone, or bad people that are promoted.

General DEMPSEY. No, sir. I am not surprised a bit. In fact, I

deal with those—or, I did deal with those questions weekly, I

would say.

Mr. MEEHAN. What do you do if you are made aware of these

types of frustrations as we have been? Specifically, how do you deal

with that?

General DEMPSEY. Well, what we do, sir, is we make an inquiry

of the system to learn about the details. In other words, sometimes

we will actually—the transition teams will hear about these things

before we do at the ministerial level.

Now, when we walk it backwards to determine the basis on

which decisions were made to replace leaders, we find that there

are just as many instances where there is a very good reason for

the replacement as there is a bad reason or an insidious, let’s call

it, reason. There are cases where the change has been made for

reasons that make us uncomfortable. I will give you example of two

of them.

The commander of the 9th Division, Major General Bashar, who

we considered to be one of our finest commanders—this was in my

first year there—was replaced and moved into the Training and

Doctrine Command.

It was done in a way that made it impossible for us to understand it before it occurred. And we do always go back and ask them

for transparency before the fact, because we are making quite a

significant contribution to their security and we think they should

be transparent with us.

We found out that he was moved because they were trying to balance the demographics of the 10 divisions at the time, and that

they felt that he could provide a better service in the Training and

Doctrine Command.

Now, the reason given when the transition team identified it, the

transition team was sure that he was being moved because he was

a Sunni Arab. It does not appear to be the case in retrospect, or

upon reflection, that that was the case.

However, there are also cases where it is very clear that certain

leaders are put into place because the government believes that it

needs to have someone loyal to it above all.

And so, for example, in the intelligence architecture and in the

operations architecture, you will find the government of Iraq seeking to, in their view, balance the demographic to account for the

fact that the population of Iraq is approximately 65 percent Shia.

Now, what becomes difficult for us is to determine whether they

are doing that out of a sense of that it is their turn, if you will,

or if they are trying to make absolutely sure that in the future they

will never put themselves in a position of being dominated by the

12

minority, or if it is being done to disadvantage the other groups,

the Kurds and the Sunnis. And we are very careful to both understand the rationale and to watch the conduct after the fact.

It is a fact that there are leadership changes going on all the

time. When we confront them, they will say to me—in fact, most

recently, they said to me, ‘‘Well, look, General, you have been here

for two years and you are going home, so we want to adopt a similar policy: Two years and you move on.’’

It is hard to say sometimes, sir.

Mr. MEEHAN. How are negative appraisals of Iraqi units and

commanders communicated from the MTT to the Iraqi assistant

group chain over the MNSTC–I chain and its links with the MOD

and the MOI?

How are these, sort of, negative appraisals of these units—what

is the chain like?

General DEMPSEY. The transition teams do the transition readiness assessments, we call them, on a monthly basis, against a series of metrics that I think you are familiar with.

I know you didn’t get them as quickly, certainly, as you wanted

to see them. But I am told that we have moved beyond that and

you do have access now to the TRAs and the background data that

forms them.

But in any case, the TRA itself is done by the transition team

and then discussed with the Iraqi counterpart leader, passed over

to Multi-National Corps-Iraq, Lieutenant General Ray Odierno,

who has a cell in his headquarters that collates the data.

And then, on a monthly basis, there is a briefing that General

Odierno gives to General Petraeus. I sit in on it. And at that briefing, we discuss the movement, either forward or backward, of units

to battalion level.

Now, near simultaneously, I have a staff—we have approximately 100 transition team members in the MOI and in the MOD,

the joint headquarters. We do exactly the same thing for the two

security institutions.

And then, once a month, we brief General Petraeus on institutional progress, or the lack of progress, thereby giving him the ability to see both ends of this security enterprise, the degree of tactical progress or the degree of institutional progress.

Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Akin.

Mr. AKIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My impression, just from having sat in these hearings for some

considerable period of time, the first thing is that it seemed like

the police sector was a lot harder than just the regular security

forces. Somehow the Iraqis understood a soldier, but they didn’t

seem to understand the concept of police as much. So that seems

to have been difficult all the way along the line.

Is that, like other things in Iraq, a little spotty, depending on

your geography? For instance, the way the Marines in Anbar handled it, is that a little different than the way it is by the Army in

Baghdad in the way that the police are used? Is it true that the

police, particularly in a place like Ramadi, now, where the sheiks

are heavily involved in that, that that is better?

And so, that is just the first question, just comment on police

versus the other.

13

The second question I have is, if you stand way back from what

we have done, what has happened over a period of years is we have

put a lot of Americans in contact with a lot of Iraqi people at all

different levels of government and different kinds of professional

positions. To a certain degree, are some of our philosophies of a little bit more peaceful, democratic kind of society, are they rubbing

off over there in the long-term sense?

If we were to withdraw over some period of time, have we left

something behind where they are going to be thinking a little bit

differently?

I suppose I am asking you to speculate a little bit, but you are

in a better position to do that than some of us are.

Thank you, sir.

General DEMPSEY. To the first one, sir, on the police and does it

vary around the country, it certainly does. We say there is no template in the development of almost anything in Iraq.

I mean, as you know, the police are actually performing remarkably well in Mosul, for example, working side by side with Iraqis.

There is only one U.S. combat battalion in Mosul, which is the second or third largest city, depending on what you believe about

Basra.

And so, in the second or third largest city, you have police forces

in Iraq in charge of local security, who call upon the army, the

Iraqi army, if they have a problem, who, in turn, calls upon that

one coalition battalion if they have a problem.

And that is, of course, where we would like to be throughout the

country.

But, as you say, with police, what we have learned is there is no

history in Iraq, and I might even say in the region—because I have

traveled extensively in the region—of police that are what you and

I would describe as a force that lives to protect and serve the population.

Police forces in the region are notably corrupt. And they get that

way because, as we say, they live at the point of corruption.

The difference between building an army and building a police

force is that an army is built with the intent that it will move

around the country and it has a national fabric and it has national

loyalties.

Police forces live locally. Their families live locally. They don’t

really have a sense of nation. They have a sense of local community, and all of the influences that are brought to bear.

So it has been very challenging.

But I would also say, Congressman, that all local influences are

not negative. And as we see now playing out in Al Anbar, the local

influences are starting to become something we can leverage positively.

The second part, sir, about are some of our values rubbing off on

our Iraqi counterparts, I would say absolutely.

But in a situation where there is such levels of violence—levels

of violence that, frankly, sometimes it is mind-numbing to me that

they accept them. They do have a tolerance for violence that exceeds our ability to understand it.

In that environment, I think they crave security to the point

where they will often sometimes wax nostalgic about the Saddam

14

Hussein days. You will hear people say, ‘‘You know, we were a lot

more secure and safe during the Saddam regime.’’

Of course, when you discuss that with them they quickly come

to the conclusion that they are indeed better off today. But it is not

without this certain nostalgia for efficiency and security that will

take time for them to overcome.

Mr. MEEHAN. Thank you, General.

Dr. Snyder.

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

General Dempsey, I met with—there is a group of, I think it is

54, Arkansas World War II veterans that have been in D.C. for the

last 3 or 4 days. PBS is going to be airing a documentary about

them in conjunction with the Ken Burns series on World War II.

But they brought these 54 men and women up here, and they

went to Arlington and the World War II Memorial and had meetings. And I visited with a fair number of them over the last 3 or

4 days.

But when I think about the amount of time that you have put

in on this war in Iraq and that your family has served along with

you in your absence, I mean, it compares with, you know, the great

American fights of the past. And I appreciate your service.

And I think sometimes we Americans in civilian life forget the

burdens that are being borne as the years go by in this war on terrorism in both Afghanistan and Iraq. And so we appreciate your

service.

On my first trip to Iraq, I was with Congressman Thornberry on

a CODEL that he led. And we met with you when you were with

the 1st Armored Division. And you gave a metaphor in describing

how things were going which I stole and used in an abundance of

speeches back home.

And what you said was that you felt like—and this was several

years ago, now—you felt like that the American military, in conjunction with our allied forces, were pushing a big boulder up the

hill and that progress was being made, that the boulder was indeed

going up the hill.

The open question for you at that time was, will we actually get

the boulder to the top and see it roll down the other side, or will

something happen and that big boulder will come rolling back on

top of us?

I think clearly we are not to the top of the hill. Is the metaphor

still at work? Do you have a new metaphor? Or has it been rolling

back down on top of us for the last couple years?

General DEMPSEY. I am sure I have other metaphors.

Dr. SNYDER. I would like to hear them. We are always looking

for wisdom here.

General DEMPSEY. But the metaphor or Sisyphus may, in fact, be

the right one still. And we have seen it roll backwards on us on

occasion. It rolled back on me in 1st Armored Division in April of

2004 with the uprising of the Mahdi militia. I think it certainly

rolled back on the entire effort in February of 2006 when the

Samarra bombing took place.

And so those are two points at which I would absolutely say that

this boulder that we are trying push up the hill rolled backwards.

15

I think to both our credit and to our Iraqi brothers and sisters’

credit, though, that no one has given up on it. I mean, we have still

got our shoulders to that boulder, you know, rolling it up the hill.

If I sound, you know, cautiously optimistic here today, it may be

that I have been there too long. I don’t know. But in the process

of being there this long I have come to gain a certain faith in Iraq

that I, frankly, didn’t have traveling in the rest of the region.

You may have heard me say, Congressman, that if it is in United

States’ national interest—and I will promise not to step on Mr.

Kimmitt’s equities here in terms of policy—but if it is in United

States’ interest to have a strategic partner in that part of the

world, which is a very dangerous part of the world, situated with

Iran, Syria, the volatile Mideast conflict, and this, let’s face it, existence of radical Islam that believes itself to be completely—that

their way of life is completely anathema to ours—if it is important

to have a strategic partner in that part of the world, Iraq should

be that partner.

It has oil, of course. But more important, it has water, it has agriculture, it has human capital, it has a very fine education system,

and it has a history that is as rich as any in the world, and who

understand that history.

And so I think that the metaphor applies. There will be times

when this boulder rolls back. It is probably rolling back a bit right

now in Baghdad. But I don’t think it is going to roll over us, and

I think we are going to be okay.

Dr. SNYDER. The question in my mind several years ago when we

met in Baghdad, I had this picture of the boulder being fairly close

to the top of the hill. And now I think there are great expanses of

the American people think that the top of that hill is a long, long

ways to go.

And I appreciate your comment about cautious optimism. I think

in terms of what the American people are looking for and the work

that you have been doing on this training is what is going to get

us finally there, that we can declare this done.

We are going to go around several rounds. I wanted to ask one

final question this round.

How do you see the quality and numbers and experience of our

U.S. trainers, our troops that are doing the training? Any comments you have about that now. And we may want to expand on

that as time goes by.

General DEMPSEY. Okay.

By the way, the answer to your first question there, sir, about

is it closer or further away from the top of the hill, the real key

for us, I think is to convince the American people that there is a

point in time where we can stop doing the tactical job for them, we

can stop running patrols, we can stop manning checkpoints. I think

that that part of it is closer, far closer, than when you and I spoke

a couple of years ago.

The institutional side, in other words, a mature institution that

has a functioning pay, promotion, logistics, contracting sector, they

are going to need some help in that for a long time.

It is probably worth noting that when I was in Saudi Arabia

doing this program, I was there in year 28 and 29 of that program.

But it is a program that works at the national level to help the

16

government of Saudi Arabia build its architecture, not necessarily

running security on the streets of Riyadh.

And I think that is where, it seems to me, we can see some

progress. And I think that is probably what will shape our longterm relationship. But I defer to Mr. Kimmitt on that.

As far as the second part——

Dr. SNYDER. U.S. trainers.

General DEMPSEY. Yes, about the trainers, you know, we have

actually worked through this in several different ways and have

evolved over time.

Initially, they were all individual augmentees, many of whom

were drawn out of the reserve component. And then we migrated

to a process where they were still individual augmentees, but they

were pulled into Fort Riley, Kansas, into a center of excellence, so

there would be a common standard for the transition teams.

And now I think we are moving toward an evolution where the

transition teams are what we would describe as out of hide, which

is to say, as the Iraqi Security Forces become more mature, as

the—you know, and what they really need is help not necessarily

in knowing how to enter and clear a house, but rather they need

help in how to perform administrative and logistics functions, I

think you will see that that evolution will move into the future.

So my report to you is that we continue to learn as we go, not

only in how to build them but how to partner with them.

Mr. MEEHAN. The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Miller.

Mr. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Continuing the metaphor of the boulder and the mountain, General, could it also be that the boulder has not rolled back, but

maybe we got over whatever that peak was and found out, when

we got to the other side, that there may have been a higher hill

on the other side?

General DEMPSEY. Well, that is the risk of metaphors, I think,

Congressman. They are never-ending.

Sure, that could very well be. You know, there certainly is reason

to be concerned about the depth of what was always, probably,

some historical animosity, under the surface, between the Shia and

the Sunni.

But what I have been struck by is that there is just as large a

body in Iraq who have, in the past, intermarried. In fact, many of

my Iraqi counterparts are of one sect and married to another sect.

There is actually a history in Iraq of intermarriage among the

sects that is clearly somewhat retarded now, or slowed or discouraged, perhaps, even, by families, but it is there. And I don’t think

it would take too much progress to give them hope that they could

return to that.

But, sure, there are other hills, potentially, to navigate here, as

we have discovered recently.

Mr. MILLER. As you move to your new position at CENTCOM, I

would be interested in hearing from you what your recommendations may be to Admiral Fallon, in regard to the CPA’s problems,

I think, if you would, that they had in disbanding the army, deBaathifying the government, and allowing so many young men to

become unemployed.

Your comments?

17

General DEMPSEY. Well, actually, I would really rather defer to

the way you phrased it at the beginning. I probably ought to share

those with my new boss before I share them with you, actually.

Mr. MILLER. Will you come back and share them with us after

you share them with the admiral?

General DEMPSEY. I will. Despite what you may think, I have

never been loath to come back to the Congress, because my wife

lives at Fort Belvoir, so it was always an opportunity to say hello

to my wife.

Mr. MILLER. Thank you, General.

Mr. Kimmitt, if you would, we talk about the United States and

partnership with Iraq, and if there were a precipitous withdrawal

from Iraq by United States and coalition forces, who would you

think the new partner with Iraq would be if we were not there?

Mr. KIMMITT. Well, sir, I think the first question would be, if

there was precipitous withdrawal and created a security vacuum

inside that country, the real question is who would fill that. And

it would probably be filled by both sides of the border in terms of

the Sunni Arabs as well as the Shia Persians.

It is clear that taking a look at whose security is at risk from

an unstable Iraq—which is exactly what would happen should

there a precipitous withdrawal—there would be numerous countries in the region that would feel their security interests at risk

and possibly feel the need to preemptively or positively get involved

inside that country.

One could imagine that—well, I think we could, sort of, do a complete walk around the neighbors and see that each of one of those

countries would have a stake in trying to, if not re-establish order,

at least take a stake inside the conflict.

It would not, to my mind, be unlike what we saw in the early

1990’s in Bosnia, where the Serbs were heavily involved, the

Croats were heavily involved and external forces were heavily involved as well.

So that is one of the reasons that we continue to seek a conditions-based handover of security responsibilities to the people of

Iraq themselves, characterized predominantly by the work that

General Dempsey and General Petraeus are doing with regards to

the Iraqi Security Forces. Give them the time, give them the

chance, give them the opportunity to take on this responsibility so

that at that time when they can take over more and more of the

responsibility, our forces become redundant.

Mr. MEEHAN. Thank you.

The gentlewoman from California, Mrs. Davis.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you very much for being here, General Dempsey and Secretary Kimmitt.

And particularly I am delighted to welcome your wives here as

well. We know that our men and women in uniform and their families have really been the sole sacrificers of this war. And I want

to thank you for that.

I think that Chairman Skelton mentioned briefly in his remarks,

and I wonder if you could speak to that, the situation in Al Anbar

and the fighting with coalition forces of the Sunni tribesmen.

18

Could you tell us a little bit more about how you see that working, actually? And, in fact, are there situations where you wonder,

you know, who in fact they are actually fighting for? What are the

challenges, liabilities and benefits?

General DEMPSEY. Congresswoman, this is one where I think I

would be happy to speak candidly with you about what is happening and some of the challenges and some concerns. But I think that

probably would be best done in closed session.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Okay. Then let me turn for a second

to the metrics. You mentioned and I know were quoted in the National Journal as saying that somewhere the annual attrition rate

is about 15 to 18 percent in the army and 20 to 22 percent in the

police.

What do we know about that attrition? And what in fact happens

to those individuals? Are we able to track them?

I was a little surprised by the numbers as well, because on this

committee we have tried very hard to get a real handle on, how do

you get those numbers?

I know there are some biometrics that are being put into place

now. But what do we know about the folks who don’t return? And,

in fact, do we know that they actually are fighting with militias or

against the U.S. and coalition forces?

General DEMPSEY. Yes, ma’am. I would describe accountability of

people and accountability of equipment as things that have gotten

better over time; that there has been an evolution of improvements—not a revolution—an evolution of improvements in personal

accountability and equipment accountability over time.

In my early days in Iraq in 2003, we were quite interested just

simply to get some Iraqis on the street with us and procured weapons for them or captured weapons and gave them to them. We were

paying them out of CERP in those days, as you recall.

But there quite simply wasn’t any accountability in those early

days. No accountability, fundamentally, because there was no Iraqi

Ministry of Defense, for example, to tie it to.

Over time, we have introduced automated databases that now

give us the ability to, to some degree of accuracy—not yet where

we need it to be—to compare payroll data, for example, to data that

we get from the MTTs in the units themselves.

And by the way, in the era before MTTs, we could issue things

to the division level, but as it went beyond that, we lost some visibility on it.

So, I mean, this has been, again, one of those places where we

and they have gotten better and better, to the point where now the

payroll generally in the MOD matches the people we believe are actually serving.

In the MOI, however, the payroll exceeds the trained and

equipped number by tens of thousands. In other words, there are

tens of thousands more policemen serving in Iraq than have been

trained and equipped by us, and it is one of the things we are

working with the MOI to get a handle on in 2008, or help him get

a handle on.

Now, as for the crosschecking of data, we made an investment

about six months ago to make sure that the vetting instruments we

used when we brought police and army in could be cross-referenced

19

with the vetting information at other places, so we could determine

how many of those that we, at some point, trained and equipped

ended up in custody down the road.

We are very close to being able to do that. We can do it manually

now, but we want to be able to do it in a database. That doesn’t

exist, though, for people who might end up in an Iraqi prison.

So it is something we are aware of. I couldn’t give you a number

right now, but we are, with our Iraqi counterparts, working to add

some granularity to that process.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. And then you are able to track individuals that have been detained or killed who, in fact, were trained

by the coalition forces as far as you know?

General DEMPSEY. No, I wouldn’t say that just now, if you were

to give me a name of someone in a prison, I could not run it backwards to find out if he at one time had been in security—I mean,

I could do it manually. At entry, they provide four names. There

are some things that make it pretty difficult to track people that

way. But we are very close to having a database that will allow us

to do that.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you.

If I could just turn for a second to the issue of protection for the

Iraqi soldiers and police, but more for the military, we have had

some hearings here where we looked at the protection vests, the

SAPI plates worn by our military. And I understood from that

hearing that in fact that equipment is not being used by the Iraqis.

How would you characterize the equipment that they are using?

And if they had better equipment, would there be fewer deaths

among the Iraqis, the soldiers that are fighting?

General DEMPSEY. Yes. Yes, ma’am.

Again, this is a thing where we continue to make progress and

they make progress. They are all outfitted with individual kit, we

call it OCIE, that is similar to what we would issue an American

soldier. They have body armor. They have helmets. As you know,

they are armed with personal weapons. As you may not know, they

have just taken the decision to procure U.S. personal weapons.

But their individual kit that we procure for them is of a standard

consistent with ours; not quite the same, and we have the best kit

in the world. I think you would actually be heartened to hear that.

Now, on their own, though, they have taken some donations from

other nations that in some cases has provided lesser protection.

They have also procured some things on their own before we got

them into this foreign military sales program with us.

They made, frankly, some very poor decisions in procurement

and got some very substandard equipment. That stuff is still out

there. And it will take some time for them to replace.

I would say, though, that, for example, they have approximately

2,700 up-armored Humvees now that are of the same standard as

ours. They have several thousand armored personnel carriers, all

of which have armor protection similar to ours; not exactly the

same in every case.

Again, we have the best equipment in the world. But they are

far more protected than they have ever been.

And by the way, that means ever been ever, even before we went

to Iraq in 2003.

20

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Conaway.

Mr. CONAWAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

General Dempsey, you were talking a second ago about the MOI

and the payroll. What I heard you say was that there are tens of

thousands more serving than have been trained.

Did you say being paid than have been trained? Or is it that the

payroll is inflated by folks who aren’t really there?

General DEMPSEY. Well, there are certainly, we call them ghost

policemen. There is a percentage that we believe—and I could give

you an approximation of that.

Let me give you the background, sir. It might help you understand it.

When Minister Jabr was the MOI, we noted that the police

forces, particularly in the province, had a tendency to overhire,

more or less as a jobs program.

Mr. CONAWAY. Okay.

General DEMPSEY. And so we got him to essentially fix the end

state of the Iraqi police forces in the provinces based on international law enforcement standards in counterinsurgency environments. And, I mean, I could drill further down in this, if you like.

But the bottom line is, that is how we came up with the number

135,000, spread across 18 provinces, based on the population in the

provinces and the threat in the provinces. Higher threat area, more

police: Al Anbar province, 11,330, for example; Baghdad, 25,000.

What happened, though, is because there is still in Iraq, as a relatively young government, there is still some disagreement between the powers of the center and the powers of the province.

Some of the provincial governors, in particular in places of religious

significance like Karbala and Najaf, grossly overhired policemen.

And it only became apparent to the minister and to us when the

payroll rolled in and they put a demand on the system that we

hadn’t recognized before.

And, again, we are getting better at databases, automation. So

we have been getting better and better visibility on what is really

out there, to the point where now there is something between

60,000 and 75,000 policemen on the payroll over the authorization

and untrained by us.

And so the question, now, for the Iraqi government is, what do

they do about it?

Of that 60,000 to 74,000, certainly 10 to 20 percent of it will be

ghosts that are just there for payroll purposes.

Mr. CONAWAY. Okay. Well, that is a better answer than 100 percent of them being ghosts. I am hoping that those 50,000 that are

there, that are trained, are actually, maybe, doing something. But

thank you. I appreciate that.

General DEMPSEY. Yes, sir.

Mr. CONAWAY. Given as I got here late, I really don’t want to replow previous ground. Is there anything that either one of you

wished you had said during your testimony this morning, that I

will now give you a chance to take whatever time you want to say

anything else that we didn’t question you about or——

General DEMPSEY. Yes, and, sir, thank you for that.

21

There was a question earlier, and I don’t recall who asked it, but

I think it is important to note, in the MOI, that we assist in the

training and equipping, mentoring and advising of both national

level police forces and local police forces.

We discussed the local police forces at length. The national police

forces of Iraq—we have had some real challenges with the national

police.

Literally, this is a force envisioned to be something like a gendarmerie, approximately 24 battalions of them organized into eight

brigades now, that can project police power across provinces, as

provinces go to this thing called provincial Iraqi control.

So, in theory, if the province is being secured by local police and

they have a problem that exceeds their ability, the governor requests assistance; the MOI sends the national police. If it exceeds

their capability, then they call in the army. And so there is this

tiered response.

And we think the national police are making progress, though it

is the single organization in Iraq with the most sectarian influence

and sectarian problems.

And then the other national police force are the border, the directorate of border enforcement, approximately 28,000 of them. They

oversee a 3,100-kilometer border, 14 land ports of entry, soon to be

15—we are opening one in Al Qaim—and organized with 258 border forts and approximately 143 annexes that sit between them.

So those are the national level police forces.

Thank you for that, Congressman.

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Kimmitt, anything you want to say?

I yield back. Thank you.

Mr. MEEHAN. I thank the gentleman.

The gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Andrews.

Mr. ANDREWS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I thank both of you for your service.

And welcome home, General Dempsey. I know you have been on

the road for a very long time. I had the chance to meet with you

in Iraq. And please understand how profoundly grateful we are to

you for your sacrifice and commitment.

And to Mrs. Dempsey, thank you for your forbearance and the

struggle the entire family deals with when someone serves overseas. We appreciate you very, very much, and wish you well in

your new post.

On page three of your testimony, General, you indicate that we

have trained 188,300 objective civil security forces as of December

2006. Does that mean that is the total number we have trained or

the total number that are deployed somewhere in Iraq?

General DEMPSEY. It is the former, Congressman. It is the total

number we have trained.

Mr. ANDREWS. Okay. And I know I am re-covering some of the

ground that Ms. Davis and others covered, but I wanted to do that

to get my own take on this.

Do we know how many of the 188,300 are presently working as

police officers in Iraq?

General DEMPSEY. In January of this year, we did what we

would call in our system a personnel asset inventory. And of those

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police forces that we just cited, we estimated that we had lost over

the course of the previous 18 months about 32,000 of them.

Mr. ANDREWS. Okay. So we would be down to 156,000 or so. Do

we know where the 32,000 went?

General DEMPSEY. We know which ones were killed in action, because they put a demand on the system through a thing that they

call martyrs pay.

Mr. ANDREWS. About how many were that?

General DEMPSEY. We believe that we had lost approximately

8,000 to 10,000 killed in action on the police side.

Mr. ANDREWS. That would leave maybe 22,000 living. Where did

they go?

General DEMPSEY. We knew that another portion of them, probably another 5,000, had gone, had deserted, essentially, had failed

to repair.

Mr. ANDREWS. And then of the, say, 17,000 or so, what about

them?

General DEMPSEY. Probably another 6,000 to 8,000 of those were

so severely wounded that they could no longer serve, but were

being maintained on the rolls so they had a pay——

Mr. ANDREWS. Appropriately so.

General DEMPSEY [continuing]. Because there is no retirement

system.

Mr. ANDREWS. Appropriately so. So that would leave us with

maybe 7,000 or 8,000 others. Where are they?

General DEMPSEY. They are unaccounted for.

Mr. ANDREWS. Okay.

Is there any basis—and this is not an accusatory question; it is

a clinical one. Because I, frankly, don’t think you have been responsible for trouble or failure. I think we have, the people that made

the policy.

But is there any basis to believe that some portion of those 6,000

or 7,000 are fighting our people?

General DEMPSEY. Well, because they are unaccounted for, we

just don’t know, Congressman.

Mr. ANDREWS. Yes. But, well, are they totally unaccounted for?

Or, let me ask you a specific question. I think you answered this

a minute ago. Are we able to go into prisons and find people who

have been arrested and work backwards from there and see how

many, if any, of them are people we paid to train?

General DEMPSEY. We are able to attempt to do it manually. And

in almost every case, we have been thwarted at some point along

the way by mostly the tyranny of a manual system. And so——

Mr. ANDREWS. Why are these data not in a computerized

databank?

General DEMPSEY. As I mentioned earlier, Congressman, they

are actually in the database. At this point in time, the databases

don’t talk to each other. And I have invested some money within

the last 6 months to try to make that happen.

Mr. ANDREWS. How much have we spent since 2003 on databases

to deal with the training of Iraqi police?

General DEMPSEY. I would have to take that one for the record.

But, for example, in the Ministry of Defense we have a system

called HRIMS, Human Resources Information Management SysVerDate 22-MAR-2001 08:34 Jun 25, 2008 Jkt 038265 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-60\163160.000 HNS1 PsN: HNS1
23

tem, that is state-of-the-art and should give us the ability to do

many of the things you are talking about.

Let me take that one for the record.

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Kimmitt, do you know that answer?

Mr. KIMMITT. No, sir. As General Dempsey said, I think we need

to take that one for the record to give you the precision that you

are looking for in that answer.

Mr. ANDREWS. When we bought those systems, who designed the

bid specs, and was there a competitive bidding process?

I mean, you understand, General—again, I don’t accuse you. You

work with the tools we gave you. But we have spent a huge

amount of money. And we spent it on databases that can’t tell us

by computer operations whether people who are sitting in Iraqi

prisons are people we paid to train. Now, I hope the answer is none

of them are, but I doubt it.

And let me ask one other question. For how many of the 188,300

that we trained did we have biometric data that we collected when

they went into the training process?

General DEMPSEY. All of the—100 percent. We would have some

biometric data, either through AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification System), which is a fingerprinting system——

Mr. ANDREWS. Yes.

General DEMPSEY. Even in the early days, we had AFIS. As we

have progressed, we have actually begun to use retinal scans. So,

again, that has been evolutionary.

Mr. ANDREWS. My time has expired.

But, Mr. Chairman, what I would ask if the witnesses could supplement the record by telling us what data the Department of Defense has as to what happened to these 188,300 people given their

biometric identity. How many are dead? How many are wounded?

How many are in prison? How many are still serving on the police

force?

So we can get some notion—this is not just a theoretical interest,

obviously, that we are going to have some continuing national

stake in the training and quality of these police officers. Irrespective of our involvement, we are going to have some stake in that.

And, General, I think you have done an extraordinarily good job

with extraordinarily bad tools and policies to work with. And I

thank you for doing that.

Mr. MEEHAN. The gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Bartlett.

Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

If we were to ask the Iraqis how many trained and equipped police and how many trained and equipped security forces they needed so that we could leave, would they give you that number?

General DEMPSEY. I think, Congressman, that they would answer

in a relatively unsophisticated way.

For example, we are in those discussions with them all the time.

If you were to ask their chief of defense forces, he would say, ‘‘We

need a brigade in every province or a division in every region.’’ I

mean, they have this former regime notion that bigger is better.

And in some cases, by the way, in a counterinsurgency environment, bigger is better.

24

But I would suggest to you that what MNSTC–I does as a living

is try to help shape the answer to that question so that they can

get what they need, but not more.

In fact, part of my mission statement is to build security forces

that will be sustainable by the government of Iraq over time. So

there is a degree of fiscal reality. We know what their budget is.

It was $32 billion last year. We know what the International Monetary Fund will allow them to spend in the security sector. And we

bumped them right up against it so that they can sustain, over

time, what we are building with and for them.

Mr. BARTLETT. If we were to ask you how many of these forces

they needed so that we could leave, what would you tell us?

General DEMPSEY. What I would tell you, sir, is that we had a

target for the end of 2006, which I have mentioned previously. We

made an adjustment because one of the assumptions we made

early on, in my first tour, was we would build security forces for

a short war, partnered with us, against an environment of decreasing levels of violence, because we believed we could help them drive

the levels of violence down, and therefore we needed this many security forces to take over responsibility.

And the end of 2006 or the middle of 2006, we took a look, and

levels of violence were not coming down. In fact, they were increasing. We also saw some of the problems with units deploying around

the country, and we made adjustments. And with our Iraqi counterparts and with their funding, largely, we have got them on a

path to grow an additional 45,000 military forces this year.

We just recently completed another assessment looking to 2008.

The reason we did it now is both because General Petraeus is

adapting his strategy, and we also did it now because the government of Iraq’s budget cycle runs June through August, and we

want to make sure that we inform their budget and what we think

they need in 2008.

I am not yet prepared to give you a number, but I would say,

as I said in my statement, that it is pretty clear to us that for them

to take over responsibility in the face of declining coalition presence, at some point, they need to be slightly bigger.

Mr. BARTLETT. General, our constituents are very uneasy with

terms like ‘‘stick it out’’ and ‘‘stay the course.’’ They have no idea

what that means. If that means we are going to be there 50 years

from now, like we are in South Korea, they have got no stomach

for that, sir.

Americans would like to have on their refrigerator a checklist

that says how many of these forces we need and what laws need

to be passed, and they want to check those off month by month so

that they know when this thing will be over.

I would hope that the administration would focus on developing

those numbers so that our citizens can have that assurance that

there will be an end to this.

I would like to yield the remainder of my time to the ranking

member. Thank you.

Mr. AKIN. Thank you.

I would just maybe ‘‘me too’’ what Congressman Bartlett just

said a little bit. My sense from a marketing point of view as just

a plain old American—and, of course, I have had a chance to get

25

over to Iraq a couple of times—but our sense is the media keeps

saying, ‘‘Well, somebody got killed, another couple of people got

killed today.’’ We hear that over and over again. And one of the

things that we are not provided news-wise with is, ‘‘These are the

to-dos, and we are checking things off the to-do list.’’

When we go to Iraq, we have a sense that there is progress. It

is slower than we would like it to be, but relatively speaking, considering the conditions in the country, it is pretty significant

progress. But we don’t really know what those items are and how

to check them off, so just wanted to reiterate that.

The second thought was, it has also been my sense that our difficulties over there have been less military than they were more in

the nation-building kinds of things.

Like, you have some police; you are trying to get them kicked

into shape, but there are no courts, there are no jails. You have

problems with you can’t wire transfer money, which isn’t really a

military thing to build the wire transfer system in banking. You

have to run oil pumping facilities and oil storage and transfer and

all that. You have electric and sewer and all those things, which

are really, in a way, nonmilitary.

My sense has been that if there have been problems, it has been

more in the nonmilitary sector almost than it was in the military.

Would you want to respond to that?

General DEMPSEY. I will ask Mr. Kimmitt to assist me on this.

I will say, as it affects my job, though, I can say that one of the

things we have been dealing with since we got there in April of

2003 is that the Iraqi people believed that, because we are who we

are, that we would make their lives immediately better in those

very sectors you are speaking: electricity and fuel and economic development.

And certainly, I think we will have to reflect on the fact that, because those sectors have languished, it has affected the security

sector. In other words, I think there are certainly some parts of the

population that have lashed out because they haven’t realized those

dreams.

You want to add anything?

Mr. KIMMITT. Well, Congressman, I think your point is exactly

right, that to the extent that the military is bearing a significance

on the operations, it is oftentimes important to pull back and recognize that the solution and the long-term progress inside of Iraq is

really going to be less about the military consequences and more

about, ‘‘Is this society prepared to move on?’’ to dismiss not only

the past of Saddam but any longstanding differences between the

major constituent groups, the Shia, the Sunni, the Kurds.

We are not pleased, at this point—and this is a subject that we

will probably talk about later on, either in the closed session or

later on in the 9010 discussions.

We are certainly not pleased, at this point, that the space and

time that the military has bought for the Iraqis themselves to take

on the hard questions of reconciliation, that they haven’t yet used

this opportunity, and not recognizing that there is a difference, as

General Petraeus has said many times, between the Baghdad clock

and the Washington clock, the American clock.

26

So we continue to work with not only the Iraqis, but also with

our civilian counterparts, to try to accelerate the progress being

made on the ground, not simply in terms of handing over provincial

security control, but also in turning the society into one that is not

constantly at each other’s throats, and one that does not have a

zero-sum mentality between the different sects.

But in many ways, we are talking about changing attitudes. We

are talking about changing suspicions that have been held for

many, many years. And as we have seen in many

counterinsurgencies, and as we have seen in many peacekeeping

operations, those take time. Those take a significant amount of efforts, both on the parts of the outside forces that are there to help,

whether they are civilian or military forces, but also internal to

that nation, to be able to elicit that dialogue between the different

constituent groups that can lead to the reconciliation that, at the

end of the day, is going to spell success, not the military victories

but the civilian victories.

Mr. MEEHAN. Thank you.

The gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Spratt.

Mr. SPRATT. General Dempsey, I last saw you a week or 2 ago

in Baghdad, and we welcome you back to the States. Not only that,

we thank you for your dedicated service to our country.

I observed, on one of the charts you showed us in Baghdad, that

all of the timelines for the completion of objectives tended to end

somewhere in 2008 if not sooner.

You have 119 battalions up at some level of operational capability. Ninety-four are taking tactical leads in their areas of responsibility. As I understand it, all but four or five provinces are hopefully likely to be under local force control, indigenous force control,

by the end of this calendar year.

They are still short on logistics at the command level, particularly field-grade level. You simply can’t grow overnight lieutenant

colonels and majors, so that will have to be accomplished over time.

Probably some additional embedded American troops would help

their maturation, professionalization.

But, as you look at those timelines, you have to ask, ‘‘Isn’t it

about time we talked about a transition?’’ You used that word in

your testimony. You used it in an interview with the National

Journal, saying, ‘‘To some extent, I am a fan of transition. After we

move to protect the Iraqi people with this surge, at some point we

will need to go back to transitional responsibilities.’’

You also make the observation in your testimony that, ‘‘This is

a balancing act. There are several different values here. If you turn

over responsibility too soon, you could falter and fail. But if you

hold on too long and don’t turn over responsibility, you will never

know what the units can do and they will become over-defended.’’

I think that is what Abizaid and Casey and others have said

about increasing our forces relative to theirs in the last year or so.

They were concerned that the Iraqi troops would not be encouraged

or challenged to rise to the task before them.

Do you think it is time to have a transition plan, both for our

purposes? We have 20 brigades on the ground, we have long-term

security issues to be concerned about.

27

General DEMPSEY. Well, as I told you when you were in Baghdad, Congressman, I am the one in Iraq that had the T in his title,

the T being transition. And so, everything that MNSTC–I has ever

done is done with an eye on, ‘‘How do we transition it over to Iraqi

control?’’

I think I would respond to your question by saying I don’t think

it is an either/or proposition. There is ongoing transition even in

the middle of this—not the middle, but even at the beginning of the

surge, the institutional side of our enterprise is actively seeking to

pass responsibility to Iraqi control.

I think, tactically, the surge has conceded that the population

has to be protected for a period of time to give some breathing

space for political progress. But at the institutional side, I can tell

you there has not been any slowing of our effort to transition responsibility.

And, yes, we should constantly be looking to transition all sectors

of this thing, tactical and institutional, to Iraqi control.

Mr. SPRATT. The president a couple of years ago, formulated in

a very easy-to-understand way, he said, ‘‘As soon as we stand up

their forces, we will stand down our forces.’’

Would you agree we are approaching that point in time when it

is ready to stand up their forces, give them operational responsibility for the security of their own country and then we begin a gradual withdrawal ourselves or pull back while we push them forward?

General DEMPSEY. As you know, Congressman, my part of the

equation is to get the Iraqi Security Forces to where we believe and

I believe, and now Lieutenant General Jim Dubik believes, that

they can accept that responsibility. There are parts of the country

right now where that is possible. Not only that, there are parts of

the country right now where it is occurring.

I think the question will be best deferred to General Petraeus’s

assessment that he will make before this body in the late summer.

Because the question becomes, has the surge been able to get at

the belts and get at the parts of Iraq that, frankly, we haven’t been

able to address pre-surge? And as a result, can the security forces,

given what I just mentioned about their challenges, can they take

over responsibility?

I think you will find that in parts of the country, the answer to

that question will be yes. And I think you will find that in parts

of the country, the answer will be no.

Mr. SPRATT. Just when I looked at your chart and everything

sort of ended in 2008, it begged the question in my mind, what is

next? And it suggested that a transition of some kind, a significant

transition would be next.

There was something in the paper this weekend, in The Post

about the Pentagon at least making plans for three different strategies. One is to go long. The other is to go home. The other is to

go small, which I guess means more embedding, more partnering.

Would you discuss those options, to the extent you can?

General DEMPSEY. Well, sir, we had a little conversation about

metaphors earlier in the testimony. And so, since these appear to

be football metaphors, I will now lateral that question to Mr.

Kimmitt. [Laughter.]

28

Mr. KIMMITT. Congressman, I think that the article you are referring to was one from some time ago. And I believe that that was

from some comments that were coming out of Baghdad as they

were conducting an assessment of some of the options that they

were looking at.

Earlier, the chair mentioned that General Petraeus was conducting a joint strategic review of the situation on the ground, along

with Ambassador Crocker. It is working its way up. The secretary

of defense has not yet been briefed on that, on that——

Mr. SPRATT. Is it originating in the Pentagon? Or does the Central Command have a central role to play in the formulation of

this, given the fact that this is its command?

Mr. KIMMITT. Well, it is certainly the case that the chain of command goes from Multi-National Forces-Iraq through Central Command to the Department of Defense and the joint staff.

So certainly Admiral Fallon will be an integral part of this. It is

my understanding that some discussion has already been held between Admiral Fallon and General Petraeus in terms of where the

strategy is being viewed. And I think that, as any military officer

would do, he would brief his boss before he briefed his boss’s boss.

And I think that is where we are at this point.

Mr. SPRATT. Thank you.

Mr. MEEHAN. The gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Gingrey.

Dr. GINGREY. Mr. Chairman, thank you.

General Dempsey, I am going to address this question to you.

Based on current reporting, it is difficult to obtain accurate figures

for the actual number of the Iraqi soldiers that are present for

duty.

And the March 2007 Defense Department report advised that the

actual number of present-for-duty soldiers is about one-half to twothirds of the 153,800 total. I guess that is due to scheduled leave.

But some of it is absent without leave and downright attrition.

This uncertainty, between 50 percent and 67 percent, is pretty

wide, 17 percent spread, are over, if my math is correct, 20,000 soldiers in an ambiguous state. And, actually, it is tantamount to admitting that we don’t have a confidence in our knowing where five

brigades of the Iraqi army are at any one point in time, if you do

the math, in the 20,000.

So the question is, the wide variations in DOD reporting on the

actual number of Iraqi soldiers present for duty, with estimates

ranging from one-half to two-thirds, why this amount of uncertainty in the number that are actually missing?

General DEMPSEY. It has to do, Congressman, with some of the

things we have learned about their reluctance to report, literally.

You know, the reporting process has been transitioned over to Iraqi

control. So they report on their own strengths. They report on their

payroll data.

And what we have found is—I will just use two examples. When

we receive a report that just doesn’t seem to us to be reasonable,

we will confront them. And oftentimes an Iraqi commander will either under-report because he knows if he reports what he has got

he may not get any more; this is, after all, a nascent chain of command. Or he will over-report so that he gets a payroll share more

than he deserves, and thereby pocket it.

29

The instances of the latter are way down from 2006. In 2007, we

have actually been pretty pleased with the reporting process, and

we think it is progressing.

The other thing we have learned is, when we started to move

units around the country, which is a very positive thing—I mean,

when we told the Iraqi army that we needed an extra nine battalions, three brigades in Baghdad for Fardh Al-Qanoon, the first shot

at that, as I told you, Congressman, was a real problem for us.

They came down at less than 50 percent strength. And many of

them, 20 percent, refused to come at all.

We learned from that. Both we learned and our Iraqi counterparts learned, and have made adjustments to the point where now,

when asked to move into places like Baghdad, with a system in

place that trains them to do so; gives them a monetary stipend;

issues an order that tells them how long they will be there; prepares the gating to welcome them and give them billeting and so

forth—things that we take for granted in our Army—the last installment of that rotation was very positive.

But they still leave behind approximately 25 percent of their

strength to either guard their facilities, which is a natural instinct,

or to make sure that they don’t leave their local communities uncovered.

This army, as a deployable army for the entire nation, is somewhat of a new concept for them. Even in the former regime, there

were several units that were expected to deploy, the Republican

Guard, but the rest of the army was largely territorial and fixed

inside of certain regions.

So we are learning. They are learning. The accountability is getting better. But they have tactical and they have strategic

vulnerabilities. Reporting is a tactical vulnerability for the Iraqi

army, no question.

Dr. GINGREY. Well, General, what more can we do about that,

though? This is a huge problem. And particularly, as you mentioned, some of it could be fraud on the part of the commander and

over-reporting.

What, specifically, can you tell the committee that we have put

in place to try to get accurate numbers and get them to show up?

General DEMPSEY. There are two things. One is rather obviously;

the other is a technological application.

The rather obvious one is, we have to get their leaders, their senior leaders, as interested in this problem as we are.

The first couple of units that came to Baghdad at 50 percent, we

were very upset about that. At that time, it was General Chiarelli,

General Casey and myself. But, frankly, the senior military leaders

of the Iraqi government were kind of pleased that they had gotten

50 percent to come, because in their mind, this was such a change

in culture that they were surprised they got what they got.

So we have to get them as interested in this as we are, and we

are.

The technological issue is this system I described to you as the

Human Resources Information Management System. It is a personnel database that right now goes to Iraqi division level. We are

going to push it to Iraqi brigade level by the end of the year. And

eventually, in early 2008, we will get it to battalion level.

30

And once we have them accepting of an automated database—

there are some that are fighting against the automated database

for obvious reasons. As soon as you automate it, it is subject to

scrutiny, and they are not exactly sure they want that kind of scrutiny. But the more enlightened of them, and the ones we tend to

try to empower, understand that it is going to be a powerful tool

for them.

Dr. GINGREY. Thank you.

General Dempsey, in reviewing the May of 2007 unclassified

Transition Readiness Assessments from the Ministry of the Interior

transition team on its ministry, it evaluates the ministry at the

highest tier, TRA–1, in command and control. This signifies that

the ministry can provide effective command and control for police

operations across Iraq.

Given the limited transition team presence in the provinces, how

much confidence do you have in this particular assessment?

General DEMPSEY. Yes, I am actually quite confident, and here

is why.

Although we only get into about a third to a half of the police

stations, we are embedded at the provincial level—that is to say,

at the Provincial Joint Coordination Centers—with the provincial

directors of police, all 18 of them, on a one-for-one basis.

And so we have PTTs, police transition teams, at the provincial

level who, in turn, report to the National Coordination center, the

NCC, who, in turn, reports to the National Operations Center, the

NOC.

And we are embedded in each of those nodes, and so we have actually seen them exercise command and control from center to

province level on several occasions: problems in Diwaniya, problems in Amara, problems in Baqouba, problems in Samarra. And

their reporting system and the command and control that they

have exerted is actually quite efficient.

Sometimes, they will intentionally bypass it. You know, the cell

phone is both the boon and bane of my existence for command and

control in Iraq, because they oftentimes will call directly down and

lose visibility on the process.

But quite confident based on what you just said.

Dr. GINGREY. Given the accounts of endemic problems in the

Iraqi police service, and even some of the members of our committee—I led a CODEL to Iraq. We had an opportunity to get over to

Jordan at the JIPTC (Jordanian International Police Training Center) police training center.

And as impressive as the facility was, what was stunning was

the fact that the 50,000 or so Iraqi police service people who were

trained, nobody knew how many of them were in Iraq, nobody

knew whether they showed up for work, nobody really had an assessment or who we were training, frankly, because we didn’t keep

track of them.

And it just seems, given what we were able to see relative to the

police service and all of the endemic problems that we hear about

on a continual basis, that struck me in the report as—it made me

ask, ‘‘How could it be accurate?’’

General DEMPSEY. Yes, as you know, JIPTC is a very fine institution with great entrance requirements and so forth. I am sure

31

that the perspective of INL (Bureau for International Narcotics and

Law Enforcement)—INL runs JIPTC for us, and has and continues

to—their perspective was, we lost complete visibility when a policeman graduated. It is just not the case.

I can tell you that we knew exactly what provinces—because

they were recruited from provinces to go to JIPTC—we know what

provinces they went back to. We know where the provincial director of police assigned them.

But I will concede, as I have earlier with other parts of this, that

once they get to a local police station, that we are subject to the

whims of the local police chief’s reporting and payroll manipulations and so on and so forth.

And there is no database yet to in an automated way look down

inside police stations. That is in train as well. There is a database

for the MOI that is being put in place.

That also makes them uncomfortable, by the way. But——

Dr. GINGREY. But you would agree, General, given the hundreds

of millions of dollars invested in that training operation, one would

think that we would have a better idea, or at least they would have

a better idea whether or not the police servicemembers that they

trained showed up for work, whether they moved up, you would

think there would be an assessment about whether the training

put them in a better position to move up in rank.

General DEMPSEY. Sure.

Dr. GINGREY. It was stunning to all of us that there was no real

assessment of where these police service personnel ended up and

how they were doing.

General DEMPSEY. Yes, I do agree that we should and can continue to help them become better at those kind of tracking.

I would say, though, that our ability to provide trained police

with the kind of skills—human rights, rule of law—to the provinces

is certainly nothing to be underestimated. Again, the Iraqi police

is something they have never been before, and that probably

doesn’t exist any place else in the region. That is why the police

side of this is so extraordinarily difficult.

Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Akin.

Mr. AKIN. I have no further questions.

Mr. MEEHAN. Dr. Snyder.

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

General Dempsey, I am going to take advantage of you being

here and ask you somewhat broader questions. But they relate to

what we have been talking about.

The first one, I wanted to hear your thoughts on one of the concluding comments you made. And, reading again from your opening

statement that you delivered earlier, ‘‘The leaders and people of

Iraq have not given up on themselves. We should not give up on

them.’’

One of the issues that we have, I think that the American people

have, the questions that are being asked is, ‘‘Well, what is the attitude of the Iraqi people toward America and our American troops

and all our American civilians that are working there?’’

There have been, what, I guess the number is approximately, a

rough estimate, about 2 million Iraqis that have made a decision

32

to have left Iraq and have gone to neighboring countries, discouraged with their potential future.

We certainly have seen in your time there, since you were first

there, dramatic changes in some neighborhoods, as there has sectarian violence that have driven Shias out of mixed neighborhoods

and Sunnis out of mixed neighborhoods. And I think General

Petraeus has made public comments about some of the dramatic

changes he has seen in neighborhoods since he has been there.

There certainly have been an abundance of polling data and discussions about what have been attitudes of a certain percentage of

Iraqis toward American troops. And there has been an unfortunate

willingness on the part of a significant percentage of Iraqis to say

that it is okay to attack American troops.

So when I hear your statement that ‘‘leaders and people of Iraq

have not given up on themselves, we should not give up on them.’’

But it is certainly not a rosy scenario of everyone pulling in harness.

Would you amplify on the negative side of this and how the

American people should see this over the long haul?

General DEMPSEY. I would say that my comment is more based

on my personal perspective on what would be the indicators that

Iraq had descended into something that was irretrievable as a national entity; for example, if the Council of Representatives stopped

sitting. I mean, it may not be functioning very well, but it continues to meet.

The army sees itself as an institution of national unity, and the

leaders of Iraq see the army as an institution of national unity and

are not inclined to use it for sectarian purposes.

It is those kind of things where it seems to me the country still

believes that it will be an integral whole and not fragmented into

thirds or something less than thirds in the future. And that is really the point I wanted to make in that phrase.

There is no question, though, that—I heard General Abizaid say

3 years ago that there would undoubtedly, at some point in this

mission, be a point of descending consent, where the population

would either want to be completely in control of their own destinies

or begin to blame us for the failures of their government.

And I think we have to be alert for that point. I don’t think we

are there yet. But we certainly need to keep our eye on that.

Dr. SNYDER. As all Americans listen to their daily news, if there

has been a dramatic bombing, IED, suicide explosion somewhere in

Iraq, that often will be in the top one or two or three stories: 30

killed with this bomb, 25 killed in this bomb.

I know that that is one of the metrics that you all follow. And

I am not sure how to put that in perspective. I think there is one

perspective amongst the American people that when we hear those

kinds of numbers—another suicide bomb went off, killing 25 or 30

people, and that we know the ramifications that that has to those

families and the resentments and tragedy that it brings, the tendency would be to say, ‘‘That is one more indication that it is not

going well.’’

The other side of that—and as one who did not vote for the war

resolution originally in October of 2002, I am looking at it, I think,

the other way, which is, as I see these horrendous bombings going

33

off in marketplaces, killing just indiscriminately women and children, and it seems like for those who have the perspective that

there should be an immediate—you know, ‘‘Go home as quickly as

possible,’’ there really are some horrendous people doing horrendous damage to innocent people.

How do you see where these dramatic bombings fit into how we

should view what is happening in Iraq and your view? As you

began your statement earlier, you are cautiously optimistic.

General DEMPSEY. You know, as we try to determine who are our

enemies and the enemies of the Iraqi government, we tend to see

the high-profile mass-casualty suicide bombings as a tactic of the

Sunni extremist. And I think that for a period of time, we maybe

were more alone than in accord with the Iraqi government on, you

know, what to do about that.

I would suggest that, as you see what is happening in Al Anbar

province, it does seem that it has finally become apparent even to

the Sunni population that those kind of attacks, which kill indiscriminately and kill not only Sunni but Shia and Kurd, and Christians for that matter as well, I think you are seeing them begin to

come to the conclusion finally that their future should not be tied

to the Sunni extremist element, and in particular al Qaeda in Iraq.

I think that is a positive thing.

The tactic of the Shia extremist—and make no mistake about it,

there is an extremist element of the Shia population as well. And

their tactic seems to be the, as we describe it, extrajudicial killing

or murders, where they will kidnap or move into a neighborhood

and kill dozens on occasion.

And so as we have tried to describe it to the Iraqi government,

it is absolutely necessary to address both sides of this spectrum of

violence. Because if you address just one or the other, you tend to

empower that other element.

And so I do think that the Iraqi government, Prime Minister

Maliki in particular, understands that either extreme will not only

undermine his government but eventually could potentially lead to

the failure of Iraq.

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you. My time is up.

Mr. MEEHAN. Mrs. Davis, did you have a——

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I wonder if I could just go back for a second, because I understand that you wanted to speak about the challenges of working

with the Sunni tribesmen separately and in closed session, but

those reports have been in the media. And I wonder what you could

tell us that would help us to understand, help the public to understand better what exactly is happening and what we are learning

from that process.

General DEMPSEY. I can in general terms, Congresswoman. And

I would be happy to do that.

First of all, I think that local initiatives in general—this particular one in Al Anbar province is certainly the high water mark for

local initiatives—but local initiatives where the local populace decides to cast off this extremist element in their midst could be profoundly important.

But I say ‘‘could be profoundly important’’ because at some point

for the government of Iraq to remain the central authority and to

34

have the sole proponency on the use of force, which is what a civil

society must have, the central government must be the sole proprietor of the use of force.

So what we have to do, quite simply, is we have to find a way

to harness the power of these local initiatives but tie it back to the

center. And that is what I will talk to you about in closed session.

That absolutely has to happen.

But it could very well be, maybe already is, that this local recognition that the extremist elements on both sides have to be

stopped that could be the most profound moment in this entire mission—could be.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Okay. I will leave it at that.

I think part of the confusion that people might have is that if

they are able to be co-opted in working with the local tribes, what

is the difficulty in trying to make that transition?

General DEMPSEY. Well, I think the difficulty, simply and in an

unclassified way stated, is we have to make sure we know their

motivations.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Okay. Thank you.

I think we have all tried to step back a little bit and look at the

overall scene that is happening. And I see the parallel moves of

training the Iraqi Security Forces alongside hopes for political reconciliation.

But I am wondering to what extent that hampers or has really

stalled, in some cases, the opportunity to move as quickly as possible toward a transition.

How are even the Iraqi generals or the leadership that you are

working with, how frustrating to them is the lack of movement for

political reconciliation?

And in fact, I mean, we could be doing an exceptional job on one

end but not working on the other. And to what extent does that

affect their work?

General DEMPSEY. Well, I think I would say that they are acutely

aware of our frustration at the pace of movement toward reconciliation. But that could be because I am not sure they see themselves

capable of reconciliation in the near term. I think they may see

themselves capable of accommodation in the near term.

And in my discussions with them, particularly those that take a

very broad national and even, in some cases, regional view—men

like Barham Saleh, for example, the minister for economics—I

think they are looking for ways to make themselves more interdependent on each other as a first step, as a step toward accommodation, thereby setting the conditions eventually for reconciliation.

I mean, that is why this hydrocarbon law is so important. It

makes the regions and the peoples of Iraq interdependent. And

until they find some reason to be dependent on each other, it is

going to be probably impossible to reconcile. It may not be impossible to accommodate, though.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My time

is up.

If we are going to go into closed session, I would appreciate that.

Thank you.

Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Spratt.

35

Mr. SPRATT. General Dempsey, it is my understanding that the

Iraqi units that have shown up for duty in the surge initiative have

typically shown up a battalion or two short than an ordinary brigade.

You said for justifiable reasons they felt it necessary to leave behind a battalion to defend the homefront. But in addition to that,

it is my understanding they have been serving short tours like 90

days, a fairly short period of time before they rotate out.

Have these factors hampered the success of the surge initiative

thus far?

General DEMPSEY. Not thus far, sir.

But General Odierno and I, who meet on a regular basis—he has

expressed his concerns that the turbulence created by short deployment cycles for Iraqi units could begin to impact on his ability to

accomplish what he needs to on the surge.

It is one of those cases—there are cases in this mission where

the tactical necessity rubs uncomfortably against what to me is the

strategic desire to, in this case, have deployability be a core competency of the Iraqi army.

In other words, for me as the transition commander, I like to

think that this Iraqi army will see itself as a national entity and

therefore be willing to move where it is needed, not just stay in one

place.

And I also think we learn an enormous number of lessons when

you move units around. You actually get a look at their strength,

you get a look at their equipment, you get a look at their ability

to lead as you move them around.

So there is a strategic transition objective in making

deployability a core competency of this army that is rubbing uncomfortably against a tactical desire to keep them in place for stability. We are going to work that out, and he and I now—Lieutenant General Jim Dubik.

And it may be extending the period for some length or time, or

it may eventually mean that we will build additional forces to remain in Baghdad permanently, but not lose the deployability piece.

We can pull them out of the fight and send them to training in

Basmaya Range, which is a very state-of-the-art training center we

have built for them.

We have to make sure we keep them thinking about

deployability, but we may be able to do so in a way that doesn’t

impact the surge. We are aware of that.

Mr. SPRATT. General Petraeus told us up in Mosul several years

ago that one of the frustrations or dilemmas he confronted was for

every bad guy or troublemaker he took off the streets, he risked antagonizing three or four, five others.

Wouldn’t it be better to have an Iraqi face on the surge? And I

take it that was part of the architecture of it, with one brigade

matched by one partnered battalion of ours. And can you achieve

this affect if you have the Iraqi troops rotating in and out on a fairly short-term basis?

General DEMPSEY. I don’t know that I have heard that proposal,

Congressman.

But, again, as long as the two of us accept that we have to make

sure we have both things—the surge has to work, but we have to

36

keep developing this army as a long-term institution—then I think

we will be able to figure it out, or General Dubik and General

Odierno and General Petraeus will.

Mr. SPRATT. Well, assuming we do achieve some success in Baghdad with this surge initiative, I would assume that some troops

will have to stay behind for some time to come in order to stabilize

that success and keep it riveted in place. And I would assume that

we would prefer to have Iraqi troops do that as opposed to our occupation troops.

How do we achieve that? Are there sufficient Iraqi forces to come

and take on this longer-term duty?

General DEMPSEY. As I have mentioned—I think I even mentioned it when you were with me in Baghdad—we have done an assessment and come to the conclusion that they do lack depth.

And I will define depth as the ability to maintain control of their

battlespace in one part of Iraq, and move sufficient forces elsewhere to what we would describe as weight domain effort.

Baghdad is clearly the main effort right now. And we are trying

to get Iraqi units to move to it, but they lack the depth to be able

to keep hold of what they had and move.

And so that is why I have said that I think they will need to

grow a few more forces—and I am not prepared to put a number

on it yet—so that they can do that, exactly what you say.

In other words, everyone understands there will be a decline in

U.S. presence at some point; and to include the Iraqis understand

that. And they are beginning to ask me how much bigger should

they grow in order to offset the declining U.S. presence. And the

answer to that question is the pace at which we eventually decline.

And that part of what, I think, Admiral Fallon, General

Petraeus, and our Iraqi counterparts have to sort through.

Mr. SPRATT. Thank you again, sir.

Mr. MEEHAN. Dr. Snyder.

Dr. SNYDER. General Dempsey, following up on what Mr. Spratt

was talking about, as you look ahead to the future, and at a point

when there will be changes in the role of U.S. troops, what is the

number—I am trying to arrive at some kind of a number of U.S.

troops that would need to be available to protect U.S. trainers.

Would we not foresee that, even 1 or 2 or 3 years down the line,

that we will have U.S. trainers, still, perhaps, in an embedded role

or a partnered role with Iraqi units, but would have to have U.S.

troops in fairly substantial numbers, would they not, to be prepared to bail out those troops or support those troops and provide

close air support?

I mean, it would have to be a significant number of U.S. troops,

would it not?

General DEMPSEY. Well, I have not been involved in any—intuitively, what you just said——

Dr. SNYDER. But you are aware of how many Iraqi units you currently have——

General DEMPSEY. I am.

Dr. SNYDER [continuing]. In which U.S. troops are currently embedded.

General DEMPSEY. Correct.

37

Dr. SNYDER. I assume you are still trying to get the trajectory

up, in terms of number of U.S. trainers. And if we have trainers,

I assume, sprinkled all over the country, providing this role everywhere, you couldn’t just have some kind of rapid reaction force sitting outside of Baghdad. We would have to have substantial numbers of U.S. forces available at multiple places throughout the

country, would we not?

General DEMPSEY. I think the answer to that question will be determined once we decide whether the current transition team concept will be the one that prevails, or if it adapts.

I mean, for example, when a unit reaches what you have seen

described as level one, the question will be, does it still need a

transition team? If the answer to that question is yes, then the

commander on the ground will make that decision. Well, then you

will have transition teams spread all over the country.

If, on the other hand, as they reach level one, those transition

teams move to the next higher level—in other words, it, sort of, uncoils from bottom up, and that the transition team concept is more

like a circuit rider program where a transition team rolls in and

rolls out as necessary—then I think it changes the dynamic and it

helps the commander answer that very concern.

Your point about sovereign airspace is a very good one, though.

I mean, Iraq’s air force will not be capable of protecting their sovereign airspace for probably the next 5 years. So the question that

will be negotiated with the Iraqi government—and, again, I would

ask if Mr. Kimmitt wants to comment—but that is all part of determining what is this long-term security relationship.

Dr. SNYDER. I am running out of time. I think the chairman has

been very patient here.

Two final questions. The first one, if you could just comment real

briefly: From the time you entered the Army and we were in the

midst of a cold war, all your training was toward, how do you have

massive ground forces and nuclear forces and all that kind of

thing? We are in a different concept of what we think war is going

to look like in the future.

And I continue to be concerned that those of us who are supportive of the military in this role and the military that we are not appreciating—that we really need to dramatically change the role of

foreign language training in our military forces, that the business

of sending a trainer over there with 1 month of somehow some

part-time language training and some cultural sensitivity makes

up for the fact that we really need to be people sending over there

that, as part of their career, they had had several years of Arabic

or several years of Farsi or several years of whatever the languages

are, and that we are not working that at all into our training the

way we ought to, in our promotion and—what are your thoughts

about that, as somebody who looks ahead at the——

General DEMPSEY. Well, I think your point is correct.

I have been out of the country so long, I can’t speak definitively

for this, but I do believe that even when General Petraeus was at

Fort Leavenworth and in conversations with the superintendent of

our military academy on the Army side, there is in fact some

emerging changes to our professional development model that

would in fact require an officer from the time he was commissioned

38

to begin that course of study into cultures, into languages and actually make them eventually gates that have to be navigated to be

promoted.

I think you will see that, sir.

Dr. SNYDER. I am not so sure that it shouldn’t be beginning in

boot camp with our basic enlisted folks, that this is just going to

be part of your life as a military soldier.

May I ask one final question, Mr. Chairman?

Would you respond to the soundbite that we hear again in the

great American debate going on about America’s role in the war in

Iraq? When you hear the phrase, ‘‘America should not be refereeing

a civil war,’’ how do you respond to that? And how do you see the

role with regard to the sectarian violence——

General DEMPSEY. You know, without getting into the semantics

of whether it is or is not, the way I would respond is, I think we

do what we have to do in parts of the world that are important to

us.

And I hearken back, Congressman, to the fact that, at least from

my personal perspective, Iraq is very important. A stable Iraq as

a strategic partner in that part of the world, which is undoubtedly

the most dangerous part of the world for our nation for at least the

next 25 years—again, in my personal opinion—whatever is there,

I think we deal with it, because the Nation is important to us.

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you for your time today and your testimony

and your service and the service of Mrs. Dempsey.

Secretary Kimmitt, thank you.

Mr. MEEHAN. Thank you, Dr. Snyder.

I would like to continue our practice of allowing our subcommittee staff members here an opportunity to ask questions. So I would

first like to turn to Mr. John Kruse of our subcommittee staff.

Mr. KRUSE. Thank you, sir.

General, my question is concerning the 2006 Joint Campaign

Plan and the April Assigned Campaign Plan by Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus. Which one were you operating under

when you left? And at the unclassified level, can you tell us any

significant differences between the two?

General DEMPSEY. I can, sir.

And we were operating under the interim, let’s describe it, campaign plan signed by Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus.

And I would not say it is a sea change or a significant change

in strategy. I think you know that General Petraeus’s assessment

correctly was that there was a period of time here where we had

to protect the population. I think in his view, the effort to transition had probably put the population at risk that was unacceptable

risk.

And so, there is always a balance between transition and security. And in his view, the balance had tipped a bit too precipitously

to transition and that it didn’t have to be either/or, but certainly

that in the near term, this period that he describes as the surge,

we had to ensure that the population was secured.

As he has described it to me, if it comes to a jump ball between

transition and security, security must prevail in the near term here

to give the Iraqi government time to move ahead.

So that is the way I would describe that change.

39

Mr. KRUSE. General, will your successor have to revise the

MNSTC–I 2007 Campaign Action Plan to reflect the new CrockerPetraeus joint campaign plan?

General DEMPSEY. Almost surely. I mean, it is a tenet of our profession that as the senior commander adapts his campaign plan, we

have to adapt ours to nest in it.

Mr. KRUSE. General, if I can just focus for a moment on the IPS

(Iraqi Police Service), our investigation has demonstrated that the

development of the IPS lags behind the national police and certainly Iraq armed forces. After speaking to a number of transition

teams, our police transition teams’ constant theme is, ‘‘It is a good

day if Iraqi police are able to go out and patrol.’’ That seems to be

the measure of success.

Could you comment on MNSTC–I or MNF–I, what their goal is

for the development of the IPS? Where do we want to take them

to? And if you can comment on how the transition teams, the advisory mission, will leverage that goal.

General DEMPSEY. Okay. I go back to what I mentioned a bit earlier: that we are actually trying to build a police force to do something that it has never done before in that part of the world.

And so, as you know—and I am sure as you know—that in the

past, police forces typically, if they were traffic police, they stood

in the traffic circle, but if they were patrol or station police, they

pretty much stayed in the station. And then as someone wandered

in with a problem, they would either choose to deal with it or not,

and sometimes they chose to deal with it if the price was right. I

mean, that is just what we encounter.

One of the things that the Baghdad Security Plan, Fardh AlQanoon, has done is established these joint security stations. And

a big part of the motivation for that was to get the police to feel

confident that they could leave the station and go out on patrol and

survive the experience.

Now, recall that policeman in Iraq are armed with individual

protection but they don’t have armored vehicles. They have some

crew-served weapons to protect police stations, but patrolling in the

back of a Suburban or in the back of a pickup truck in that environment is a very dangerous experience.

So the joint security stations were conceived and are operating

so that you have all four components working together: local police,

national police, Iraqi army and coalition. And part of the motivation, as I mentioned, was to get the local police out of the stations.

It is working in some places, and in some places it is not working.

Mr. MEEHAN. Thank you very much.

Mr. Jones just arrived.

And thought you might want to take this opportunity to ask a

question, if you would like.

Mr. JONES. Yes, Mr. Chairman, I apologize for not being here

most of this session.

And, General, I want to thank you for your service. I have heard

so many good things about you.

And, again, I apologize for—I actually don’t mind telling you, I

was on T.V. today about the Duke lacrosse players down in North

40

Carolina, which has been a huge issue, as you well know, and that

was the main reason I wasn’t here on time, Mr. Chairman.

And, General, I am going to go a little bit off, but because you

are such an expert, the reason that—I was at a subcommittee hearing a couple of weeks ago, and we had Air Force, Marines, Army

to testify—most of them were colonels, I think, and one lieutenant—about the training of the police in Iraq.

And I have heard you today—a couple questions, in brief, Mr.

Chairman.

I took from their testimony—and I did not hear yours, but I

heard parts of your answers to some of my colleagues—it seems

like the best anybody can tell me, that it is slow and it is probably

moving forward instead of backward.

But you can’t, and they couldn’t, tell me that in two years or

three years the police force will be at a position where they can

pretty much do the police work themselves. And I am not talking

about investigative work. I am just talking about taking care of a

block, a neighborhood.

What would you say to a Member of Congress if the same report

that those colonels gave—and they were still giving that same report three years from now?

You know, I learned yesterday that we are now going to arm the

Sunnis. I know that has nothing to do with the police work, I

would assume. The American people are just terribly frustrated

with what seems to be an impossible situation that you and others

have been put into.

Now I will go back to what—I am rambling, but I will go back

to what I am trying to say. You cannot, in your position—I guess

you have been very honest and up-front. You always have. That is

your reputation. And God bless you for being that type of person.

But we are grappling with a nation that the budget is about to

explode from overspending. The figure in Iraq now is $9.2 billion

a month. We are careful about assigning weapons to many of these

Iraqis in the police force because we don’t know if they are on our

side or not.

How do you say to the American people that it is going—how

would you, if you were in my position, how would you answer the

people back home that are saying, ‘‘Are we in a black hole?’’

General DEMPSEY. Actually, Congressman, thanks for the opportunity to answer that question, because not only does Mrs.

Dempsey ask me that question on occasion, but, as some of you

know, I have had two children serve with me in Iraq as well. One

is a captain, and one is a—my daughter is a second lieutenant.

And they are asking the question, and they are also asking, how

many times do we have to go back? And those are questions that

are fair questions. And so here is what I would say, though, in answer to them or in answer to you.

First of all, please don’t forget that Iraq is an important part of

our future, and that it may be that we have to continue to sacrifice

there for some time in order to achieve our objectives, unless the

objectives change. And that is not a military decision; that is a political decision. But while the objectives remain what they are, we

need to stay committed to it.

41

Second, the Iraqi people are very eager to take over responsibility for their own security. We would be in far worse shape if they

didn’t express that eagerness. And so that is a positive thing, in my

view.

And they have started to demonstrate their willingness to do it,

at least financially, as I mentioned in my opening statement. There

is every reason to believe that, this year, they will outspend us two

to one, and next year it should be three to one, in my view, if the

budget process goes as I anticipate it may.

And in terms of local police in particular, I don’t think local police will reach a level that you and I would recognize as local police

until political progress is achieved.

In other words, I think we can and will make their army and

their national police forces capable of taking over security in Iraq

soon. I won’t put a date on it, because I am not there anymore, and

that really is the responsibility of those there to make that decision.

And that the national forces, once they are able to take over the

security portfolio, the local police will only become effective once

the security situation stabilizes and political process is realized.

Stated another way, local police are tied to political process in a

way that isn’t true for national forces, so we are very focused in

the national forces and getting them in a position to take control.

We are working with the local police, because, at some point, they

are going to need them. But they are not going to be able to step

up while the situation is as elevated as it is.

In seven of the provinces, however, today, local police are, in fact,

in the lead in security. But those are the parts of Iraq where political process has moved sufficiently forward and tend to be in those

parts of Iraq that are homogeneous.

So the Kurdish region is stable, the deep Shia south is stable. Al

Anbar is looking promising, but Baghdad, Diyala, Salahuddin and

At-Ta amim, which is the faultline, they are not stable and the

local police are not effective there.

Mr. JONES. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.

Mr. MEEHAN. Thank you.

Mrs. Davis.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We are looking at numbers, I believe, of increasing the Iraqi

army to about 50,000 additional soldiers. I think you mentioned

that by the end of the year that was the hope——

General DEMPSEY. It is about 45,000—well, it is not just the

army. It is military forces, because the air force and navy are coming along.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Could you speak then to the capacity

to do that? I mean, we have talked about the immature logistics

system and any other areas of government. How do you anticipate

that that capacity is going to be there?

And then, just to follow up very quickly, General—we really appreciate your hanging in for the length of this hearing—if you

could comment on the Iraqi navy. And are we developing the Iraqi

navy with the ability to actually protect their interests in the Gulf

as well as the U.S. interests too?

42

General DEMPSEY. Yes, ma’am. Thanks. And by the way, I see

this more as an opportunity than a liability for me, because I have

invested 3 years of my personal life into this, and has my family,

and this is a chance for me to help you understand what I think

exists and, just as important, what doesn’t exist in Iraq. So I don’t

mind a bit, to tell you the truth.

Capacity is there, or going to be there. You are really interested

though, ma’am, in capability.

There is an Iraqi logistics architecture. They helped design it.

They are helping fund it, but it is not demonstrating its full capability for probably a number of reasons.

One is unfamiliarity for a few reasons. The second one is that

they are in a very tough fight, and developing the capability to do

things other than survive in the middle of a fight is pretty challenging.

And the third thing gets at the issue of leadership that I mentioned before. I mean, I hope I leave you with the understanding

that the scarcest resources we have is not time, it is not money;

it is leaders in Iraq.

As you know, the Baath Party consciously culled out for 40 years

the kind of leaders we are looking for. They culled them out. Innovation, creativity and accepting responsibility were the three things

that could get you killed during the Saddam regime.

Then they went to war with Iran for several years, and most of

their bravest soldiers, not surprisingly, and their bravest leaders

were killed.

And then they fought two wars against us, and now they are

fighting a war against al Qaeda and others.

And so we are running into a challenge of getting leaders in

place that can turn the capacity we have provided into a capability.

That is really the challenge.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. And absent their doing that, I guess,

does that training fall on the U.S. then, if, in fact, those leaders

are not there?

General DEMPSEY. Well, in some things I think the answer will

be yes, but we have found ways to help them. I mean, the foreign

military sales program was a huge moment for us when we were

able to convince them that they can’t enter into reasonable, honest

and productive contracts where they were right now in their development. They are incapable of it. And so we convinced them that

we can help with that, if they just allow us to do so. And they are

beginning to do that.

I wish they had the same capability to do that for the other—

there are 27 ministries, 12 key ministries. And we overwatch two.

And two of them are enrolled in foreign military sales and are beginning to produce things for them, equipment and goods and services.

To your other point about the navy, ma’am, the Iraqi navy is actually progressing. It is rather small. But it doesn’t need to be big.

It has 36 miles of coast. They have two offshore oil platforms. Of

course, one of those oil platforms, ABOT, is responsible for

transiting 83 percent of their economy, one oil platform. And the

other one pulls in about 4 or 5 percent. So almost 90 percent of

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their economy runs through their offshore oil platforms in the

south.

They are closely partnered with CTF 158, which is the coalition

navy and NAVCENT in the Gulf, who provide them not only the

transition teams and the trainers, but also provides them additional combat power that they can call upon when it exceeds their

capability.

For example, they don’t have yet an offshore support vessel. And

so the small Iraqi patrol boats have to go back and forth in and

out of the port of Umm Qasr to be refueled and rearmed and refit.

The CTF 158 recently put the HMS Belvedere there, which is a

British offshore support vessel. And they intend to leave it there

for a couple years, which now allows this little nascent navy to stay

at sea.

They also have two squadrons of marines that have been trained

to take responsibility for point defense of the offshore oil platforms.

The smaller platform, the northernmost—ABOT, the one that is

very close to the Iranian line—they will actually take responsibility

for securing it this year, probably in the fall. And then we anticipate maybe a year later they will be responsible for the KAOT,

which is the bigger one.

But we will see how they do with ABOT before we decide whether to hand over KAOT to them.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Okay. Thank you very much.

Mr. MEEHAN. General, thank you very much for your testimony.

There was one question that I think Mrs. Davis had that either

we could go to a secure room or maybe we could go in the back

room and you could whisper to her. It is up to you.

But I want to thank you for your appearance. You have always

been accessible to Members of Congress, both here in Washington

but also in various trips to Iraq that members have taken.

We have on this subcommittee, as the chairman and I indicated,

had some disagreements or have had some disagreements with the

DOD relative to witnesses and relative to materials being available

to the committee. But we appreciate your accessibility.

We appreciate even more your service to this country. And we

hope we have you out of here in time to take Mrs. Dempsey to

lunch.

Thank you.

General DEMPSEY. Thank you very much.

[Whereupon, at 11:28 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

A P P E N D I X

JUNE 12, 2007

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

JUNE 12, 2007

(49)

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE

RECORD

JUNE 12, 2007

(67)

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. Account (by category) for the 188,300 MOI Civil Security ISF that

have been trained and equipped. Account for them by category (KIA, deserted,

wounded and on payroll, active service, unaccounted for, etc.) to supplement the

record. (CM Andrews HASC O&I Hearing)

General DEMPSEY. (U) The specific information requested is not accessible given

the way the Ministry of Interior tracks personnel accountability. Simply put, when

policemen are KIA, wounded, unaccounted for, deserted, etc. there is no distinction

made as to whether they are trained or untrained.

(U) There is currently no reliable data on how many of the trained and equipped

police from the Objective COIN Security Force are still serving with the Mol due

to a number of factors. The estimates of this number range from 40% to 70% of the

total trained by coalition.

(U) The MOI has hired a significant number of police beyond those trained by

MNSTC–I.

(U) To cross-match WIA and KIA against the list of policemen who have or have

not received training is problematic for the Ministry of Interior’s current human resource management system since it is a manual paper system for personnel accounting. To gather the requested information would require a manual review of each individual personnel file assuming the correct information is annotated in every file.

(U) There are two database systems currently in development to automate human

resource management for the Mol. First, E-Ministry is designed to be the Mol’s centralized database for the approximately 24,000 employees in the Ministry of Interior

headquarters. E-Ministry is currently in Phase I, testing and evaluation. Phase-II

data entry is anticipated to begin in December 2007, and be fully populated by December 2008 (conservative estimate). If the project is embraced by key personnel in

the MOI, the data entry phase could be complete as early as mid 2008.

(U) To automate the management of Iraqi police in the provinces, an additional

personnel system is being developed. The Iraq Police Data Management System

(IPDMS) is a US Department of State-sponsored initiative currently in the development stage. IPDMS is scheduled for test deployment in August 2007, pending the

formation of an MOI committee. It is not possible at this state to estimate when

IPDMS will be fully operational. This committee, which has been approved by the

Minister, will provide direction, deployment plans, standard operating procedures,

and training candidates that will allow IPDMS to be implemented. IPDMS is designed to link with e-Ministry.

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