especially for our veterans. As one general put it to me, he said,
"You know, sir, the United States Army is fully mobilized and
going at this war. But the American people aren't. They are not be-
hind this war in the way that the Army is.”
So our veterans, our reservists, our guardsmen are suffering as
a result. We have got homeless veterans, we have got people who
are being shoved out of the-off active duty without adequate tran-
sition time. We have got enormous problems building with our Vet-
erans Administration and for our reserve component force. I think
it is incumbent upon this committee to take the lead in dealing
with those issues.
We simply need to augment the size of the active force substan-
tially. We need to fully fund our material requirements. We need
the benefits and support the reserve force. And as both
a pragmatic and moral imperative, we need to fully fund the Veter-
ans Administration and improve our support structure for veter-
ans.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to testify. I would
be happy to take your questions.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, General Clark.
[The prepared statement of General Clark can be found in the
Appendix on page 63.]
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Perle, thank you. You also have been a very
frequent witness for this committee, and we have greatly appre-
ciated your recommendations and your observations over the years,
and thanks for being with us this morning. How do you think we
are doing and where do we need to go?
uce. I appreciate the opportunit- -
STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD PERLE, FELLOW, AMERICAN
ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE
Secretary PERLE. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you again for inviting me. It is always an honor to appear
before this committee. I appreciate the opportunity to share with
you some ideas and observations about the situation in Iraq and,
more specifically, some of the lessons we should take away from
our experience there.
Within the Department of Defense and among its many advisors
and consultants, there have already been several important lessons
learned, assessments. I imagine you have been briefed on some of
those. These cover everything from the effectiveness of the specific
weapons systems, procedures, organizations and training to the
performance of individual uni
ance of individual units, flows of information, logistics, in-
telligence and the like.
Our military lives or dies by the lessons it learns and, for this
reason, it is deeply introspective. Those who have made and con-
tinue to make these assessments are far more qualified than I am
to think about the next generation of plans, procedures, operations
and guidance that will flow from this process of critical self-exam-
ination. I wish simply to draw a few broad lessons that are likely
to be applicable to future situations in which we find it necessary
to use military force to combat our terrorist enemies.
I am also quite happy to address the other question of what we
need to do with respect to regional wars.


17
15, 20, 30 of them are killed; or when they are graduating from the
police academy or the training that is provided with our help, they
are killed. Is there a way, because I mean, to protect them? Be-
cause if this continues on, it might take a long, long time before
we will be able for them to protect their own and their own coun-
try, to defend their country.
Another thing that struck out in the testimony is that—and I
have heard this before because at least 40, 45 percent of the re-
serves have been activated. Some of the equipment is not coming
back. Now we are concerned with an attack inside our own country.
When the equipment stays behind, they cannot train because the
equipment is not with them. So how can they respond in case we
have an attack from within?
These are the two things that really bother me, and maybe both
of you can touch on those two things: when will they
able to
take over? Number two, what will happen if we don't have the
equipment so that our reserves or the National Guard can train in
case something—God forbid, I hope never happens—happens in the
United States?
General CLARK. Congressman Ortiz, I think the answer to the
first, the issue of the insecurity in Iraq, is something that has got
to be dealt with from the top down, starting with the building of
the Iraqi government, establishment of legitimacy, building of the
armed forces, local police forces, collecting intelligence, gathering
security.
In the near term what is happening, of course, is U.S. Armed
Forces are filling in for the need and using the Iraqi forces as they
are trained; and I am sure that there are efforts under way to iden-
tify areas and times of specific vulnerability, such as when there
is a graduation or a crowd gathering. And I am sure there are ef-
forts under way—or there will be efforts under way, because this
is just a function of good leadership on the ground, of assessing
your vulnerabilities and developing a plan to protect yourself in
those vulnerable areas. It is a question of what the capacity is of
the Iraqis.
So where we are right now in this process as I see it is we are
in the risk-taking stage. We are going to redeploy U.S. forces away
from the most intense fighting. We are going to push the Iraqi
forces out front to do more and more. We are going to be, I hope,
establishing an advisory structure so that there is a linkage be-
tween the Iraqi forces on the ground and our ability to reinforce
to—if they get something they can't handle in a timely fashion, and
that will entail risk. As we disengage U.S. forces and put the Iraqi
forces in, I think it is a risk that we have to take; and we know
that the insurgency knows this and is targeting the Iraqis. So we
are witnessing the ongoing conflict there.
There is no reason to believe that we can't establish an effective
Iraqi security force, given time and adequate resources. And we are
just—as someone who is not part of the Administration, I just have
to watch it being developed. I know our generals who are doing the
training. I have confidence in them. They simply have to ask and
demand what they need to get the job done.
At home, we know our reserve components have given up a lot
of equipment, and they have got a substantial recovery mode. And


35
beforehand to make sure, when we get the initial result we want,
that we can follow through.
Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you. Did you want to respond
to that Mr. Perle, at all?
Secretary PERLE. Well, there is turbulence in the region, there is
no doubt about that. I think much of it is attributable to the exam-
ple of what is happening in Iraq; because while we are con-
centrated, understandably, on solving day-to-day problems in Iraq,
protecting our men and women who are in uniform in Iraq, and en-
couraging the evolution of democratic institutions in Iraq, seen
from the point of view of a Syrian or a Lebanese or an Iranian,
something extraordinary is happening in Iraq, and that is people
are voting for their leaders. And if you live in a country where you
have never had a chance to vote for your leader and you despise
your leader, that is going to have consequences.
And that is what I believe we are seeing when a million people
turn out in the streets of Beirut and when you start to hear de-
mands in places like Syria for a liberalization.
Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you. I guess the concern would
be whether we assume that that is going to be the reaction or we
plan for something different.
Secretary PERLE. Well, we can't always know what the reaction
is going to be. But I am certainly not suggesting that we go into
Syria or that we go into Iran. What I am happy to suggest is that
we work with Syrians and Iranians who want to change their gov-
ernment.
Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you. Thank you to both of you.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentlelady. The gentleman from Ten-
nessee, Mr. Cooper.
Mr. COOPER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would encourage you
to follow up on General Clark's suggestion, that we do have hear-
ings on Syria so we are a little more prepared for this possible con-
flict.
The CHAIRMAN. I just tell the gentleman, I think he has made
an excellent point. I think we may entitle it, though, if General
Clark appears on it, “Freedom can be hell,” because it brings insta-
bility, and the torment that we went through when we took down
the Soviet empire was that there was going to be turbulence.
But I think, obviously, looking into the aftermath, the long pic-
ture in the entire region is, I think, something that is very appro-
priate; and I can assure the gentleman we will do that, probably
mostly in classified form.
The gentleman is recognized.
Mr. COOPER. I thank the Chair. Mr. Chairman, the Bible says,
"By their fruits we shall know them.” I think, if you look at the
testimony that both these gentlemen delivered to this committee
prior to the war, there is no question as to who ended up being
more correct. I think it is General Clark by a wide margin. And I
could read all the statements in here—I would encourage folks to
look it up on the Web, but it is results that matter for the Amer-
ican taxpayer.
Regardless of the pros and cons of entering into the war, we are
there now. Somehow we have got to pay for it, we have got to get


37
an
You know, the American people want answers to these questions,
and I don't think they are getting them. And for you to suggest in
your testimony that we should have just pulled out immediately
after the fall of Baghdad or, quote, “as soon as possible thereafter,”
I don't think any professional military person in the country would
have said, “Oh, we can break and leave.”
Secretary PERLE. I didn't say that.
Mr. COOPER. In your testimony, you said, and I quote, “We
should have turned over Iraq to the Iraqis on the day Baghdad fell
or as soon as possible thereafter.” That is a quote from your testi-
mony.
Secretary PERLE. Yes. But I did not suggest and didn't say that
we should have left. The Iraqis should have accepted responsibility
for governing Iraq; we obviously had to be there.
What I was-
Mr. COOPER. How long? Where were our plans? Who is going to
pay for it? Who is paying for it? The Chinese are paying for it
today. Is that an appropriate national strategy? Do you want our
volunteer force damaged the way it is being damaged today? Re-
cruitment is suffering. Where are the answers to these questions?
You may have done-
Secretary PERLE. I think you are raising a question about wheth-
er we should have gone to war in Iraq at all.
Mr. COOPER. We are there. Let us figure out a way out. Let us
figure out a way to pay for it. What are your ideas for paying for
this war?
Secretary PERLE. The way we pay for wars is by imposing taxes
on the American people.
Mr. COOPER. Are you suggesting a tax increase, Mr. Perle?
Secretary PERLE. I am suggesting that whatever the cost of the
war, it will have to come from tax revenues.
Mr. COOPER. Therefore, you are suggesting a tax increase?
Secretary PERLE. Not necessarily. Within the top line, decisions
have to be made about priorities.
Mr. COOPER. You are aware how, even in the defense budget,
even though it is the largest in our history, Iraq is crowding out
so many of our needs. General Clark spoke eloquently to that ear-
lier. Weapons systems, research, the needs of our troops are being
crowded out in order to pay for the aftermath of this conflict that
we were clearly not prepared for.
General Clark says specifically in his testimony back two years
ago, “We should not be using force until the personnel, the organi-
zations, the plans that will be required in postconflict Iraq are pre-
pared and ready.”
And you were the Chairman of the Defense Policy Board; you
must have known we had little, if any, postwar planning-little, if
any.
Secretary PERLE. I don't agree with that.
Mr. COOPER. Well, what plans did we have?
Secretary PERLE. Well, I think there was a tremendous effort
that went into attempting to anticipate developments and organize
responses to those developments.
Mr. COOPER. Where is the evidence of that? General Keane him-
self, as Mr. Skelton pointed out earlier, suggested that we were se-


38
duced by Iraqi exiles. You know, your version of the facts is quite
different than some other knowledgeable, professional, lifetime
military in this country, and yet you are a defense intellectual and
you know better.
Secretary PERLE. All I can say is, if you don't want to hear my
views because I am a defense intellectual, then don't invite me to
testify.
Mr. COOPER. No, I am asking for evidence.
The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask the gentleman: You have laid out 25
or 30 questions to Mr. Perle, and when he starts to answer, you
have got another question for him. If you want a response, let us
let him give it.
Does the gentleman have a particular question he wants to have
a response to?
Mr. COOPER. How are we going to pay for this war?
Secretary PERLE. Well, as I said, the funds to pay for this war,
like any other war, like any other expenditure of the government,
will come from tax revenues. What lies behind the question is frus-
tration at how costly the war has proven to be, and I share that
frustration. It has proven to be very costly indeed. I don't know of
any other way to pay for it.
The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman has waited a long time to have
his questions. Do you want to have any questions of General Clark?
And then we will move to Mr. Saxton.
Mr. COOPER. I appreciate the Chair's indulgence. Overall, I ap-
preciate the accuracy of General Clark's prior testimony.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from New
Jersey, Mr. Saxton.
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I apologize
for not being here earlier. Mr. Perle, I recently read the book that
you and David Frum wrote, and you know that I enjoyed it because
you and I had a conversation about it subsequent to that. And one
of the—the concluding paragraph of chapter three is an interesting
one, and I just wanted to give you a chance to talk about this con-
cept a bit.
The paragraph reads, “This murderous rage must be met and de-
feated on three fronts”-of course, talking about the Islamic terror-
ist threat—“on three fronts: at home where it attempts to pene-
trate our defenses and murder our young people; abroad where it
inspires governments and terrorist troops to plot nuclear and bio-
logical jihad against us; and finally, in the minds of the men and
women in the Islamic world.”
I was particularly interested in the last of those three, “In the
minds of the men and women in the Islamic world.” that is a task
which you might define as an uphill battle. And I just wanted to
give you an opportunity to talk about that for a few minutes, be-
cause I know that you have great concern with regard to that sub-
ject.
Secretary PERLE. Thank you, Congressman Saxton.
Look, I believe that within the Muslim world there is a division
of opinion. The overwhelming majority of Muslims would behave as
would the humane citizens of any country. They are not interested
in holy war, they are not interested in terrorism, they are not in-
terested in assassination, beheadings, kidnapping, and all the rest.


DayIII
pieces. How would we do that? With the United Nations mission?
Calling on the Saudis? Maybe get the Egyptians there? We don't
know that.
But it is irresponsible for the United States, as the dominant
player in the world right now, to be threatening governments and
pushing them down and then not being prepared and working to
help create the conditions which can meet their citizens' needs.
People in the region say, “Look, give us a chance.” They say they
want, they all want democracy, but they don't want to go through-
they do not want the condition of lawlessness that we have allowed
to happen in Iraq.
The CHAIRMAN. But don't you think it was a condition of democ-
racy of the Iraqi model and the American presence that protected
that model to actually operate, that inspired hundreds of thousands
of people to demonstrate in Beirut? That wasn't the Americans
demonstrating; those were Lebanese that inspired people to begin
moving toward multiparty elections in Egypt, and it probably was,
in my estimation, the American presence, along with the long dia-
logue that we have been having.
As I understand, our folks have been working, discussing, having
discussions with Mr. Qadhafi long before those shipments of arma-
ments or his weapons complex machinery began moving to the
United States. But those, all those things were not, in my esti-
n, a function of intimidation, but were a function of people
looking at the Iraqi model and these elections and saying, We
would like to have that for our country.
Don't you agree with that?
General CLARK. Mr. Chairman, I think we are trying to talk past
each other. I am trying to talk about national strategy and the big
picture, and I feel like what you are trying to do is take political
credit.
The CHAIRMAN. No, I am not trying to take political credit.
General CLARK. Then let us talk about the Iraq problem.
The CHAIRMAN. What I am saying is, when you have a democ-
racy, General, when you have a democracy and you have a country
that embraces democracy, that country then has-generally speak-
ing, our historic experience has been it has a benign relationship
with the United States which lends itself toward stability. That is
why we are not worried about Britain even though Britain has nu-
clear weapons.
And so while I agree that you don't go out and bash countries
with the idea that we only want you to be free because it is in the
American interest, I think it is good news when you have nations
that turn toward freedom; and that the experience of discomfort
and turbulence to some degree that you meet, that you find and
discover when dictatorships are disassembled is something—is a
cost that sometimes we simply have to pay. And I don't see a way
to move seamlessly and without any turbulence at all from brutal
dictatorships to free societies.
General CLARK. We moved in Eastern Europe, we moved in Po-
land, in the Czech Republic, in Slovakia, in Hungary.
The CHAIRMAN. But with the disassembly of the Soviet empire?
General CLARK. And we did that without a war.


56
strength of the American Army, and that is billions of dollars of re-
sources we are talking about to do that.
The CHAIRMAN. But you don't think that the—I mean, to some
degree then your theme has been, and Mr. Perle's, also, that we
should have handed off the military, the civilian reins quicker than
that we would have served ourselves and the Iraqis-
disserved the Iraqis by not doing that early.
By the same token, would you agree with the proposition that we
are not going to develop good military leadership at the division
brigade battalion level unless we hand off fairly large chunks of re-
sponsibility? The longer we hold off on that, the slower the Iraqi
military is going to be in producing quality leadership.
I mean, there is an aspect to getting people to swim and that you
want to get them into the water quickly and you want to do a little
risk taking as opposed to the slow process.
Do you think that we are putting off the development of the Iraqi
military to some degree by not giving them the tougher jobs, the
tougher security jobs, the ones with more exposure?
General CLARK. I think it depends on how you define tougher se-
curity jobs. There are two things that are tough about it—there are
three things that are tough. There is, first of all, the intelligence
collection. They cannot do—and we are not going to give them the
techniques to do right now all the sophisticated technical stuff we
have got. So they are not going to have that.
The CHAIRMAN. No. Understanding that.
General CLARK. Number two is there is the sort of kicking down
doors in the middle of night and pulling people out of their homes.
Now it is my understanding they have hired back a lot of the peo-
ple from the old regime who were part of the Ministry of Interior
and are really good at doing this, and that is a very dangerous
thing to have done, but that is what is being done, I am told. That
means that we are building in an automatic conflict in between the
government and its own servants in terms of standards of
and law, rule of law, so forth. That is a tough task.
We have already started turning over the Iraqis, and I am in
favor of really close supervision of that one, as long as you can get
away with that without it infringing too much on Iraqi sovereignty.
Then there is the tough task of using big battalions, combat sup-
port, air-ground coordination and so forth. You have got to walk up
to this one. It takes us in the United States Army 16 years to train
a battalion commander and longer for a brigade commander. So,
assuming we have got some captains that have come in, two or
three years of training, it is not asking too much.
At this point, having invested all these lives and all these hun-
dreds of millions of dollars and all of our national prestige in this,
then I think we need to do as much as we can to minimize the risk
that something is going to go seriously wrong during this phase of
the operation, and that means that I would err on the side of plan-
ning for, resourcing and preparing for a longer stay. Then if you
can reduce it, fine. But not to try to cut corners now.
The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Mr. Perle.
Secretary PERLE. I would go for the longer handover as well, but
I believe the emphasis should be on police and gendarmerie func-
tions, rather than on battalion level military maneuver.


Statement of
General Wesley Clark, USA, (ret.)
Former Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, and
Commander in Chief, U.S. European Command
before the
House Armed Services Committee
on
April 6, 2005
(63)