4.F 76/2:S.HRG.109-21 S. HRG. 109–21 STRATEGIES FOR RESHAPING U.S. POLICY IN IRAQ AND THE MIDDLE EAST A I I ) BREAK HEARING BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED NINETH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION FEBRUARY 1, 2005 Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations Pennsylvania State University Libraries JUL 7 2005 Documents Collection U.S. Depository Copy Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON : 2005 21-064 PDF For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-0001 STRATEGIES FOR RESHAPING U.S. POLICY IN IRAQ AND THE MIDDLE EAST TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2005 U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, Washington, DC. The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:03 a.m., in room SD-419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Richard G. Lugar presiding. Present: Senators Lugar, Hagel, Chafee, Coleman, Voinovich, Sununu, Martinez, Biden, Dodd, Feingold, Boxer, Bill Nelson, and Obama. OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD G. LUGAR, U.S. SENATOR FROM INDIANA The CHAIRMAN. This hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is called to order. The Committee on Foreign Relations meets for our first hearing on Iraq in the 109th Congress. In the last Congress we held 23 hearings on Iraq, a level of scrutiny de- manded by the critical impact that the progress in Iraq has on United States national security. The remarkable elections held in Iraq over the weekend dem- onstrated the courage and the commitment of the Iraqi people. De- spite threats and acts of violence, reports indicate that millions of Iraqis voted. The results will not be certified until February 15, but there is little doubt that the election provides a basis for moving forward with Iraqi self-government. Most importantly, the election can strengthen the legitimacy of Iraqi officials. The impact of having properly elected leaders in Iraq for the first time could be substantial. Insurgents may find it tougher to sell their propaganda that the government has no legit- imacy and the United States is merely an occupying power. In ad- dition, parties and groups in Iraq that participate in the govern- ment will have a growing stake in its success. The election, however, does not guarantee that the path to de- mocracy will be an easy one. The security situation in the Sunni areas of Iraq will remain extremely tense. Protecting the newly elected 275-member Transitional National Assembly must be a se- curity priority. Methods also must be found to include Sunnis in the government without being unfair to the winners of the election. The Iraq election will be viewed by some as the first step in the United States exit strategy, but we should recognize how much work is left to be done. The coalition must assign priority to train- ing Iraqi security forces. Ultimately, our success at training Iraqis (1) When the distinguished ranking member, Senator Biden, arrives, we will call upon him for his opening statement, but for the mo- ment we'll proceed with the testimony. Dr. Cordesman, would you please proceed. STATEMENT OF ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN, PH.D., ARLEIGH A. BURKE FELLOW IN STRATEGY, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES Dr. CORDESMAN. Thank you very much, Senator, and let me thank the committee for the opportunity to testify. I think it is clear that our strategy toward Iraq is today our most important foreign policy issue and I hope the committee will forgive me if I take just a few extra minutes to outline some of the views in “Play- ing the Course," which I do request be included in the record. In that paper, I pointed out that the odds of success in Iraq are roughly even if we pursue the right policies and that the definition of success is going to be a pluralistic Iraqi Government that can work its way through years of difficulty without direct American support and continuing large American military presence. But I also pointed out that, while the United States must be prepared for failure in Iraq, exiting is a tactic and it is not a strategy. It can eliminate the costs of the war, it can eliminate casualties, but it will inevitably create at least as many problems as it solves, unless we exit under conditions that do define success. If we leave a leg- acy of political failure, chaos, or civil conflict in Iraq, that is not a strategy. Regardless of what we do, we will need to reassess and rebuild our entire position in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, restruc- ture our security policy and regional posture in the area, deal with problems like energy and the problems of a nuclear Iran. Let me also say that, while cut-and-run may ultimately be a ne- cessity, it too is not a strategy. It is a massive defeat. That is why I am going to argue that we really do need to do our best to salvage the situation in Iraq. We should not stay at any cost. We should not abandon Iraq as long as there is any hope of success. I think, though, to understand what we can and cannot do in Iraq we have to begin by admitting that we have to build on the climate left ft by past mistakes, and I see nine major mistakes that we now have to deal with. One is going to war on the basis of the wrong intelligence and on the basis of a rationale we have not been able to defend to the world or to the Iraqis. The second is to bypass the inter-agency process during the plan- ning and preparation for the war, which has left a legacy of dif- ficulty in terms of intelligence, the role of State Department, and civil-military relations. The third is that we fought the war without any meaningful plan for stability operations and nation-building and we allowed political and economic chaos to take place as we advanced and in the imme- diate aftermath of Saddam's fall. Fourth, we did not prepare our military forces for civil-military missions, to develop human intelligence capabilities and deal with terrorism and insurgency, to play the role of occupier in a nation with an alien religion, language, and culture. As a result, we have forced our military to adapt under pressure and in the face of a growing enemy. For a year we assumed that a proconsul in the form of CPA could govern Iraq and plan its future rather than Iraqis, and we staffed much of the CPĀ with inexperienced ideologues, many of which spent virtually all of their time in a secure enclave and on 3- to 6-month tours. For a year we developed idealized plans for political reform that did not survive engagement with reality, and we fo- cused far too much on national elections and drafting a constitution and not on effective governance. For a year we had military leader- ship that would not work closely with the leadership of the CPA, and we lived in a state of denial about the level of popular hostility we faced and a growing insurgency. For a year we made no effort to create effective military, security, and police forces that could stand on their own in dealing with the growing insurgency, ter- rorism, and lawlessness. Instead, we saw such forces largely as a potential threat to our idealized democracy and felt our forces could easily defeat an insurgency of some 5 to 6,000 former regime loyal- ists. Finally, for a year we tried to deal with an Iraqi economy that was a command kleptocracy as if it could quickly and easily be con- verted to a modern market-driven economy. Again, we sent in far too many advisers with no real area expertise and with far too lit- tle continuity. We created a long-term aid plan without a meaning- ful understanding or survey of the economic problems Iraq faced, without an understanding of Iraq's immediate needs and expecta- tions, and without the talent in either the United States Govern- ment or the contract community to implement such a plan or to de- velop the kinds of plans and programs that should have been fo- cused on the short- and medium-term requirement that Iraq actu- ally needed. Many of the problems we face could have been avoided and I think it is to the credit of the people in Iraq today that the past does not have to be the prologue to the future. We have moved Iraq policy beyond the policy cluster in the Pentagon, we have weakened the hold of neoconservatives and we have begun to implement a se- rious inter-agency approach. We now have an ambassador and a general that can work together and function as a civil-military team. We have given sovereignty to the Iraqis and let them take over the political process. We have begun to accept the true com- plexity of the political problems in Iraq and the level of popular hostility and tension we face. We have reorganized the U.S. and coalition military posture to fight a serious counterinsurgency and counterterrorist war. In fact, we have begun to rethink our entire process of force transformation to focus on these threats. We have begun to train Iraqi military, security, and police forces for the threat they actually face and not for a secure, stable, and democratic world. We have, at least partially, understood that our initial aid plans were unrealistic and that priority has to be given to short- and me- dium-term stability and to using dollars as a substitute for bullets. We have also begun to understand that USAID in Washington is incompetent in dealing with the challenge it faces, that outside con- lion and where the total of Iraqis hired under the aid program has recently been dropping by about 9,000 Iraqis a week. I would urge this committee to demand an immediate appear- ance by the director of USAID to explain the details of our aid pro- gram, to provide a clear plan for transferring funds and responsi- bility to the Iraqi government, to show how our projects meet valid requirements, and to prove that USAID's leadership is competent. Unless he can meet every such test, that leadership should be changed and the aid program should immediately be transferred to more competent hands. Fourth, we need a clear declaration of our goals and principles for Iraq. We need clear and unambiguous statements from the President and Secretary of State that refute the key conspiracy theories that poison our relations and undercut the legitimacy of the Iraqi government. To be specific, we need a clear statement from the President that we will leave the moment the Iraqi govern- ment asks us to, that we will phase our forces down as soon as Iraq forces are ready to do the job, that we will not maintain permanent military bases, that we will not exploit Iraqi oil wealth or the econ- omy, and that we will shift our aid funds to Iraq control and to benefit Iraqis, insisting only that the uses be validated and there be no corruption or waste. Fifth, we need to have a regional strategy to support what we do in Iraq. We must give settling the Arab-Israeli conflict top priority and make our efforts fully visible. We must act through the Quar- tet whenever we can. In spite of our intervention in Iraq, survey after survey shows there is no single issue which causes more anger toward the United States than the Israeli-Palestinian con- flict or does more to aid extremists and terrorists like bin Laden than the lack of visible high-level United States efforts to revitalize the peace process and the perception that the United States fights terrorism, but does nothing to halt settlements and occupation. I do not for a moment advocate we halt any aspect of o gle against terrorism or do anything to compromise the security of Israeł. But we can only adopt the right policies toward Iraq if we adopt the right policies toward the Arab-Israel conflict. Finally, Mr. Chairman, we also need to have a strategy that deals with the gulf region and with the Middle East that goes be- yond rhetoric about democracy and reform. Far too much of our re- cent rhetoric has actually been used by our opponents to argue that we seek to overthrow governments in the region or to impose our own leadership. What we need now are practical, country by coun- try efforts to quietly and steadily support the reformers in those countries, not noisy outside exiles. We need to press for achievable evolutionary progress steadily and without pause. We need to give human rights, the rule of law, economic reform, and demographic reform the same priority as democracy. And we need to recognize that democracy cannot work unless there are meaningful political parties and preparation for democracy to work. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. [The prepared statement and related material of Dr. Cordesman follows:] PREPARED STATEMENT OF ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN, ARLEIGH A. BURKE FELLOW IN STRATEGY, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, WASHINGTON, DC Several months ago, I laid out the basic elements of a strategy for dealing with Iraq in an analysis which I called "Playing the Course”—a paper that I now request be placed in the record of this hearing In doing so, I pointed out that the odds of success in Iraq are at best even-if one accepts the fact that in the real world the only definition of success we can actu- ally hope to achieve is some form of pluralistic Iraqi government that can work its way through years of political and economic difficulty without direct American mili- tary support. AN EXIT IS NOT A STRATEGY I also pointed out that the U.S. must be prepared for failure in Iraq, but that exiting is a tactic and not a strategy. Exiting Iraq would eliminate U.S. casualties and the cost of war fighting, but create as many or more problems as it solves. Leaving a legacy of political failure, chaos, or civil conflict in Iraq is not a strat- egy. A strategy means that we must reassess and rebuild our entire position in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, restructure our security policy and regional pos- ture in an area with some 60% of the world's proven oil reserves, deal with what Islamist extremism will claim as a massive victory, cope with a nuclear Iran, and find some way to reestablish credibility in the world. "Cut and run” may become a necessity, but it can never be a strategy; only a mas- sive defeat. This is why I have argued that we must do our best to salvage the situation in Iraq, and to correct our past mistakes. We should not do this at any cost; but we. should not abandon Iraq as long as there is any serious hope of success. FACING THE CONSEQUENCES OF OUR OWN MISTAKES We also should recognize that we are where we are today as much because of nearly two years of avoidable failures in U.S. policy and leadership as because of the inherent difficulties in helping Iraq become a stable and successful nation. In summary, we have made nine major mistakes: • We went to war on the basis of the wrong intelligence and with a rationale we could not defend to the world or the Iraqis. • We bypassed the Interagency process. We ignored warning after warning by U.S. intelligence experts, State Department officials, military officers with expe- rience in the region, and outside experts that we would not be greeted as lib- erators fighting a just war, but by a highly nationalistic and divided people who did not want outsiders and occupiers to determine their destiny. We fought the war to remove Saddam from power without any meaningful plan for stability operations and nation building. We allowed political and economic chaos to take place as we advanced and in the immediate aftermath of Saddam's fall. We did not prepare our military forces for civil-military missions, to deal with terrorism and insurgency, to play the role of occupier in a nation with an alien religion, language and culture, or have the mix of HUMINT and weapons they needed for the “war after the war.” As a result, we forced our military to slowly adapt under pressure and in the face of a growing enemy. For a year, we assumed that a proconsul in the form of the CPA could govern Iraq and plan its future, rather than Iraqis. We staffed much of the CPĂ with inexperienced political appointees and ideologues that spent virtually all of their time in a secure enclave and only served for brief three to six month tours. For a year, we developed idealized plans for political reform that did not survive engagement with reality. We focused far too much on national elections and drafting a constitution without having a similar focus on effective governance at the national, regional, and local levels. For a year, we had military leadership in Iraq that would not work closely with the leadership of the CPA, and which lived in a state of denial about the level of popular hostility we faced and a steadily growing insurgency. For a year, we made no serious attempt to create Iraqi military, security, and police forces that could stand on their own in dealing with a growing insur- gency, terrorism, and lawlessness. Instead, we saw such Iraq forces largely as a potential threat to our idealized democracy and felt our forces could easily de- feat an insurgency of 5,000-6,000 former regime loyalists. needt under pressurmed that a procon Iraqis. We stafheat spent virtuanth tours. • For a year, we tried to deal with an Iraqi economy that was a command kleptocracy as if it could be quickly and easily converted to a modern market- driven economy. We sent in CPA advisors with no real experience and no con- tinuity. We created a ridiculous long-term aid plan without a meaningful under- standing or survey of the economic problems Iraq faced, an understanding of Iraqi needs and expectations, and the talent in either the U.S. government or the contract community to implement such a plan or develop the kind of plans and programs focused on short and medium-term requirements that Iraq actu- ally needed. THE PAST DOES NOT HAVE TO BE PROLOGUE TO THE FUTURE This past does not have to be a prologue to the future. During 2004, we began to correct many of our past mistakes. • We have moved Iraqi policy beyond the disastrous policy cluster in the Pen- tagon, weakened the hold of failed neoconservatives, and begun to implement a serious Interagency approach. • We have an ambassador and a commander that can work together, and much more of a true civil-military team. We still lack the civilian elements that can support nation building in high-threat areas, but the U.S. military has found ways to partially compensate. We have given sovereignty to the Iraqis and let them take over the political process. • We have gradually accepted the true complexity of the political problems in Iraq, the level of popular hostility we and our forces face, and the seriousness of the insurgent threat. We have reorganized the U.S. and Coalition military posture in Iraq to fight a serious counterinsurgency and counterterrorist war, and we have begun to rethink our entire process of force transformation to shift from a Cold War focus on advanced technology to fight conventional forces to one that can deal with the very different asymmetric, political, and ideological threats we actually face. • We have begun to train Iraqi military, security, and police forces for the threat they actually face, and not for a perfect secure, stable, and democratic world. • We have partially understood that our aid plans were totally unrealistic, and that priority must be given to short and medium term stability and to using dollars as a substitute and supplement to bullets. We have at least begun to understand that USAID in Washington cannot deal with the challenge it faces, that outside contractors cannot manage an effective aid program in Iraq, and that dollars need to go to Iraqis and not outsiders. We need to give the Americans now in Iraq—and especially the civilians and mili- tary actually in the field outside the Green Zonefull credit for these changes. They have not stood idly by, failed to adapt, or failed to challenge the many failures in leadership they received from Washington. America's "neoconservatives” may be an unmitigated national disaster in shaping policy towards Iraq, and in virtually every other aspect of foreign policy they have managed to affect. We have seen, however, that realists, true area experts, and adaptive military professionals can produce far better answers and have already begun to compensate for many of our past mistakes. WHAT MUST BE DONE The question now is what must be done to reinforce the steps we have already taken. I should stress that my proposed answers have had to be formulated in a climate where there is remarkably little realistic U.S. government reporting of the metrics necessary to understand the true nature of the insurgency. We have little meaningful data on the results of our efforts to create effective Iraqi forces, the economic problems Iraq faces, and the actual impact of our aid. We have substituted self-serving polls to justify our positions rather than to seriously and objectively poll Iraqi perceptions. I have prepared a short paper on what needs to be done to improve the quality of the reporting to the American people and the Congress, and again, I request that it be included in the record. Yet, I believe that enough data are available to show that there are five steps that might well increase our chances of success well beyond the 50–50 level, and that clearly need to be taken immediately if we are to move towards success during the coming year: manac towards coconserd from W. adapt, een Zone 14 There are several types of summary reporting that would provide far more insight into the nature of the conflict, some of which the U.S. provided on a background basis until the fall of 2004: • Providing daily incident breakouts by type and effect by major city and governorate with national totals. These data were available in the past. Their censorship does not build confidence; simply confusion. Providing meaningful casualty reports by location, cause, and for all those being attacked by category. The totals of U.S. killed and wounded are an important measure, but totals are no substitute for pattern analysis by location and cause. It is also a serious reflection on the U.S. that it does not provide any meaning- ful reporting on Iraqi government, military, police, and civilian casualties, much less the kind of pattern and trend analysis that would help show what is hap- pening in the war. • Reporting on insurgent captures and kills. This again needs to be by governorate and major city, and show the nationality and ethic/religious char- acter of those involved where possible. Estimates of insurgent strength by group and location. These do not have to be precise, but would both show the scope of the threat, and whether progress is estimated to be made in defeating it. The inevitable lack of precision is not an embarrassment, it is a warning. Summaries of U.S. / Coalition military action. Like all of the metrics suggested these should not be so precise as to risk compromising operational security. The various press releases, however, give no picture of the level of overall military activity or activity by region, and no picture of the level of intensity in oper- ations or the resulting trends. 5. REALISTIC METRICS FOR PROGRESS IN CREATING EFFECTIVE IRAQI MILITARY, SECURITY, AND POLICE FORCES U.S. efforts to create capable cadres of effective Iraqi military, security, and police forces seem to be gathering momentum at a time that the U.S. has again sup- pressed virtually all meaningful reporting. Some areas where meaningful metric would be extremely useful are: Combat effective military, security, and police forces in terms of manning and unit strength: The kind of meaningless totals for training and equipped man- power now being issued produce misleading totals with no correlation to war fighting or self defense capability. Leadership and quality are the issue. • Capable forces versus goals over time: The key projection for strategy is how many effective forces will be created over time, and is there a stable set of goals to measure progress by. • Trained manpower by service / type of force showing different levels of training: “Trained” becomes milspeak for “meaningless” when it is not tied to a clear defi- nition of exactly what training is involved. Equipped by type of equipment: Like "trained,” “equipped” is meaningless when there are no data defining what this means, and whether it meets valid require- ments. For example, send Iraqis out in unarmored vehicles is not a winning move if the U.S. needs uparmored Humvees. Facility metrics: Sending men into soft or undefendable facilities is a way to ei- ther get them killed or see them break if attacked. Metrics of the adequacy of facilities are as important as metrics of equipment levels. • Patterns in casualties, and in desertions and defections: These are simple metrics of how well the Iraqi forces are, or are not, doing. Chronologies and maps of Iraqi force engagements and outcome: These display how well the Iraqiş fight. 6. ECONOMIC MAPPING This may be a need for nation wide economic data focused on long term planning in the future. To have a future, however, the government and Coalition needs de- tailed economic mapping that looks at jobs, economic activity, and how aid is flowing by major city, by governorate, and by key area. It often will not be possible to assemble comparable or complete data, but this is not operationally necessary. A mosaic of disparate data will often red flag key prob- lems and areas. Unemployment, access to health care, and functioning education are key metric. So are power, sanitation, water, and secure roads. The breakdown of past existing services in any area is a major warning. There are critical overlays to such data that help measure the realities in the war: da. For exampeeds uparmo into soft off attacked. Meis. 16 minorities. The elections in the governorates will also be useful, and will the post- election power brokering and new allotment of government positions. Metrics of governance, however, may be more useful than metrics of politics. One key indicator of stability in Iraq is to map where the government is in full control, where it has a limited or insecure presence, and where it is largely ab- sent or ineffective. It is obvious that in at least four provinces, the Iraqi govern- ment is only partially functioning. Maps by governorate and city that show the scale of the insurgency are key meas- ures of the level of risk and improvement/decline—this is particularly true if such maps show the population in the area involved. It is obvious that in some half-secure areas, the government does not meet a key test from Vietnam days, it cannot operate at night or when insurgents are in the area. Similar mapping of government services adds meaning to the security test. Se- cure police presence is one key test. Ability to make government offices secure and functional is another. • It is equally important to map out the actual distribution of key government services like pensions, economic aid, office services, etc. Most Iraqis, like most people in the world, need government services every day. Elections and politics are an episodic luxury. All of the above options would be more effective if there was a census. The rough estimates that say the population is 60% Shi’ite, 20% Sunni, 15% Kurd, and 5% other are guesstimates first made over a decade ago. Having an accurate picture of the ethnic and sectarian mix would greatly aid in understanding how the insur- gency tracks relative to such factors, as well as the true nature of the population size in threatened areas. and functie presence overnment servisurgents are inkey test fromus; 3. PUBLIC OPINION POLLS AND POLITICAL ATTITUDES Sophisticated, properly structured public opinion polls can be of great value in un- derstanding Iraqi views and needs. Public opinion polls based on small samples using limited questionnaires are little more than statistical drivel. The sample base may be “statistically valid” within a limited range of percentage error in the mathe- matical sense, but far too often, the methodology and results are empirically absurd. The sample base in many recent polls is far too small and excludes too many areas and insurgents. Moreover results that cannot be broken out by area, ethnicity, religion, and social background lump together so many disparate groups that they provide few insights or no controls on who is really being surveyed with any ade- quacy. The answer, however, is not to avoid public opinion polls. It is rather to see them as a critical metric worth funding at a high level of repeated activity with as much data on given localities and areas, and as much data on attitudes by ethnicity and sect as possible. Some past polls have provided much of the scope for this, but few recent polls seem to have made such an effort or to have credible transparency. A key metric is being ignored or misused. A key tool is being misused or not used at all. 4. MAPPING WARFIGHTING It is obvious that the U.S. government is making steadily more detailed classified efforts to understand the patterns in the fighting and the nature insurgents at a time what it has virtually suppressed all meaningful public reporting. Its daily inci- dent reports are no longer made available on background; the Iraqi government no longer provides meaningful public estimates of Iraqi casualties, and even the broad monthly incident totals vary so much from U.S. spokesman to U.S. spokesman that they seem to have uncertain credibility. There are several types of summary reporting that would provide far more insight into the nature of the conflict, some of which the U.S. provided on a background basis until the fall of 2004: • Providing daily incident breakouts by type and effect by major city and governorate with national totals. These data were available in the past. Their censorship does not build confidence; simply confusion. • Providing meaningful casualty reports by location, cause, and for all those being attacked by category. The totals of U.S. killed and wounded are an important measure, but totals are no substitute for pattern analysis by location and cause. It is also a serious reflection on the U.S. that it does not provide any meaning- ful reporting on Iraqi government, military, police, and civilian casualties, much less the kind of pattern and trend analysis that would help show what is hap- pening in the war. efforts to understairtually suppresseailable on backer casualties, and spokesman that ports are no long ful public estimates's spokesman to u UY. 19 There are, however, different ways to leave and some are much better than oth- ers. Stating and demonstrating that the U.S. has the right intentions will make it clearer to the world that the U.S. made every effort to succeed and help to defuse the impact of U.S. withdrawal. Efforts to strengthen the Iraqi government as much as possible as soon as possible not only raise the odds of success; they raise the odds that stability will eventually emerge even if the U.S. is forced to withdraw. Efforts to strengthen the role of the U.N. and to multilateralize as much of the aid process as possible will have the same effect. The Regional Dimension At the same time, the U.S. must make every effort to strengthen its position in other parts of the Gulf and the Middle East. Virtually the same strategy is needed whether the U.S. succeeds or fails in Iraq. Even “victory” in Iraq will be highly rel- ative, and defeat will force the U.S. to reinforce its position in the entire region. The specific steps the U.S. needs to take are: • Give the settlement of the Arab-Israel conflict the highest possible priority in the most visible form possible. • Rebuild U.S. ties to friendly Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and strengthen ties to all of the GCC states, emphasizing cooperation in dealing with terrorism and Islamic extremism. Adopt a more flexible policy in dealing with Iran. • Prepare for the potential impact of problems in Iraq in dealing with the fighting in Afghanistan. Recast U.S. energy policy to deal with the reality that the U.S. will have grow- ing strategic dependence on Gulf and Middle Eastern oil exports for the next 20 years, and their security will become steadily more important. Adopt a realistic approach to political reform in the region that will improve U.S. relations with both moderate regimes and with the peoples of the area. Give the political dimension of counterterrorism a new priority, addressing the many aspects of the way in which the U.S. now fights the war of terrorism that needlessly hurt relations with the Islamic and Arab world, and restrict the edu- cational, business, and other relations necessary to create a common effort to deal with terrorism and extremism. Almost all of these steps are necessary regardless of the outcome of the U.S. inter- vention in Iraq, but they become far more urgent if the U.S. is forced to withdraw or Iraqi governance fails. In short, the U.S. strategy for Iraq must be part of a broader strategy for the Middle East, and one founded on pragmatism and not ide- ology. Regardless of how we got into Iraq, and regardless of our mistakes to date, we are there. Our strategic interests are now linked to both our success and that of the Iraqis. We can certainly survive withdrawal and failure, but the result will be seen as a serious defeat unless an Iraqi government emerges that is clearly better than Saddam Hussein's regime, unless Iraq holds together, and unless Iraq makes progress over time. : We have set the rules of the game to the extent we can, we hold the cards we are going to get, and we have made our bet. The most we can do at this point is hold, fold, or raise the ante. We do not need to rush towards some form of exit strat- egy before it is clear whether we will win or lose. At the same time, we do not need a pointless ideological commitment to "stay the course," simply carrying on with what we are already doing. We need detailed and tangible ideas about how to make things better, and improve the odds of success. The challenge is how to best “play the course.” It is how to take a bad to mediocre hand and increase the chance of getting a productive outcome. The fact remains, however, that the odds of success are now at best even, and may well be worse. Popular anger and hostility towards the U.S. and Coalition forces has grown steadily since the spring of 2003. Some 11% of Arab Shi'ites and over 33% of Arab Sunnis saw attacks on Coalition forces as justified by early 2004.1 The vast majority of Arab Iraqis never saw the Coalition invasion as legitimate, and some 70% wanted Coalition forces to leave Iraq when sovereignty was returned to the Interim Iraqi Government in June 2004. More than 80% of the Iraqi Arab's sur- veyed this summer expressed deep distrust in Coalition forces.2 Iraqis still express hope in the future, but they do not feel the Coalition is capable of bringing either security or economic welfare. While no reliable polling has emerged since a new surge in the fighting in September 2004, it seems virtually certain that Iraq resent- ment of the U.S. and Coalition has steadily increased in recent months. We must do what we can within very tight time limits, knowing that we may well fail. Iraq may divide, there may be civil war, and the Interim Government may fail without leaving a viable option. The end result of the series of elections to come may we got intents aree with du vernies together 20 well be that the U.S. is asked to leave, asked to stay on Iraqi terms that largely consist of our providing aid, or tied to a government that does not have adequate popular support and legitimacy. "Playing the course” does not mean the U.S. can count on winning, and certainly does not mean staying beyond the point where "playing the course” is no longer productive. It also means that U.S. programs must be carefully tailored to the limits imposed by the “art of the possible." Trying to im- plement the “art of the desirable” is an almost certain road to failure. Accordingly, we need to consider both whether there are steps we can take to im- prove the current odds and when and how to leave. To paraphrase a country and western song, we have to “know when to hold them, know when to fold them, and know when to run.” We also need to understand that any strategy to "play the course" in Iraq must be tied to a regional strategy that will both increase our chances of success and our ability to leave under the best circumstances possible. "AND KNOW WHEN TO HOLD THEM:” SEEKING AN ACHIEVABLE VICTORY One key decision has to be made to have any real chance of winning. This is to define “victory” in narrow and pragmatic enough terms so that we have a credible hope of achieving it. By this standard, success can be measured as the emergence of an Iraqi government that holds the country together, offers more in terms of plu- ralism and the rule of law than did Saddam and the Ba'ath, which is seen as broad- ly legitimate by most Iraqis, and which can establish conditions for economic devel- opment. As a corollary, we need to recognize that we cannot overcome many critical forces affecting the situation after more than a year of war and occupation. These forces include the present level of Iraqi resentment of the invasion and occupation, Iraqi nationalism, and cultural and religious tension. Success means the U.S. must trans- fer power to an Iraqi government that the vast majority of Iraqis see as legitimate, and leave Iraq as soon as this is practical—at least to the extent that the U.S. does not maintain significant military forces or military bases, and does not maintain the Green Zone and an “imperial” Embassy. The U.S. can, at most, stay in Iraq for one or two more years and it must do what it can as quickly as possible. Moreover, we need to preserve a sense of history. Iraq has massive political, secu- rity, ethnic, religious, and economic problems that will take a half a decade to a dec- ade to play out. The chances are that it will undergo several periods of crisis and instability after we leave. We can continue to influence this situation, but we can scarcely hope to control it. We need to understand and make clear to Iraq and the world—that the transition to full independence, and American military withdrawal, place the responsibility for Iraq's future clearly in Iraqi hands. We must not claim either levels of success or responsibility that will allow critics to blame the U.S. for future problems it cannot control. Defining Success as Narrowly as Possible A future Iraqi government does not have to be favorable to the U.S. in any narrow sense. The U.S. does not need Iraqi dependency; it needs Iraqi success. A neutral government that distances itself from the U.S., or even one that is aggressively independent, will be perfectly acceptable. The key test of success is that such a gov- ernment can hold the country together, gives every ethnic and religious group a rel- atively fair share of wealth and power, does not represent extreme factions, has no broader regional ambitions, and creates a climate where both internal stability and the welfare of the Iraqi people is likely to improve over time. In fact, from both an Iraqi and regional viewpoint, the stronger and more inde- pendent the Iraqi government becomes the better. The U.S. does not need a client or dependent, and its best chance for being seen as having conducted a “just war" (or at least an excusable one) is to show that it leaves when it is asked to and leaves Iraqis clearly in charge. Put differently, the key in Iraq to knowing how long to "hold them" is having a clear plan to "fold.” As a corollary, “playing the course” means that there are several objectives the U.S. not only must not pursue, but also must conspicuously and openly reject: • One is to try to use Iraq as a tool or lever for changing the region. The Iraqi example may have some impact over time, but nothing could be more destruc- tive to regional efforts at reform than any deliberate effort to use Iraq as some kind of springboard for change in other countries. A meaningful reform strategy must be a country-by-country U.S. effort to encourage the positive evolutionary trends inside each country. Moreover, the U.S. must accept the fact that any foreseeable government that is legitimate in Iraqi eyes will sharply oppose present U.S. policies in dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and will be hostile to Israel's present government and policies. 25 correct them. As is the case in every area of U.S. action, Iraqis must not only be in charge, but be held publicly accountable. The constant effort to spin every minor accomplishment into success is precisely the wrong approach. Transparency and ac- countability serve three key purposes: (a) the independence and legitimacy of the Iraqi government and political process is clear, (b) the U.S. is not held accountable for Iraqi failures if it stays or withdraws, and (c) Iraqis are pressured to take re- sponsibility. The U.S. must demonstrate through its actions that it will actually begin to leave as soon as the Iraqi government, military, and security forces can do the job. It needs to demonstrate it through phased withdrawals and changes in its role. The U.S. should not set rigid deadlines, which will become targets for insurgents and opponents of the Iraqi government, but it should seek to do as much as possible dur- ing 2005 and if it does not succeed by the end of 2006, it seems likely that it will have effectively been defeated. More than 70% of Iraqis polled wanted the U.S. forces out as early as the fall of 2003, and the figure was well in excess of 80% by mid-2004. This is one of many reasons why the U.S. needs to aggressively and openly seek to expand the role of the U.N. and other nations in helping Iraq develop its govern- ance and political process. Just seeking multilateralism expands the legitimacy of the U.S. effort. Achieving it, particularly if the country becomes more secure, will be much more important. It will show Iraqis and the world that the U.S. is serious; that its efforts are designed to create an independent and legitimate government and that it is seeking to improve, not dictate, Iraq's future. It will also create an important process of continuity as the U.S. phases down its effort and if the U.S. has to withdraw rapidly in a crisis. REINFORCING THE CURRENT EFFORT TO CREATE EFFECTIVE IRAQI MILITARY AND SECURITY FORCES The second critical variable is the ability and willingness of Iraqi military and se- curity forces to largely-if not totally_replace U.S. and other Coalition forces no later than the end of 2006. As has been touched upon earlier, it has been clear since early 2004 that Iraqis bitterly resent U.S. domination of the military security effort, and polls in 2004 put hostility at well above the 80% level. At the same time, poll after poll shows Iraqis see physical security as the most important single issue in their lives, followed by economic and educational security. Equally important, the same polls that reflected the unpopularity of Coalition forces reflected great popular confidence in the Iraqi army and police-although far more out of hope for what they might become in the future than their capabilities at the time the polls were taken.5 There is no question that creating the kinds of Iraqi forces that are required is a high risk effort that will have to be rushed forward under adverse circumstances. It is also almost certain that if polls were taken now—after Najaf, Baghdad, Samarra, Fallujah, and Mosul—the Iraqi people would show far less confidence. Nevertheless, the only practical solution to popular hostility to coalition forces is to create strong Iraqi military security forces as soon as possible, and to keep up the effort regardless of any near term problems and reversals. “Iraqiazation” either has to be made to work, or Iraq will become a mirror image of the failure of “Vietnam- ization” in Vietnam: Coalition military victories will become increasingly irrelevant. The U.S. military and U.S. Embassy now seem to clearly understand this, as does the Iraqi Interim Government. The failures at the policy levels of the U.S. govern- ment, CPA, and shadow Iraqi government that gave General Eaton a hopeless mix of tasks and resources through May of 2004 seem to have been corrected. General Petraeus and the Multi-National Security Transition Command (MNSTC-I) may now be getting much of the support they need.6 It is disturbing, however, that the U.S. has stopped issuing meaningful public in- formation on the equipment and training effort, and has cut the content of the Iraq Weekly Status Report to the point where it has limited value. Like the empty meas- ures of success contained in USAID reports, the end result is that there is no way to relate what is happening to any meaningful picture of actual requirements and the measures of accomplishment that are provided are the kind of empty, self-con- gratulatory statements typical of public relations exercises. Resources to Date The only data on expenditure cover the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Program (IRRP), but do not reflect reprogramming. Taken at face value, they indicate that the U.S. had dispersed $798 million for its Security and Law Enforcement Program at a rate of only $8 million a week. This compares with an original program level of $3,235 million, which was raised to $5,045 million program for the FY2004 fiscal noit is dis tun the equip to the point is reporting the pictu Weekly Stacess containeding to any meare provided 31 tainly remain so well into 2005. They also indicate that the U.S. may be moving too slowly in creating military forces that can deal with the insurgency problem by 2006. While the U.S. is seeking to help Iraq build a three division force, it seems clear that it is not yet committed to creating the kind of national military forces that can defend the country and give the government legitimacy and respect. In practice, the U.S. can only succeed in “playing the course” of the program for training and equipping Iraqi military and security forces meets the following key short-term and longer-term objectives: • Create effective police and security forces capable of operating on a nation-wide basis. • Create a suitable mix of military and specially trained and equipped security forces that can help defeat the insurgencies in Iraq and come to maintain secu- rity without Coalition assistance. Create the structure and cadres that will allow an Iraqi government to expand the Iraqi military to the point where it is capable of defending the nation and with the size, professionalism, and equipment to act as an effective, modern military force for national defense. This latter objective means creating a longer term U.S. aid and advisory plan that will give Iraq the modern, professional military forces it needs for defense and de- terrence without risking a return to either a political role for the armed forces or the kind of military buildup that could lead to an arms race and a destabilization of the region. More broadly, U.S. needs to carefully reexamine the level of effort it is making in each area. There are serious tradeoffs in force quality if the training, force build- ing, and equipment effort is rushed. The end result could be a failed force. Yet, the U.S. can only “play the course” effectively if it works out goals and plans with the Iraqi Interim Government that go far beyond the 28,000 man armed forces—and the roughly 40–55,000 man total of military, paramilitary, and National Guard—the U.S. currently says are “required.” This may well mean scaling up a much larger training and equipment program over time than the U.S. currently plans. U.S. Transparency and the Role of Allied Forces Finally, the U.S. needs to communicate a clear plan for achieving all three of the previous objectives to the Iraqi people and the region. Once again, it needs honest and transparent reporting that is detailed enough to be convincing, while pushing Iraqis towards responsibility and accountability. It needs to show that it is truly dedicated to creating legitimate forces for a legiti- mate government, and creating the conditions necessary for a phased U.S. with- drawal. It needs to go back to reporting systems that are detailed and transparent enough to show the progress it is making, and minimize the impact of the various conspiracy theories rampant throughout the country. The U.S. also needs to keep seeking as much allied and outside support in the training effort as possible. The U.S. will not get significant numbers of additional combat troops. In fact, it will be almost impossible for its current allies to maintain their present troop strength unless it articulates a clear strategy for both improving the legitimacy of the Iraqi government and phasing out Coalition troops. It is one of the many strategic ironies in Iraq that any serious increase in foreign troops re- quires a level of internal security in Iraq that makes them largely unnecessary. At the same time, an NATO or other country that plays a role in the training process not only aids a critical mission; it also adds a degree of transparency and legitimacy to the military effort. Their presence and activity will make it clear that the U.S. is creating real Iraqi capabilities, and does intend to leave. The U.S. State Department announced on November 19, 2004, that NATO's deci- sion to send military trainers to Iraq was the first collective, consensus decision the alliance had made on Iraq in two years, and would substantially increase the num- ber of military trainers in the country from around 65 to as many as 400. Not clear, however, exactly when such manpower will arrive and it will require an additional 1,000 to 1,200 personnel to support the trainers by providing force protection, logis- tics, and communications—creating a mission total of between 1,500 and 1,700 peo- ple, some of which will be drawn from the United States. Most of the new military personnel were scheduled to be in place within 5 to 6 weeks, and the U.S. military personnel contributions will come from outside Iraq. 12 SHAPING THE POLITICAL DIMENSION OF U.S. MILITARY ACTION The U.S. has already learned that it can win virtually any direct military battle or clash, but it cannot secure the country. Moreover, U.S. and Coalition forces are so unpopular that their presence can create added hostility and new insurgents. 34 AcWhat is less fort in gover have been ie to carr ratism or ethic cleaning in dealing with Iraqi Arabs and other minorities like the Turcomans. So far, the Kurds have shown they understand the political realities involved, al- though they naturally push their cause to the margin. The U.S. must do nothing to change this perception. It must also make it clear to the Kurds that if things go wrong in Iraq, it will not support or protect them as it did with Saddam, either against their fellow Iraqis or from pressure and threats from Iran, Syria, and Tur- key. The U.S. has no future strategic interest in the Kurds, and no humanitarian obligation to protect them from the consequences of their own mistakes. The Civil Side of U.S. Military Operations and the Need for New Kinds of Jointness U.S. troops in Iraq face a serious and dangerous mix of insurgency and terrorism. The U.S. can subordinate military effective and force protection to civil and political concerns. At the same time, it seems clear that some elements of the insurgency will continue indefinitely into the future, and that the U.S. cannot delay many civic action and aid activities until something approaching local security is established. The U.S. military has already established that it understands the need to use dol- lars as well as bullets. It has used the Commander's Emerging Relief Program (CERP) with considerable effectiveness, and has since used the reprogramming of aid funds in similar ways. As of October 2, 2004, the U.S. had dispersed $578.3 mil- lion in CERP funds. Some $150.4 million had gone to police and security services and the facilities protection service, but the rest had gone to civic action. Another $383.8 million was approved for a somewhat similar time-urgent program called the Accelerated Iraq Reconstruction Program (AIRP) in April 2004.13 What is less clear is how good the partnership is between the U.S. military and the U.S. aid effort in governance and economic programs, and whether the U.S. Em- bassy and U.S. command have been able to establish the necessary level of civil- military jointness in making it possible to carry out such programs. The poor civil- military relations between the CPA and previous military command left what at best was a poisoned chalice. As will be discussed shortly, one of the keys to success in economic aid and sta- bility, will be to terminate the U.S. contractor effort as immediately and fully as possible, and to shift aid planning and execution to the Iraqi government and Iraqi contractors. Such an effort, however, requires careful U.S. review in the field and often hands-on advice and support by U.S. officials and direct, accountable employ- ees of the U.S. government. It also requires removing non-Iraqi security personnel as quickly as possible. This will make civil-military jointness even more critical than in the past. It also raises an issue that may be too late to address in Iraq, but that may be critical in the future. The separation of U.S. civilian authority and operational mili- tary commands makes good practical sense during conventional warfighting. It is far less clear that it should happen in stability, peacemaking, and nation building oper- ations. Many of the pointless civil-military tensions, and much of the lack of effective civil-military coordination, during ORHA and the time of the CPA were the result of a divided presence coupled to divided responsibility. The need for truly integrated civil-military operations (including integrated effort in developing local military, se- curity, and police forces) is simply too great to permit this to happen in the future, and such integration should occur in Iraq as quickly as possible. ECONOMIC AID AND STABILITY The U.S. economic aid program in Iraq has had many individual success and ac- complishment, and U.S. AID and contractor personnel have accomplished a great deal in individual areas in spite of immense difficulties and the dangers in the field. As an overall effort, however, U.S. economic aid has lagged far behind the need for urgent action; has wasted vast resources on an impractical contracting effort; and reflects U.S. views and priorities. As a result, it is decoupled from the needs of Iraq, the political and military realities and pressures in the country, and the need to transition responsibility and action to the Iraqi government as soon as possible. The situation is made worse by an almost completely dysfunctional reporting sys- tem within the U.S. government that does not tie plans and accomplishments to re- alistic requirements, and that reports different kinds of aid in separate reports using different categories. It has been compounded by the CPA's inability to put its ideas about economic reform into action while sustaining economic distortions like the massive subsidies provided under Saddam Hussein. It was further compounded by a focus on longer-term plans and expenditures in a country where the U.S. faced serious security problems and needed to act decisively and to begin achieving far more visible results over a year ago. it also requis. officialreful usage governme and fullysta actis. views militarynd acti ments, and nment that almost completeniment as stoom and the neélraq, 37 Push debt and reparations forgiveness to the limit: The last thing Iraq needs is a burden similar to one place on the Weimar Republic. A stable and secure Iraq cannot emerge with massive foreign obligations and debts. Nations in general find it easier to foreign such obligations than to provide real aid money, and a major U.S. effort to open pressure all of Iraqi debtors and reparations holders is a good way to externalize the aid effort and counter nations that are willing to be critics, but not to help. The Paris Club agreement on November 21st to reduce some $31 billion of $38.9 billion in Iraq's debt in three stages is an 80% reduction that does not meet the goal of a 95% reduction set by the U.S., but is an important step forward, par- ticularly if it can be extended to all debtors and remain linked to pressure on Iraq for effective economic reform. 18 It does, however, leave Iraq with combina- tion of reparations and remaining debt that may exceed $120 billion. This is one of the few political weapons the U.S. has in dealing with outside powers and it should use it to the maximum extent possible.19 Restructuring the Mid- and Long-Term Approach to Economic Aid In addition to these immediate priorities, the U.S. needs to take a similar ap- proach to encouraging the Iraqi government to carry out multilateral and study plans that will allow it to act when (and if) security and stability are established, and Iraq's longer term needs can really be established. • Infrastructure planning: Roads, electricity, water, and sewers: The U.S. has placed far too heavy an emphasis on infrastructure recovery without having clear Iraqi plans and priorities, and Iraqi decisions designed to correct the mas- sive imbalances and inadequacies Saddam's regime created in the services and facilities provided to given groups. This is an area where Iraq needs to make hard decisions and choose its own path, not have the path chosen for it. The financial sector: The U.S. made some good beginnings in this area, but Iraqis now see many of its efforts to open up the financial sector in conspiracy theory terms. The U.S. needs to shift as much of the burden in this sector to the World Bank and IMF as possible, and ideally, to work with Iraq to find some European or Asian nation to take the lead. • State industries: Iraq's state industries are a major economic millstone around the neck of its development efforts. They are also a political nightmare. The U.S. should encourage reform, but distance itself from direct involvement. Let Iraqis, the IMF/World Bank, and other nations take the lead. Subsidies: As above. The U.S. has already done enough damage by failing to come to grips with the problem immediately after the war, when something might have be done with far more ease. The agricultural sector: Some progress has already been made here. Creating an efficient and competitive sector, however, again involves political issues that the U.S. should be careful to give the Iraqi government the lead in. Aid efforts should be as multilateral as possible. • Education: The issue is not facilities; it is quality and relevance in term of job creation. Unlike some countries in the region, Iraqis see this on their own. The U.S. role should be to encourage them to plan and act, and provide aid. It can be largely passive. Austerity and Financial Discipline: Iraq needs job creation, sustainment, and stability first. The U.S. should help it resist any types of rapid economic reform that will be internally destabilizing. Landings need to be as soft as possible. Plans for U.S. withdrawal and phasing down the U.S. aid effort should not mean abandoning Iraq. They should instead mean mid- and long-term aid plans that can actually be implemented on terms the Iraqis want, can execute, and can sustain. The U.S. also needs to be careful to multilateralize such efforts as much as possible to give them international legitimacy, avoid taking responsibilities that belong with the Iraq government, and demonstrate the legitimacy of its actions. “KNOW WHEN TO FOLD AND KNOW WHEN TO RUN:” WHEN AND HOW TO GET OUT While any form of conspicuous U.S. failure in Iraq will be serious defeat, such a defeat is still all too thinkable and all too possible. This is why every section of this analysis has not only addressed what can be done to create some acceptable form of “victory," but the need to transfer responsibility to Iraqis, and to create the kinds of transparency that will minimize the political backlash and blame the U.S. will face if it must withdraw. As has been stated in the introduction, the key to any feasible form of “victory" is to plan to “fold” just as rapidly as the Iraqi government can take over the political and security burdens, and has some basis for dealing with the economic crisis. The 43 could include it the vulne is knowneking to pro plans have nium hexafluoride." Experts contend that this could be enough to create 5–6 atomic weapons. 23 It is doubtful that Iran will really fully comply with the NNPT, and it seems more likely that it is only a matter of time before Íran acquires nuclear weapons. It's, however, very unclear what kind of a nuclear power Iran will be. No plans have ever surfaced as to the number and type of weapons it is seeking to produce or the nature of its delivery forces. Nothing meaningful is known about Iranian nuclear doctrine and targeting, or plans to limit the vulnerability of its weapons and facili- ties—and whether these could include a launch-on-warning or launch-under-attack capability. Iran might be content to simply develop its technology to the point it could rapidly build a nuclear weapon. It might choose to create an undeclared deterrent, limit its weapons numbers and avoid a nuclear test. It might test and create a stockpile, but not openly deploy nuclear-armed missiles or aircraft. It also, however, might create an overt nuclear force. Each option would lead to a different Saudi response, as well as provoke different responses from Israel and the U.S., creating different kinds of arms races, patterns of deterrence, and risks in the process. Delivery systems are also a problem. Iran is reaching final development of its Shahab-3 missile, and working on a longer-range version of the missile as well as the Shahab-4, and Shahab-5. These missiles will be able to reach most Gulf cities and area targets, but are far too inaccurate and lacking in total payload to be effec- tive conventional weapons. They are useful militarily only if they have warheads carrying weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, Gulf states face the risk of some form of covert attack or the possibility of the transfer of weapons to some anti-Saudi extremist group or proxy. These currently do not seem to be probable scenarios, but Entremist group ttack or the possibition. Moreover, tarily only ifat payload to be eities Much will depend on whether Iran feels it faces a threat of attack or preemption if it openly deploys nuclear forces, and on its perception of the level of cooperation between the U.S. and the Southern Gulf states in creating effective defenses and deterrence. Iran will never be a regional “superpower,” but it may well become dan- gerous if any power vacuum or lack of resolve emerges in the region. It will cer- tainly exploit any gap between U.S. policies and efforts and those of other Gulf states, as well as any opportunities offered by states outside the region. Much will also depend on how Iran perceives its options in dealing with the U.S. over both its overall security position and Iraq. The U.S. needs to offer carrots as well as sticks. It needs to make it clear to Iran that the U.S. will not stay in Iraq or uses its position there against Iran. It needs to stop talking about an “axis of evil,” and act from a stance of “more in sorrow than in anger,” calling for coopera- tion and putting the onus on Iran's hardliners. It needs to adopt a clear posture of being willing to engage in unrestricted official dialog, and show it will engage Iran in any area where quiet talks and mutual cooperation can help both nations. Af- ghanistan is an example, and should have been a prelude to such cooperation over Iraq. Above all, the U.S. needs to stop talking vaguely about Iran at the "official spokesman" level and making charges it does not substantiate in detail. The U.S. needs to makes its concerns clear and specific, and back them up. It needs to ad- vance proposals, not just problems. It needs to recognize Iranian concerns and show how cooperation over Iraq and other issues could benefit Iran more than confronta- tion. It also needs to think long and hard about how to approach Iran in the case of either success or failure in Iraq. A stable Iraq means a Shi'ite majority; a failed Iraq means a power vacuum. Iran should be quietly told what U.S. policy is, and what its options are, in both cases. Prepare for the Potential Impact of Problems in Iraq in Dealing with the Fighting in Afghanistan It is time to need to think long and hard about the future of Afghanistan, and what can actually be done about it-particularly if the U.S. is forced to withdraw from Iraq. There already is a serious risk that the legacy of the defeat of the Taliban is making Afghanistan the “poster child” of politically correct and unobtainable goals. This situation is difficult now, and could become explosive if the U.S. is seen as being defeated in Iraq. What is need is realism, and not good intentions. As is the case in Iraq, it is plans that can be actually implemented. This requires several existential questions to be dealt with that the U.S. (and Europe) often seem determined to ignore: • What constitutes achievable success in nation building in Afghanistan, and is it that much different from what the West normally regards as failure? • How long and intensive should the fight to deal with the remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaida go on? What kind of fight is actually worthwhile? When 57 storing Iraqi oil production to pre-1990 levels would cost an additional $5 billion, plus $3 billion per year in annual operating costs; (4) outside funds and large-scale investment by international oil companies will be needed; (5) existing oil contracts will need to be clarified and resolved in order to rebuild Iraq's oil industry, with any “prolonged legal conflicts over contracts” possibly "delay[ing] the development of important fields in Iraq"; (6) any “sudden or prolonged shut-down" of Iraq's oil industry could result in long-term reservoir damage; (7) Iraq's oil facilities could easily be damaged during any domestic unrest or military operations (in early Feb- ruary 2003, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan claimed that Iraqi soldiers were min- ing oil wells in the north of the country in anticipation of war); and (8) given all this, a "bonanza” of oil is not expected in the near future. According to the Middle East Economic Survey (MEES), problems at Iraqi oil fields include: years of poor oil reservoir management; corrosion problems at various oil facilities; deterioration of water injection facilities; lack of spare parts, materials, equipment, etc.; damage to oil storage and pumping facilities; and more. MEES esti- mates that Iraq could reach production capacity of 4.2 MMBD within three years at a cost of $3.5 billion. The International Energy Agency, in contrast, estimates a $5 billion cost to raise Iraqi output capacity to 3.7 MMBD by 2010, and a $42 billion cost to raise capacity to 8 MMBD by 2030. 17 Department of Defense, “Iraq Weekly Status Report,” November 3, 2004. 18 Office the Press Secretary, Press Release, November 21, 2004, 508 PM. 19 An EIA report dated 11-04 notes that, “the country's economy, infrastructure, environment, health care system, and other social indicators all deteriorated sharp- ly. Iraq also assumed a heavy debt burden, possibly as high as $116 billion if debts to Gulf states and Russia are counted, and even more if $250 billion in reparations payment claims stemming from Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait are included. It is possible, however, that much of Iraq's debt will be written off in the end, and that reparations will be capped at a certain level, possibly around $40 billion. In Decem- ber 2003, former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker was sent as an envoy to sev- eral of Iraq's major creditor nations, attempting to secure pledges to write off some of Iraq's debt. Russia stated that it would be willing to write off part or all of the $8 billion it is owed in exchange for favorable consideration for Russian companies on Iraqi oil and reconstruction projects. In January 2004, Kuwaiti Prime Minister al-Sabah announced that his country would be willing to waive some of the $16 bil- lion owed by Iraq, and would help reduce Iraq's overall foreign debts as well. Under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1483, Iraq's oil export earnings are immune from legal proceedings, such as debt collection, until the end of 2007." 20 Richard F. Grimmett, “Conventional Arms Transfer to Developing Nations, 1996–2000,” Washington, Congressional Research Service, CRS RL32547, August 26, 2004, pp. 50 and 61. 21 Richard F. Grimmett, “Conventional Arms Transfer to Developing Nations, 1996–2000,” Washington, Congressional Research Service, CRS RL32547, August 26, 2004, pp. 50 and 61. 22 IAEA GOV/2004/60, "Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Report by the Director General, 1 September 2004. 23 Sanger, David, “Pakistan Found to Aid Iran Nuclear Efforts,” The New York Times, September 2, 2004. 24 Michael Evans and David Charter, “NATO will send More Troops to Afghani- stan,” London Times, June 29, 2004; Defense News.com, June 30, 2004. 25 See http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/pgulf.html, DOE/EIA estimated in Sep- tember 2004 that the Persian Gulf contains 715 billion barrels of proven oil re- serves, representing over half (57%) of the world's oil reserves, and 2,462 Tcf of nat- ural gas reserves (45% of the world total). Also, at the end of 2003, Persian Gulf countries maintained about 22.9 MMBD of oil production capacity, or 32% of the world total. Perhaps even more significantly, the Persian Gulf countries normally maintain almost all of the world's excess oil production capacity. As of early Sep- tember 2004, excess world oil production capacity was only about 0.5-1.0 MMBD, all of which was located in Saudi Arabia. According to the Energy Information Administration's International Energy Out- look 2004, Persian Gulf oil production increased from 18.7 MMBD in 1990 to 22.4 MMBD in 2001. It is expected to reach about 27.9 MMBD by 2010, and 38 MMBD by 2020, and 45.0 MMBD in 2025. This would increase Persian Gulf oil production capacity to over 33% of the world total by 2020, up from 28% in 2000. The estimate does, however, change significantly in the high oil price case: It is expected to reach about 21.4 MMBD by 2010, and 27.3 MMBD by 2020, and 32.9 MMBD in 2025. 26 Estimates differ according to source. The last comprehensive USGS analysis was performed in 2000, and was seriously limited by the fact many countries were 1996-2. Wo anditzett, “Conver 59 low point of 57% in 1988 to a high of 78% in 2003. About 30% of Japan's Persian Gulf imports in 2003 came from Saudi Arabia, 29% from the United Arab Emirates, 17% from Iran, 12% from Kuwait, 11% from Qatar, and around 1% from Bahrain and Iraq combined. Japan's oil imports from the Persian Gulf as a percentage of de- mand continued to rise to new highs, reaching 78% in 2003. 31 Estimates by country and necessarily uncertain. The “International Energy Outlook for 2004" estimate of production capacity in MMBD for MENA countries is as follows: 2010 2020 2025 Country 2001 Reference High Reference High price Reference High price price 3.7 3.5 4.0 3.7 Iraq 2.9 3.7 Iran ......... .......... Kuwait .......... Qatar Saudi Arabia .... UAE 2.8 2.3 0.6 10.2 2.7 2.3 0.6 4.7 5.3 4.4 0.8 18.2 4.6 3.8 3.7 2.9 0.7 12.9 3.3 4.9 6.6 5.0 0.8 22.5 5.2 4.3 4.6 3.4 0.7 16.0 3.9 ........... 0.6 13.2 3.3 9.4 2.7 .............. Total Gulf 22.4 27.9 21.4 38.0 27.3 45.0 32.9 1.6 Algeria .......... .......... Other Middle East ........ Libya 2.0 2.0 2.2 1.7 2.0 1.6 1.7 2.4 2.4 2.6 2.6 2.7 2.9 2.0 2.1 2.9 2.2 2.4 3.1 2.8 Total Other ........... 4.3 6.2 5.7 7.6 7.0 8.4 7.7 Total MENA Total World ................. (US) 26.7 79.3 9.0 34.1 95. 1 9.5 26.1 90.0 9.9 45.6 114.9 8.9 34.3 107.2 9.6 53.4 126.1 8.6 40.6 117.3 9.0 OPEC data are labeled confidential but are very similar. The IEA does not pro- vide country-by-country estimates, but uses very similar models with similar re- sults. It estimates total world production was 77 MMBD in 2002, and will increase to 121 MMBD in 2030. If one looks at the data for the Middle East, the latest IEA estimates are as follows: The IEA estimate in the “World Energy Outlook for 2004,” Table 3.5, is: 2002 2010 2020 2030 Ave. annual growth (percent) OPEC Middle East .......... Other Middle East .... 19.0 2.1 22.5 1.8 37.4 1.4 51.8 1.0 3.6 -2.7 Total ........... Non-Conventional Oil (Worldwide) ........... World ......... 21.1 1.6 77.0 24.3 3.8 90.4 38.8 6.1 106.7 52.8 10.1 121.3 .............. 6.7 1.6 32 See http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/security/choke.html#HORMUZ. The Strait is the narrow passage between Iran and Oman that connects the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. It consists of 2-mile-wide channels for in- bound and outbound tanker traffic, as well as a 2-mile-wide buffer zone. The EIA estimates that some 13 MMBD flowed through the Strait in 2002. The IEA puts the figure at 15 MMBD in 2003. Both agencies indicate that the amount of oil moving by tanker will increase steadily as Asian demand consumes a larger and larger share of total exports. Closure of the Strait of Hormuz would require use of longer alternate routes (if available) at increased transportation costs. Such routes include the 5 million- bbl/d capacity Petroline (East-West Pipeline) and the 290,000-bbl/d Abqaiq-Yanbu natural gas liquids line across Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea. Theoretically, the 1.65– MMBD Iraqi Pipeline across Saudi Arabia (IPSA) also could be utilized, more oil could be pumped north to Ceyhan (Turkey), and the 0.5 million-bbl/d Tapline to Lebanon could be reactivated. 33 International Energy Agency, “Oil Market Outlook,” World Energy Outlook, 2004, OECD/IEA, Paris, October 2004, Table 3.7 and 3.8. 60 34 International Energy Agency, Oil Market Outlook, World Energy Outlook, 2004, OECD/IEA, Paris, October 2004, Chapter 3. 35 BP/Amoco, "BP Statistical Review of World Energy,” London, BP, 2003, p. 17. 36 BP/Amoco, “BP Statistical Review of World Energy," London, BP, 2003, p. 17. 37 EIA “Annual Energy Outlook, 2003,” pp. 80–84. 38 Energy Information Administration, “Annual Energy Outlook 2004,” p. 95. 39 EIA, "Annual Energy Outlook, 2004,” Table 26. The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you very much, Dr. Cordesman, for a very comprehensive, very important paper. As you saw, some members were nodding at various points. A good number of these issues are ones in which we find accord. You have phrased the issue in an articulate way. Now, there are others that we may want to question, and we will be doing that in a moment. This is why we have called General Newbold and Mr. Khalil for immediate commentary on your paper. Let me mention, if I can engage in a colloquy with the distin- guished ranking member for a moment, that the distinguished ranking member requests that after the comments by General Newbold and Mr. Khalil, he be recognized for his opening state- ment. That seems to be a reasonable thing to do. Senator BIDEN. I do not want to interrupt the flow here. The CHAIRMAN. The other reasonable thing to do, if we can. We have nine members present. We are approaching a quorum. We could obviate the need to meet in a business meeting at 2:30, given the fact that there appears to be unanimous consent, as far as I ell, on the effective busywork that we need to do, namely the adoption of our rules, budget resolution, subcommittee organization and membership. Senator BIDEN. That is correct. There is no disagreement on our side. The CHAIRMAN. So, not to disconcert the witnesses, but at the proper moment, I might call for order and dispense with that busi- ness if possible. If not, I would ask all members to be prepared to meet at 2:30 this afternoon in S–116 to do that business. I call now on General Newbold. STATEMENT OF GREGORY S. NEWBOLD, LIEUTENANT GEN- ERAL, U.S. MARINE CORPS (RET.), MANAGING DIRECTOR, GLOBESECNINE General NEWBOLD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am honored to be here, obviously, on the subject before this committee. The first thing I would like to offer is that I am comforted that the debate, the discussion, the dialogue, is taking place before this committee. Too often this is viewed as a solely military issue with military solutions and the fact is that it is not. It takes all ele- ments of our national power to address this issue, and most fun- damentally this committee is the appropriate one. Sir, I have prepared a written testimony that I would like to offer for the record. The CHAIRMAN. It will be made a part of the record in full. General NEWBOLD. Thank you, sir. I will make comments that highlight what are in the written tes- timony. I know that your first priority is that I comment on Dr. Cordesman's paper and I will do that and then offer some of my own views. 67 I have read a lot of Dr. Cordesman's writings and we have dis- cussed these issues at length. I have a great deal of regard for him and for his paper. I find very little not only to disagree with, but virtually everything to support. I have also read his written testi- mony and, frankly, I find that even better. I think it is more fo- cused and pointed. It is critical, but where it is critical it makes a great deal of sense, and it matches my personal experience. I will not regurgitate the points he has made, but I would like to highlight and reinforce some of my own that complement what Dr. Cordesman has said. In particular and in no particular order, I think our public diplomacy, information operations campaign, not only in Iraq but elsewhere, have been abysmal. It is almost a cul- tural weakness of ours, but very costly when we are this inefficient and this ineffective. Our regional policies, as Dr. Cordesman pointed out, are viewed as one-sided and they have implications and effects that reach far beyond Iraq. In fact, when I am asked about an appropriate Iraq strategy my first answer is that there is no independent Iraq strat- egy; it has to be a regional strategy. When our policies are viewed as so totally one-sided, the complications are evident. We had an extremely poor plan prior to the invasion for what would take place after the invasion. There was some planning done on the military level. It was done in spite of the process, not be- cause of it. We have inherited the seeds that we have sown and the vacuum that we created, and that is very unfortunate. More unfor- tunate is that if we do not correct this process that resulted in such flawed and even arrogant planning, we are doomed to repeat it. I would like to point out that I think the United States military in Iraq has performed magnificently at the operational and at the tactical level. I have a number of friends that have been involved in the fight and, frankly, I spend part of every single day trying to take care of the wounded sailors and marines who are at Be- thesda, Walter Reed, and elsewhere. I have enormous respect for what they have accomplished, but I believe that much of it is in spite of our policies and our strategy and not because of it. They deserve all the credit and all the support we can give them. But the truth is we have overly focused on military solution focused on military strategy for Iraq and in the postwar phase we have been very energetic on the military front, but that should not be the centerpiece for our policies, as I will point out. At the national level, we have been deluding ourselves on some key points, probably most importantly on the nature of the insur- gency in Iraq, but also on the nature of what it will take, more broadly than Iraq, to counter radical Islam and terrorism and to develop the policies and procedures that will accommodate that. The state of training of Iraqi forces were described by Dr. Cordesman and in my own opinion we are either deluding our- selves or it is being misrepresented. I will talk a little bit more about the Iraqi national guard and the Iraqi army later on. But if the centerpiece for our withdrawal is the state of training, then we first must be honest about it. We also have not had truly an international coalition to the de- gree that has been described and we will begin to lose additional members of the coalition. 62 The fundamental reality of what exists in Iraq right now is that we have an intractable insurgency of great vehemence that has cost us over 10,000 casualties and over 1,000 Americans. It has no immediate end in sight and we ought to know by now what our strategy is. I do not think we do. No matter what strategy we adopt, I think we ought to have a clear goal to be out of Iraq within 2 years. That may not be achiev- able, but it ought to be our goal. If we set it as our goal, perhaps we will assign the assets, the resources, and the mental energy to achieve it. If we are content to stay in Iraq for 5 years, if we are content to sustain the casualties at the rate we have to date, then it will be our future. A fundamental weakness of what we have been doing in Iraq in my view is that we have viewed the Iraq situation overwhelmingly from an American perspective. This is not unique to this adminis- tration. It is something I have witnessed in administrations for as long as I have been involved in the process. But it is the problem we have right now, and examples of what I am talking about, the ethnocentric view of this situation, include on the political front ex- pectations that I believe are exaggerated of what are immediately achievable in Iraq. Our goals ought to be noble and they ought to be very chal- lenging. But we cannot set them as the minimum standard for what we will accept in Iraq. It is not Iowa. It has a rich history of clan-tribal accommodations and government that will take gen- erations to overcome. The second problem I see on our American perspective of the issue is that we see the insurgency as a military problem. As I will point out later, we have failed to grasp what has caused the insur- gency and what has sustained it. If we view it only in military terms, then we will have only military solutions. We have done a wonderful job on the tactical level. We have killed literally thou- sands of insurgents. We have inflicted punishing defeats on the in- surgents in Najaf, in Samarrah, and in Fallujah. But during the same timeframe we have had such great victories on the tactical level, the insurgent strength has grown from 5,000 to 20,000. We cannot kill the insurgents as fast as they can recruit them, so we have to look for a different strategy. Most troubling of all the American perspective problems I have described is that we have yet to articulate why we believe that or- dinary Iraqis, Shiites and Sunnis, men and women, old and young, Baathist and the downtrodden, have joined the insurgency. Until we describe its root causes, we will not come up with the solutions that address them. The most basic primer at any war college will tell you that you begin to fight an insurgency by understanding why there is an insurgency. In all my contacts and all my reading and all the expressions I have heard, I have yet to see the govern- ment address that. I would like to point out that among the solutions I would rec- ommend, none of them involve an immediate withdrawal. I think that would be a catastrophic mistake- Senator BIDEN. Say that again, General, because I did not hear it. I did not hear what you just said. 64 some time, but it will take time according to the surge efforts we make. I am encouraged by what has happened in the last month. Dr. Cordesman has talked about the pitiful efforts we have made to equip. After a year and a half, we are now approaching the 50- percent level in most of the items that are desperately needed, and we have to do better than that. We have to call on our allies, not only to make promises to help train, but to deliver on those prom- ises. And in my view, if it takes additional forces in the short term to control the rest of areas like Mosul and others that percolate, then we ought to do that, rather than sustain this level of effort for 5 more years of bleeding. In the political realm, if it had matched the efforts on the mili- tary side we would not be having the problems we are today. The fact is most of the political effort was expended in Baghdad and the insurgency will be won or lost in the interior. After a year of trying, there has been almost no success in getting political training teams out into the interior to help with the provinces, and that is unsatis- factory. My recommendation is that we regionalize our effort in Iraq, that we create a graduated or an exaggerated system of carrots and sticks, incentives and disincentives, by which stable areas of Iraq can receive benefits that make them a clear model for the others to emulate. The areas unstable will be told that they will receive the benefits, the gratuities, the independence, independence of judgment, etcetera, only when they become stable. As it stands right now, all of the regions are created equally, treated equally, and that is unfortunate. Unless there are incentives we cannot con- dition human behavior to adjust. In the economic realm, Dr. Cordesman has talked at length about that. Suffice it to say that the meager expenditure of our re- sources has had an outcome that has undermined our effort. Qual- f life for Iragis must improve. We must provide jobs to give people an alternative to the insurgency, and we frankly have to overhaul what has been done there, as Dr. Cordesman said. Finally, in the war of public opinion, I have already described how poorly we have done. In that regard, I go out on a limb inde- pendent of many of the people whose opinion I respect. I truly be- lieve that one of the reasons for the vehemence of the insurgency is that they view us as an occupying power. While I do not rec- ommend timelines, I do recommend that we break away from a blind obedience to the code of conditions only and offer some hope to the Iraqis conditioned on a roadmap. We ought to provide an ex- ample that will indicate that if conditions in Iraq or in the prov- inces—one at a time, become more stable, that they will see the co- alition forces are withdrawing. There is a way to do that. We can do it with illustrative exam- ples that shift the responsibility directly to the insurgents for the length of the stay of the U.S. forces. I believe that we have to do that. The ordinary Iraqi has to know that United States and coali- tion forces are there because the insurgents have made that a re- ent. Together with the newly elected government of Iraq, we ought to indicate that forces can begin withdrawing when the in- surgent activity declines, as soon as the end of the year. If condi- tions were such that the Iraqi army was fully capable of handling ity 65 an inconsequential insurgency, then it is possible that our forces could largely be withdrawn by the end of 2006. If conditions do not allow that because the insurgents refuse to comply, then it is their responsibility for an extended stay. We ought to use this in an information campaign broadcast by the President and articulated on a daily basis to ensure that the mes- sage is loud and clear, not only in Iraq, but throughout the region. I think the elections gave us a wonderful opportunity, but the momentum will soon slip. We need to be more open-minded about possible alternatives to our strategy in Iraq. We need to listen to different voices. We need to be flexible and adaptive and we need to re-invigorate the three elements of national power that have been so weak so far. Mr. Chairman, thanks for the time to appear before the com- mittee. [The prepared statement of General Newbold follows:] PREPARED STATEMENT OF GREGORY S. NEWBOLD, LIEUTENANT GENERAL, U.S. MARINE CORPS (RET.), MANAGING DIRECTOR, GLOBESECNINE, ARLINGTON, VA First, I am honored to have been invited before this Committee, composed of these members, on a subject of such vital importance to our country. Second, I am comforted that the forum for this discussion is the Senate Foreign Relations Committee because too often we view these issues as military in their ori- gins, processes, and solutions. They are not. These issues don't start, and their an- swers don't lie, strictly in the military realm. To address the issue at hand appro- priately, our nation and this committee must take into account both all elements of our national power and the character of this insurgency more fully than we have in the past. In this paper and during my oral testimony, I will provide my views about the most productive course for our strategy in Iraq, but will first comply with the Com- mittee Chairman's letter of invitation, in which I was asked to provide commentary on Dr. Cordesman's paper, “Playing the Course: A Strategy for Reshaping U.S. Pol- icy in Iraq and the Middle East.” Dr. Cordesman's Paper. As you know, Dr. Cordesman is an astute and prolific an- alyst of issues that affect our national security. “Playing the Course," and a host of other of his papers, perform a great service by their dissection of key issues in both a detailed and frank way. Perhaps more importantly, Dr. Cordesman's pre- scriptions are generally ahead of government thinking. In my view, Dr. Cordesman's analysis hinges on his five main recommendations and four central observations. The recommendations are essentially these: • Craft a dramatically improved statement of U.S. intent for Iraq and the region and implement it in an overhauled communication effort. • Develop more effective Iraqi governance at the local, provincial, and national level. • Increase the effort to adequately train and equip the Iraqi security forces. Improve the political and informational effects of U.S. military strategy and op- erations. • Recast the economic focus of effort to increase near term stability and transition to Iraqi management of this effort as soon as possible. Dr. Cordesman's four central observations—as extracted by me—that I will use as the basis for my comments are these: • The odds of a successful outcome in Iraq are about even. • The U.S. has to seize upon the opportunity to declare victory and withdraw as soon as possible-probably by the end of 2006. The U.S. must see the conflict in broader terms than we are now. The U.S. must implement regional policies that bring due credit to us, and we must see the conflict in ways that can address the root causes of terrorism and the clash of cultures. The U.S. must free itself from hindrances to its strategic freedom of action im- posed by dependence on Middle Eastern oil. First, I agree with Dr. Cordesman's recommendations and observations without caveat or criticism. They are correct. To be useful to this committee, though, I will 66 reinforce specific points that I think are crucial to a meaningful analysis, and offer some additional specificity in recommendations that I think should be fundamental elements in a re-crafted U.S. strategy. My reinforcement of Dr. Cordesman's recommendations is based on my own thoughts: Our public diplomacy/information operations have been poor throughout the last several decades and are distinctly not up to the task today. • Our regional policies are almost universally viewed as one-sided, and our credi- bility on almost every other issue is undermined by this fact. • We had a poor to non-existent plan for the post-invasion phase, and are now reaping what we sowed. In fact, failing to correct the conditions that resulted in poor planning may doom us to repeat them. • The U.S. military has performed magnificently and heroically—not because of the strategy, but in spite of it. We have focused overly on the military as a tool to contain the insurgency, and have been woeful in providing the other elements of national power that are needed in at least equal measure. • At the national level, we are deluding ourselves in many key ways-examples are the public assessments of the state of training of the Iraqi forces and police, the underlying nature of and prospects for the insurgency, the degree to which we truly have an international coalition in support, and in the strategy for ade- quately addressing the root causes of terrorism, radical Islam, and instability in the region. First, as I see the fundamental reality—we are facing a tough, resilient insur- gency that has no end in close sight. We've had over 10,000 casualties and over 1,000 deaths, and by now we should know whether our strategy has a realistic chance of creating appropriate conditions in Iraq and bringing our troops home. In my view, five years of this is unsustainable in what it will cost us materially (our most patriotic young citizens), economically, diplomatically, and politically. We should not accept five years of what we are experiencing now. No matter whose strategy is adopted, it ought to set at its goal a termination within two years. Better to surge now—with whatever that costs us—than to bleed for five years. A fundamental weakness in my view, and one we must correct, is that we con- tinue to view Iraq overwhelmingly from an American perspective. (This is not a phe- nomenon unique to this Administration, and was equally a characteristic of the pre- vious one.) Two examples in the current crisis are illustrative of our myopia. The first is that we define a satisfactory political outcome-federalism and democracy- in ways that are more realistic for Iowa than for Iraq. The dream is correct and noble; the standards for near term attainment are unrealistic. The second is that we view the insurgency as a military problem that can be defeated principally by killing more insurgents. In the past six months we've killed thousands of insurgents and inflicted significant defeats on them at Fallujah, Samarra, and Najaf—and by our own estimation the insurgent ranks have grown from 5,000 to 20,000. What is most troubling is that I have yet to see or hear of a government assessment that adequately describes what motivates thousands of young and old, male and female, Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish Iraqis to attack us with suicidal fervor. The basic primer in all of the service war colleges instructs you that you cannot formulate an effective strategy for an insurgency, if you have not adequately assessed its root causes. As it stands now, we think of the problem and the target as the insurgents; rather than what creates the insurgents. We attack the insurgents, rather than what produces them. Iraq is now fractionalized; some discord and factional fighting are part of its fu- ture. If we departed peremptorily, the cost to Iraq, the region, our credibility, and probably to our national security, would be severe. Pared to its core, though, our central problem is that our attempts to stabilize the country are being undermined by the insurgency—and the fundamental reason for the insurgency is that we are occupying Iraq. It does not matter how nobly we view our presence; what matters is that the absolutely overwhelming view of Iraqis (and of others in the region) is that we are occupiers. Worse, in their view, we are Western infidels there only to control oil. Their recruiters are having a good deal easier time than ours. The irony of our occupation is simple, but profound—there is no stability without us, but our presence inflames the insurgency that causes instability. The trick, then, is to craft a strategy that neutralizes the rationale for the insurgency—the chief complaints that drives the active insurgents and their supporters to violence—while strengthening the stake of the ordinary Iraqi in a future tied to the legitimate gov- ernment. ture. Hiy to our natihat our attendamental reasowe view quorf others in, there only 67 quid, while the insuligation strategy thatonsistent with al assistance, lessyork, how- A re-crafted strategy must be far bolder and broader than has been initiated thus far. Thus far, we have attempted a military defeat of the insurgents, augmented by weak efforts to improve the material condition of the Iraqis. As Dr. Cordesman points out, only a small portion of funding for infrastructure, security, and quality of life improvements have been spent. The ordinary things that most symbolize a life with hope—jobs, electricity, clean water, security, and sewage and trash removal are not ordinary enough. Coalition military training teams operated throughout the provinces, while training teams to assist in governance, economics, and information dissemination are scarce outside of the capital. Our troops have performed with dis- tinction, but they can't do it all. We have an opportunity to seize important initiative with the significant success of the election, but the momentum we gained can be transitory if not reinforced. The theme to a reinvigorated strategy should address root causes, and be no more com- plicated than dramatically enhanced incentives and disincentives (“carrots and sticks”) that make clear that the dreams and aspirations of ordinary Iraqis lie with the new Iraqi government, and the insurgents are the enemy of their hopes. Where we need to sustain and augment the effort: In the Security Realm. While we strike insurgent forces and keep them off bal- ance, we must give full weight to Gen. John Abizaid's call for a dramatically en- hanced force to train the Iraqi Army. The National Guard proved to be largely use- less in the Sunni areas, and our main efforts have to focus on the more promising Iraqi Army. We also need our European allies immediately to fulfill their promise to help train Iraqi security forces. We must ruthlessly overcome the inertia that has taken over a year and a half to provide only half of what is needed to fully equip the Iraqis security forces. Soon, we are going to lose a portion of our allies on the ground, and we need to replace them as the need arises. Finally, if we don't want the insurgency to drag on for five years, we need to be ready to surge adequate forces to dominate restive areas like Mosul and Ramadi. We have operational mo- mentum, and we ought to exploit it. Where we need to overhaul our effort: In The Political Realm. Our diplomatic and political efforts pale in comparison to our military ones. Our political assistance is almost completely restricted to Bagh- dad, while the insurgency will be won or lost in the outlying areas. We should im- plement a regionalization strategy that empowers the more stable provinces and motivates the restive areas to change, consistent with a carrot and stick approach. To the stable areas, we should offer increased financial assistance, less Coalition presence, and greater autonomy in disbursing aid. This strategy won't work, how- ever, unless the benefits are exaggerated enough to encourage emulation by those who don't have them. Alternatively, the restive areas would receive restricted amounts of aid, less autonomy, and more Coalition force presence because they would be augmented by those who are released from duty in the stable areas. Those in the unstable areas need daily reinforcement that a better life ensues when the area is stable. When the people believe this, the insurgents lose their protective cloak and their support network. In The Economic Realm. As Dr. Cordesman points out, our inability to dispense appropriated funds where they are needed is nothing short of astounding. To a sig- nificant degree, the inability to improve the daily lives of the Iraqi citizen is our biggest failure, and one of the biggest sources of dissatisfaction. We need to create or restore basic human services, and we need to establish jobs. If we don't dramati- cally alter the speed at which we are dispensing aid, all other efforts may be moot. The CETA funds, by which military commanders have been able to fund projects that improve the quality of life for Iraqis in their area, ought to be an immediate and active model for other agencies. In The War of Public Opinion. By any poll, scientific or otherwise, we have per- formed dismally in attempting to win hearts and minds. (This almost seems to be an American cultural deficiency, because this trait has been symptomatic for gen- erations of administrations.] But beyond our inability to grasp and articulate the themes that resonate most heartily with the various groups in Iraq, we have little to advertise. If root causes are important, then we need to find the ways to neu- tralize them. When the reasons are material-quality of life issues—then we need to work to address them, and advertise our success. Solutions here were previously discussed. The more difficult situation, though, occurs when the root cause of violent opposition to our forces, is our forces. To legions of Iraqis driven by what we would call nationalism, the cause is simple—they are an occupied country. Since the issue most fueling the insurgency is our presence, we need to shift re- sponsibility/blame for our current presence to the insurgents. Simply communicated, we would probably have withdrawn by now, if not for the actions by the insurgents. And, we could make a fairly speedy withdrawal now, if not for insurgent actions. Coesence, and greenefits are exaggely, the restive on force presenhle are 68 The key to success in the war for public opinion is that we need to be able to discuss what would happen with success. This approach must be a unified front with the newly elected Iraqi leadership. In my view, closed mindedness about discussing any- thing except that our withdrawal is wholly "condition based,” fuels the perception that we have no intention of withdrawing. To be sure, we don't need or want precise timelines, but we ought to be imaginative enough to provide examples of what could happen if the insurgency was measurably suppressed and the Iraqi Army was stronger. We must be utterly convincing that the length of our stay can be short or long--and it is entirely dependent on the violence currently tolerated by the si- lent majority of Iraqis. An Example. Our goal is to leave Iraq a stable country, able to administer to its own needs and security. This is not now possible. Should the insurgency wane sig- nificantly, however, you might expect to see reduction in U.S. and Coalition forces by the end of the year. If, on the other hand, the insurgents refuse to respect the will of the Iraqi people and its government, we would be compelled to remain until conditions permitted a beginning to our withdrawal. We would prefer to begin a withdrawal, but apparently the insurgents are not willing to see either our depar- ture or the government of the Iraqi people succeed. Continuing the example, if the insurgency were to be assessed as "controlled and of minor consequence” by the end of 2006, there would be no reason for continued U.S. presence in Iraq-other than those minor forces requested by the Iraqi government to assist in training the new Iraqi Army. Such a withdrawal, though, is entirely dependent on the ability of the Iraqi Army to provide reasonable security. If the insurgents continue to disrupt the daily lives of Iraqis and their attempt at democratic government, and the govern- ment requests our continued operations, then we would have no choice but to stay. We have a chance to build on the success of Sunday's elections, and future dem- onstrations of democracy in Iraq, by undermining the legitimacy of those who vio- lently oppose us. To exploit this success, though, we need to demonstrate more hon- esty in self-appraisal, and greater flexibility and imagination in implementation, than we have to date. We cannot accept further delays in administering the polit- ical, economic, and public information aspects of our strategy, because the cost will ultimately be measured in young Americans. We should set goals for how long we want to sustain this effort, and take the actions that provide a real opportunity for making them achievable. This will take flexibility among our key decision-makers, and a willingness to ex- ploit alternative views and options—neither have been the norm. The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you very much, General Newbold, for your very comprehensive and thoughtful statements. Members will have questions for you as well as for Dr. Cordesman and Mr. Khalil in just a few moments. As the chair announced before General Newbold's testimony, we would like at this point to have a business meeting, which would obviate the need to meet this afternoon at 2:30. I have asked the distinguished ranking member for his permission, and he has told us to proceed. So let me just say, now, that more than 10 members are present. The hearing is now recessed, to reconvene shortly at the conclusion of the business meeting. For the interest of our audience, this should take just a moment. I now call the committee to order and convene the business meet- ing. I call members' attention to the business meeting agenda. The committee must approve subcommittee organization and member- ship, subcommittee jurisdiction, Foreign Relations Committee rules, and the committee budget resolution. These items are de- scribed in your committee memo and all have been agreed on in discussions between the chairman and the ranking member. Our responsibility today is to pass these organizational items so that the committee can become fully functional in this Congress. Do you have any further comments, Senator Biden? Senator BIDEN. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to survey again my colleagues. 69 My understanding is from staff and each of your staffs that ev- eryone has signed off on and we are all on the same page on this. [No response.] Senator BIDEN. That being the case, Mr. Chairman, we have no objection and suggest we adopt the changes, the agenda, as you have laid it out. The CHAIRMAN. Is there further debate? [No response.] The CHAIRMAN. If there is no debate, I move that the items on the agenda be approved en bloc by a voice vote. All in favor say aye. [A chorus of ayes.] The CHAIRMAN. All opposed say nay. [No response.] The CHAIRMAN. The ayes have it and the agenda is passed. Please record the members who are present. If other members ome in they would have the opportunity to vote. I appreciate very much the cooperation of the membership. Senator BIDEN. Mr. Chairman, a minor little point. Since we had called the meeting for this afternoon, can we leave the record open the entirety of the day for those members who may not make it to this hearing but would like to be recorded? The CHAIRMAN. By unanimous consent, the record will be kept open for the rest of the day for members' comments or votes or both. Senator BIDEN. Thank you. The CHAIRMAN. I thank Senator Biden. This concludes the business meeting. I now call to order the hearing and the Chair recognizes Mr. Khalil. Thank you for your patience. STATEMENT OF PETER KHALIL, VISITING FELLOW, SABAN CENTER FOR THE MIDDLE EAST POLICY, THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION Mr. KHALIL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Senators. I would also like to thank you and the committee for the honor to testify today for the first time, and I hope not for the last time. I am going to start, Mr. Chairman-I have a prepared written statement also I hope to place in the record. The CHAIRMAN. It will be placed in the record in full. Mr. KHALIL. Thank you, sir. I am going to keep my remarks brief and to the point. I have studied Dr. Cordesman's paper and noted his comments today and General Newbold's comments and agree with the broad thrust of their arguments. I hope to make apparent any points of difference as I deliver my comments. By way of quick introduction and to set the context for my re- marks, I was sent to Iraq as an independent civil servant of the Australian Government, not a political appointee and I hope not one of the ideologues that Dr. Cordesman referred to earlier. I was working in my time there very closely with the Iraqi political lead- ership and also the tribal leaders and the clerics and academics across the country on the issue of rebuilding the Iraqi security forces and national security institutions, such as creating the newly civilian-led Iraqi ministry of defense. I was also involved for some time in conducting negotiations with Iraqi political militia leader- ship in transitioning their forces into the state security services. It was, if I may say, a great honor to serve my country and to serve within the U.S.-led coalition. I am honored to be part of that long tradition of United States-Australian alliance and real friend- ship, which I think actually springs not just from our shared stra- tegic interests but also our shared values. Even though today I will be focusing on security aspects, I do agree with Dr. Cordesman that any Iraq strategy must, both at the operational and strategic level, push progress in a combination of political transition, security and economic reconstruction for it to be successful. A successful Iraq strategy not only defeats the insur- gency but makes possible two very important goals which I do not think are mutually exclusive. They are: First, a speedy return of United States troops in the next few years; and second, the longer term strategic goal of a free and democratic Iraq, able to defend herself from external threats and no longer a threat to her neigh- bors, nor a haven for terrorists. These are goals which I assume all the Senators on the committee share, although there may be some disagreement on how to get there. There are three key areas I want to touch on this morning, all of which I believe are critical to the successful Iraq strategy and which can make the achievement of these goals possible. First, the policy direction of training of Iraqi security forces, their capabili- ties, and my firm belief that it is actually the quality, not the quan- tity, of these forces which is critical in ensuring a realistic transfer of security responsibilities from United States forces to Iraqi forces, and basically how we should proceed on this front. Second, the sec- ond key area is the critical importance of reform and rebuilding of the Iraqi security institutions and ministries and the capacity- building efforts in those structures. Third, very quickly, where the two tracks of security reforms and political transition meet and the need, I believe, for the United States to ensure that there is a com- mitment to the underlying principles and democratic practices, which I think are crucial to a genuine Iraqi democratic state. The first key area, security and training policy. We are, at present, in a situation which is essentially United States and coali- tion forces leading the counterinsurgency effort with Iraqi forces only in a very supporting role. General Casey said in the past that what the Iraqis want to do in the next year is reverse that. I that is possible, and I also think that the exit strategy as outlined by the administration is, at least at the strategic level, fundamen- tally sound: Train Iraqi security forces and have them take over re- sponsibility for directly dealing with the insurgency so that United States forces can gradually withdraw. The devil is in the detail, however. It is the quality, not the quantity, of the forces, as I have said, which is critical to a realistic transfer. At present, as Dr. Cordesman has pointed out, the vast majority of the Iraqi security forces, 127,000 I think is the number, have not actually been given the required counterinsurgency or counterterrorism training and therefore do not have the required capabilities to conduct offensive or even at times, as we have seen 71 in Mosul and other places, defensive operations against the insur- gents. Now, I do not imply that there should not be this large number of Iraqi forces in existence. It is just that they each have a role and function, as in any society, and not all of them can actually be thrown out into the front line against the insurgency. The assumption of the Pentagon in the early postwar phase was that there would not be such an intense and deadly insurgency. So consequently a lot of the plans to train Iraqi security forces were broad and based on large numbers of recruits doing very basic training in local policing and also conventional military operations. Dr. Cordesman is also correct in saying that the emphasis has clearly shifted to training the right type of Iraqi security forces with the capabilities to take over offensive operations from the United States with minimal support. I have more detail in my written testimony about the problems with both the Iraqi police and the Iraqi national guard training and there is a detailed discussion in that of the specific training policy for each of the Iraqi forces. The main point I wish to make here is that, even with the improvements in the vetting and train- ing process having become centralized, firstly under General Eaton and now currently under General Patraeus, the bulk of these forces—that is, the national guard and the police—will not nec- essarily have the capabilities to take on the insurgents even with the training they get now. While I was in Baghdad, I have seen as late as May 2004 na- tional guard and police forces, local police forces, providing perim- eter security, even in the Green Zone, outer perimeter security, and they also performed with distinction in securing polling centers in the recent election. But that is what they are trained to do, basic fixed-point security. They do not have the capabilities to take on the insurgents offensively. Only the specialized units, police units and army special forces, which are currently very limited in num- ber, as Dr. Cordesman has pointed out, have the required capabili- ties to take on the insurgents offensively. I would also like to note that the bulk of Iraqi army training and capabilities are geared toward conventional military operations defending Iraq from external aggression. I believe that, given the past history of the Iraqi army and its use as a tool of repression, the United States must be very careful not to overemphasize the use of the army in internal security operations. It was in early 2004 that the Iraqi interim political leadership and the CPA put in place the policy to raise and train high-end in- ternal security forces, commonly known as the Iraqi Civil Interven- tion Force, an umbrella grouping which includes several types of specialized police units with this specialized training, SWAT teams and special police commando units. I think these are the critical forces, with the capabilities to take on the insurgents. They are particularly important, not just because of the special- ized training and skill sets, but the ability to combine intelligence, law enforcement, and light infantry capabilities. They are also im- portant in my view in the sense that we can limit a heavy empha- sis on army internal security operations. 72 So, I think the key to a realistic transfer of security responsi- bility, that is Iraqi security forces that can successfully conduct of- fensive and defensive counterinsurgency operations with minimal United States support, rests not only with building up the Iraqi army special forces, but more importantly these high-end internal police forces under the ministry of interior. As far as I understand, these forces are growing in number. There are, I think, plans for something like 33 battalions of these forces to come out of the training pipeline over the next 24 months. But I actually believe a concerted and concentrated effort must be made in the next 12 months to intensify and increase the training of these specialized units, particularly in counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, to ensure a realistic handover in the next 24 months. I think it is short of a plan, but specifically an increase and-or a shift in the allocation of U.S. and coalition training resources and manpower to the specific co-in and counterterrorism training of these forces, I think this will lead to a realistic handover and the consequent withdrawal of U.S. troops. The second key area is building the capacity of Iraqi security in- stitutions and ministries. There is obviously more to Iraqi security strategy than training forces. A key area where progress has been made to date and the groundwork laid is the capacity-building ef- forts within the newly civilian-led Iraqi ministry of defense. A good example for the Senators is the time I spent there conducting inter- views and selection of senior leadership for the ministry of defense, up from the ministry down through the deputy secretaries and the secretary and the senior leadership in the ministry. We ha count around half of the hundreds of Iraqis that we interviewed for these positions because they either did not understand or would not accept the very simple concept of a civilian minister of defense. So I do really believe that the training, mentoring, and edu- cational and technical assistance for this new civilian service in the ministry of defense and also for the more troubled ministry of inte- rior is an area that the United States has made good ground in over the past 2 years, but really needs to remain committed to, likewise with other coalition partners such as the U.K. and Aus- tralia, which have committed assistance there. To the third and last point, the political transition process and the need for underlying democratic practices to be instilled in the Iraqi structures. Democracy is not just about elections, as Dr. Cordesman has pointed out. There are underlying principles and practices in the security sector specifically which make democracies work and must be encouraged in Iraq. The principles and democratic practices which are specific to en- suring Iraqi security institutions work in a democratic state in- clude some of the following, and I want to emphasize the principle of civilian control over the military, but more specifically demo- cratic civilian control over the military and, more broadly, the secu- rity forces, so a clear chain of command up through the operational military, Iraqi military and police commanders, to the civilian min- isters of defense and interior and of course up to the prime min- ister and the security cabinet. 73 An even distribution of power among the key security ministries, particularly important to Iraq, so that not one minister has domi- nant control over Iraqi forces. Transparency in both the executive and the national assembly and a clear separation of the two, particularly in the need to estab- lish oversight committees in the new national assembly, something I am sure the Senators here would be very much behind. Checks and balances in the national assembly on the use of force and in the executive on this insofar as such decisions require cabi- net consensus and the approval of the president always, I think, are critical and they must be adhered to to ensure the newly formed Iraqi security institutions work in a democratic state. States does have considerable ability to influence and encourage the new Iraqi political leadership, but these principles and practices, some of which have been established over the past 2 years, need to be respected and enshrined, and that there is no serious deviation from these important foundations, because I do believe that whatever progress is made with the elections that we have just seen, these will be in jeopardy without the ongoing pres- ence of some of these democratic practices. I think the focus of United States policy and continued United States support in these areas will ensure longer term success in Iraq and mitigate the need to return to a possibly failed state in 20 years time. Put simply, during this political transition process over the next 12 months the administration really should focus its efforts in supporting the commitment to these underlying struc- tural foundations and principles common to all democracies and really stay out of some of the meddling and internal Iraqi politics and political personalities. In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I think three key points can be summarized here. One, increasing or shifting the allocation of re- sources to training counterinsurgency and counterterrorism train- ing for Iraqi forces over the next 12 months. That may include army ranger battalion special training from the United States being committed to that effort. Second, continued United States focus on capacity-building for the Iraqi security institutions, such as the ministry of defense and the ministry of interior, which back up these forces and are very important. Third, United States influence of the political process should be focused on encouraging and enshrining these underlying demo- cratic practices and principles I have outlined within the Iraqi se- curity and political structures. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [The prepared statement of Mr. Khalil follows:] PREPARED STATEMENT OF PETER KHALIL, VISITING FELLOW, SABAN CENTER FOR MIDDLE EAST POLICY, THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION, WASHINGTON, DC Anthony Cordesman's paper “Playing the Course: A Strategy for Reshaping U.S. Policy in Iraq and the Middle East” presents sound strategic assessments which can aid U.S. policy towards Iraq. My agreements with his ideas and a few points of dif- ference are made apparent in the following analysis and recommendations. Any Iraq strategy both at the operational and strategic level must push progress in a com- bination of political transition, security and economic reconstruction for it to be suc- cessful. 74 A successful Iraq (exit or victory) strategy aims to achieve two goals: 1. the speedy return of U.S. troops in the next few years; and 2. the establishment of a free demo- cratic and pluralistic Iraq, secure and stabilized, able to defend herself from exter- nal threats, no longer a threat to her neighbors nor a haven for terrorists. These do not have to be mutually exclusive. A weakening and defeat of the insurgency through a combination of progress of Iraqi security reform, democratic political tran- sition and economic reconstruction will lead to the achievement of both. There are three key areas of U.S. policy over the next 12 months which can en- sure the achievement of these goals: 1. The training of Iraqi security forces and the building up of their capabilities. The quality, not the quantity, of these forces is critical in ensuring a realistic trans- fer of security responsibilities from U.S. forces to Iraqi forces. 2. The reform and rebuilding of Iraqi security institutions and ministries, capacity building in those structures and the practice of underlying principles and democratic practices within those structures that are crucial to a genuine Iraqi democratic state. 3. The political transition process and the point at which the two tracks of secu- rity reforms and political transition form an important nexus which the U.S. must help to shape. 1. SECURITY AND TRAINING At present U.S. and coalition forces are leading the counterinsurgency effort with Iraqi forces in support. General Casey has said that “What the Iraqis want to do in the next year is reverse that," and he has added that “We're an outside force, and the Iraqis in some parts of the country see us as an occupation. We need to get the Iraqis in front.” The exit strategy concerned with security as outlined by the administration is, at least at the strategic level, fundamentally sound: to train Iraqi security forces and have them takeover responsibility for directly dealing with the insurgency so that U.S. forces can gradually withdraw. The devil is in the details, however. It is the quality, not the quantity, of the Iraqi security forces which is critical to a realistic transfer of security responsibility from U.S. forces to the Iraqi security forces. At present the vast majority of these forces (130,000 trained and in uniform) have not been given the required training and do not have the required capabilities to con- duct offensive (or even defensive) operations against the insurgents. This is not to imply that there should not be the large numbers of Iraqi forces which exist. It is just that they each have a role and function, as in any society, and not all of them can or should be thrown on the front line of the insurgency. Problems with both the Iraqi Police and Iraqi National Guard (ING) can be traced back to the fact that initially, throughout 2003 and early 2004, much of the training and vetting of recruits for these services was decentralized. Local U.S. and coalition military commanders were given the responsibility to raise these units, leading to a lack of standardization in their training and in uneven vetting of these recruits across the country. The pressure on the United States and coalition military to get Iraqi boots on the ground led to many local police simply being “reconstituted”— former police officers who were brought to work without having to go through the required police academy training. National guardsmen went through minimal levels of basic training and then were expected to be the bulk of Iraqi forces facing the insurgents. To a certain extent, these training and vetting problems have been rectified. The raising and equipping of Iraqi Police and ING have been centralized, first under Major General Eaton from spring 2004 until June 2004 and since then under his successor, Lt. Gen. David Petraus. Under General Petraus, ING training involves 3 weeks of basic training and 3–4 weeks of collective training. However, ING capa- bilities are still limited to basic tasks such as fixed-point security, route-convoy se- curity and joint patrolling with coalition troops. The ING performed these tasks ad- mirably during the January 30 elections, when they were charged with creating cor- don and perimeter security around polling centers; yet they still require heavy U.S. logistical and combat support. Local Iraqi police forces currently complete 8 weeks of training (or a 3-week re- fresher course for former officers) in police academies around Iraq and in Jordan. Still, their capabilities are limited to local policing duties and ensuring basic law and order. Given their skill sets, they are unable to combat the insurgency effec- tively as a frontline force. It should be noted that even the best-trained Western po- lice forces would have a great deal of difficulty dealing with such intense and contin- uous attacks with RPGs, small-arms fire, and suicide bombings on their officers and police stations. backoblems with both can or should be have a role and are numbers of mirty and joint patrted to basic taskeeks of collective etraus, ING trahen under his ont uous forces wrontline heir skil limite in polplete 8 75 In contrast to the ING and the police, the Iraqi Army has had a centralized re- cruiting and vetting structure from its inception. As a result, the Army has at- tracted a higher quality of recruits who must undergo thorough and standardized vetting, and the training itself has been of a higher standard. The basic 8-week army boot camp is supplemented by additional training for recruits moving into spe- cial forces, such as the Iraqi Intervention Force (IIF). It should be noted that the bulk of Iraqi Army capabilities are attuned to conven- tional military operations, especially defending Iraq from external aggression. Given the past history of the Iraqi Army, including its use as a tool of repression against the Iraqi people, and the propensity for the military to dominate Iraqi politics, the United States must be very careful not to overemphasize the use of the Iraqi army in internal security operations. Necessity, however, has required the building up of the IIP (9 battalions by the end of January 2005) as the Army's key counterinsurgency wing. This force has proven to be extremely capable in operations in Samarra and Fallujah in late 2004. The Iraqi armed forces also has at its dis- posal two trained battalions: the 36th Commando Battalion-a special ING bat- talion put together to serve as an infantry-type strike force in late 2003, with fight- ers from many of the different Iraqi militias—and the Iraqi Counterterrorism Bat- talion, with fighters drawn from both the ING and Army units. The key to a realistic transfer of security responsibility to Iraqi forces rests not only with these Iraqi Army special forces (such as the IIF), but more importantly with the building of high-end internal security forces under the Ministry of Interior. These specialized national police units are particularly important because of their specialized training and skill sets and their ability to combine intelligence, law en- forcement, and light infantry capabilities. They are also important in the sense that a heavy emphasis on Army internal security operations can be limited as much as possible. It has taken some time for the building of these internal security forces to get underway. The assumption of the Pentagon in early 2003 and in the early postwar phase was that there would not be such an intense and deadly insurgency. Con- sequently, the initial plans to train the Iraqi security forces were broad, relying on large numbers of recruits with very basic training in policing and conventional mili- tary operations. Only in early 2004 did the Iraqi interim Governing Council and the Coalition Provision Authority put in place a policy to begin building specialized in- ternal security forces to fight the insurgency. Since then, the emphasis has clearly shifted to training the right type of Iraqi security forces with the capabilities to take over offensive operations from U.S. forces with minimal support. These high-end internal security forces are commonly known as the Iraqi Civil Intervention Force, an umbrella grouping that includes several types of specialized police forces: • The Iraqi Police Service Emergency Response Unit: an elite 270-man team trained to respond to national-level law enforcement emergencies-essentially a SWAT capability. The 8th Mechanized Police Brigade (MPB): a paramilitary, counterinsurgency Iraqi police unit. The MPB will comprise three battalions. The Special Police Commando Battalions. The Special Police Commando Battal- ions provide the Ministry of Interior with its strike-force capability. The com- mandos—which will ultimately comprise six full battalions—are highly vetted Iraqi officers and rank-and-file servicemen largely made up of Special Forces professionals with prior service. 1 These internal security forces, which are specifically and intensively trained in counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, are the key to the transfer of security to Iraqi forces. 2. BUILDING THE CAPACITY OF IRAQI SECURITY INSTITUTIONS AND MINISTRIES It should be made clear to U.S. policymakers that democracy is not just about elections, and there is more to the Iraqi security strategy than training forces. There are underlying principles and practices in the security sector which make democ- racies work and must be encouraged in Iraq. Thus, it is imperative that U.S. policy makers ensure that fundamental principles inherent in all democratic states are part of the security and political structures of the future Iraq. The focus of U.S. pol- icy and continued U.S. support in these areas will ensure longer term success in Iraq and mitigate the need to return to a failed Iraq in 20 years' time. A key area where progress has been made to date and needs to be continued is capacity building within security institutions, such as the newly civilian-led Iraqi . The 8th Mechanizne MPB wil battalions. The strike-foreen capare highly 1 http://www.mnstci.iraq.centcom.mil/facts_troops.htm. 76 and admistrategic de and ultice with fense cantive, dedicahange of the Interior Ministry of Defense. A functioning and strengthened civilian-led Iraqi Ministry of Defense (IMD) is critical given the past history of civil-military relations in Iraq. During the Baathist regime, the Baath Party emptied the military of independent professional officers and replaced them with Baathist ideologues in uniform who held the key security posts in the cabinet. In turn, this Baathified military domi- nated the ministry. The new IMOD, headed by a civilian Minister of Defense, was established in April 2004. The United States and its coalition partners, such as the United Kingdom and Australia, must remain committed to capacity building, training of civil servants, mentoring, and technical assistance for the new civilian service in the IMOD. This is critically important, as the ministry's civil service not only provides the logistical and administrative support for the new armed forces, but also articulates and devel- ops the strategic defense policy for the country under the guidance of the civilian Minister of Defense and ultimately up to the security cabinet of ministers. An independent civil service with no political appointees has been established in the IMOD. The Iraqi Minister of Defense cannot bring "his people” into the IMOD. Iraqi civil servants are professional and objective, dedicated to serving the national interests of Iraq without fear of losing their jobs with a change of minister. Unfortu- nately, Iraq has a predilection for nepotism and corruption, and the Interim Min- istry of Interior was rife with examples of different ministers appointing cousins, uncles, and other personal favorites to senior leadership positions. This cannot af- ford to be replicated in the newly established IMOD. There are many critical principles that underlie a democratic state: the separation of powers, freedom of expression, and a host of civil and political rights. Principles and democratic practices specific to ensuring that Iraqi security institutions such as the new IMOD work in a democratic state include: The principle of civilian control over the military, but more specifically demo- cratic civilian control over the military. This entails a clear chain of command up through the operational Iraqi military commanders to the civilian Minister of Defense, the Iraqi Prime Minister, and the security cabinet. Transparency in both the executive branch and the National Assembly. • An even distribution of power among the key security ministries. This is par- ticularly important to Iraq, in order to assure that no one minister has domi- nant control over the Iraqi security forces. Checks and balances in the National Assembly on the use of force and in the executive, insofar as such decisions require cabinet consensus and the approval of the President. • The establishment of oversight committees in the National Assembly. These are fundamental principles and practices which are critical to the long term goals as outlined. They must be adhered to ensure the newly formed Iraqi security institutions work in a democratic state. A genuinely free democratic Iraq requires democratic practices and democratic institutions. The U.S. ability to influence and encourage the Iraqi political leadership to enshrine these principles and structures (some which have already been put in place during the past two years) but also to ensure there is no serious deviation from some of these important foundations is critical to achieving long-term U.S. strategic goals in Iraq. Although these principles and practices may seem like intangibles in comparison to concrete needs such as training, they may be even more important. No matter how well the Iraqi security forces are trained and take over their security respon- sibilities, the real danger exists that U.S. policy makers will drop the ball on ensur- ing the maintenance of these democratic security structures and practices. The United States needs to keep its assistance up in ensuring that these institutions and these democratic practices continue through political transition process over the next 12 months. 3. THE POLITICAL TRANSITION PROCESS AND THE NEXUS BETWEEN SECURITY REFORM AND POLITICAL TRANSITION Put simply, the political transition is one in which the Administration should focus on those underlying structural foundations and principles common to all de- mocracies. The United States must ensure that in the political transition over the next 12 months, including the drafting of the constitution and the development of Iraqi security and political institutions, that they encourage the practice of these principles in governance in the security and political spheres while essentially fore- going interference in individuals and political personalities. The legitimacy of the newly elected National Assembly and the executive govern- ment that is formed will be key to accomplishing the long-term goal: a free demo- cratic Iraq. Thus, the United States must resist the temptation to try to control the 77 political process which will form the new Iraqi government. Certainly, in a general sense the United States should encourage a Shi'a leadership to include key Sunnis in the new cabinet. However, overall the United States needs to play the ball and not the man-in other words, focus on maintaining sound structural foundations and underlying principles and not supporting personalities who may be in or out of favor. A democratically elected Iraqi government in which Sunni, Shiite, Kurd, Turkoman, Christian, Yazidi, Communist, capitalist, secularist, and Islamist are all represented may not even be a government the United States particularly likes- particularly if Sunni ex-Baathists or radical clerics like Muqtada al-Sadr hold key cabinet posts. But such a government will be legitimate, with the support of an overwhelming Iraqi majority, and will serve to hold the country together to the det- riment of the insurgents. As long as this future government does not attempt to erode the important principles which buttress a pluralistic democratic state, the United States should not attempt to fiddle with the internal Iraqi political process, even if it does not like who wins. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Khalil. I call now upon the distinguished ranking member, Senator Biden, for his opening statement. STATEMENT OF HON. JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., U.S. SENATOR FROM DELAWARE Senator BIDEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Tony, I am sorry I missed the very beginning of your statement, but I can assure you quite literally there is not a thing you have written that I have not read in the last 2 years, and that is not an exaggeration. As I listened to your statement, General, I think we should point out for the record, nothing either of you are saying is new today in terms of what you have been saying from the very beginning. It is kind of dumbfounding we are here at this point having to be reiterating these points. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for having this hearing. As we have all seen, we obviously have an extremely distinguished panel. I have already relied a great deal on the advice of two of our witnesses over the last 2 years in formulating my own views thus far. So it will not be surprising for them to hear that I agree with virtually everything they have had to say. Sunday's elections were, to state the obvious, a significant posi- tive tribute to the courage of the Iraqi people and to the courage of our soldiers and civilians in Iraq. The images of children dancing in the streets and elderly walking miles to polling stations despite the obvious danger were incredibly moving. Given the trauma of the past 2 years, to say nothing about the past 3 decades, it was encouraging to have some good news coming out of Iraq. But, as all of you have pointed out, one election does not make a democracy or even a stable government make. Whether the his- tory books look back on Sunday as a transformational event in Iraq is going to depend on what the Iraqis do and what we do in the next several months. It seems to me that we have several very im- portant challenges, some of which you all have mentioned. First, in my judgment we have to use our influence to work the Sunnis back into the constitutional writing process here, which will define minority rights and protections. Quite frankly, in my most recent trip to Iraq last month, I got the sense, from some of the Shias with whom we met that they understood that, that the Kurds understood that. Now, whether or not they can translate 78 that understanding to reality remains to be seen. But it seems to me that is a critical step that has to be undertaken. Second, the Iraqi Government, to state the obvious, needs more capacity. When Senators Lugar and Hagel and I were there a year and a half ago, right after Saddam's statue went down, we kept talking about capacity, what we were going to do to provide the Iraqi people with any capacity. When the transfer of sovereignty occurred last summer, it was clear that we transferred sovereignty, but virtually no capacity. I want to ask you in the question and answer period more about why it has been we have failed to focus on that and instead have in- sisted on this arbitrary number of 127,000 trained Iraqis as if it provided capacity for this government. Third—and I am summarizing here, Mr. Chairman-we need to show reconstruction results. I am going to be anecdotal. I was with my friend from Rhode Island on a recent trip. We met with a num- ber of people, the same people we met with, I met with, 2 months earlier, 3 months earlier, with Senator Hagel. General Chiarelli of the First Cav, he was very, very simple and straightforward. I think he has done a hell of a job. He said: Look-he showed us Sadr City and he said: This is my responsi- bility. Then he showed us HMMV's going down the streets with sewage up to the hubcaps and piles of garbage literally 10, 12 feet high in front of the front doors of homes, not much further away than this rail is from that door. He said: I talked to the CPA and I have talked to their successors about what we do about that, and they talk about $100 million, hundreds of millions of dollars, ter- tiary treatment plant. He said: Give me some PVC, let me run it with Iraqis from the homes to the Tigris River, drain the swamp. You know, we have all seen the Powerpoint presentations the military, that you guys, General, love so much; He then showed us where all the attacks on his forces had been, where the most environmentally degrading circumstances existed, where he had, I think it was-correct me, Chuck or staff, if I am wrong. I think he said he had 30 million bucks he was able to spend right away, where he used it. Then he put another graph right on top and said: Now look what has happened. CNN 3 or 4 days ago—some of you may have seen it; I was at Davos and I turned on CNN. They had Chiarelli walk- ing down a street with Iraqis who were turning in insurgents be- cause they now had a street built, the garbage taken away, the sewage diverted, and lights on. The idea that we have only spent $2.4 billion—not very well, I might add-out of the 8-as you said, Tony, the good news and the bad news. The good news is we have only wasted $2.4 billion. The bad news is we still have this vast bulk of this reconstruction money we have not used. So I would like to ask you some more specific questions about that, but the failure of us being able to use more than 15 percent of the so-called Marshall Plan reconstruction has not been all be- cause of insurgents. It is not all because it is too dangerous. It is the method we have chosen as to how to lay it out. In my judgment we have to move away from these massive projects that are costly, slow, susceptible to both the incompetence 79 of American contractors and the difficulty they have in dealing with security, as well as not providing any immediate tangible re- sults for folks in the street. Fourth, it seems to me we finally have to make Iraq the world's problem, not just ours. I had the opportunity, Mr. Chairman, to spend I do not know how much time, but a considerable amount of time with a few of my colleagues, with President Chirac. The President, our President, has a unique opportunity when he heads to Europe now. It is time the Europeans stop bleeding for the Iraqi people and ante up a little bit. It is time they get over George Bush. It is time they get over the election. It is time to get over it. They love beating up Bush and I believe it has been used as an excuse, in some cases from their perspective legitimate, to avoid their own responsibility. Talking with the French president, he was very specific—it is not appropriate to lay it out here—very specific about things he is will- ing to do relating to training on and off the scene, relating to in- volvement in civil society issues. We should ask, ask. We should give them a way out and into their responsibilities. I know some of you have mentioned that. Fifth, it seems to me we have to articulate much more forcefully what our plan is. We are going to come up and we are going to have to vote for $80 billion, I say to my colleagues here. I am pre- pared to vote for it, but this time I am not voting for it unless they tell me what they want to do. I am not looking for a withdrawal date. I am one who has been calling for more forces up until re- cently. I have been one who has been suggesting that we have to do more. But I want to tell you something. As that old song goes, what is the plan, Stan? I do not see any evidence, except on the training side and only in the last 4 to 6 weeks, that there is any coherent notion about how Iraq fits into our regional strategy and about how, in fact, we even define what the insurgency is. The Secretary of Defense started off calling them dead-enders and jihadists. Give me a break. They are dead-enders, a bunch of dead-enders and jihadists. Well, what are they? I want the admin- istration to tell me what they think they are, so I have any notion to whether or not there is any maturation in the thinking of this administration, because otherwise we are faced with a situation, Dr. Cordesman, in my view that you had said in your November article which you have updated for this presentation here, which is that we do not have much better than a 50-percent chance. You indicate if we do these things we have a much better than 50-percent chance. I think we do as well. But I want to tell you: If there is no change, no change in the thinking of this administra- tion, significant change in the last 10 months, we do not have a shot in my view of prevailing. And I am not in on the game any more, because then I am faced, as we always are in the Senate, with Hobson's choices by presidents, two bad choices. The one is, do we continue to drain American blood for an approach that seems to be, I think, a loser, or has there been a change in the strategy. And if it is, what is the strategy? So I want to know what it is as just one Senator. 80 I also believe, to state the obvious, we have to support our mili- tary, and that relates to their training, their mission, their rotation schedule, the equipment they are provided. We can go into that later and I do not want to take the committee's time since so many of our colleagues are here now. I think maybe most importantly, I say to my colleagues more than the witnesses, we need some straight talk to the American people here. We need to level with them. I know you are tired of hearing me saying this, but no foreign policy can be sustained very long without the informed consent of the American people, and there has not been informed consent. We still operate in this fiction that we do not have to put money for Iraq in the budget, in the regular budget. I do not know how you guys in good conscience can support that notion, that it is unknowable what we need. We still talk about this in terms of what great success we are having. I recommend any administration official who tells us what great success we are having to get back in a HMMV with the Senator from Rhode Island and me and go 50 to 60 miles an hour inside the Green Zone, with automobiles weaving in and out and while sitting there, although I did not hear them, six mortar attacks in broad daylight inside the Green Zone; flying in, making sure we cannot go anywhere at all except on a helicopter at high speeds about 100 feet off the ground. Tell me about how much more security we have. Why do they insist on this fiction that we have 125,000 trained Iraqis? So we better level with the American people. There are a number of questions that are going to have to be answered by the adminis- tration. They will get my continued support if they try to answer them, but I want to tell you something. We should use this oppor- tunity, I will say parenthetically, Mr. President, of voting for money to get a real live strategy written, stated, articulated by the administration as to what their plan is, because if it is a repeat of the last 2 years we are doomed to fail in my humble opinion. I thank you for allowing me to make this statement, Mr. Chair- man, and I will reserve my questions until after you question. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Biden. Let me just say that, one characteristic of the hearing on both sides, both the witnesses and the Senators, is that there will be a lot of straight talk this morning. It is meant to have oversight, but like- wise a constructive purpose. We appreciate your papers as well as t we will ask to try to flesh out what you have said to us. We have many Senators here. The chair would suggest that we have a 7-minute question period for our first round, so that we try nany Senators as possible. I know you, Dr. Cordesman, must leave us, I understand, at about 11:30; is that correct? Dr. CORDESMAN. I changed the plane until later, Senator, so I can extend it. Thank you. The CHAIRMAN. I am glad you will be able to stay longer. That is great. Now, let me just ask members to be thoughtful about the 7- minute limit. As always, the chair will try to be liberal and make sure answers have been given and questions have been asked. But 81 at the same time, as a courtesy to all of our members, it would be helpful if we can try to observe the time limit. Let me start by asking a question and then ask the three of you for comments. In the testimony that you have given today there is a question about definition of the insurgents. Who are they? To contain or defeat them, calls for careful definition of the enemy. Likewise, why do they appear to be growing in number even as a number are killed by our security forces or the Iraqi security forces. An assertion has been made that essentially the insurgency comes because we, that is the United States and our allies, are per- ceived as occupiers, and that the end of occupation would end a ra- tionale for the insurgency. Let me just ask for more definition of this proposition. Some have suggested that the insurgency is pri- marily focused in four of the 18 provinces of the country. One of the characteristics of those provinces is a high number of S Furthermore, some have suggested that a number of the insurgents have in mind not only the end of American occupation, but likewise the end of the Iraqi democracy experiment. In other words, they would simply like to take power again, and one way of doing that is, of course, the elimination of outsiders, ourselves included, but also of those who are involved in this fledgling experiment, includ- ing those who would be involved in the constitution-building, or at least the present leaders, to be replaced by those whom the insur- gents would attempt to install by force. That may be a stretch for 20,000 people, but then no one knows whether just 20,000 are involved. So I am curious, how do we have this situation in which, on the one hand, we are pledged to try to defend the fledgling democracy, the 275 people that will now as- semble, the election procedure of a referendum on their constitu- tional development, and the December 15th election of the new offi- cers of the country, while at the same time providing the training that we have all talked about today, including certainly much more training? The people you have identified need to have specific types of training to be more effective. How do we go about trying to determine, as Dr. Cordesman has suggested, the metrics of how well we are doing? Clearly, in our hearing with Dr. Rice, Senator Biden raised the point about the 120,000 that are suggested as trained and the estimates of 12, 14,000, maybe, who really seem to be effective against an insur- gency, or capable of replacing U.S. forces. We raised the metrics question during that confirmation hearing. W would we know how that training is coming so that we can have this dialogue with the Iraqis or with the world as to our with- drawal, as to how this handover occurs, and thereby leave behind a group of people who are prepared to defeat insurgents who may be after them by then and no longer after us? Dr. Cordesman, would you begin with your comments on this broad question? Dr. ČORDESMAN. Well, Senator, you have hit on, I think, one of the key questions. Let me say, all of these numbers when you talk to intelligence people who actually serve in the field have to be generated as guesstimates. They will tell you, if you keep asking us to provide an estimate we will provide you with an estimate. 82 But we do not have a basis for counting. We do not have a method- ology that we can defend. We have to make rough estimates. So General Newbold quoted 20,000. I am perfectly happy to sup- port the figure. I have seen estimates as low as 14,000. Iraqi offi- cials have talked about 200,000 sympathizers. The truth is that we do not have an intelligence structure that can give us precise num- bers. We are talking, too, about a very diverse movement, and I will concentrate here on the Sunnis. Some 35 groups have claimed to exist. I think the latest estimate I heard was that we could confirm the existence of about 18. Some of these have outside leadership. There are no outside groups per se except for a relatively small but fairly lethal group that is responsible for a lot of the suicide bomb- ings. The most recent estimate for General Casey was that only 1,000 of the insurgents were foreign volunteers, and most of these foreign volunteers are not trained, experienced people. They are being re- cruited locally in Arab countries and funneled in through primarily Syria, but also to some extent Iran. When we talk about these movements, they are organized so there are core cadres of people who do planning and organization. There seem to be finance and infrastructure cadres who do not op- erate, but do provide services. Then you keep recruiting locally young men, most of them young Sunnis, in an area where unem- ployment is put at the 70-percent mark for this particular age group. Some of the groups are Islamic. They seem to be relatively small as pure Islamist extremist groups, but certainly there is a growing number of Sunni groups that are Islamists there. Some are Baathists, some are former regime loyalists, many are local. So we really need to understand. Why are they growing? Well, they are growing because many of them are hostile to the new gov- ernment. They are hostile to the loss of Sunni power. They are hos- stence of a more democratic structure in an artificial country where the Sunnis led because Britain used divide and con- quer tactics from the foundation of Iraq to the present. Now, when it comes to metrics, the metrics we had in Vietnam were better than the metrics we have now. We broke them down locally. We showed what areas could be secured. We showed what the number of incidents were. We broke the incidents down by type and we had pattern analysis of what the incidents were trying to do. We have suppressed that data, although we initially published it. Since time has run out, I will try to get back to metrics on how you can deal with measuring the improvements in the Iraqi forces later. The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you, following an example that I hope we will set, we will not proceed with additional comments of others. You may want to make those comments as you respond to other Senators or in a second round. Senator Biden. Senator BIDEN. Thank you. I promise I will adhere to the same discipline. 83 I would like to just focus in the 7 minutes on training, if I may. Dr. Cordesman, through my four trips into Iraq and regular e-mail contact between the trainers that are there and my staff, I share the view that has been expressed I think by all of you, that I think that there has been a bit of, as we Catholics say, an epiphany of the need for fundamental change in training. I think General Petraeus is first rate. I think he is making a genuine effort. I think they are changing the way in which this is going on. I think they are much more realistic about what the reality is there. ut getting us into numbers—and by the way, Dr. Cordesman, you said up to 16 or 17 thousand. I think that was the number. I have been using the figure, based on what I have been able to glean from the folks in the field, somewhere at the low end of around 5,000, at the high end, 18,000, depending on how you de- fine their mission and what you define as capacity. We all agree that part of, quote, a "success strategy” is giving the capacity to the emerging elected government to not only govern itself with some legitimacy, but also to be able to maintain its posi- tion with a capacity to have a security force available to it. How long are we talking about, assuming the change has taken place as to how to train and what the goals are as we think it has? I am vastly oversimplifying in the interest of time. How long are we talking about, assuming everything went according to plan, we work like heck, we have a rational new policy? What are we talking about? Are we talking months? Are we talk- ing more than a year, Dr. Cordesman? What are we talking about to be able to give an Iraqi government the capacity to maintain its own security? Dr. CORDESMAN. I think, briefly, Senator, we are talking some point in 2006. We had only one operational battalion of the Iraqi army in the spring of 2004. We have been able to increase that to something like 27 battalions at the end of this month. But that is training and equipment. Let me stress, that does not mean they are combat-ready. Senator BIDEN. I understand. Dr. CORDESMAN. You have to have leaders. You have to have unit integrity and you have to have experience. We can do that by put- ting in U.S. advisers. We can do it by selectively moving uni the field. But to actually get to combat-ready forces, that process, once you have trained and equipped, is going to take you a matter of at least 3 to 4 months. You also, in terms of equipment, have not equipped these forces with what they need to survive. What you have are a few old So- viet APC's, but you do not have a real mechanized battalion in the field yet. We will have a mechanized brigade by some time in the summer. But we are talking about three divisions eventually and that would be some point in 2006. Senator BIDEN. Thank you. General, do you want to add to that? You have done it. 1 NEWBOLD. Sir. just a couple of quick comments. As is ob- vious to everybody here, we are not training them to western standards. The real standard is how good are they against the in- surgents. So to some degree it depends on how quickly we and the nits into 84 Iraqis can destroy the power of the insurgents, not just military but political as well. I would argue that we ought to-in certain areas of Iraq—use moderately trained Iraqis to control the situation, as we have seen both in the north and in the south of Iraq. We certainly cannot in western Iraq. But we can incrementally feed them into the more benign areas with the state of training that they have right now. I think it will take until the end of this year to be able to do that in many areas of Iraq. It will take through next year, if we over- haul our strategy, before the predominance of the security mission can be undertaken by the Iraqis. They will be at a self-generating point, dependent upon the activity of the insurgency, probably within a year. That does not mean that Senator BIDEN. No, I understand. By the way, in communicating with some folks on the ground these last couple days, on the Iraqi performance. They did perform well in the election. But what ev- erybody forgets is the United States secured the perimeter. The United States essentially established martial law. The United States on election day actually shut down the country in terms of vehicles, etcetera. Then within the second perimeter you had the Iraqi army performing well, and within the interior perimeter you had the national guard and police performing well. But absent that outer perimeter, being able to be locked down, figuratively speaking, by the United States military, no one should read into what happened on election day the idea that the Iraqi forces have the capacity. Let me put it another way. Absent the presence of American forces in Iraq on Sunday, I do not think the kind of situation that existed would have been possible. Well, I can see the light is about to go on. I am going to come back and ask you about the notion of building an integrated Iraqi force—I am talking about an army that can shoot straight, have the proper equipment, be under the control of a civilian Iraqi gov- ernment, being in the range of 30 to 40,000 over the next couple years. Is it likely to be integrated, that is sunni, Shia, Kurd? What are the problems we face there? But I have many more questions, but I will abide by the yellow light and yield back the last few seconds I have. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Biden. Senator Hagel. STATEMENT OF HON. CHUCK HAGEL, U.S. SENATOR FROM NEBRASKA Senator HAGEL. Mr. Chairman, thank you. Gentlemen, thank you for coming before our committee this morning. You have each made a significant contribution and your careers attest to that as well. For the record, General Newbold, I think it would be helpful if you would tell this committee what you did at the Pentagon in your ịast job and how you were involved in the lead-up to our invasion of Iraq and when you left the Pentagon? General NEWBOLD. Okay, sir. I became the Director of Oper- ations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in August of 2000. The Director of Operations, as you know, is responsible for oversight for the em- ployment of our forces around the world and is the communicator 85 between the Joint Staff and the equivalent operations that go on in the combatant commanders' realm. I left that job in November of 2002. Senator HAGEL. 2002. General NEWBOLD. Yes, sir. Senator HAGEL. So you had a considerable amount of experience on the inside at the Pentagon as we were preparing to go into Iraq? General NEWBOLD. Sir, I had virtual access to every bit of intel- ligence. Other than the Presidential daily briefings, I think I had 100 percent other than that. I participated in all the planning, all the conduct of operations for Afghanistan and all the planning for operations for Iraq. Senator HAGEL. My point in asking you to put that on the record is so that we will all clearly understand that you are not a very distinguished lieutenant general retired who is before us today just commenting or speculating. In fact, you were there and had a very significant responsibility for our efforts. So thank you for your serv- ice. Let me ask each of you, and because of our time restraints I would appreciate a brief answer: The issue is Kurdistan. What in your opinion is the likelihood of the Kurds moving to establish an independent state? Dr. Cordesman, may I start with you. Dr. CORDESMAN. I think they will only do that, Senator, if they cannot find a way to protect what they already have in some form of not necessarily autonomy, but federalism. If there are com- promises, if as it seems this new government remains inclusive, then I think the Kurds will be more than willing to stay and will not seek independence, particularly given the risks of seeking inde- pendence and the problems with the Turks. Senator HAGEL. Thank you. Mr. Khalil. Mr. KHALIL. Thank you, Senator. Having spent many hours and days with Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, I think I can sum- marize their key concerns as: First, political instability—they do not know what this future government will hold—and second, secu- rity, obviously terrorist attacks in their region and Irbil and Sulaimaniya and so forth. So until they find out what the political situation will be, they are committed and have been on the record to be committed to a federal structure so long as the autonomy that they have developed over the last 10 years remains. That is a red line for both Barzani and Talabani. So they are committed to this stage. The other point I should make is we made great efforts to in- clude the Kurds in the central governmental structures, in curity institutions and in the political structures. You see obviously Barham Salih is the deputy interim prime minister. The secretary general of the ministry of defense is a Kurd. One of the four-star generals is a Kurd. There are Kurds in the Iraqi army, in the secu- rity forces. They feel that they have a place within that central government. I think they will also have a place, given their turnout in the elec- tions, a place in the new, newly elected government as well. Senator HAGEL. Thank you. General Newbold. 87 throughout the region convincing people that our goals are objec- tive. Senator HAGEL. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, thank you. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Hagel. Senator Dodd. STATEMENT OF HON. CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, U.S. SENATOR FROM CONNECTICUT Senator DODD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing. The timing was tremendously appro- priate, to come immediately after the events on Sunday, and it is tremendously worthwhile to have such competent witnesses before us. Mr. Cordesman, let me tell you, your statement here today is- I hesitate to speak as glowingly about it for fear that others may not pay as much attention to it. But I want to tell you, this is about as clear and thoughtful a set of recommendations as I have seen and I commend you for them. Let me ask you, just without getting too open-ended, but obvi- ously I would like to hear how you read the elections. What should we take from this? If you are being asked to give a brief analysis of what happened on Sunday and what should we as Americans read from that and how do we then take that decision and try and move it forward a bit? I wonder if you might comment on the elec- tions themselves. Dr. CORDESMAN. Well, first, Senator, one of the problems we have is we do not know how many people turned out. We do not know who they voted for and we do not know what the people they voted for are going to decide. But whatever happened, it is quite clear that very large numbers of Kurds went out and voted, not simply for a national election, but for a Kurdish assembly and for local elections. A lot of the tensions and problems that people feared did not take place, particularly given the history of Kurdish rivalry. Sunni parties went out and voted in large numbers. We probably will never be able to know how many really voted because one problem is the registration lists are the Oil for Food list. They are not people who went out to register to vote and only about 60 per- cent of the polling places that were required could actually be put into the field and many did not open. But all that said, it is quite clear that the Sunnis not only went out and voted, they voted for different parties, they did not vote along some clear theological line, and the party that was most reli- gious, it is the quietest party that is not seeking any kind of theoc- racy. It is seeking a government which again is based on coalitions. In those areas where Sunnis could vote, the vote was very, very mixed. But there are indications that in places like Mosul when people saw it was safe to go out to vote in Sunni areas they did begin to vote, not in the numbers required. The other thing to put this in context is we keep talking about the Sunnis, but they are at most 20 percent of the population. More recent estimates put them into the 12- to 15-percent category. The areas where people could not vote, like Al-Anbar Province or Nineveh or elsewhere, probably had something on the order of 7 percent of the population of the country. So the election I think, given the conditions, is a much better tribute or a much better sign of hope than can be indicated simply y people out of the registration list went to the polls. Senator DODD. Dr. Khalil. Mr. KHALIL. Thank you, Senator. All of the Iraqis, whether they be Sunni, Shia, or Kurd, also voted for local provincial elections as well as the national assembly. The Kurds, as Dr. Cordesman point- ed out, had the additional vote for the Kurdish assembly. He is right that the Sunnis make up around 20 percent of the population, but they do make up about 99 percent of the insur- gency. The important point about this is that, even though there was much talk about boycott by the Iraqi Islamic Party, a more moderate Sunni party, and the Moslem Scholars Association, the leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party actually said before the elections that he would not prevent his candidates, who were still on the slate and still on the ballot, from taking their seats if they won. So there might still be some Sunni representation on the assembly. The other point which is important is as far as bringing more moderate Sunnis into the political process, I think it is important that they be made part of the constitutional drafting process, the Sunni jurists and clerics, and also that the new cabinet has some Sunni leaders appointed as ministers. Both Shia leaders have said that they will commit to this. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and Jafri have said this. So there is the potential to bring the Sunnis into the po- litical process and I think there are some positive signs. · DODD. General. I want you to comment as well, but I want to ask you something as well. When I came in you were talk- ing about the withdrawal or the exit strategy. I do not have your exact words here, but you said we could leave when the insurgents allow us to leave. What occurred to me, just for the sake of discus- sion, is there a realistic assessment here that there are certainly significant parts of the insurgency or elements of the insurgency that would like us to stay for their own broader political purposes, that having the United States in Iraq on a daily basis, the informa- tional benefit to them throughout the Arab world and elsewhere, engaged in sort of a quagmire, may serve their longer term and deeper interests than having us leave Iraq? Is that a fair criticism of the assumption that we can go when they allow us to go? General NEWBOLD. Yes, sir. Just on the election very quickly, I thought it was a wonderful, courageous display by ordinary Iraqis and it ought to give us hope and it gave them tremendous hope. There is the potential for it to have a contagious effect throughout the region. We should not overplay that, but we ought to try to take advantage of it. The momentum will slip quickly unless we are effective at push- ing the things that made it possible. The Sunnis will be the key. They are a minority that believes they have majority rights and an almost cultural disposition to rule. If the new government provides them opportunities and gives comfort to quell their fears, then I think they'll participate and I think we have some opportunities there. 89 As far as the exit strategy, my comment of course was to shift the responsibility to the insurgents so that we shift the blame if we stay there longer than we would desire, than they would desire. But I do believe there is a hard-core element, Islamists, radical Islamists most particularly, who take some comfort by our presence in Iraq to allow them to increase their vitriolic statements through- out the world and to attack us in the place where we are vulner- able. Senator DODD. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [The prepared statement of Senator Dodd follows:] PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR CHRISTOPHER J. DODD Mr. Chairman, I would like to commend you for holding this important hearing just two days following elections in Iraq. I would also like to thank our distin- guished panel of witnesses who are here today to share their thoughts on U.S. policy toward that country and the greater Middle East. There is no more important issue facing us than the future of that region, and I look forward to hearing the expert testimony of all our witnesses, and to engaging in a productive dialogue. Dr. Cordesman, I would especially like to thank you for the various items you have sub- mitted for the record. You make some very important recommendations that I be- lieve the Bush Administration would do well to heed. Obviously, it will be some days yet until we know the results of the Iraqi elec- tions. But I think it is important to say that regardless of the many challenges we face and any disagreements we may have over the direction of U.S. foreign policy, the holding of elections in Iraq was a momentous event for the Iraqi people. But we shouldn't take that to mean something it doesn't. The elections are not the end of our task in that country—they are a beginning. First of all, we will not always have troops there. If the new Iraqi government re- quests that the U.S. withdraw its troops, we should abide by its request. And if it doesn't make this request, we should still do everything in our power to ensure that we adequately prepare Iraqis for handling the defense and stability of their country a suickly as possepare Iraqite should see we should the new the That means we will have to start being honest about the numbers of Iraqis cur- rently up to the task of defending and stabilizing their country. Common sense dic- tates that if the number of those types of forces were even close to the figure that Secretary of State Rice quoted for trained forces generally in that country-120,000, including 50,000 police—then U.S. troops would likely be able to start withdrawing as we speak. That is obviously not the case. Simply put, when it comes to the training of Iraqi forces, we have a long way to go. And we are in desperate need of an effective plan to get there. But paying lip service to withdrawal and having a realistic plan to do so are not one and the same. We can't approach withdrawal from Iraq in the same haphazard and shortsighted way that we approached the invasion of that country. We have to have a plan or we could turn a difficult situation into something much worse. I couldn't agree more with Dr. Cordesman on this point—that regardless of whether we withdraw gradually over the next couple of years or if the Iraqi government asks us to leave in the coming weeks—we must not abandon the people of that country. What does that mean? It means that there is more to nation building--and I think it is safe to call it that—than the use of military might. Regardless of when we exit, we should be generous with offers of aid and assistance to the new Iraqi government-even if that government sometimes takes stands on issues with which we disagree. We've refused to learn this lesson with respect to democratically elect- ed governments in our hemisphere, such as Venezuela, and I hope that we don't make the same mistake with respect to Iraq. What is needed more than anything else when it comes to nation building is the partnership of the people in the nation you are trying to build. To loosely borrow a well-known phrase, the new Iraq needs to be a country built by Iraqis and for Iraqis. That means using U.S. aid increasingly to put Iraqis to work in the building of their country. According to statistics, at least 2 million Iraqis are currently unem- ployed. American aid could be used to put them to work in rebuilding their country's infrastructure. This is the right thing to do. But more importantly, it would give Iraqis a greater stake in the success of a democratic Iraq, which is in our mutual interests. makeovernments in ourused to learn thisometimes takes stssistance to thess of when 91 tial for this election to be a paradigm-shifting event? Was it just because of great security that the insurgents were not able to come forth and do all that they did? If the insurgents, as Mr. Khalil talked about, are 90 percent Baathists, it is internal then, they are not external folks, what does the statement that the Iraqis made about democracy, about voting, what does that do to the insur- gency? Dr. CORDESMAN. We need to be very careful, Senator, because the latest estimate I have seen is there were over 100 attempted or actual incidents in the Baghdad area and somewhere between 260 and 300 attempted incidents in the area outside Baghdad. It was not as if they were passive. So the insurgents are not going to go away quickly. As General Newbold and Mr. Khalil have point- ed out, they are a serious issue and a lot of them are committed. But they certainly do remain a relative minority, both in terms of their religion and ethnicity, and that has to be kept in perspec- tive. Now, where is this going to go? I do not think you can say that you have seen any turning point here until you see what the results of the election are. I do not mean the vote. If the Iraqi par- ties come together, if as has been suggested by my colleagues they are inclusive to the Sunnis in the ministers and in terms of the convention for the constitution, if they show they can cooperate, re- taining the good ministers—and this is important, continuity—but sharing power among each other, then this step forward in govern- ance, combined with the election, will over time, I think, become a turning point. But we should not expect that to occur simply because there is a vote. People have to show they can govern. They have to show te the right political decisions. They have to show they can be inclusive. If they meet these tests, that is a turning out. Senator COLEMAN. Mr. Khalil. Mr. KHALIL. Thank you, Senator. I traveled to Ramadi and had a very interesting meeting with the governor of Al-Anbar Province, the tribal leaders, and also around a dozen or 15 insurgents, basically ex-military personnel. These are rational actors, and I am talking about the ex- Baathists—they are still Baathists—the Saddam loyalists, the ex- military personnel and the intelligence folk. They will come to the negotiating table. It is the extremists, the Islamic extremists, the foreign jihadists, which you cannot negotiate with. Obviously, with Zarqawi saying democracy is wicked, that is not a negotiating point. So if you look at Muqtada Sadr as a template, there is a potential to bring these guys into the political tent. He laid down his arms, or the Mahdi army's arms, and thought about coming into the political process rather than using force, and there you see reconstruction occurring in Sadr City. I think this can occur in the Sunni Triangle with some of these more moderate Sunni resisters, the ex-Saddam security personnel. Senator COLEMAN. General Newbold. General NEWBOLD. I agree with the comments of my colleagues. I think it has the potential to be a seminal event. We need to quickly reinforce what was positive about it and give concrete evi- dence of what the Iraqis were looking for. We need to take some 93 to provide a secure and stable environment so that the elections could in fact take place. Their service was not without cost or personal sacrifice. More than 1,400 American service members have lost their lives while serving in Iraq. Moreover, it is reported that in addition to an estimated 35 Iraqis who were tragically killed by suicide bombers who attacked polling stations on Sunday, a 22- year-old Army medic from Cincinnati, Ohio, Private First Class James H. Miller IV, lost his life while providing security for the elections. Last week, four United States Marines from the State of Ohio were killed when a helicopter crashed near Iraq's border with Jordan. These men and women have made the ultimate sacrifice not only in order to promote a free, democratic and prosperous future for the people of Iraq and the greater Middle East, but also to protect the national security interests of the United States. As our witnesses will discuss, it is essential that the U.S. policy makers con- stantly re-examine strategies to bring lasting peace to Iraq. We owe it to the Iraqi people and to our men and women in uniform to ensure that we move forward with a solid plan, doing all that we can to empower Iraqis so that they are able to provide for their own security and stability as soon as possible. This is not an easy task, which makes our discussion this morning even more important. I would like to join the Chairman and Ranking Member in welcoming our distin- guished witnesses this morning: Dr. Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CŠIS); Lieutenant General Gregory Newbold, USMC (Ret.) of the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and GlobeSecNine; and Mr. Peter Khalil, who is a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Thank you. I look forward to your testimony. The CHAIRMAN. Senator Feingold. STATEMENT OF HON. RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, U.S. SENATOR FROM WISCONSIN Senator FEINGOLD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank you and Senator Biden for holding this hearing. Like many Americans and Iraqis and people around the world, I was deeply moved by the courage of the Iraqi men and women who went to the polls to par- ticipate in Sunday's election and to make their voices heard in de- termining the future of their country. Iraqi's election was unques- tionably an inspiring event. I do have, of course, a series of very serious continuing concerns that I have outlined briefly in an opening statement that I would ask to be put in the record if I could. The CHAIRMAN. It will be put in the record in full. Senator FEINGOLD. Given the limited time, Dr. Cordesman, I would like to go on to a point you mentioned in your testimony. You underscore the need for clear statements from the President and the Secretary of State that help refute the sort of key con- spiracy theories that poison our relations and undercut the legit- imacy of the Iraqi government. Among the statements you call for is one clearly stating that we will not exploit Iraqi oil wealth in any way and that we will shift our aid funds to Ira s to Irag control, insisting only on sound accountability measures. As I consider these recommendations, my thoughts turn to the report that the Special Inspector General for Iraqi Recon- struction issued on Sunday. This is an office that I fought hard to make sure would exist and now this report indicates that the Coali- tion Provisional Authority failed to impose adequate controls on nearly $9 billion that was distributed to various Iraqi ministries during the period prior to the transfer of sovereignty late last June. I find this extraordinarily disturbing. The $8.8 billion in question was Iraqi money, proceeds from oil sales and repatriated funds, that the United States as the occupying authority was responsible 94 for administering. But today we simply cannot account for what happened to these funds. This kind of mismanagement is a gift to those forces who want the world, and particularly the Muslim world, to mistakenly believe that the United States is a corrupt and imperialistic power. In my view, this is not just an oversight failure. It is a policy fail- ure, with the potential to help the very forces that wish to do us harm. How will Iraqis and others in the region understand this failure? In light of the inability of the CPA to account for what hap- pened to this Iraqi money, how likely is it that the nascent Iraqi government could provide meaningful accountability for U.S. tax- payer dollars if they were given the kind of control over the recon- struction budget that you actually have advocated? Dr. CORDESMAN. Senator, the argument always in the field is we are too busy today doing things to account for all of these expendi- tures. The problem, as you pointed out, is tomorrow always comes and you are then judged by how well you accounted for them. I think that these figures are at least somewhat excusable, sim- ply because of the pressures, the uncertainties, the reprogramming. But it should not have been that difficult to maintain a modern ac- counting system. This is not the kind of cash flow problem where you have to get down to individual dollars and cents. These are massive expenditures. What I find a lot more disturbing is when I read the reporting that comes out weekly as to what we are doing with the money now. We have reporting on electricity which is the amount of power generated, not the amount of power distributed. Often the report- ing on the electricity generated is the theoretical capacity, not the amount actually delivered. We have reporting on the oil sector, which is a critical earning area, the oil sector indicates we not only are not coming close to meeting our goal, we do not have significant stocks to deal in the area with the winter. More than that, I look at the latest figures on expenditure on the oil program and you allocated $3.6 billion to help renovate the oil sector in this $18.4 billion tranche and they spent all of—let us see. Let me correct that. They spent all of $123 million of that money to date. You look down the list, there is 15 percent of the money disbursed on electricity, which does not mean completions. We spent 15 percent on trying to improve governance. We spent some- thing like 5 percent of the money that was allocated on health care and 7 percent of the money on water. For those of us who do be- lieve in the private sector, we spent about 9 percent on private sec- tor development. When I look down the list of what people claim is done, it is just one list after another of a project started. Nobody says whether the project survived. Nobody says whether the project can ever be used. We have massive projects like water plants north of Basra that cannot feed the system, so even if they are not sabotaged it does not matter. What bothers me is not that there is an accounting problem. What bothers me is this incredibly powerful tool is not being used to support Iraq, is not being used to fight insurgency, is not being used to support the government. I think any soldier or commander in the field will tell you that dollars are as important as bullets, 97 Senator CHAFEE. What would be a good venue for dialogue? How would we start that? Dr. CORDESMAN. Unfortunately, Senator, I think a lot of that, I have been in many second track dialogues with Iranians and it was always very interesting and I learned a great deal. The end reaction every time, however, is we have a long list of things we would like you to do, but if you did them our internal politics pre- vent us from actually moving forward. Those dialogues over time have shown that the people who advocate dialogue in Iran are pro- gressively more cautious and more frightened of the consequences of being in them. We still have to try. We have to meet with them in second track meetings wherever we can. But I think one of the great tools we have here is to work with the Europeans, who have been allies here and cooperated with us in trying to block proliferation. It is to make use of countries which can talk to Iran and do not have the same history and communicate wherever we can a positive message, that if Iran will back away from the policies that divide us, none of which really serve its ultimate interests, we are ready to have an official dialogue, to deal with Iran in economic terms, to have the kind of relations we should have. Senator CHAFEE. Who of the Europeans have the best relations with the Iranians, the ruling government that exists in Iran now, which European or a number of them? Dr. CORDESMAN. I think often we are talking about some of the smaller countries, like Switzerland, who have more continuity, talk to the people in Iran. Germany certainly has worked hard at this issue. Britain has tried. Unfortunately, Britain has found, as have others, that when you go beyond dialogue to actually set policies you often provoke reactions among the Iranians which make it dif- ficult. But one of the problems we have is these countries, Senator, are virtually all talking to the Khatemi faction. They are talking to the people who will not be there when this President leaves office. We do not even know if the more pragmatic traditionalists, like the Rafsanjani faction, will be represented in large numbers. If they are, then the Europeans will be able to talk to them. But it does seem to vary by country and on a given day the country that seems to favor Iran the most has the best relations. It is a very troubled, difficult situation. Senator CHAFEE. Would any of the other two guests like to add anything? Ġeneral NEWBOLD. Just very quickly, Senator. I think Iran is a schizophrenic society and has to be dealt with to some degree that way. That is, it reminds me of when I was Director of Operations, Joint Chiefs of Staff, our path toward Iraq was becoming obvious. I suggested that we look at Iraq and those things that would un- dermine Saddam Hussein and those things that would reinforce his power. A clear analysis there, a simple analysis, would show that many of the things we were doing, in fact, reinforced the power of Saddam Hussein. In a like way with Iran, if we are bellicose, if we are too threat- ening, we reinforce the radicals and we undermine the people that might be predisposed to align with us. 98 Senator CHAFEE. Thank you. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Chafee. Senator Boxer. STATEMENT OF HON. BARBARA BOXER, U.S. SENATOR FROM CALIFORNIA Senator BOXER. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank the panel. You have just been so interesting, I think, for all of us. I really appreciate your being here and extend- ing your time. Secretary of State Rice said after the election, she said the elec- tion signals a new day for Iraq. I agree with that, but I think it also should signal a new day for America and our policy toward Iraq. Of course, for me that is what I am grappling with, how do we take this good news and how do we put a light at the end of the exit tunnel. And I know “exit” has suddenly become a somehow charged word. I am not wedded to the word, but an end, an end of so much money, an end of so many troops, etcetera, an end of being a target to the insurgents, all of that. Friday I visited with the families of marines stationed at Camp Pendleton and this particular marineFirst Marine Expeditionary Force has taken a huge hit. I want to report that their families are just extraordinary and I think we all know that. General, you know this. They are just extraordinary. They are willing to make even more sacrifices. If they are asked to by their Commander in Chief, they will absolutely do it. So I think it is up to us to show our appreciation to them, not only by doing what I am very excited to see is going to happen, I think, in the State of the Union, a great increase in some of the benefits, which members of both parties want to see happen along with the President, but also I do think we need a light. We need to light a candle here so we have some goal. General, you actually used the word “goal,” and I think in many ways for me you did light a candle to our exit, although you said we should set a goal of being completely out of Iraq in 2 years. Is that correct? That is what you said? Yes. I assume you believe that should be done gradually, is that cor- rect? General NEWBOLD. I am sorry, ma'am? Senator BOXER. I assume you believe that should be done gradu- ally. Okay, so it seems to me if we were just to, just for the sake of discussion, adopt that goal, we then have to take your next statement, which is disheartening—that one was he that was that you said that you don't see an end in sight of this insurgency. Those were your words. So if we have this strategy, this goal to be out in 2 years, doing it gradually, but yet there is no end in sight to this insurgency, clearly the training of Iraqi forces, which I have to say–Senator Biden has just been on this for so long, and Senator Lugar as well, in hearing after hearing after hearing. It looks like this goal that you set can only be met if we can transfer authority to the Iraqis themselves, because there is, quote, “no end in sight of this insur- gency.' 99 So I guess it is frustrating for us because, first, we cannot seem to find out exactly how many troops are trained, and there are rea- sons for that. But Senator Biden asked Secretary Rice a number of questions. I am not going to go over the give and take, but at the end of the day Senator Biden said—and Joe, if I misstate this please tell me that you felt if they were properly trained that they could replace our people one on one, if they were properly trained. To which she replied: I really do not think so; I do not think they can do all of that which American forces do. Then she said: But in some ways, she said, they will be better because and I am liberally quoting her now; she said—they really know the neighborhood. They know better than our people who are these insurgents. So with that, I want to ask a question. If Secretary Rice—first, I want to know if you agree that we cannot make this one to one transfer, because if we could that would begin a drawdown and it could begin to gradually bring our forces home in direct relation- ship to the training of their forces. So I want to ask you about that. But I also, Dr. Cordesman, wanted to ask you: If Secretary Rice is correct and the Iraqis know the neighborhood better, why is it that we do not believe them when they are telling us, the Iraqi in- telligence, that they may have 30,000 fighters and up to 200,000 supporters? You alluded to it, but you did not seem to give it too much credence. So those are those two questions I have. General NEWBOLD. Senator, on the direct swap one for one, I do not believe that we can swap the units and the individuals one for one, but I am also not sure we need to. Again, my recommendation is that we regionalize our approach and we use the newly trained Iraqi forces, who are clearly not up to United States standards right now, but use them in the more benign areas, freeing up some of our forces-coalition forces, United States forces—to move to the more active and violent ones, and over time as the Iraqi forces be- come better trained and become stronger quantitatively, then they can replace us in those areas. So a one for one swap is not required in order to achieve what we want to to withdraw our forces. Dr. CORDESMAN. Senator, part of the problem I have with all of these numbers, as I said earlier, is intelligence, if it is not based on facts, is intelligence based on guesswork. We do not have a way of measuring the number of insurgents in any meaningful way. If you want to make a conservative guess, you push the number down. If you want to make a pessimistic guess, you push it up. I think that the Iraqi Minister of Defense and other Iraqi offi- cials rounded the numbers off because they first wanted to make the point that we are dealing with considerable sympathy for the insurgency. That is where the 200,000 came from. Where the 30,000 came from and whether it is better than 14,000 gets back to whether you define core insurgents, people who are members of organized cells, fighters, part-time sympathizers. Now, we broke those out in Vietnam. What we have today in Iraq is virtually meaningless reports coming out by way of public data, and to the extent I understand it, one reason they are mean- ingless is we have not standardized the way we break out the as- 100 sessment of insurgents in given areas, and our numbers are bad hen we pull together the intelligence estimates. But I have not seen the classified data, I cannot assure you of that. Senator BOXER. Well, Mr. Chairman, if I could just say, I have had meetings with the military, our military, trying to find out the size of this. It is frustrating since our coming home depends on the size of this insurgency. I just wondered if I could simply ask one quick question and that would be the end of me. The CHAIRMAN. Very well. Senator BOXER. That is, what do you think was the role of the Grand Ayatollah Sistani in the turnout? Dr. CORDESMAN. I think it was extremely positive. He has pushed for elections. He has pushed hard. But he has pushed for coalitions. He has been a quietist. He has not pushed for any kind of theocratic rule. It is clear that he sees a Shiite Iraq as an Iraq that has to have Sunnis and Kurds in it, rather than something that is a Shiite enclave. So I think his role was consistently posi- tive. Senator BOXER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Boxer. Senator Martinez. STATEMENT OF HON. MEL MARTINEZ, U.S. SENATOR FROM FLORIDA Senator MARTINEZ. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much and thank you for holding this hearing. I think it is extremely timely. I too share in the delight of seeing these pictures on television of people voting, standing in line, daring the insurgents and daring the negative forces who do not believe in democracy. So I am, for one, extremely pleased with where we are today and I am delighted we have a chance to hear from these gentlemen, and thank you all for coming. Dr. Cordesman, I wanted to ask if you might lay out for me one of the things I heard in following up on the euphoric day of the election about not losing the momentum. I know we have talked in several ways about that issue, but I would like to know from each of you if you could detail out a perhaps one, two, three approach of how to maintain the momentum, but then again how to build on that momentum to achieve the goal that we seek, which is obvi- ously to empower an Iraqi Government to handle their own affairs and yet allow us to have a timely withdrawal. Dr. CORDESMAN. The key to the momentum, Senator, I think is ultimately Iraqi. We need to encourage them—and here my col- leagues have made the same points—to be inclusive, to bring in the Sunnis, to try to defuse the insurgency by showing those Sunnis who will be part of the country that they have a future in spite of the economic and other problems they face. We need to encourage the kind of settlement with the Kurds, the type of federalism that will stabilize the structure. We need to work with the new ministries and new parties and make it clear we will support them and that we accept their sovereignty. One of the visible signs we have to have is the fact that we are not pro- 104 So I think the problems here were not the fabled disbanding of the Iraqi army, which we did with some 18,000 precision-guided munitions and quite a lot of tanks. It was the aftermath. ator NELSON. General, in your statement you said, and I am quoting: “We had a poor to nonexistent plan for the post-invasion phase.” Then you go on to say: “At the national level we”—meaning the United States—“are deluding ourselves in many key ways. Ex- amples are the public assessments of the state of training of the Iraqi forces and police, the underlying nature of, and prospects for, the insurgency, the degree to which we truly have an international coalition in support, and in the strategy for adequately addressing the root causes of terrorism, radicalism, and instability in the re- gion.” I have felt, along with our colleagues here, our leaders in the committee, that the United States has not stepped out vigorously enough to get other nations of the world to help us in the plan for the occupation and in the training of Iraqis. So we have gotten all of these countries, in Europe and others, that have hardened their positions publicly, saying they will not come in and help us with the occupation. But is there not the indication that these countries have told us that they will help with the training of the Iraqi army and the Iraqi police? And, what are your observations about the United States unwillingness to step out and really implore these nati including Arab nations in the region, to help us with training? And, if they would, how do you see that helping us to accelerate the training of the Iraqi forces? General NEWBOLD. Senator, I think it is critical that we get our international partners to participate more fully. Two reasons: Quantitatively, and that is simply we could use more trainers; and also symbolically, to broaden this from a United States occupation to an international effort to rebuild Iraq. Senator Biden, I know, has worked closely to try to gain more from our traditional allies. There are two faults really there. Frankly, my experience in my dealings was that sometimes we dealt with them arrogantly and the reaction of some of our allies was predictable. On the other hand, some of our allies were the ones that would not support Sec- retary Powell's attempts at smart sanctions and the failure of smart sanctions led down a path toward what became the invasion of Iraq and the power of the people that wanted to, the power with- in our government, that wanted to do that. So on the part of the allies, they have been recalcitrant, reluc- tant, and halting, and that is unfortunate. Iraq is important not just for the United States, not just for the region, but for the world. As Senator Biden pointed out, I think we need to redouble our ef- forts, perhaps swallow a little bit of our pride. But we also need to expect some of our traditional allies to be more accommodating, and if they are not, it will stick with us for some time, I am afraid. Dr. CORDESMAN. Senator, could I make just one comment. You referenced "Arab training.” One thing we need to be very caref about: If we take the figures that are normally used, 80 percent of this country is not Sunni Arab. The neighbor to the east is Iran. It is very difficult to bring in outside people for training, for train- ing missions, beyond what we have already gotten from Jordan, 106 stabilized Iraq, but many did so very privately. They did not want it made public because of domestic pressures, and there is some as- sistance from some of these Arab states that is not out there as far as public information. On the issue of the Iraqi army, it was dissolved and many of the conscripts, around 400,000 of the conscripts, the largest share were not going to come back. I think the real problem was in the imme- diate postwar phase, knowing that there was going to be this secu- rity vacuum, that there was not an increase in U.S. and coalition troops to fill that vacuum and to provide basic law and order. There was a grace period where Iraqis did view the coalition forces as liberators, but that quickly eroded because of the lack of basic law and order and the looting that occurred. Senator NELSON. Thank you. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Nelson. Let the record show that Senator Obama has been here from the beginning of the hearing. I appreciate your patience, Senator. We are delighted that you are here as our 11th questioner. We have very good participation today by the committee. Senator Obama. Senator OBAMA. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank the guests. It has been very informative, so I very much appreciate their presence and patience with us. This ink we saw an enormous glimmer of hope in what has been a very difficult situation, and I think that it is a testimony to the Iraqi people. It is also a testimony to our military, which, as you indicated, General, have performed oftentimes despite bad policies to provide the kinds of security that facilitated the election. So I am very proud of our troops. I have mentioned before, Illinois I think, would be the third or fourth largest coalition partner if it was a country. So I am just grateful that we reached the point that we did this weekend. We have a lot of work to do. A couple of questions I have. One, I am just going to pick up off the training issue that Senator Nelson and certainly Senator B Biden have been pursuing vigorously. I was out of the room. I understood that I think someone asked, and my staff indicated that it might have been you, Dr. Cordesman or General Newbold, that you did not think that we needed a one-to-one replacement of American troops to Iraqi security forces. I was not sure whether you were able to elaborate on that, but do you have an estimate at this stage in terms of a reasonable minimum number of security personnel that are fully trained and equipped in the way that you have dis- cussed to allow us then to phase out and let them take on the full responsibility of security in their country? Dr. CORDESMAN. No. Senator: I do not. I think the reasons are this. First, this is an ongoing battle. We do not know what the in- surgency will be over time. As we have all said, a lot of this de- pends on the politics and to some extent the aid policies that are pursued. More inclusive policies could reduce the size of the Sunni threat. If you get the Islamists, the outsiders, the extreme units, more isolated, you need far less troops, both American and Iraqi. If you make mistakes, the reverse is going to be true. We do not have a core understanding at this point of what units in the Iraqi military structure we can build on. I am looking at a report dated 107 21st of January from the U.S. Embassy and it refers to special op- erations forces, a counterterrorist force, and a commando battalion as having conducted independent operations. That is a very limited number of men. But you have got 27 battalions in the field. If you build up to solid brigades and the insurgency goes down, then the Iraqi forces can replace us more quickly. If the insurgency goes up and the Iraqi forces remain weak, then one-to-one ratios become almost theoretical. It has been pointed out that police can operate in much of this country if the country is secure and the police are properly deployed, trained, and equipped But the fact is that today, out of 55,000 supposedly trained Iraqi police forces, about half do not have real training and you have something on the order of 13 battalions out of that force that is somewhere around 8,000 police_with the core capability to deal with significaround 8,000 policbattalions out of the and you have On January 6th they folded the national guard in—and I will leave that to General Newbold or to my other colleague-into the army. That had 68 battalions in the national guard, which sounds incredibly impressive, except maybe two to three of them could ac- tually function because this was the old Facilities Protection Serv- ice. What we desperately need is a clear plan to create a balanced, integrated approach to strengthening Iraqi forces, one that Iraqis can see, that you in the Congress can see, and that the world can see. But for us to sit here and say we can give you these numbers under these conditions, we simply do not have the kind of informa- tion. That is one of the reasons why our efforts are being given so little credibility in much of the region. Senator OBAMA. That is a good point, so let me follow that up, and any of you can respond to this. But where does that plan for security force development and training, where does that get ar- ticulated? Now that we have had these elections, although the job of the assembly is primarily to draft this constitution, is that still primarily our function in consultation with them? Who announces it? How do we track it? Part of my interest is figuring out how, on an ongoing basis, we are going to be able to evaluate the progress that is made. Dr. CORDESMAN. Well, in a practical way, Senator, first, we do not know if the Minister of Defense or the Minister of the Interior will stay. The last time we had considerable turbulence and lost 3 months simply because the Ministers changed. The Minister of De- fense in the old government did not get along well with the Min- ister of the Interior and got along even less well with the Minister of Finance. I would suggest that in practice the best way to approach this would be to have the people actually in the field—General Petraeus, General Sanchez, General Casey—propose an integrated plan which would include the police and security forces with the military to the Iraqi government, so they would have a clear plan to work from rather than ask them to do something they will not be able to do for months, but give them the sovereign right to make the key decisions. 108 I would make that plan clear and public so people could see what our intentions were and that we were really stepping up to the job with the mix of equipment, training, leadership, and advisory pres- ence that is really needed. Senator OBAMA. General, Mr. Khalil, do you want to add any- thing to that? General NEWBOLD. Real quickly, over the last 6 weeks the United States military in Iraq through Central Command has de- veloped actually quite a good security plan. You could argue it is a bit later than the need, but Senator OBAMA. It is a year late. General NEWBOLD. But it is a pretty good plan. My most impor- tant point would be that that is a security plan and, unless articu- lated into a broader plan that shows much more energy and imagi- nation in the economic, political, and informational realm, then we will become more efficient without becoming more effective in Iraq. Senator OBAMA. Mr. Khalil. Mr. KHALIL. Thank you, Senator. Just very quickly also, I think the plan also has to emphasize shifting the focus of training and training resources on the counterinsurgency forces that can really take over responsibility, so increasing police trainers, increasing army ranger training personnel, even FBI trainers in some cases, and not just from the United States, from other coalition partners, I think is imperative, even to the point where you might want to think about not going ahead with the full 68 battalions of the Na- tional Guard. I think they are currently at around 40 battalions or 45 battalions, and shift those resources to training counterinsurgency forces. I think that is a critical element. Senator OBAMA. Mr. Chairman, I know I am out of time, but maybe if I could just have one last follow-up question and then I can turn it over to you and Senator Biden. Shifting gears a little bit, but it picks up on your last point there, General. That is, it is our task as the U.S. Government to articu- late our policies. Dr. Cordesman, you, I think, laid out what I find a very persuasive suggestion, that we specifically, unequivocally, in a policy statement as opposed to in an ad hoc fashion debunk some of the conspiracies that may be conspiracy theories that may be out there with respect to our presence. I thought all those are suggestions thay ught all those are suggestions that I hope this administra- hope on w tion pays attention to. I am wondering whether we should rightly nti, expect a well-articulated exit strategy as part of that broader state- ment, because when Dr. Rice was here I recognized this adminis- tration's reluctance to put a firm timetable. On the other hand, it strikes me that, particularly given some of your comments, Gen- e fact that our presence there may actually inhibit some of the political developments that we want to see happen, that this now may be the time post-election where we stake out a position, recognizing that there may be some flexibility involved, but that we say very clearly, here is what we anticipate doing on the security front, on the economic front, on the political front, and that it would actually enhance our ability to execute over the next year or two. 109 So I wanted to see if what you talked about, doctor, was inclusive of a broader exit strategy or you were restricting your comments to those five or six points that you thought needed to be made. Dr. CORDESMAN. The problem I have with exit strategies bec so confused with simply leaving as distinguished from strategy. Senator OBAMA. Let me interrupt then just to say, I have been very clear and I think the majority, the strong majority of this com- mittee, has been clear that we want also a success strategy and not simply a cut-and-run strategy. So I asked the question in that con- text. Dr. CORDESMAN. I think it is exactly as General Newbold has said, I think frankly we have all said. It should not just be a mili- tary strategy. It should be an economic strategy. It should be a po- litical strategy. It should be a clear statement of American objec- tives. And it should be quite clear to the Iraqis in the world that at the end of this, when Irag is able to have a government tha stands on its own, when it has military forces that, at most, require a United States advisory presence, that when its economy has taken the benefits of the aid that is needed, we will be out of Iraq except for whatever very limited remnant is needed and we will have no bases, we will make no effort to exploit the situation, our objectives will be to create the kind of Iraq which can stand on its own, deal with its own problems, and remain hopefully pluralistic and federalistic. The only caution I would give you, Senator, is I do not believe we should set some calendar. If a calendar is to be proposed it should be proposed by the Iraqis, first, because it is their choice to make and, second, because I become frightened that the minute you put a date down and for any reason you cannot make the eco- nomic program work, the military program takes more time, there is some kind of political division that is not a crisis but difficult, and you cannot meet that deadline, all of a sudden your credibility comes into question and, more than that, as you move toward the deadline the insurgents are going to try to find every fault line they can to make that deadline impractical and unworkable. Senator OBAMA. Could you argue that that was the same argu- ment that was being made about the election? I guess what I am wondering is whether just creating some sense of urgency actually then accelerates activity and shapes and channels and focuses peo- ple's attentions in ways that are useful and makes it less likely that we would drift and continue failed policies when we know that we are going to have to make this thing work in a time certain. Dr. CORDESMAN. There is a difference between, I think, putting out a plan that shows the urgency we have in economic aid ar creating effective military forces and in setting deadlines for with- drawal. Do not forget, Senator, we have two more deadlines just this year, the constitutional election and then an election at the end of the year. We are going to be moving very, very rapidly there. I think the best thing to do is not to set deadlines for with- drawal, but to set very clear milestones for practical U.S. action. One obvious area is to make the aid program work. Another is to get effective Iraqi forces on line. Those give the kinds of urgency I think we need without potentially trapping us. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Obama. 110 We will have a second round of questioning now. We promise not to hold you indefinitely through your lunch hour, but we will allow 10 minutes for our second round. I will commence by raising a question just pragmatically. We on this committee and you today as witnesses have found a number of deficiencies in terms of our planning and execution of whatever we were doing in the past. But pragmatically, what is your assess- ment of how we are doing now? For example, Ambassador Negroponte went to Iraq at midyear to stand up a very large Em- bassy. We estimated, at least at the time of our hearings, that there would be maybe 700 employees in that Embassy, maybe more than that, for that matter, with a number of Iraqis employed in various capacities. Ambassador Negroponte has been in operation now for several months of service there. You have cited Generals Petraeus, Casey, and Sanchez who are now in our military leadership capacity there. I raise this question because frequently as we all talk about this we point out that these things happened and that they did not work out particularly well. But then, as opposed to simply con- demning the whole efforts therefore, we are all in favor of making things work out well now, playing the ball where it lies and moving ahead. How well are we doing with the current leadership that we have in the country? Or should the question be broader? Does it include the President, the Secretaries of Defense and State? In other words, can you give some assessment of how we are doing? Dr. CORDESMAN. Senator, as I said in my testimony, I see signifi- cant improvements taking place in the area. I think that just talk- ing to people, the relationships between the Embassy and the mili- tary, the inter-agency cooperation, is far better than it was a year ago. I think there is the feeling that Ambassador Negroponte has cre- ated an effective team on the civil side. You have several other Am- bassadors, all of which have a very high reputation. You do have a problem. The Embassy, for reasons which we should have thought about harder, was put in the wrong place and the Green Zone is not the place to have an Embassy. You have people too con- centrated in the Embassy. One of the complaints I hear from the military is they need civilians to assist them in a lot of the mis- sions they have and those people are not going out into the field, I think often more because they are not allowed to than because of any reluctance, although there were recruiting problems in get- ting that Embassy staffed with many of the sort of people at the lower and mid-level. So I think you do see a more powerful team, and certainly in the field you have people, I think, that can implement a policy effec- tively. My greatest concern there would be twofold. One is con- tinuity, because I am very much afraid we are going to rotate peo- ple yet again in a society where having people stay is absolutely critical. A 1-year tour is almost a recipe for difficulty, if not failure. The other is I do not know if we have a meaningful problem- a plan, rather, for dealing with this Embassy. I am afraid we have a very expensive building going up in the Green Zone, rather than one which is being moved out into areas at a reasonable size and 112 system the plans that might occur and that, absent our being this bold, might not happen for a while? Do any of you have any thoughts or guidance to our committee along those lines? Senator BIDEN. Our collective staff behind us are rolling their eyes. I think you are dead right, but anyway go on. The CHAIRMAN. Notwithstanding rolling of eyes. Dr. CORDESMAN. I am sure your loyal staff can have such a plan within the next 4 days. More seriously, I think we have to do something. This is the first day of February. It is an obvious statement, but we are now down to 11 months in 2005. We have a constitution which to be made work there has to be as much support to federalism as we can sibly give by way of tangible plans between now and the late spring. We need to be ready to have an election where people fully believe in the future by the end of this year. Those plans should exist in every area. They do not have to be my plan and I am sure each of the colleagues would agree. But it is very, very discouraging that what we have today is no plan in every important area, no plan that can convince the Iraqis, no plan that can convince the Congress, no plan that can win the support of the American people or the world. One way or another, that plan should exist. I do not care what it takes to force it to the surface. It should exist. The CHAIRMAN. Let me just comment quickly that this committee did believe that we ought to be engaged in some type of permanent organization for nation-building or reconstruction, as I think it is now called at the State Department. We proceeded to have a plan for this. Immediately the State Department and other people in the administration said: Well, we are already behind the scenes doing a lot of this and so we really do not want you to pass a bi dating such; it has to happen administratively. So, in fairness, we heard Secretary Rice testifying the other day about quite a considerable effort going on in this area, which is a 180 change from the thought, say of 4 years ago, that we are just not engaged in nation-building, never intend to be. But clearly we are. The State Department actually has some people thinking about this and doing it. This is why I raise this suggestion, that from time to time people say, well, this is not your province. In fact, behind the scenes: You do not know what you are talking about; we are actually doing these things. But I hope that is the case, for the same reason that you have suggested, Dr. Cordesman, because the plans are not ap- parent and they are probably very necessary for all the reasons you have given. I would just conclude by saying specifically that you have raised a very important question that this committee probably should be seized with, and that is the Embassy building. The location and so forth. You are testifying that putting it in the Green Zone is not a very good idea. We are about to appropriate money, as I under- stand, as part of an $80 billion supplemental for Iraq and Afghani- stan to build an Embassy. 117 leadership, you and I, attempt to lay out, attempt to lay out, what we think the strategy should be or encompass, and where we can- not agree at least lay out the alternatives that are available, be- cause quite frankly, Mr. President Mr. Chairman I do not know that it is likely to come in any form that is discernible from any other source, quite frankly. But if we do it-look, you are the guy who put together very quietly a group of the leading people in this country, military, State, retired, active—I mean, employed-left and right, to deal with this nation-building notion. I came along for the ride with you on that. It was your leadership. I am absolutely positively con- vinced that it would not have reached the point where there is ac- tion occurring now had you not done that. So again, I mean this with absolute—there is not a large enough dose of humility for me to suggest that we should try this. But somebody—it has got to be started somewhere. You guys do it. You guys do it from your think tanks, from your background, from your interest, from your great credibility. But it does not quite get there no matter how good you are. So I think it ends up having to-I think it will force the issue. I am going to be presumptuous: I think there will be a lot of grate- ful administration people if, in fact, we could somehow begin to force this issue. And maybe, if we begin, Mr. Chairman, midterm or right in the beginning, it will maybe prove to be unnecessary, and that will be a wonderful moment if that occurs. But I think until we politically help, quite frankly, in a bipartisan way, help make it clear that there is a general consensus on the kinds of things we have to know, I am not sure it is going to happen. I want to point out now for the record and for the press that re- mains here, there has been very little disagreement on post-Sad- dam Iraqi policy, suggestions, criticisms, constructive criticisms, be- tween and among Democrats and Republicans in the Senate. Al- most every one of us who have taken this on as our major responsi- bility, foreign policy and this, have been, if not in the same pew, clearly in the same church. So I do not see that much disagreement based on any partisan, partisan approach to this. So I hope we can, at least, take a crack at some version of that. I personally want to thank each of you. Your testimony and your advice for the last 2 years has been invaluable. Thank you. The CHAIRMAN. Well, I thank the distinguished ranking member for his comments, and I would concur that it is very important for our committee in a bipartisan way to view the situation and to offer constructive ideas. We have been attempting to do that, I think with some success. But I think that probably we need to do more. Stimulated by your guidance this morning, and the excellent testimony you have given, we will proceed to do that. Certainly it would be a better idea than simply having partisan arguments about the competence of the President, of the Secretary of State or Defense or whoever as individuals, personalizing the sit- uations, or debating which administration does better. What we really need now are plans, as you pointed out, with a fairly narrow timeframe in which some things have to occur. If we are able to help stimulate that, this may be for the better. 120 habilitation of the Baghdad Port of Umm Qasr..ted by Congress, was management • Strategy piration, PAPMO, the PRO PCO, cement of was magi people uspite the spendinan essentid the pras renamorganizat;PMO, Ationed initio habilitation of the Baghdad and Basrah International Airports; and rehabilita- tion and management of the Port of Umm Qasr. Funding under IRRF II ($18.4 billion), as appropriated by Congress, was managed by the now-expired CPA, and is currently managed by the Iraq Reconstruction Man- agement Office (IRMO) under the U.S. Department of State Embassy in Iraq. • USAID does not maintain the responsibility for the overall strategic program- ming and program funding decisions for IRRF II funds. Strategic programming authority under IRRF II resided with the CPA under Ambassador Bremer until it expired, and is now with IRMO under the direction of Ambassador Negroponte. • All IRRF II funds apportioned to USAID, under both the CPA and IRMO, are programmed to fulfill specific U.S. government-wide reconstruction goals. USĂID does not retain responsibility for programming the entire $18.4 billion appropriated under IRRF IT. As of January 26, 2005, USAID had been apportioned slightly less than $3 bil- lion of the IRRF II funds. Of that total, over $2.5 billion (87 percent) has been obligated to existing contracts and grants and over $480 million has been spent on ongoing CPAVIRMO-approved projects in support of the Iraqi people. The great bulk of the remainder of the $18.4 billion was apportioned initially through the CPA to the Iraq Project Management Office (PMO), and then to the Iraq Project and Contracting Office (PCO), an organization of the U.S. Depart- ment of Defense (post-CPA, the PMO was renamed as the PCO). The role of the CPA/PMO, and the programming decisions that it made prior to its expiration, is an essential component to any discussion of reconstruction • Despite the relatively small share of reconstruction funds apportioned to USAID, USAID has provided successful programs which address short and me- dium-term needs while setting the foundations for long-term stability. • Under the IRRF II, for example, a total $786 million is dedicated to healthcare. USAID has been apportioned only $75 million (9 percent) of that amount. Of this, $50 million is obligated to the current construction of a children's hospital in Basrah, and the remaining funds are currently being programmed to build capacity at the Ministry of Health. All other dedicated healthcare funds have been apportioned to PCO. Additionally, under IRRF II, USAID is implementing successful programs in local governance, community development, transition initiatives, health, edu- cation, private sector development, economic governance, vocational education, business skills training, agriculture, infrastructure rehabilitation (power, water and sanitation, and telecommunications), humanitarian assistance, and assist- ance to the elections process. USAID has undertaken a comprehensive approach to democratic development in Iraq, not limited to elections as an event, but encompassing the deeper and more profound changes required to establish stable democratic institutions. Most impor- tantly, USAID recognizes that the spirit of democracy is rooted not in the institu- tions of government, but in the people. Therefore, we have worked creatively and vigorously to ensure that the Iraqi people have an active voice in the creation of their own democracy. • USAID recognized, before arriving in Iraq, the importance of effective regional and local governance to Iraq's future, both as a tool of governance, and as an incubator for a new generation of democratic elite. Toward that end, USAID programs have worked in a coordinated fashion to support Iraq's political tran- sition, informing Iraqis of the process, assisting in the devolution of authority to provincial and city governments, and constructing the mechanisms to foster a new cadre of democratic leaders in Iraq. To promote diverse and representative citizen participation in communities throughout Iraq, USAID designed the Iraq Community Action Program (CAP). Under this program, USAID awarded cooperative agreements now worth nearly $168 million to five international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). These NGOs are working in different regions across Iraq to foster stability and improve Iraqis' lives by ensuring that citizens' basic needs are met within their respective communities in a process that gives Iraqis a voice in those decisions. Specifically, this program: • Establishes community committees that are representative of the gender, eth- nic, and religious composition of the community; • Demonstrates rapid improvements in Iraqis' lives and the positive outcome of citizens working together to identify common priorities; and • Draws upon local expertise to address identified priority needs. 122 thapni 2004, USAID, in infrastructure and tran as to provide lahor Bagh- ce, through of essentials surface se mase approved o follow-up to elections success with comprehensive support to the Iraqi demo- cratic transition. USAID has adapted to the challenges of the insurgency and is providing short and medium-term deliverables through its programs—directly and more visibly improv- ing the lives of Iraqis. USAID's programs have been designed, from the outset, to balance the need for short and medium-term deliverables with the need for setting the foundation for longer-term stability in Iraq. • USAID's ongoing agriculture, civil society, education, health, and local govern- ance programs all institute grant programs designed precisely for flexibility and short and medium-term impact while linking these short-term impacts into a coherent long-term strategy. USAID has formed a unique partnership with the U.S. Army's 1st Cavalry Divi- sion (1st Cav). Together, USAID and the lst Cav are focusing their efforts on reducing tensions in Sadr City and other poor neighborhoods throughout Bagh- dad that have become dangerous. Since April 2004, USAID, in coordination with the 1st Cav, has targeted imme- diate assistance, through its infrastructure and transition initiative programs, to improve the provision of essential services as well as to provide labor-inten- sive projects such as trash pick-up and surface sewage removal in restive Bagh- dad neighborhoods. In this joint effort, USAID has approved more than 860 transition initiative grants, worth nearly $100 million. This effort has generated both extensive short-term employment for thousands of Iraqis and provides the foundations for medium-term stability. Since June 2004, USAID grants have created temporary (60-day plus) jobs for an average of 21,000 local residents per month in the Baghdad districts of Sadr City, Tissa Nissan, Abu Ghraib, Karradah, Al Rasheed, Al Mansour, Al Adahamiyah and Al Khark. • Moving forward, these projects served as models for collaboration between USAID and the U.S. military that was replicated in other strategic cities, in- cluding Najaf, Tal’Afar, and Samarra. USAID has taken a comprehensive approach to the particular challenges of mar- ket economic transitions. • USAID has extensive, successful experience assisting in command-to-market economic transitions. We are well aware of the time and effort this transition requires and our programs reflect the long-term view, but do not ignore short and medium-term deliverables. • Drawing on our experience, from Poland to Mongolia, we designed and are im- plementing a comprehensive program of systematic and sustained assistance in Iraq. Individual programs in economic governance, private sector development, voca- tional education, and agricultural reform address both the immediate problems of Iraq's economy, and are establishing the foundations for the long-term proc- ess of economic transformation. USAID has deployed highly qualified personnel to Iraq and these staffs have maintained USAID's continuity on the ground. USAID personnel joined a multi-agency effort to plan for humanitarian and re- construction needs in Iraq in late 2002, and USAID was prepared to mobilize its significant development resources and technical expertise to support human- itarian relief and reconstruction requirements in Iraq. • Following the cessation of major conflict, the U.S. Government deployed a multi-agency Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART)—including USAID staff—to Iraq to assess and respond to humanitarian needs and to help coordi- nate the emergency relief effort. • At the same time, USAID deployed technical staff to prepare for the immediate reconstruction requirements. USAID established offices in Arbil, Baghdad, Al Hillah, and Al Basrah and USAID personnel were located in Kuwait, Doha, Amman, and Cyprus to provide regional support. On July 27, 2003, the USAID Mission Director officially announced the formation of USAID's Mission to Iraq. The USAID Mission in Baghdad coordinates all USAID programs. • USAID has deployed numerous expert personnel, with post-conflict development experience in regions including Serbia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, West Bank/ Gaza, and East Timor, to Iraq. Regional experts with experience in programs throughout the Arab world, from Jordan to Egypt to Morocco, are a core part of USAID's staff, as well as of the staffs of our contractors. 123 USAID experts include career foreign service officers with decades of overseas experience; academics who have spent many years doing research on topics as diverse and relevant as local governance in the Arab world, peace-building, and strategic planning for reconstruction and stabilization; economists and lawyers specialized in command-to-market transitions who have served from Poland to Mongolia; engineers with major project experience in infrastructure develop- ment throughout the developing world; and civil society experts who have run programs in countries as diverse as Guatemala, Mali, Egypt, and Romania. Our experts are not merely visiting Iraq. They are deployed there for an ex- tended period of time. In fact, there are still USAID personnel on the ground that entered Iraq immediately following the war in 2003. As a result of their exceptional skill and dedication, the majority of USAID senior staff tours in Iraq have averaged over one year from the beginning of our service there. This pattern does not evidence a lack of continuity. USAID has, and continues to work in close cooperation, indeed partnership, with both the appropriate government agencies in Iraq, as well as with the Iraqi people. • All USAID programs have been developed, and are implemented in the closest possible consultation with Iraqi government leaders and organizations. USAID and all of its partners employ large numbers of Iraqi professional staff in a wide range of technical and expert roles in every program area. • We continue to expend considerable effort to train Iraqi contractors to function as productive sub-contractors on various reconstruction projects using substan- tial numbers of Iraqi labor. For example, Bechtel has used 120 different Iraqi subcontractors on 160 sub- contracts for a total value of $185 million under its first contract. Additionally, Bechtel employed an average of 3–4,000 Iraqis per day in 2004 on projects in Iraq. • At present, USAID programs, contracts and grants alone are employing 53,900 Iraqis.