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52–944 2010

[H.A.S.C. No. 111–30] 

EFFECTIVE COUNTERINSURGENCY: 

HOW THE USE AND MISUSE OF 

RECONSTRUCTION FUNDING AFFECTS 

THE WAR EFFORT IN IRAQ AND 

AFGHANISTAN 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

MARCH 25, 2009 
(II) 

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS

IKE SKELTON, Missouri, Chairman 

JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina 

SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas 

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi 

NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii 

SILVESTRE REYES, Texas 

VIC SNYDER, Arkansas 

ADAM SMITH, Washington 

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California 

MIKE MCINTYRE, North Carolina 

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California 

ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania 

ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey 

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California 

JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

JIM MARSHALL, Georgia 

MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam 

BRAD ELLSWORTH, Indiana 

PATRICK J. MURPHY, Pennsylvania 

HANK JOHNSON, Georgia 

CAROL SHEA-PORTER, New Hampshire 

JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut 

DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa 

JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania 

GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona 

NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts 

GLENN NYE, Virginia 

CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine 

LARRY KISSELL, North Carolina 

MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico 

FRANK M. KRATOVIL, Jr., Maryland 

ERIC J.J. MASSA, New York 

BOBBY BRIGHT, Alabama 

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York 

ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland 

HOWARD P. ‘‘BUCK’’ MCKEON, California 

MAC THORNBERRY, Texas 

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina 

W. TODD AKIN, Missouri 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia 

JEFF MILLER, Florida 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

ROB BISHOP, Utah 

MICHAEL TURNER, Ohio 

JOHN KLINE, Minnesota 

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS, Washington 

K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas 

DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado 

ROB WITTMAN, Virginia 

MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma 

DUNCAN HUNTER, California 

JOHN C. FLEMING, Louisiana 

MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado 

THOMAS J. ROONEY, Florida 

ERIN C. CONATON, Staff Director 

MIKE CASEY, Professional Staff Member 

ROGER ZAKHEIM, Professional Staff Member 

CATERINA DUTTO, Staff Assistant 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS 

2009 

Page 

HEARING: 

Wednesday, March 25, 2009, Effective Counterinsurgency: How the Use and 

Misuse of Reconstruction Funding Affects the War Effort in Iraq and Afghanistan .............................................................................................................. 1 

APPENDIX: 

Wednesday, March 25, 2009 ................................................................................... 33 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25, 2009 

EFFECTIVE COUNTERINSURGENCY: HOW THE USE AND MISUSE OF 

RECONSTRUCTION FUNDING AFFECTS THE WAR EFFORT IN IRAQ 

AND AFGHANISTAN 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

McHugh, Hon. John M., a Representative from New York, Ranking Member, 

Committee on Armed Services ............................................................................ 2 

Skelton, Hon. Ike, a Representative from Missouri, Chairman, Committee 

on Armed Services ................................................................................................ 1 

WITNESSES 

Bowen, Stuart W., Jr., Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction ........ 3 

Fields, Maj. Gen. Arnold, USMC (ret.), Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction ............................................................................................. 5 

Williams-Bridgers, Jacquelyn L., Managing Director, International Affairs 

and Trade, U.S. Government Accountability Office .......................................... 7 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Bowen, Stuart W., Jr. ....................................................................................... 37 

Fields, Maj. Gen. Arnold .................................................................................. 43 

Williams-Bridgers, Jacquelyn L. ..................................................................... 51 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

[There were no Documents submitted.] 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

[There were no Questions submitted post hearing.] 

(1) 

EFFECTIVE COUNTERINSURGENCY: HOW THE USE AND 

MISUSE OF RECONSTRUCTION FUNDING AFFECTS 

THE WAR EFFORT IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, Washington, DC, Wednesday, March 25, 2009. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in room 

2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ike Skelton (chairman 

of the committee) presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. IKE SKELTON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM MISSOURI, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED 

SERVICES 

The CHAIRMAN. Good morning. Today, the House Armed Services 

Committee meets to take testimony on Effective Counterinsurgency: How the Use and Misuse of Reconstruction Funding Affects 

the War Effort in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

We are very fortunate to have three extremely qualified witnesses to help us here today: Stuart Bowen, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR); Major General Arnold Fields, 

the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction 

(SIGAR); and Jacqueline Williams-Bridgers, Managing Director for 

International Affairs and Trade at the Government Accountability 

Office, the GAO. 

Recently, the United States has engaged in two counterinsurgency operations, Iraq and Afghanistan. And while the campaign 

in Iraq is winding down somewhat, we are expecting a new strategy that will reinvigorate our efforts in Afghanistan to be announced in the next few days. We, of course, all look forward to 

that. This makes today’s effort so very, very important. 

Both SIGIR and GAO have written and testified repeatedly 

about the problems in the U.S. efforts to rebuild Iraq. Among many 

other problems, at some point during the war in Iraq, the reconstruction effort suffered from poor financial controls, poor interagency coordination, which we are very concerned about in this 

committee, and a lack of strategic planning, which we have all been 

concerned about for some time. 

While to some extent these problems were addressed over time 

in Iraq, we must ensure that the lessons that we learned there, at 

great expense, are not lost. So often we do not learn the lessons 

of the past, and we, on this committee, are very familiar with that. 

To help ensure that we do not experience the same problems in 

Afghanistan that we did in Iraq, this committee, as part of the Fiscal Year 2008 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), created 

the position of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Re-
2 

construction, or SIGAR. As the President will announce the new 

strategy shortly, it is our hope that SIGAR will help to take a critical look at the efforts in Afghanistan to ensure they are properly 

coordinated. 

At the same time, many people have heard the concern that, in 

Afghanistan, we are faced with a proliferation of auditors that we 

did not face in Iraq when the SIGIR began its important work. I 

am hopeful that our witnesses will take the time to address the difficult trade-offs between full accountability on the one hand, and 

the flexibility needed in a war zone, and the coordination that we 

need between auditors, on the one hand, to ensure that we do not 

stifle creativity and the work product. 

I would also like to note that many of the lessons learned in Iraq, 

as pointed out by the GAO and then SIGIR, may be applicable to 

the future as we consider ways to reform the interagency system. 

We reiterate the problems with the interagency system. We have 

done something on that in last year’s bill. We hope to continue on 

work on that. 

It is my hope that the testimony and discussion here today will 

help us understand these issues and problems and potential solutions. I appreciate the witnesses that we have. We realize you are 

the best at what you do, and we appreciate it very, very much. 

With that, John McHugh, Ranking Member, please. 

STATEMENT OF JOHN M. MCHUGH, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM 

NEW YORK, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ARMED 

SERVICES 

Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And like you, Mr. Chairman, I certainly want to welcome our 

witnesses. I think your closing comments encapsulated their skills 

and their expertise very well. And we are truly fortunate today to 

have the benefit of their testimony as we go forward on this very 

important issue. 

And let me, in that regard, Mr. Chairman, compliment you on 

holding this hearing. As you noted, sir, we hope that the product 

of today’s efforts will help us as we prepare for the 2010 budget in 

the wartime supplemental spending bills which will be before us in 

pretty short order. 

This committee spent a whole lot of time, rightfully so, and a 

whole lot of energy focusing on the allocation of reconstruction 

funding in both Iraq and Afghanistan. And in that process, we 

have used the good work of these fine people that have joined us 

here today, the GAO, the Inspector General for Iraq, and of course 

now the Inspector General for Afghanistan, as we have tried to implement their recommendations and their oversight findings into 

both our hearings as well as ensuing legislation. 

As you noted, Mr. Chairman, one of the direct results of those 

experiences was, indeed, our efforts back in the 2008 Defense bill 

to create the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, 

something that I think was both very wise and something we take 

great pride in. 

As we look at the work of their assembled efforts, it seems that 

one indisputable conclusion has been revealed: more work needs to 

be done. And I know that sounds like we are stating the obvious, 
3 

but I don’t think it is ever a fruitless effort to remind ourselves 

that we have much business before us. 

And although we have been at this now for nearly a decade, as 

SIGIR Bowen’s testimony reveals, we have not yet internalized effectively the difficult lessons that are out there for us to embody. 

And frankly, I am unsure if the fundamental problem is that we 

are simply bad at doing contingency relief and reconstruction, or 

we simply lack a policy to institutionalize the best practices for this 

kind of work. I hope it is the latter, but that is one of the primary 

reasons, of course, we are here today. 

SIGAR and GAO’s reports suggest we are too reliant on personalities and lack the organizational structures required for an expeditionary post-conflict reconstruction. They contend that we need to 

put an end to the culture of improvisation when managing contingency operations, exigencies of the battlefield notwithstanding. 

If the problem is rooted in policy, then simply we on this panel 

and in this Congress need to act. The House and the Senate has 

appropriated some $48 billion for Iraq reconstruction since 2003 

and $32 billion for Afghanistan since 2001, and a large slice of 

these funds has gone to the security sector. 

In Iraq, we will continue to assist that nation with their security 

forces for the foreseeable future. At the same time, building up the 

Afghan national security forces is a vital element of our counterinsurgency there. In other words, this work is essential, and we 

cannot afford any longer the inefficiencies and waste that has riddled our past efforts. And toward that end, I am certainly interested in hearing from Inspector General (IG) Fields and how 

SIGAR has used the Hard Lessons from Iraq and applied them to 

Afghanistan. Where these lessons don’t apply, I know we would all 

be interested in learning why and what steps we may be able to 

proactively take to avoid any pitfalls in the path ahead. 

So a lot of interesting work behind us. A lot of interesting discussion I hope today. And again, I thank all three of you for being 

here. 

And with a final word of appreciation to you, Mr. Chairman, I 

yield back the balance of my time. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, I thank the gentleman. We are off to an excellent start. 

We, again, are very pleased with the panel, and we look forward 

to your testimony. 

And without objection, each of your testimony will be entered in 

the record. 

Stuart Bowen, you are on. 

STATEMENT OF STUART W. BOWEN, JR., SPECIAL INSPECTOR 

GENERAL FOR IRAQ RECONSTRUCTION 

Mr. BOWEN. Thank you, Chairman Skelton, Ranking Member 

McHugh, members of the committee, it is my pleasure to address 

the issue before the committee today, the use of reconstruction 

funds in contingency operations, in particular in Iraq, an issue I 

have been reporting on for over five years now. 

Let me start by putting my comments in context. Six years ago 

this day, the United States forces were engaged in the bloodiest 

fire fight of the invasion, in the Euphrates Valley around Najaf. 
4 

Baghdad would fall two weeks later. Five years ago, I had just returned from my second trip to Iraq, having seen a deteriorating security situation and beginning the process of issuing my first quarterly report on a reconstruction program that had expanded tenfold 

from what had been planned to $20 billion, now $50 billion. 

One year ago yesterday, a rocket attack on the Green Zone took 

the life of one of my auditors who was working on an audit of a 

significant contract regarding that $50 billion. That context sets an 

important tone for analyzing what happened in Iraq, and that is, 

security drove up the cost of everything. 

I just returned from my 22nd trip to Iraq, and the security situation is much better there today than it was a year ago, much better 

than three years ago and five years ago. It still is not a safe place. 

It is still a dangerous place to work. I traveled out to Anbar to visit 

a project and to get their required significant security detail and 

major planning. But it is much safer today than it was. 

There is another stark reality that has caused the misuse of U.S. 

taxpayer money in the Iraq reconstruction program, and it echos 

the point, Mr. Chairman, that you were making, and Ranking 

Member McHugh, about the need to learn our lessons regarding 

these contingency operations, and that is, the United States Government does not have an established framework for the management and execution of contingency, relief, and reconstruction operations. 

I met with General Odierno, senior leadership in the embassy, 

and senior leadership in Multi-National Force—Iraq (MNF–I) during this latest trip. And they acknowledged to me, as virtually all 

the leadership did in the course of producing Hard Lessons: Our 

Study of Iraq, that reform is necessary to improve the management 

of contingency relief and reconstruction operations. 

Hard Lessons addresses a number of points. It tells the story of 

a reconstruction program that was very narrow, that sought to do 

two things at the outset: namely, avert humanitarian disaster and 

repair war damage. That quickly expanded after the invasion concluded to a program that sought to touch every aspect of Iraqi society, and then expanded thereafter through the Iraq Security Forces 

Fund (ISFF) to rebuild the Iraqi Army and the police. 

Fifty billion dollars later, what have we achieved? As Hard Lessons points out, on the infrastructure front, the United States program did not achieve the goals that it set for itself back in 2003. 

On the security side, after significant investment by the Congress, 

over $18 billion in the Iraqi Security Forces Fund, another $5 billion from other sources, the Iraqi Army is now a fairly capable 

force that has control of most of the provinces across the country 

and, by the end of May, will have control of all of them, according 

to the current schedule. 

Those are the realities of the challenges of the $50 billion, and 

the lessons learned are significant. Chief among them, as I said, is 

the need to develop unity of command for the management of contingency relief and reconstruction operations, something that is not 

extant within our current system. The Department of Defense 

(DOD), the Department of State (State), the United States Agency 

for International Development (USAID) all agree that there has 

been weak communication regarding the execution of the recon-
5 

struction effort, and that there needs to be reform. And I think that 

that reform should certainly come from the Congress, and there are 

several ways that it could go. 

There are other important reforms that need to be carried out, 

including the development of wartime contracting rules that are 

more efficient to avoid waste; the need to emphasize the integration and development of soft programs for the projection of soft 

power, especially relevant in Afghanistan today; programs that are 

geared well to indigenous needs, which was not the case in Iraq. 

The program, as we have seen in our asset transfer audits, we 

haven’t built exactly what the Iraqis wanted. And their complaints 

to us, in the course of our audits and in the course of our lessons 

learned reports, have been that it’s not what they wanted; we 

didn’t build to their need. Building to scale, especially in Afghanistan as we move forward, is essential, something that they can 

manage, that they have capacity to do. 

And finally, the U.S. Government needs to develop human resources, management systems, information technology (IT) systems, other systems for executing such operations. 

Let me close by saying that I met yesterday with a chief executive officer (CEO) of a contractor who did significant electricity 

work in Iraq in 2003, 2004, part of the Task Force to Restore Iraqi 

Electricity. He is now working in Afghanistan. He said, Mr. Bowen, 

I have read every one of your reports, and you are right, there was 

significant waste; that these large contractors, through subcontractors, caused the loss of significant taxpayer dollars. 

But then he said, I want to tell you that the same thing is going 

on in Afghanistan now, that there is significant waste and that the 

lessons learned from Iraq are waiting to be applied effectively in 

Afghanistan. 

With that, Mr. Chairman, thank you for your time. And I look 

forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bowen can be found in the Appendix on page 37.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. We are certainly, of 

course, so sorry about the loss of your auditor in Iraq. That is very, 

very, very sad. 

Mr. BOWEN. Thank you, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. The Inspector General for Afghanistan now, General Fields. 

STATEMENT OF MAJ. GEN. ARNOLD FIELDS, USMC (RET.), SPECIAL INSPECTOR GENERAL FOR AFGHANISTAN RECONSTRUCTION 

General FIELDS. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member McHugh, and 

members of the committee, I am pleased to be here for this hearing 

on reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a welcomed opportunity, our first since I was sworn in last summer, to discuss 

the establishment of the Office of the Special Inspector General for 

Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR for short, and, as well, our 

plans for oversight of reconstruction programs in Afghanistan as 

mandated by the Congress. 

The nature and scope of U.S. reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq have many similarities. However, as members of this 
6 

committee are aware, conditions in Afghanistan, from the standpoint of economic, geographic, demographic, and political, offer 

unique challenges to the feasibility and sustainability of reconstruction efforts. 

Afghanistan remains a poor and undeveloped country after nearly three decades of warfare and economic neglect. My colleague, 

Stuart Bowen, recently identified lessons learned from the U.S. reconstruction effort in Iraq. SIGAR will be assessing how U.S. agencies are considering these lessons in planning and implementing 

programs in Afghanistan. 

In my written statement, submitted for the record, I outline 

SIGAR’s priorities in several areas, using some of the lessons 

learned as a framework for my discussion. Now I want to, one, 

highlight actions we have taken to begin providing oversight; and 

two, discuss one of the lessons learned in Iraq and how we will examine its applicability in Afghanistan. 

Oversight is clearly an important and necessary function to ensure accountability over the use of U.S. taxpayer dollars. I want to 

mention four things we have done. 

First, we have hired and continue to hire highly qualified people 

willing to work in Afghanistan. Today, we have 41 people as part 

of our team. As additional funding becomes available, SIGAR plans 

to hire additional personnel and increase our presence in Afghanistan. 

Second, we are developing strategic plans to direct our work. We 

have commenced several audits, delivered two quarterly reports to 

the Congress, and established a hotline for reporting complaints. 

Over the next several months, we anticipate completing several reports containing analyses, observations, conclusions, and recommendations. 

Third, we have established an office in our embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, and we have secured space for personnel in three other 

locations in Afghanistan. We feel this is important to our work. 

Fourth, we are working closely with our oversight colleagues to 

share our plans and coordinate, as required, in our authorizing legislation. 

Now I would like to discuss one of the lessons learned in Iraq 

and how we will examine it in Afghanistan. 

The United States Government’s capacity to manage the contractors carrying out reconstruction work is an important issue. SIGAR 

plans to conduct a number of reviews on the use, oversight, and 

performance of contractors. And over time, we expect this work will 

lead to improved contracting and contract management processes. 

We have started an audit of U.S. agencies’ management of reconstruction funds, projects, and contracts. 

SIGAR is one of several audit entities responsible for oversight 

of contracts in Afghanistan. SIGAR plans to prepare the required 

comprehensive plan for audits of security contracts and other contracts. And this plan will be coordinated with other oversight entities, as appropriate. 

In closing, SIGAR takes its responsibilities very seriously. We 

are unique in our position in as much as we can examine reconstruction programs and activities in Afghanistan across all U.S. 

agencies. 
7 

I appreciate the support the Congress continues to provide our 

office. And I certainly look forward answering your questions. 

Thank you. 

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

Appendix on page 43.] 

Mr. ORTIZ [presiding]. Thank you, General. 

STATEMENT OF JACQUELYN L. WILLIAMS–BRIDGERS, MANAGING DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS AND TRADE, 

U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 

Ms. WILLIAMS-BRIDGERS. I thank you very much. GAO appreciates the opportunity to be here today to participate in this very 

important hearing. 

The United States faces unique challenges in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, GAO’s work has shown that success in both countries will depend on addressing common challenges. There are 

three: The first challenge is establishing and maintaining a basic 

level of security; second is building a sustainable economic foundation in each country; and third, holding the governments accountable to their political and economic commitments while building 

their capacity. These challenges underscore the need for the U.S. 

to chart comprehensive strategies to lay the groundwork for joint 

operational plans. 

I would like to first address the challenges the U.S. faces in Iraq. 

In Iraq, many U.S.-funded reconstruction efforts took place in an 

environment of deteriorating security. Oil, electricity, and water 

projects were subject to insurgent attacks, which raised cost, 

caused delays, changed scopes, and denied central services to the 

Iraqi people. Although violence has declined in Iraq, security conditions remain quite fragile. 

Iraq’s oil resources provide a foundation for economic growth. 

With revenues from the world’s third largest oil reserve, Iraq has 

accumulated a $47 billion surplus. However, Iraq’s investment in 

its infrastructure has been limited, resulting in slower-than-anticipated reconstruction in that country. 

The United States has held Iraq to its commitments to address 

political grievances among Sunni, Shi’a, and Kurd populations. It 

has passed some key legislative reforms and held several elections. 

However, the Iraqi Government still needs to enact other laws to 

define how the country’s oil and gas revenues will be shared and 

how Kirkuk will be governed. 

Finally, the Iraqi government’s limited capacity to deliver services to its people weakens its legitimacy. Iraq’s ministries lack personnel who can formulate budgets and procure goods and services. 

Also, the Iraq Security Forces (ISF) have demonstrated limited 

capacity to provide security without coalition support. 

Now let me turn to the challenges the U.S. faces in Afghanistan. 

A lack of security in Afghanistan has put U.S.-funded development projects at risk. Concerns over security have delayed projects, 

increased cost, and, again, changed the scope and nature of the 

projects. Building the National Security Forces (ANSF) is central 

to the U.S. effort to establish security, but progress there has been 

slow. 
8 

The drug trade in Afghanistan is a significant challenge to security and has required a multifaceted U.S. counternarcotics program. Profits from opium production help fund the Taliban and 

other insurgent groups, and it contributes to the government’s instability. Recent decisions, however, by DOD to change its rules of 

engagement in countering narcotics are a positive move. 

As one of the world’s poorest countries, Afghanistan is dependent 

on foreign aid now and for the foreseeable future. Afghanistan’s 

National Development Strategy (ANDS), established with U.S. and 

international support, is significantly underfunded and may not be 

viable given the current levels of assistance. The Afghanistan Government’s lack of capacity also hinders the country’s ability to meet 

its economic and development goals. The ministries do not have the 

expertise to maintain U.S. and other donor-financed infrastructure 

and capital investments, nor can it deliver the essential services to 

its people. 

I would like to turn now to the need for effective strategies in 

Iraq and Afghanistan. 

As the Administration defines its strategy in Iraq and develops 

a new one for Afghanistan, it should consider the characteristics of 

an effective national strategy. Both strategies should clearly define 

the objectives for U.S. efforts, identify and mitigate any risk, estimate future costs, and coordinate all U.S. agency, international, 

and host-country efforts. For example, the U.S. strategy in Iraq 

should identify the security conditions that the United States expects to achieve to ensure that troops can be withdrawn responsibly. The strategy should also consider how the U.S. would respond if these conditions are not achieved. 

The new U.S. strategy for Afghanistan should estimate what financial commitments the U.S. is willing to make to contribute to 

the Afghan National Development Strategy goals. It should also assess the risk to U.S.-funded investments if Afghanistan does not 

obtain the resources or develop the technical capacity to maintain 

them. And it should, importantly, address the external risk of regional influences, such as Pakistan. 

This concludes my statement. I would be glad to take any questions that the committee may have. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Williams-Bridgers can be found 

in the Appendix on page 51.] 

Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you so much. 

I know that all of you at some time have criticized efforts in Iraq 

and Afghanistan for a lack of interagency planning for reconstruction. Can you elaborate for us what you would like to see in such 

planning? What agencies and actors should be involved? And what, 

if any, reforms are needed to ensure for this to happen? Maybe 

each of you can elaborate a little bit on that. 

Mr. BOWEN. Yes, Mr. Ortiz, I will start. I think there does need 

to be reform to promote improved interagency integration, not just 

coordination, of contingency relief and reconstruction operations. 

The chief players are the Department of Defense, Department of 

State, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Other 

agencies play important but less significant roles. 

The key is to ensure that there is, before the balloon goes up, so 

to speak, before we engage in a contingency, a well-practiced, well- 
9 

exercised, well-resourced, well-developed strategy for managing a 

contingency however it may unfold. And that has not been the case. 

As Hard Lessons points out, the U.S. approach to contingencies 

since World War II has been chiefly ad hoc, and, indeed, Iraq was 

a sort of ad hocricy, inventing temporary organizations, like the Coalition Provisional Authority, like the Program Management Office, 

like the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office, none of which exists now but all of which had charge of billions and billions of U.S. 

dollars and tried to spend it as quickly as they could within the 

framework of their existence. That is no way to run a contingency 

operation. 

There have been attempts, steps forward, significant steps forward, embodied first in NSPD–44 over three years ago that identified the importance of a Civilian Reserve Corps, but these solutions, to a certain extent, have been balkanizing themselves. The 

problem is one of balkanization, but the solutions haven’t led to integration. 

The DOD has moved forward with 3000.05, and Stability Operations is a big part of DOD’s work. CJ–9 is an extraordinarily significant new creation. But over on the State side, there is the Reconstruction, Stabilization, Civilian Management Act, which was 

Title XVI of the NDAA last year, which puts huge responsibility in 

the Department of State for managing this same issue. They need 

to be integrated. And I think that that requires significant legislative analysis and new policy to bring the agencies responsible together. 

Mr. ORTIZ. Anybody else that would like to respond? 

General FIELDS. I would just like to add to what Mr. Bowen has 

said, first off, concurring with his commentary on the need for the 

interagency community to coordinate with each other. We find that 

in our early, not so much assessment, but observations regarding 

Afghanistan, that this is an issue in Afghanistan as well. But Afghanistan, we also feel, I will not say is more complicated than 

Iraq, but there are some uniquenesses associated with Afghanistan, 

particularly that which involves the international community. So 

as, on the one hand, we certainly support the need for interagency 

coordination and cooperation; there is also the need for international coordination and cooperation. 

As this committee knows, the United States has invested already 

$32 billion in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. This is in addition 

to an overall $56 billion that the international community has invested in Afghanistan. The complications of Afghanistan, the period of time within which we would like to bring closure to this 

event, require the cooperation and coordination within the international community. We would like to see more of that. 

And I would agree that, to the extent possible, before we engage 

in such matters, we should have reasonable, long-term agreement 

from the international community if they are to bring their wherewithal to bear upon a contingency as complicated as that we have 

undertaken in Afghanistan. 

Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN [presiding]. Thank you, General. 

Ms. Williams-Bridgers, did you have a comment on this? 
10 

Ms. WILLIAMS-BRIDGERS. Yes, just one brief addition. I concur 

with my colleagues’ conclusions that there is a need for a coordinated interagency plan to be articulated. We believe, however, that 

some years ago, the National Security Council (NSC) did establish 

an interagency management system for planning and executing 

contingency operations under the Bush Administration. 

In November of 2007, GAO published a review looking at national security reforms within the context of many independent 

commissions’ recommendations calling for massive reorganization 

of government agencies and new structures to support security operations overseas. And what we said was that that national security system that had never been tested needed to be tested in a 

real-world situation. It has not. It certainly would have some value 

in looking at whether or not that particular system, developed for 

contingency operations as we are now facing, could be employed. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

After I call on Mr. McHugh, we are under the five-minute rule. 

Mr. Ortiz asked the one question I wished to ask, so we will go to 

Mr. McHugh. 

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

Let me start by noting, in my opening statement, I was remiss. 

I did not extend my admiration and appreciation to the brave men 

and women that work for you good folks. 

Inspector Bowen mentioned the loss of life, but while those of us 

in this town perhaps too often think of these kinds of activities as 

folks just strolling around with pencils and pads and kind of creeping around corners and wearing green eyeshades, this has been, in 

the Iraqi experience and Afghan experience, at least in its early 

stages, a very dangerous undertaking. 

Mr. Bowen, you were in my office a few weeks ago, and you specifically spoke of the casualties that were suffered in your ranks. 

I wonder, just for the record, if you could give us those figures here 

today. 

Mr. BOWEN. Yes, as I said a year ago yesterday, one of my auditors, Paul Converse from Corvallis, Oregon, was killed in his trailer 

when a rocket impacted next to it. In 2007, I had five employees 

in Iraq wounded by hostile fire. 

I am pleased to say that the move to the new embassy compound 

is a move to a much more secure environment, and coincident with 

that has come a very, very significant reduction in the threats 

around the embassy. The last two trips, I haven’t heard any evidence of incoming fire. 

Mr. MCHUGH. Well, let’s hope that continues. But nevertheless, 

your good folks are at risk many, many times. And we deeply appreciate their service as well was the point of this discussion. 

Mr. BOWEN. Thank you, Mr. McHugh. 

Mr. MCHUGH. During the testimony we just heard, there was 

mention on several occasions about the new Afghan strategy that, 

as the chairman noted in his opening remarks, we would expect to 

be released perhaps as early as this week. And Ms. WilliamsBridgers, you mentioned as well that, in your estimation, this new 

Afghan strategy ought to estimate the financial commitments that 

the United States is willing to make and understand those parameters going in. 
11 

Let me ask a broader question just for curiosity’s sake. Have any 

of your offices been consulted by the Administration or the Pentagon as this new strategy has been developed? Has there been any 

discussion that you are aware of to try to integrate some of these 

lessons we have learned into the new strategy? 

Ms. WILLIAMS-BRIDGERS. Mr. McHugh, we have been asking to 

see the strategy as it is being developed because we do believe that, 

based on much of the work that we have done about what is necessary to be included in a strategy and what we have identified as 

shortcomings in our existing operations, that could be used. We 

have not yet been provided any drafts of that strategy. 

What I would also say, though, is, in addition to a national strategy that would reflect on the skills and the expertise of the various 

agencies, what we would like to see is that that strategy would be 

used as a basis for then developing joint operational plans. That 

currently is absent. We have seen no evidence of a plan that would 

articulate what the specific roles and responsibilities and an integration of those roles and responsibilities by the various agencies. 

We know that a joint operational plan, as called for in military doctrine, would provide a good foundation then for developing sectorlevel plans, which each agency would then be responsible for. 

So we think there is an order of business that needs to occur in 

development of better thinking about how to best use our resources, anticipate the cost, and plan for any mitigating strategies 

should the overall goals articulated in the national strategy not be 

achieved. 

Mr. MCHUGH. I appreciate that. 

General Fields, any opportunity for input from the SIGAR side 

of the equation? 

General FIELDS. Thank you, sir. In direct answer to your question, we have not been specifically asked to advise on the new 

strategy that is eventually going to be formally announced. However, we have two reports that have been made available by way 

of having posted them on our Web. In our most recent report, and 

specifically in the letter that I prefaced a report by, sent to the 

Congress, we did identify some issues that we would hope that the 

Administration would take into consideration as they structure this 

new strategy. 

One is a resounding or an echoing theme each time I have visited 

Afghanistan; one is the lack of participation by the very country in 

the reconstruction effort that we are trying to advance in the 21st 

century. The bottom line is the senior leaders of Afghanistan essentially complained to me about the fact that they are not being involved enough, or at least not to the capability that they feel they 

have, in the reconstruction effort, in the decision process, and so 

forth. I would hope that this is a measure that the Administration 

would take under consideration as it puts together this strategy. 

More specifically, the government and the industries, if you will, 

of Afghanistan, would like to partake more in the contracting effort. This is something that I noted in Mr. Bowen’s Hard Lessons 

that this, too, was an issue in Iraq. And it is one that we have yet 

to get completely correct as we address matters in Afghanistan. 

One of our missions, and in fact our principal mission, is to conduct oversight. And we will look into matters like this where, sub-
12 

sequent to the strategy, and even as we continue the work that we 

have been carrying on for the past few months, we will look into 

the extent to which there are opportunities for greater participation, for example, by the government and various entities of Afghanistan in their own reconstruction effort. 

Thank you. 

Mr. MCHUGH. Mr. Bowen. 

Mr. BOWEN. Yes, Ranking Member McHugh. We did brief the 

embassy staff on lessons learned from Iraq and how they apply in 

Afghanistan, as well as President Obama’s Deputy Chief of Staff. 

Mr. MCHUGH. Great, well, I would simply suggest, as both the 

chairman and I mentioned in our opening comments, the main objective here is not to continue making the mistakes of the past. 

And to whatever extent you may or may not have been consulted, 

I was honored to get a call this week from the Secretary of Defense, 

and he assured me this would be a consultative process. 

So I would hope, Mr. Chairman, we could use some of the findings of this hearing and our past hearings with respect to SIGAR 

and SIGIR to help evolve the best policy forward so that Afghanistan becomes something of a template, not for the next series of 

mistakes but for the next series of successes. 

So, again, to all three of you, thank you for your effort. 

And I will yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Ortiz has an additional question. 

Mr. Ortiz. 

Mr. ORTIZ. General Fields, in your testimony, you stated that the 

future capabilities would be determined by the funding received. 

Your office identified a $7.2 million shortfall for the remainder of 

Fiscal Year 2009. What impact does the lack of funds have on your 

organization? 

General FIELDS. Thank you very much, sir. 

First, we appreciate the support that the Congress has thus far 

provided to SIGAR. We appreciate the oversight legislation that we 

are mandated to carry out, and we are proceeding accordingly. The Congress has made available to us $16 million, which did 

come late into the year and late into the authorization that, in fact, 

stood up this organization called SIGAR. We have been using that 

$16 million to build our organization. We advanced to the Office of 

Management and Budget (OMB) late last summer, early fall, a 

work plan that would require $23 million to build our organization 

to a staffing of 90 personnel, with a principal slice thereof here in 

the United States, and a very good slice in Afghanistan. And as I 

said before, this is an important measure to have our staff located 

in the very environment in which they will carry out much of this 

mandate. 

So we are, yes, sir, short the $7.2 million that we need to flush 

out our work organization to the 90, to conduct the audits, inspections, and investigations that we need to conduct, and to provide 

our staff at several locations in Afghanistan, where the cost is considerably higher, to maintain personnel, to pay them, to protect 

them, to move them, than they are here in the United States. 

So we would certainly, sir, appreciate any support that the Congress might provide in helping us to obtain that additional funding 
13 

for this year and certainly in support of our 2010 budget that we 

are currently working with OMB and the Department of State on 

at this time. 

Mr. ORTIZ. I would rather see that we put that money into your 

budget because I think, by doing that, hopefully we will be able to 

save money someplace else that might be misspent somewhere else. 

I was going to ask just one more question of Ms. WilliamsBridgers. I know that your office has come up with some recommendations from GAO to DOD for them to implement certain 

suggestions. Have they done that? 

Ms. WILLIAMS-BRIDGERS. With regard to? 

Mr. ORTIZ. How to save money. Because this is one of the biggest 

problems we have: no accountability. We have seen that we still 

have not sent the 30,000 troops that are due in Afghanistan. And 

we already see that some of the suggestions that have been put before, we have not learned the lessons that we were supposed to 

have learned in Iraq. And I am pretty sure you gave some suggestions to Department of Defense. 

Ms. WILLIAMS-BRIDGERS. Yes. 

Mr. ORTIZ. Are they following through with some of your suggestions? 

Ms. WILLIAMS-BRIDGERS. Yes, they are, in fact. And others we 

have not seen as much progress. But let me give you some examples of where we are seeing some progress. 

One of the areas of highest risk of waste is in contracting. My 

colleague, Stuart Bowen, has alluded to the need for greater attention to contracting. Since 1992, GAO has identified contract management and contract oversight as a high-risk area. Billions of dollars have been spent over the years in the contracting arena. And 

increasingly, as we move toward a drawdown in Iraq, we will more 

than likely see an increase in our reliance on contractors to perform the services that DOD heretofore has provided. 

In the past, we have cited specific concerns and made recommendations to DOD to improve their overall contract management capabilities, specifically by articulating and providing it to 

their contract officers’ guidance and policy on how to management 

contracts, how to provide oversight, how to ensure that there are 

appropriate numbers of people in the field to oversight the activities that are undertaken by contractors, to provide specifically 

guidance to battlefield commanders on what their authorities are 

and their responsibilities are for ensuring that contractors deliver 

the activities in various field locations. 

About three years ago, DOD began developing such guidance to 

improve their contract management capabilities. They still aren’t 

where we believe they need to be. We are in the process now of reviewing use of contractors and various controls that DOD has since 

put in place. But we will continue to monitor that very high-risk 

area. 

Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you very much, ma’am. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Wilson. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Chairman, I am very proud and grateful today. At this hearing, we have two persons of distinguished South Carolina heritage, 

Inspector General Bowen and Major General Arnold Fields. And I 
14 

want you to know that General Fields is a role model for me. He 

has been an inspiration to the young people of the congressional 

district I represent. It would make you so proud. Each year we 

have the Hampton Watermelon Festival. And at the Watermelon 

Festival, the General comes in full dress Marine uniform. Despite 

the heat, he looks so strac. And he leads the singing of the StarSpangled Banner. We could not have the festival if the General 

were not there. 

So thank you, all three of you, for being here today. I want you 

to know what a distinguished pedigree we have with our persons 

here today. 

I also am really grateful for your service in helping address problems in Iraq and Afghanistan. I visited Iraq nine times; Afghanistan seven times. I have had two sons serve in Iraq. My National 

Guard unit that I retired from served for a year, the 218th Brigade, 

in Afghanistan. I am so grateful that our service members have, I 

believe, successfully defeated the terrorists overseas to protect 

American families at home. 

General Fields, I read your testimony. And I would particularly 

like to know your view of what the local Afghan government officials, tribal leaders, what their opinion is of reconstruction efforts. 

General FIELDS. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much for the 

kind words. And I hope to see you at the Watermelon Festival as 

well. 

Mr. WILSON. We can’t have it unless you come, so—— 

General FIELDS. Well, Lord willing, and the creek doesn’t rise, I 

will be there. Thank you, also, for your leadership. 

Sir, in my capacity as Special Inspector General, I have just completed my third visit to Afghanistan, from which I returned, actually, last Thursday. Each time I have gone to Afghanistan, I speak 

and have spoken with senior leaders, or leaders in general, at all 

levels, first, our own United States leaders, our ambassador, our 

military commanders at the Four-Star level, and otherwise. I also 

meet with the government of Afghanistan at all levels, the ministerial level, the provincial level. 

Most recently, on the 17th of this month, we were privileged to 

visit with President Karzai himself. We were very pleased that he 

would receive us and openly discuss a whole number of issues, one 

of which he presented himself, and that is the one that is sensitive 

and of interest to all of us, corruption. 

I want to say that, in comparing lessons learned in Afghanistan 

and Iraq, I want to put up front that there is a common element 

among the lessons learned between Iraq and Afghanistan. The people of Iraq wanted, and to some extent still want, clean water, electricity, good roads, and a secure environment within which to live. 

If you ask the same question about needs to the Afghans, they will 

tell you the same thing. And every province I have thus far visited, 

I have met with either the governor of the province or the deputy 

governor of the province and any of his staff that he may have assembled. Inevitably, the top four to five issues about which they 

are concerned, water, medical, education, agriculture, and that the 

country is 80 percent agricultural, if you will. So there are very 

many similarities between Iraq and Afghanistan in that regard. 
15 

And I presume that when I make my next trip to Afghanistan in 

just a few weeks, I will hear the same request. 

So they thank us for our contribution to Afghanistan, but at the 

same time, they help us to focus on the issues that are of greatest 

interest to them. 

Mr. WILSON. Again, thank you very much for your service. 

General FIELDS. Thank you, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Snyder, the gentleman from Arkansas. 

Mr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I have several questions. And if you all can err on the side of 

brevity, then maybe I can get to more than one or two. 

The first question I want to ask, Mr. Bowen, is to you. With regard to the man that you lost a year ago, Paul Converse, he was 

a civilian employee; is that correct? 

Mr. BOWEN. That is right. 

Mr. SNYDER. Are you satisfied, after the year has passed now, 

that from the time of his death, that both he and his family received the honors and support that they should have, given that, 

it has clearly come out, we did a report on this committee, that we 

have treated civilians differently than military people. Are you satisfied with how he and his family have been supported? 

Mr. BOWEN. Yes, I am. I went out and visited them for a day, 

April 4, actually, last year and took a number of honors to them 

then. And the State Department awarded Paul the Thomas Jefferson Star posthumously, one of their highest civilian awards. And 

he also received medals from the Defense Department. 

Mr. SNYDER. And in terms of financial support for his family, if 

we were to visit with his family, do you think they are satisfied 

with how he was—— 

Mr. BOWEN. He was not married. And I visited with his parents, 

and I think they were satisfied with the support they were given. 

Mr. SNYDER. Thank you. 

General Fields, you and Mr. Ortiz had a discussion about the inadequate funding. Are you in the mix for a supplemental request 

from the administration that should be coming up here in the next 

week or two or three? 

General FIELDS. Thank you very much, sir. We have advanced to the Office of Management and Budget a formal request for the $7.2 

million that we do need. 

Mr. SNYDER. Through the supplemental? 

General FIELDS. Yes, sir. 

Mr. SNYDER. Thank you. We can watch for it. 

Any time we, or the American people, hear the word ‘‘auditor,’’ 

we all get pretty apprehensive in terms of the tedium. We have 

four written reports here: your book, Hard Lessons Mr. Bowen, that 

you and your staff put out, and then we have your report from 

SIGIR, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. This 

is a mandated report, correct? 

Mr. BOWEN. Yes, sir. It is our quarterly report. 

Mr. SNYDER. And then, General Fields, this is yours here, the 

Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. And 

then, of course, we are all used to the reassuring blue color of the 

GAO reports. I suspect none of the members here have read everything that is in these reports, but I think you all are talking about 
16 

something that is key to the national security of the country for the 

next couple, three decades, which is how to—you describe it, Mr. 

Bowen, the core problem is, how do we get at this issue of redevelopment? 

At the end of this, on page 332 of your Hard Lessons book, you 

say, ‘‘An emerging lesson from Iraq is that when violence is pervasive, soft programs like those orchestrated by USAID and provincial reconstruction teams are especially important in advancing 

U.S. goals.’’ 

I note—and it may just have been in a summary statement, the 

reason why it is not there—you don’t mention the CERP funds, the 

Commanders Emergency Reconstruction Program. While there has 

probably been mission creep in the use of those funds, I think most 

of us think that, for the most part, a lot of that money was well 

spent. Do you agree with that, that that is, in fact, probably should 

be considered more of a counterinsurgency fund than a reconstruction fund? Or how do the CERP funds fit into your overall evaluation? 

Mr. BOWEN. They play a very important role, and they raise an 

important issue. First, they are covered in chapter 26, it is, ‘‘The 

rise of CERP.’’ And I think that is a good way to describe how 

CERP evolved. It was used, initially, seeds funds, the money that 

troops found on the ground to do quick projects. Then Congress 

began funding it in 2005 with its own appropriation. And $3.5 billion later and five SIGIR audits later, the story is that the program 

has achieved many important goals in Iraq. 

The challenges, as we have documented, are that, early on, there 

weren’t good controls in place. The training wasn’t there. Now 

‘‘Money As a Weapons System’’ is standard reading for every person, every commander deploying to Iraq. And the training on contracting and the support for it within the brigades is significant. 

The Department of Defense has taken this on and I think has vastly improved what we initially looked at. 

The challenge, though, as you are implying, is, how does that integrate in the contingency relief and reconstruction environment 

with the expenditure by USAID and Department of State of economic support funds, which accomplish similar small projects? And 

I ran into it last November in Hillah, when the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) director said, I wish I had known about this 

CERP project, a courthouse that was being built that didn’t get finished because the Iraqis are asking me to finish it. And that was 

sort of an on-the-ground, eye-opening revelation about the difficulties in different departments managing different funding streams, 

pursuing similar reconstruction goals. It is not so much a criticism 

of CERP; it is another argument for the need for reforming the 

U.S. approach to managing contingency operations. 

Mr. SNYDER. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. 

Before I call on Mr. Wittman, Mr. Bowen, let me ask you, in light 

of the fact that you had five of your folks injured a year ago and 

that you just lost one just a week or so ago and reflecting on your 

book, I think it is on page 331, you state that security is necessary 

for large-scale reconstruction. 
17 

The CHAIRMAN. How do we judge when there is enough security? 

Can you always afford to wait before what you think is sufficient 

security before beginning reconstruction? Tell us about this whole 

effort. 

Mr. BOWEN. It is an excellent point, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. It is a bothersome one. 

Mr. BOWEN. You are absolutely right. It is not an absolutist 

measure. The frank reality is that Copenhagen Contractors (CPH) 

pushed forward an enormous infrastructure program building large 

power plants and wanted to build five $200 million water-treatment facilities as the countryside exploded in a civil war. 

Now, as was ultimately realized in 2007, an effective counterinsurgency strategy scales its reconstruction plan to fit the environment that it faces. Clear, hold, and build was sort of a precursor, 

excuse me, to what sort of became the counterinsurgency strategy. 

There wasn’t enough of build in 2006 as part of that, and part of 

that was that the civil war that was unfolding was really too much 

for any reconstruction really to move forward. 

So the challenge is that security is a prerequisite to the success 

of long-term development and larger-scale reconstruction, but as 

counterinsurgency doctrine explicates that right alongside military 

power must come the projection of soft power that is thoughtfully 

and strategically and tactically targeted to the countryside and the 

difficulty therein. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. 

Mr. Wittman. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the panel. 

Thank you so much for joining us today. We appreciate you taking 

the time to coming and enlightening us about the issues in Iraq 

and Afghanistan. 

Ms. Williams-Bridgers, just a question. The GAO studied the efforts to build security forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan and has 

specifically pointed to a lack of mentors and equipment in Afghanistan. I was wondering if you could enlighten us about those shortages and give us a little bit of the details about what those shortages would mean. 

Ms. WILLIAMS-BRIDGERS. I would be glad to, Mr. Wittman. 

Thank you very much for the question. 

DOD has said they are critically short of the mentors and trainers that they need to build the capacity of the Afghan National Police (ANP) as well as the Afghan National Army (ANA). 

With regard to the Afghan National Army, they said that they 

had about one-half of the mentors that they need in order to effectively train the Army personnel. 

And with regard to the police, DOD has reported that they have 

about one-third of the number of trainers that they need to effectively train the police. 

That said, we have noted some progress in the overall capacitybuilding efforts of both the police and the Afghan National Army, 

but it is the police that the DOD reports as being in critical need 

of additional attention, given that about 34 units are now considered somewhat capable, either fully capable or capable with coalition support of operating there in Afghanistan. 

With regard to the Afghan National Army, it is about 44 units. 
18 

This represents a discernible increase in the capabilities of both 

of those security forces. 

Mr. WITTMAN. You speak of that increased capacity and capability. It still seems, though, to be lacking in some areas. Can you 

tell us, how do you see that as affecting the counterinsurgency 

fight there, and where do you think we would need to be to be totally effective in our counterinsurgency effort there? 

Ms. WILLIAMS-BRIDGERS. I think it is totally critical to the counterinsurgency efforts, and it speaks well of Mr. Bowen about what 

level of security is good enough, and it also speaks to what we have 

all alluded to earlier as the need for strategic planning and operational planning that speaks to what are the conditions that we expect to see in terms of the capacity of the police to step forward 

so that we can then begin this responsible withdrawal. I don’t have 

the exact number. That is something that we would like to see articulated in a strategy. What are the conditions in terms of the 

level of security that we expect to see? What are the conditions in 

terms of the level of capacity that we would expect to see? And if 

we cannot achieve either of those conditions, what, then, is our 

next step; what then is our alternative strategy? 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you. 

I want to ask all members of the panel, in the context of that 

answer, what measures do you think Congress can take along those 

lines of both the capacity and capability efforts there and also the 

counterinsurgency efforts there? What efforts do you think Congress would need to take to address those issues? 

Ms. WILLIAMS-BRIDGERS. May I begin quite directly? I think the 

Congress needs to have strategic plans, clearly articulated roles responsibilities. What are the conditions that you expect to see? What 

are the metrics that are expected? What are the cost requirements, 

and as importantly in the case of Afghanistan, because we are the 

principal contributor to goals that are established in the Afghan 

National Development Strategy, goals which clearly prioritize infrastructure first, security second and at a huge cost. 

The goals in the outyears of what is identified in the Afghan National Security Strategy anticipate an $18 billion shortfall in the 

amount of available funding from all sources, the international 

community, mostly foreign aid. We know that Afghanistan doesn’t 

have its own resources, and in the security sector, it is a key area 

of the shortfall. 

I don’t have the number readily available, but I can provide that 

to you, but security is one of those areas that is going to suffer the 

greatest amount of revenue shortfall in terms of achieving the 

goals that are clearly now established, at least in the existing Afghan National Development Strategy. 

But I want to add, we have not seen a U.S. strategy, the complementary strategy, for what we anticipate doing, given this national government strategy. 

General FIELDS. Thank you, sir. 

I concur with my colleague, and I would add that one of the 

measures that the Congress can take, and, in fact, in my case, and 

I will say our cases, you have taken, you have established oversight 

entities that are independent, that report directly to the Congress, 

and can advise by way of various mechanisms those in senior posi-
19 

tions capable of making pivotal decisions when it comes to the reconstruction of any entity, in my specific case Afghanistan. 

I want to cite and add additionally to what Jackie has said regarding what I believe to be the report surfacing on the issue of 

weapons accountability and matters like that. I have read that report, and we are looking into matters associated with this particular issue, and I might add that the Department of Defense inspector general is already looking into that matter. 

But I want to specifically say that we, first off, need to be appropriately funded, and then where the gaps exist, then we need to fill 

the gaps. 

I noted in the GAO report that in terms of training, since this 

is a fund that falls under my charge—in terms of training, only 68 

percent of the trainers, in reference to the Afghanistan National 

Security Forces (ANSF), are available to carry out their work. In 

addition to that, only 50 percent of the mentors are available. 

During my recent visit, having heard and read the report regarding the weapons issue, I discussed this matter with the senior leaders in Afghanistan, and they reiterated some of these matters that 

may have contributed to what is believed to be either unaccounted 

for or missing weapons at this point in time. 

Your oversight goal collectively, and, in my case, Afghanistan, is 

to help uncover matters like this, report them in a timely way to 

the Congress, and respectfully ask the Congress to act accordingly. 

Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Marshall. 

Mr. MARSHALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Part of this is going to be personal testimony, but I will start by 

saying I really appreciate what you are doing. It is critically important to our ability as a Nation to deal with issues like this in the 

future. 

I have made some 15 trips to Afghanistan and Iraq. My first was 

with Ike Skelton. He was then Ranking Member. He is now Chairman. We were briefed by Bremer and Sanchez and their team sitting across the table in the Green Zone, and I had decided, as a 

new Member of Congress I was just going to pretty much shut up 

and listen. And I pretty much stuck to that the first two days of 

the trip until we were given a description of how the $18.4 billion 

was going to be spent, and I couldn’t resist raising my hand and 

asking whether or not there was any contingency for security 

issues. And the response—just to show how naive we were, the response was, you cannot plan for that. And my rejoinder was, you 

may not be able to plan for it, but you can count on it. That is what 

is going to happen. You are not going to be able to spend that 

money the way you proposed. 

My impression is that we grossly underused and did not give appropriate authority to the Corps of Engineers, and that we would 

be far wiser, with regard to any large projects, to forget about contractors for the most part and let the Corps handle this directly. 

They are actually trained to deal with security issues at the same 

time that they do construction. 
20 

And the CERP funds are terribly important to effective 

counterinsurgencies. I am really pleased about that. I am pleased 

there will be a institutionalization of that. 

Vic Snyder and I had to send a letter to the Secretary, when 

there was a gap in the CERP funds, and the commanders in Iraq 

were crying for those CERP funds. It meant lives from their perspective. Couldn’t get it, but we had the $18.4 billion sitting over 

there that we couldn’t spend because we weren’t competent to do 

that. So we had the money over there, and we couldn’t provide the 

CERP funds. We were really incompetent. 

I would like to talk about reconstruction teams in Afghanistan. 

In my view, it should not be called reconstruction. You should just 

get rid of that lingo here. They should be provincial redevelopment 

teams, not reconstruction teams. Reconstruction assumes there is 

something there to start out with that needs reconstructing. 

My first visit was in Christmas of 2003 with Pete Schoomaker 

to Gardez. I was very impressed, thought this was exactly the right 

thing to be doing. 

Essentially they look the same now as they looked then; or at 

least the last time I visited, they look the same now as they looked 

then. 

With hindsight, we obviously should have created a university, 

if necessary funded a university, in the capital to train Afghanis to 

do—Afghans to do what we have Americans trying to do in these 

PRTs. It is less expensive, it is safer, and it accomplishes the goal 

of showing some reasonable presence by the Afghan Government 

instead of us being the face of development. 

So by calling them provincial development teams, I would change 

the composition as rapidly as possible. By now there should be very 

few Americans in those teams. After five or six years, they should 

be almost entirely Afghan driven, and they should be Afghan faces 

throughout the country, probably more of them. 

The challenge of Afghan First, you know, Iraq First, Afghan 

First, is that the central government is corrupt and incompetent. 

Where Iraq is concerned, they didn’t have the capacity, but, you 

know, there are some corruption issues. But we didn’t think it was 

major corruption problems. They just didn’t have the capacity to 

deal with large amounts of money getting them out. So Afghanistan, no capacity, corruption, and incompetence. Somehow we need 

to do that, but it needs to be an Afghan face throughout the development of the country, and I would like your comments about that. 

Ms. WILLIAMS-BRIDGERS. A comment. I think you are exactly 

right, and you have hit a very key point here. These are two very 

different environments, and our assumptions must be different, 

given the environments that we are dealing with. 

With Iraq you have an educated populace, and in Afghanistan 

you have a 70 percent illiterate population. 

Iraq is considered almost a middle-income country, $4,000 per 

capita, and Afghanistan substantially less than $500 per capita to 

start with. 

One of the key concerns expressed by DOD about the capacity of 

the personnel that they are training is that they would not be able 

to—this is the Afghan National Security Forces—would not be able 

to exercise command, control; would not have the capacity to per-
21 

form the logistics; would not have the capacity to perform the intelligence and data gathering. 

Mr. MARSHALL. If I could interrupt, in my last visit I found out 

that we have Afghan doctors who are serving as clerks to U.S. 

Army units instead of being out there providing medical services to 

the Afghan people. That is how skewed all of this is. 

And I am sorry I don’t have more time. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Coffman. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

First of all, a question on Iraqi reconstruction. I think that there 

was a GAO report that came out last summer that at that time, 

at least, talked about the surplus in the Iraqi budget, and I think 

the question was raised, given our economic situation and given 

theirs—and I know since that time, obviously, there has been a decline in the price of oil, which is the basis for the financing of their 

government—but, I mean, at what point will the American taxpayer say enough is enough? 

Ms. WILLIAMS-BRIDGERS. You are quite right. We did report last 

summer and have updated our figures. It is captured in the report 

that was just issued today. We estimate the Iraqi budget surplus 

to be $47 billion. This reflects a somewhat—reduction of the last 

estimate of up to $77 billion surplus that we previously reported, 

and that is due to the declining oil prices. 

However, what this surplus largely represents is an inability, a 

lack of capacity of the Iraqi Government to spend and execute its 

budget. There is no doubt that the Iraqi Government has the resources to cover what they anticipate this fiscal year to be deficit 

spending. We believe that even with their projected deficit that 

they anticipate incurring, that they can more than cover it with the 

surplus that we have. 

The Congress has even recently recognized the need to increase 

the incentives to the Iraqi Government to spend more of their 

money. This was realized in legislation that the Congress enacted 

last year calling for the Iraqis to match dollar for dollar their 

spending to U.S. spending under the economic support funds. 

We are concerned, sir, that the Department of State, who is 

charged with reporting to the Congress on the Iraqis attendant to 

this requirement for dollar-for-dollar matching, that the State Department is merely looking at Iraq’s reflection in their budget of 

their commitment to spend, but is not actually tracking their expenditures in this dollar-for-dollar matching program, in this incentives-management program. So we think this is an area that Congress needs to pay particularly close attention to in order to 

achieve the kind of cost-sharing arrangement that the Congress intended. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Thank you. 

To the other Members, and if you could address how critical is— 

when I served in Iraq in 2005 and 2006 with the United States Marine Corps, at this point in time how critical are the reconstruction 

dollars to moving the political process forward in Iraq? 

Mr. BOWEN. The era of spending U.S. dollars for significant re- construction is past. There is about $5 billion to put under contract 

of the roughly $50 billion. Most of that is Iraq Security Forces 
22 

Fund (ISFF) money, and most of that is being used to train, equip, 

provide logistics to the Iraqi Army and the Iraqi Police. 

CERP still does some significant reconstruction work, but most 

of it, a vast majority of the reconstruction money, has been spent. 

The burden is on the Iraqis now. So the issue is the cost-sharing 

requirement, and we have an audit coming out in the next month 

that will provide you insight and analysis on the success and failures of that cost-sharing process. Again, it is a challenge, an integration; it is a challenge in interpretation of the statutes. It is a 

challenge to getting Iraqis to seriously shoulder their long-term development and the burden of their own nation. 

General FIELDS. Thank you, sir. 

Let me comment on the issue of capacity. Iraq and Afghanistan 

are on different ends of the spectrum when it comes to capacity. 

There are limited resources in Afghanistan. There is no oil or any 

material such as that to help support the economy of Afghanistan, 

so there is no surplus. The international community is largely financing the reconstruction of Afghanistan and other elements of its 

development at this point in its history. 

We do need to build a capacity, however, and in so contributing, 

we need to involve the Afghans more in the process. And I would 

add that in reference to the previously asked question or comment 

regarding the participation or the level there of Afghans in the 

PRT, I could only agree with that. 

At the same time, I would also encourage the contribution that 

the Congress has made to CERP as an expedient mechanism that 

the Commander can use to contribute to the overall reconstruction 

efforts. 

In my most recent visit to Afghanistan, I visited two PRTs, and 

I have previously visited Gardez, in fact; but most recently, a PRT 

in Kunar Province, Asadabad, and the PRT up in the Panjshir Valley. Both are well-led PRTs, both lack the participation of the Afghans in the process, and both shared with me the significance of 

CERP. 

But I want to make a key point to this committee that the PRTs’ 

commanders—both of them are U.S. commanders—tell me that we 

have essentially, through process and bureaucracy, taken the ‘‘E’’ 

out of ‘‘CERP’’, the emergency aspect of it, such that it takes too 

long to work the process to get the money down to the level at 

which it might be executed, which is the PRTs, and CERP is a 

principal funding mechanism for the PRTs. 

So I am asking that there be consideration for relief, whatever 

might be offered in that regard, to streamline the process by which 

CERP arrives at the commander for execution. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Bowen. 

Mr. BOWEN. Yes, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. Our committee has authorized some $40 billion 

for reconstruction in Iraq. In your professional opinion, based upon 

your review and investigation, how much or what percentage of 

that has been wasted? 

Mr. BOWEN. Yes, Mr. Chairman, I remember we had this discussion previously, and I said I would come back to you, and that time 

is now, with respect to the waste. 
23 

The Iraq Relief Reconstruction Fund (IRRF), as you know, has 

been the primary vehicle for spending on reconstruction, and we 

have had oversight of that fund for four years, full oversight. And 

my estimate, based on 135 audits that we have conducted and 135 

inspections, is about 15 to 20 percent of the funds, or $3 to $5 billion, was wasted. 

And I told you I was visiting with a contractor yesterday who 

was talking to me about this issue, waste in Iraq, and he echoed 

exactly what we have been saying in our reports, and that is that 

the United States chose the wrong contracting vehicle to carry out 

this mission. 

You remember in April of 2004, we let 12 $500 million reconstruction contracts, cost plus. I called them open checkbook, I 

think, at the hearing two years ago because cost plus covers everything. Your subcontractor messes up, that is okay. We pay for it. 

Your second subcontractor messes up, okay, we pay for it. The Khan Bani Saad prison, 40 minutes north of Baghdad, $40 

million down the tubes, no prisoner will ever be housed there, and 

what are the consequences? Are we going to be able to hold persons 

for that? No. Why? Because of the selection of this vehicle for carrying out reconstruction in a war zone. 

Cost-plus contracts, I think, is a huge lesson learned from Iraq, 

and they need to be reformed. The National Defense Authorization 

Act (NDAA) took some important steps to reining in contractor 

abuses last year, this committee did, but more needs to be done, 

and frankly, the $3 to $4 to $5 billion that is lost, and I am speaking conservatively, was lost because chiefly, one, we chose the 

wrong vehicle for the wrong environment, and contractors took advantage of it. 

The CHAIRMAN. Your testimony is that the 15 to 20 percent of 

the $48 billion has been wasted as a result of the reasons you just 

gave? 

Mr. BOWEN. Excuse me, of the $21 billion in the Iraq Relief Re- construction Fund. The other large fund, $18 billion in the Iraq Security Forces Fund, is a different animal. We just had oversight of 

that for a year. 

The CHAIRMAN. Then let us go back. 

Mr. BOWEN. Yes. 

The CHAIRMAN. Fifteen to twenty percent of what fund? 

Mr. BOWEN. Of the Iraq Relief Reconstruction Fund. 

The CHAIRMAN. And how much was that? 

Mr. BOWEN. Twenty-one billion. 

The CHAIRMAN. So 15 to 20 percent of the $21 billion, as opposed 

to the $48- figure I gave you; is that correct? 

Mr. BOWEN. Yes, sir 

The CHAIRMAN. Ms. Shea-Porter. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Thank, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Bowen, I would like to talk a little bit more about contractors and some of the what you call lessons we have learned or 

didn’t know at the time. Are you being a little soft by saying these 

are lessons? Is this something that should have been pretty obvious 

at the outset? 

Mr. BOWEN. Well, as I have briefed, Ms. Shea-Porter, over in 

Iraq just three weeks ago when I was there, these are lessons, but 
24 

I opened my briefing with some of them, and they are self-evident. 

They really should be axioms. 

It is not difficult, I think, to understand that you need a secure 

environment to carry out large-scale reconstruction, but a largescale reconstruction plan continued to move forward in the context 

of an exploding insurgency. 

It wasn’t until Ambassador Negroponte got on the ground, looked 

at the situation, looked at the investment, and saw huge discontinuity between the two that he put the brakes on it. Unfortunately, 

he put the brakes figuratively. The meter was still running on each 

of those contracts. And as our audits pointed out, the overhead cost 

the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in waste. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. I wanted to talk about those taxpayers. People 

in New Hampshire say to me, where are the indictments? Who is 

looking, and is there ever going to be anybody who has to pay for 

this? And so I am asking you is there ever going to be anybody who 

has to pay for what has been done to the American taxpayer? 

Mr. BOWEN. To date we have achieved 15 indictments from our 

investigation. We have 77 open cases. Another five indictments will 

be coming down from—based on our arrests. I have increased my 

investigator staff over the last year by 40 percent to address exactly this issue. 

For whatever reason, whistleblowers have been more forthcoming 

over the last year. Our caseload has increased just in the last 4 

months from 52 cases to 77, and that is reflective, I think, of perhaps people feeling more safe in Iraq to talk to us, and also because of our more robust results on the investigative side. 

So, yes, I am committed to making 2009 the year of success in 

SIGIR investigations. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Is there anything we can do for you to make 

that possible? The American public wants accountability. We want 

accountability, and I think we also want to make sure that it is not 

just a lesson learned because they think that people in charge understood those lessons quite well. I think there has to be some way 

to rebuild the confidence of the American public as we go forward 

and do our work in Afghanistan. 

Mr. BOWEN. I think there are important steps to take in light of 

what Hard Lessons teaches, and it is what I said in my opening 

statement. The United States does not have a coherent, well-developed policy for managing contingency relief and reconstruction operations. I think that is an issue for the committee to take on. 

It is not just DOD, it is not just State, it is a continuum of operations that moves from conflict to development in a contingency. 

The reality is we ad hoc’d it, and we have ad hoc’d it for decades 

in this area, critical area, protecting U.S. interests abroad. 

We know who protects our interests abroad preconflict, the State 

Department settled; conflict, DOD settled. They both do a great job. 

Contingency operations, it is not clear, and it is ad hoc in each 

case. 

So I think that there are several solutions. Let me just list them 

real quick. One would be to create a sort of Federal Emergency 

Management Agency (FEMA)/United States Trade Representative 

(USTR)-type contingency operation office within EOP, the Executive Office of the President, where the Director of Contingency Op-
25 

erations would regularly prepare, develop the Civilian Reserve 

Corps, develop the Information Technology (IT) systems, develop 

the contracts, develop the personnel process, so that you are ready. 

Or put either—as the NDAA presumed to do in the Reconstruction 

Stabilization Civilian Management Act last October, put the State 

Department in charge. But DOD needs to be integrated. Or, as 

DOD is already moving well down the road in 3000.05, Stability 

Ops takes the lead. 

But the key is achieving integration and preparation and doctrine beforehand so that it doesn’t get invented in offices like the 

Program Management Office no one had ever heard of. The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), Iraq Reconstruction Management 

Office (IRMO), Project and Contracting Office (PCO), all of these, 

this alphabet soup of agencies that are gone, but had charge. And 

it is difficult to hold them responsible, hold them accountable. They 

don’t exist anymore. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Thank you. And I have one other question, if 

any of you would like to answer this. 

When I went to Iraq last time, we were using contractors to 

guard the bases. And some of the contractors in this particular 

group were from the continent of Africa, and I didn’t even think 

that they even understood English, never mind understood what I 

thought they needed to know in order to properly defend our troops 

there. 

Is there a risk, an inherent risk, of having people besides Iraqis 

or U.S. soldiers defending and protecting our bases, and have you 

looked at any of those contracts? 

Mr. BOWEN. I think there is a risk, and you are right. The Peruvian guards that worked for Triple Canopy that guarded the palace 

didn’t speak English. I experienced that personally. 

I was walking out of the palace in August of 2007, very hot day. 

The alarm ran off. I jumped in the bunker with several Peruvian 

guards, and we weren’t able to communicate about what was going 

on. 

The reality is that is part of how the contracting works. They 

find the least expensive subcontractor. And that was an issue that 

was raised by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) who I talked to 

yesterday is look down at the subcontractor level, that we hired a 

bunch of contracting entities that made a lot of money as they subcontracted at a much lower rate. 

And so I think there is—we continue to do security contract reviews, and we have several that are coming out this quarter under 

the 842 plan. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Loebsack. 

Mr. LOEBSACK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

While it is at once frustrating to be so late in the question and 

answer (Q&A) session, while at the same time I learn a lot from 

my colleagues from the panel, so it is a good position to be in many 

ways. 

The first question to Mr. Bowen. Do you think it is possible that 

the only way we can get beyond sort of an ad hoc approach to all 
26 

of this is for us as a country to accept the fact that we may, in fact, 

have to engage in nation-building? 

Mr. BOWEN. Mr. Loebsack, that is a great point. It raises the 

issue, the—managing contingency relief and reconstruction operations, how we do it falls within a spectrum. At one end is no nation-building whatever. At the other end is colonialism. These are 

impossible options. 

The place where the United States should find itself is here in 

the center of this continuum, in a suitable, appropriately funded, 

well-structured, developed doctrine for executing contingency relief 

and reconstruction operations. Where you achieve unity of command, that is the core issue in, I think, in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

There are a number of commanders who control different pots of 

money, and frequently the color of that money and who the departmental reporting officials are shape this strategy rather than an 

overarching strategy where one person is in charge so that you 

achieve unity of purpose. So that the answer is the history of the 

last 40 years show that we are going to engage in contingency operations, call it some form of nation-building. It is not out at this end 

of the spectrum, but we have to prepare, as we were a little bit 

close to this side in 2003. 

Mr. LOEBSACK. I really want to thank all three of you for your 

wonderful testimony, and many of my colleagues have raised really 

wonderful points prior to my asking you some questions. Certainly 

the whole idea of interagency coordination and cooperation is one 

that is so frustrating for, I think, all of us, for sitting here and 

looking back on what happened in Iraq and what may be happening in Afghanistan as well. 

And I want to thank you, Ms. Williams-Bridgers, because I was 

going to ask, well, who is really responsible for that? You brought 

up the National Security Council (NSC), and that is sort of the logical place for this. I hope that the current NSC is, in fact, taking 

into account not only your study, but some of your recommendations as well. 

I want to thank Mr. McHugh, then, for raising the point, too, as 

to whether this Administration has consulted with any of you or 

not. 

If we are going to have the most rational foreign policy we possibly can, we have to learn from our mistakes. There is absolutely 

no way around it. 

I do have one question. I guess it is for General Fields and for 

Ms. Williams-Bridgers, related to Afghanistan. There is a Washington Times article published this morning, and it states that at 

one point road projects accounted for 70 percent of Commander’s 

Emergency Response Fund (CERP) funding, exceeding the capacity 

of the Army Corps of Engineers, and leading to an 18-month backlog at the same time the Afghan Health Minister was allegedly told 

there were no funds available for urgent humanitarian needs. 

This also goes to the issue of soft power that you have mentioned 

that I think we all agree has to be an integral part of whatever 

strategy we adopt with respect to Afghanistan. 

Major General Fields, is SIGAR looking into who authorized the 

use of such a high percentage of CERP funds for road construction 

at this point? 
27 

General FIELDS. Thank you, sir. We have several audits ongoing 

as we speak. And, in fact, I made the decision several months ago, 

well in advance of the article of which you speak and about which 

I am aware, to look into CERP. In my frequent dialogue with the 

Congress overall, we receive occasional vectors of interest to the 

Congress, and one of those has been the issue of CERP. 

So we have been planning for some time to look into CERP, and 

we are in the midst of that as we speak, and I am not at this point 

in time prepared to arrive at conclusions or findings upon which 

any decisions can be made, certainly. 

Mr. LOEBSACK. Can we go back to an original question that was 

asked of you as to whether your budget—how much did you say 

you requested from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)? 

General FIELDS. Sir, for this year, fiscal year 2009, we actually 

requested $23.2 million. 

Mr. LOEBSACK. Was any of that accepted at this point by OMB? 

General FIELDS. Sir, we have in our bank, if you will, at this 

point $16 million, and we have been spending that since about October of last year. And that amount of money is now down to at 

or about $11 million, and we still have the rest of the year to go. 

And without the $7.2 additional to flesh us out to that $23.2-, we 

will not be able to bring aboard the robust staff that is commensurate with the robust mandate that the Congress has imposed upon 

us. 

Mr. LOEBSACK. Thank you. I hope it is included on the budget, 

then. Thank you very much. 

Thanks to all of you, Mr. Chair. 

The CHAIRMAN. Susan Davis. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to all of you. 

I wanted to follow up with the discussion of the extent to which 

we put the Iraqi face, the Afghani face engaged wholeheartedly in 

this effort. And I wanted to just talk about the faces of women for 

a second. And I am wondering to what extent you believe that 

there has been a conscious, a significant effort to engage women in 

this redevelopment, reconstruction, in the community. 

And one of the issues I just want to point to quickly is I think 

today’s Washington Post, a representative from Mercy Corps, a 

nongovernmental organization (NGO) with programs in Afghanistan, suggested that those lines between United States Agency for 

International Development (USAID) and the State Department 

have been so blurred. 

And the question really is—I would like to talk about been the 

faces of women and their involvement—but to what extent we have 

had success, depending on whether it is a U.S. agency that has 

been involved or the military in some of these programs; what difference does it make in terms of the response, the public opinion 

that is generated in this area, and to what extent do you think 

women’s voices have been ignored and/or really engaged in this effort? 

Ms. WILLIAMS-BRIDGERS. I will start. Unfortunately, none of our 

work has focused specifically on the attention that is given to 

women as part of our overall strategy. I do know in the Afghan development strategy, for example, there is specific reference to a 

goal, desire, to enhance the educational achievements of women 
28 

and incorporation of women into society, but I have not looked at 

that specifically. Our work has not spoken to that issue specifically. 

However, we do know that generally when you look at investments 

in developing countries, that investment in women is often a pivotal investment focus for returns on economic growth and economic 

development in countries. 

So certainly it is an important issue, but one that we just have 

not done any work to specifically address. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Mr. Bowen. 

Mr. BOWEN. Yes. Ms. Davis, page 46 of our quarterly report talks 

about the Daughters of Iraq program that has incorporated women 

into the security programs, sort of a parallel to the Sons of Iraq. 

Also the Joint Contracting Command-Iraq/Afghanistan (JCC-I) 

chief, the major contracting arm for the Department of Defense, 

has, through its Iraqi First program, gives preference to womenowned businesses. So there are—those are two substantive initiatives. 

As a general matter, USAID’s programs have reached out to the 

women’s community across Iraq for a number of years and continues to develop at the grassroots level, using an Iraqi face. 

Chapter 26 in Hard Lessons really underscores that story, how 

USAID, through its partner organizations, developed this Iraqi face 

through its programs to both address the security problem, but also 

to make the outreach more effective. 

Mrs. DAVIS. What I would hope, perhaps, as we continue to look 

at these issues and really to understand the role that the grassroots is playing, is that we would be asking specifically those questions with data to back that up in terms of leadership, in terms of 

responsibility that is given in those communities, because I think 

the women that we have had an opportunity to speak with—and 

several of us will be trying to focus on that specifically in Afghanistan—is that they haven’t necessarily been at the table, and we 

know that in terms of building that civil society, it is really critical. 

So I think if we have that as an accountability measure, and we 

ask the question, how many are around the table, then I think it 

begins to filter through. We know the capability is there, that is 

not the issue, but it is whether or not they are really asked and 

whether or not anybody thinks it is important. I would hope that 

we could do that. 

And just to follow up on that second question, it doesn’t matter 

who is doing the redevelopment, reconstruction project in terms of 

public opinion, whether or not it is, you know, pseudomilitary 

versus civilian. What do we know about that? 

Mr. BOWEN. Yes, it does matter. And, indeed, many reconstruction projects around Iraq, they are purposefully given through subcontracting an Iraqi face. A U.S.-funded project, frankly, there is 

no evidence on the face of the project that the source of funds is 

the U.S., and that is purposefully done for security reasons. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Kissell. We have votes scheduled very shortly. As I understand, we have Mr. Ellsworth, Mr. Massa after Mr. 

Kissell, and I believe everyone will have had a chance to do the 

first round. 

If there is an opportunity for the second round, if there is time 

for it, fine. But probably not. 
29 

Mr. Kissell. 

Mr. KISSELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I sit here— and 

thank you all for your testimony. And I am going to probably say 

a few things that are on my mind before I ask my question. 

I read a book recently, and it was about a gentleman whose life 

had not gone real well, and he made the statement that history can 

repeat itself, but you have to try real hard to make the same mistakes over and over again. 

As I listened to the testimony today, I couldn’t help but to go 

back to that statement I hear about that we didn’t build the things 

that they wanted in Iraq, we are not building the things they want 

in Afghanistan. We have spent $32 billion in reconstruction in Afghanistan, but, as Mr. Marshall pointed out, reconstruction from 

what? We really don’t have anything to show there. 

We hear that we don’t really have the procedures in place, the 

accountability in place. It looks like we are repeating history by 

making these same mistakes. 

And one of the first things I went to, as being a new Congressman, we were, as rookie Congressmen, challenged by a general 

that had been in Iraq, would we have the courage to stand up as 

Congressmen and address the tough issues of the day? And I asked 

the general, I said—because it seems like we have had a history 

of people that were associated firsthand with the problems that we 

are talking about today who did not discuss those problems until 

they were out of the position they were in, then came back to us 

and said, oh, listen to the problems we had. And I asked the general, were the people firsthand, and knowledge of what is taking 

place, forthcoming to us in a way that we could understand and 

deal with the issues, and he said, no. 

So my question to each of you, as we look towards trying not to 

make the same errors again in Afghanistan that we know we made 

in Iraq, do you all feel that you have the authority, responsibility, 

obligation to present information to us—I think you can tell the atmosphere here is very receiving—so that we can see when things 

are not going right and have a chance to do something about it before it becomes so far in our rear-view mirror, we say how did that 

happen? 

Mr. BOWEN. Mr. Kissell, that is exactly the philosophy behind my 

organization that has driven my auditing, trying to do real-time 

audit, so to speak, so that the managers on the ground know what 

is going on, and they can adjust course and improve it. 

But there are two issues you raised. One is strategic solutions 

and tactical solutions. The strategic solution is that we need to reform our government’s approach to contingency operations. That is 

going to take some time because it is introducing a new framework 

for preparing. But there are tactical solutions, lessons learned in 

Iraq that should become lessons applied in Afghanistan, that could 

make a difference and save taxpayer dollars and promote the success of our mission. 

One is develop new wartime contracting rules, rules that are 

more effective, that are designed to execute rapidly on the ground, 

and something that we have talked about in our reports for a number of years. 
30 

Two is to take advantage of the civilians who have achieved experience in Iraq through provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs) 

and others, and bring that expertise and understanding to bear on 

the ground in Afghanistan. 

Three is to take the tactical lesson from Iraq to build to scale to 

what the capacity of the country is. That is not what is happening 

in Iraq. It is not what has been happening in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is much, much lower abilities, much lower absorptive capacity 

for investment. 

Any investment has to be aimed at their absorptive capacity. We 

build above that, you lose it because they can’t sustain it. And we 

are going to have an audit coming out in a month on asset transfer 

that underscores the real waste that occurs when you build beyond 

capacity, that the assets don’t transfer, that they don’t make a 

long-term difference. 

So strategic solutions, tactical solutions, I think those are both 

areas for the committee to grapple with and engage and implement 

resolutions. The big one is how to manage these for posterity. 

Ms. WILLIAMS-BRIDGERS. Mr. Kissell, I would say, yes, we do 

have the responsibility. We do understand our obligation to report 

on what we have learned that has worked, as well as what we have 

not. These hearings provide an excellent forum for us to do that. 

With the new Administration we reached out to provide them the 

information based on what we have learned, and not the outstanding recommendations that have never been addressed in our 

mind and fully implemented. But I think we need to continue to 

have the support of Congress to get the access to the documents 

that allow us to render judgments of what works and what does 

not. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. 

In contrast to your comment, Mr. Kissell, about history repeating 

itself, my fellow Missourian Mark Twain once said, history doesn’t 

repeat itself, but it sure rhymes a lot. 

We have two more, and we should break. I think we can get 

them both in before we go vote, Mr. Ellsworth and Mr. Massa. 

Mr. Ellsworth. 

Mr. ELLSWORTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for 

being here today. This is of great interest to me. 

I have heard our distinguished Chairman refer to himself as a 

simple country lawyer many times, and as a simple county sheriff 

in a previous life, this is very disturbing to me. 

There is a young man in the fourth row, blue shirt, glasses. Sir, 

would you hold the book up you carried in? Flimflam is the title. 

And I get the distinct impression we are getting a lot of flimflam, 

not from you all, but from what is going on over there. Doesn’t 

matter how many times I have been to Iraq and Afghanistan. I 

keep getting this report from people about what is going on there. 

I guess my question is that, you know, what are the things that 

we are doing that they don’t want? Who has the authority to pull 

the plug and say, these things are going so wrong, why doesn’t 

somebody pull the plug, and we write those policies and write those 

procedures. Instead of going and continuing the bad behavior 

while—and keep spending the billions of dollars, let’s do food, 
31 

water, medicine, and shelter, and then write the policy, and then 

come back and do it. 

Those are the things they need. That is what your polls have 

showed. They want water, they want food. If we are building roads, 

it is like buying a bunch of new Sony TVs and nobody having cable 

or an antenna and not getting anything. 

So why don’t we do the things we need? Who has got that authority, and why aren’t we beating on somebody’s desk to say, pull 

the plug and let’s step back a little bit and just do the things we 

need? And that would be my first question. 

Mr. BOWEN. Well, Mr. Ellsworth, I would just say in Iraq that 

lesson has been learned. The failure I was speaking to was the failure of the original plan that built beyond expectations. I think, 

though, that it is still applicable in Afghanistan. And the key is to 

build not to just what they want, but also what they can do to their 

capacity. For example, the Fallujah wastewater treatment plant 

that I visited last August, what they wanted was something that 

ultimately is proving a little bit beyond their capacity. 

So it is a balancing act. It is a tough issue. 

But the reality is that we are contracting chiefly with Iraqi firms 

now, and we are choosing projects chiefly by working through the 

Provincial Reconstruction Development Councils and the PRTs, 

and that means that the selection of projects today is wiser. Unfortunately, it is also when the money has run out. 

Mr. ELLSWORTH. But, you know, we talked about the waste, that I think it was $70-something million for the prison because it essentially fell apart because of water and that. And we built that 

prison, but it is my understanding, correct me if I am wrong, that 

the police forces weren’t built up. The jails, the court system—we 

didn’t have lawyers, judges, anything. Other legs of the stool didn’t 

exist. So we build this prison out there somewhere, and there was 

not rule of law or a way to put people in prison. 

Mr. BOWEN. That is right. 

Mr. ELLSWORTH. Who thinks of that? What common sense—that 

is not Missouri or Indiana common sense. I said, the flimflam. 

Mr. BOWEN. The Khan Bani Saad is a poster child for bad project 

management, all of these issues we are talking about. The Iraqis, 

when it finally came to turn it over to them, the Deputy Minister 

of Justice said, no, we are not going to take it. It is not finished. 

We don’t want it, we never wanted it. And they refer to in Diyala 

Province as ‘‘the whale.’’ 

Mr. ELLSWORTH. General Fields, you said some of the Afghans 

want to partake in more of the process, and they should. I want 

to be assured that they want to partake in the process of what they 

need and not just in the profits and the corruption. I know the corruption is pervasive. Every time I have gone over there, they have 

told me that. 

They need to partake in the process of what they need to run it, 

but we just can’t keep throwing these billions of dollars of good 

money after bad. On your next trip I would love to go with you. 

I don’t know when you are headed out, but if it is on a break, I 

would love to, and continue this kind of talk with the folks over 

there, and build some common sense back into this system that 

represents all of our districts. 
32 

And I will—if you got a comment, I will wind up my questions. 

General FIELDS. Sir, we welcome you and your staff to travel 

with us. We, at least I personally, make at least quarterly visits 

to Afghanistan, and that frequency may increase as we get more 

deeply into our work. 

In reference to the involvement of the Afghans in reconstructing 

their country, I have seen work executed by contractors solely of 

Afghanistan, and the quality of the work has been good. I can cite 

a provincial police facility in Helmand Province that I visited during January. In fact, it is the only picture that I elected to put in 

our January report to the Congress because it is profound; not the 

picture per se, but the fact that there is capability, capacity in Afghanistan. We, in our early observations, feel that there is more of 

this capacity there than we have otherwise encouraged to participate in the reconstruction effort. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. 

Mr. Massa. 

Mr. MASSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for the 

hard work you are doing in representing so many people who report to you, often in dangerous conditions. 

We have had several very informative, strategic questions. I 

would like to shift and just ask a very, very specific and perhaps 

impassioned plea, and I will be brief. 

From firsthand experience I know that dealing with large numbers of contractors, hundreds of millions if not more dollars of government-furnished equipment, often very durable communication 

equipment and other items, have been delivered to these the contractors and deployed in the field in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I 

know from firsthand experience that equipment is largely, at this 

point, undocumented and potentially lost in the field. 

As we shift focus in Iraq and redeploy our forces, I would, with 

the strongest possible recommendation, ask that you would consider deploying a very small number of personnel to do whatever 

possible to find, document, either write off or recover as much of 

this government-furnished equipment as possible and return it to 

the United States, where people in my district, like firefighters and 

emergency medical technicians and others, could put this equipment to incredibly important use in a very, very harsh economic 

time in our country. 

So please take that for the record. I would be very appreciative 

if you could get back to me, this committee, or any responsible 

party with anything you might do to be able to recapture—and it 

may be a small fraction—maybe tens of millions, but I know you 

all know $1 million is still a lot of money, especially back where 

I come from. 

Again, thank you for your service, and thank you for your patience to my long question. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman very much. We certainly 

appreciate your excellent testimony, your appearance here today. It 

has been very informative, and we wish you continued success in 

your hard work as you perform your duties and advise us. Thank 

you very, very much. 

We are adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:57 a.m., the committee was adjourned.] 
A P P E N D I X 

MARCH 25, 2009 

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