4.AR 5/2 A:2007-2008/2 [H.A.S.C. No. 110–2] THE WAY FORWARD IN IRAQ COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION HEARING HELD JANUARY 11, 2007 Pennsyivania at University JAN 1 2 2009 Dor te Camartion U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON : 2008 38–367 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) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001 HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS IKE SKELTON, Missouri JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina DUNCAN HUNTER, California SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas JIM SAXTON, New Jersey GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii TERRY EVERETT, Alabama MARTY MEEHAN, Massachusetts ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland SILVESTRE REYES, Texas HOWARD P. “BUCK” MCKEON, California VIC SNYDER, Arkansas MAC THORNBERRY, Texas ADAM SMITH, Washington WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina LORETTA SANCHEZ, California ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina MIKE MCINTYRE, North Carolina KEN CALVERT, California ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania W. TODD AKIN, Missouri ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia SUSAN A. DAVIS, California JEFF MILLER, Florida RICK LARSEN, Washington JOE WILSON, South Carolina JIM COOPER, Tennessee FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey JIM MARSHALL, Georgia TOM COLE, Oklahoma MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam ROB BISHOP, Utah MARK UDALL, Colorado MICHAEL TURNER, Ohio DAN BOREN, Oklahoma JOHN KLINE, Minnesota BRAD ELLSWORTH, Indiana CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan NANCY BOYDA, Kansas PHIL GINGREY, Georgia PATRICK J. MURPHY, Pennsylvania MIKE ROGERS, Alabama HANK JOHNSON, Georgia TRENT FRANKS, Arizona CAROL SHEA-PORTER, New Hampshire THELMA DRAKE, Virginia JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS, Washington DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND, New York GEOFF DAVIS, Kentucky JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland KENDRICK B. MEEK, Florida KATHY CASTOR, Florida ERIN C. CONATON, Staff Director MARK LEWIS, Professional Staff Member STEPHANIE SANOK, Professional Staff Member REGINA BURGESS, Research Assistant MARGEE MECKSTROTH, Staff Assistant (II) THE WAY FORWARD IN IRAQ HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, Washington, DC, Thursday, January 11, 2007. The committee met, pursuant to call, at 1 p.m., in room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ike Skelton (chairman of the committee) presiding. OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. IKE SKELTON, A REPRESENTA- TIVE FROM MISSOURI, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES The CHAIRMAN. Ladies and gentlemen, the hearing will come to order. This is the opening hearing for the Committee on Armed Services in the 110th Congress. It is a pleasure to see all of my returning colleagues, as well as the new faces, and I will have to admit that it is a pleasure to have the gavel. And I especially appreciate the gentleman from California who gave the gavel to me at our organi- : zational gathering just a couple of days ago, and I will do my best to use it as thoroughly as I possibly can. I appreciate your doing so. So, welcome. The purpose of this hearing is to discuss the President's proposal for the way forward in Iraq. Testifying on that proposal and ready to answer questions, of course we have our newly appointed Sec- retary of Defense, Robert Gates, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace. Secretary Gates has had a long and distinguished government career, culminating in his years as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1991 to 1993. And we are blessed to have you, Mr. Secretary, and thank you for mak- ing this your very first hearing in the Congress of the United States. General Pace, of course, is an old pro in this room, as he is in the United States Marine Corps and is the leader of our joint forces. As always, General Pace, we count on your candor and your good judgment in performing our constitutional responsibility for oversight, as well as your duty under the Goldwater-Nichols Act, which was passed in 1986, which we would like to thank you for. I understand, General Pace, you do not have prepared testimony as per we had discussed earlier. I notice, if I may, on page five, Mr. Secretary, of your written tes- timony, you are going to turn to General Pace to provide the sum- mary of the military installments of the President's plan. That, of course, is a critical piece of what the President laid out last evening, and our committee is given the responsibility for oversight of that. I understand the arrangement with you and General Pace ·! (1) tural understanding and language capability to do that, which Americans do not have, and it allows the Americans to support the operations by moving to what I would call' our "leverage positions” of special operations, intelligence, firepower, precision strike, and logistics capabilities. The Iraqis that are in Baghdad will gain combat experience. This will improve their military capabilities. They will increase oper- ational confidence through these combined U.S.-Iraqi operations. And I would see—if this works in Baghdad, Mr. Secretary, I would see the opportunity to employ it throughout the country, but par- ticularly those contention areas where you have three Iraqi maneu- ver battalions with one American backup battalion. And after the Iraqi forces hit their stride and are operating effi- ciently, the American battalion can then turn over to an Iraqi bat- talion, leaving essentially the security apparatus in the hands of the Iraqis. I think this can serve as a template, and I would hope that you would look at it and talk to the battalion commanders in theater and see if we cannot utilize it throughout the country, understand- ing, of course, that we have used this partnership, this combined arms and combined forces, in a number of operations. So let me just offer that to you, and we will give you some backup data on this recommendation. Let me just conclude by saying this: I think that this operation in Iraq is following the basic blueprint that we have followed in this country for 60 years in bringing freedom to other nations. Whether you are talking about Japan or the Philippines or El Sal- vador or dozens of other nations, that is to stand up a free govern- ment. Number two, you stand up a military capable of protecting that free government. Number three, the Americans leave, and right now we are involved in the most difficult challenge, which is standing up that military which is capable of protecting a free gov- ernment. The President has a plan. He has vetted it with his military lead- ership. He has requested reinforcements to Anbar and to Baghdad to make this plan work, and I think it is incumbent upon us in light of the fact that we are engaged in combat right now, that re- inforcements have been requested, that they are needed; and this 21,500-person increase takes us essentially to the same level that we were last year at this time. I recommend strongly to my colleagues that we support the mili- tary leadership, that we support the commander in chief and, Mr. Chairman, that we support the call for reinforcements. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The CHAIRMAN. I thank my friend from San Diego. Did I get it right? Mr. HUNTER. Very good. The CHAIRMAN. I got it right. Thank you so much. Mr. Secretary, the floor is yours. STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT M. GATES, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE Secretary GATES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Congressman Hunter, members of the committee, let me say at the outset that it is a pleasure to appear before this committee for the first time as Secretary of Defense and, I might add, on the an- niversary of the conclusion on my third week on the job. The House Armed Services Committee has long been a steadfast friend and ally of our men and women in uniform and a source of support in meeting our Nation's defense goals. I thank you for that, and I look forward to working with you. Let me begin by advising you of two announcements that I made this morning. First, the President announced last night that he would strengthen our military for the long war and its terrorism by authorizing an increase in the overall strength of the Army and the Marine Corps. I am recommending to him a total increase in the two services of 92,000 soldiers and Marines over the next 5 years, 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 Marines. The emphasis will be on increasing combat capability. This increase will be accomplished in two ways. First, we will propose to make permanent the temporary increase of 30,000 for the Army and 5,000 for the Marine Corps. Then we propose to build up from that basis over a 5-year period annual in- crements of 7,000 troops per year for the Army for a total of, as Mr. Hunter said, 547,000; and 5,000 a year for 5 years for the Ma- rine Corps until they reach 202,000. I am aware that this committee has been leading the national debate over the proper size of the military and, accordingly, I hope that you will join us in supporting this important initiative. It will take some time for these new troops to become available for deploy- ment, but it is important that our men and women in uniform know that additional manpower and resources are on the way. Second, for several months, the Department has been assessing whether we have the right policies to govern how we manage and deploy members of the reserves, the national guard and active com- ponent units. Based on this assessment and the recommendations of our military leadership, I am prepared to make the following changes to Department of Defense policy. First, mobilization of ground force, ground reserve forces, will be managed on a unit basis instead of on an individual basis. This change will allow us to achieve greater unit cohesion and predict- ability in how reserve units train and deploy. Second, from this point forward, members of the reserves will be ntarily mobilized for a maximum of 1 year at any one time in contrast to the current practice of 16 to 24 months. Third, the planning objective for the guard and reserve units will remain one year of being mobilized followed by five years demobi- lized. However, today's global demands will require a number of se- lected guard and reserve units to be remobilized sooner than this standard. Our intention is that such exceptions will be temporary. The goal for the active force rotation cycle remains one year de- ployed for every two years at home station. Today, however, most active units are receiving one year at home before deploying again. Mobilizing select guard and reserve units before their five-year pe- riod is complete will allow us to move closer to relieving the stress on the total force. Fourth, I am directing the establishment of a new program to compensate individuals in both the active and reserve components who are required to mobilize or deploy early or to extend beyond the established rotation policy goals. Fifth and finally, I am directing that all commands and units re- view how they administer the hardship waiver program to ensure that they are properly taking into account exceptional cir- cumstances facing our military families of deployed service mem- bers. It is important to note that these policy changes have been under discussion for some time within the Department of Defense and would be needed regardless of the President's announcement on Iraq last night. Finally, I am pleased to report that all of the active branches of the United States military exceeded their recruiting goals for the month of December with particularly strong showings by the Army and the Marine Corps. Our Nation is truly blessed that so many talented and patriotic young people have stepped forward to defend our Nation and that so many servicemen and women have chosen to continue to serve. A few words on the new Iraq strategy: last night, the President described a new way forward in Iraq, a new approach to over- coming the steep challenges facing us in that country and in that part of the world. I know many of you have concerns about the new strategy in Iraq and, in particular, are skeptical of the Iraqi gov- ernment's will and ability to act decisively against sectarian vio- lence and are skeptical, as well, about a commitment of additional American troops. The President and his national security team have had the same concerns as we have debated and examined our options in Iraq going forward, and yet our commanders on the ground and the President's intended nominee as the n mander in Baghdad believe this is a sound plan, in no small part because General Casey and other senior military officers have worked closely with the Iraqi government in developing it. Further, the President. “Ambassador Khalilizad and General Casey have had prolonged and extremely candid conversations not just with Prime Minister Maliki but with other senior leaders of the Iraqi government, and have come away persuaded that they have the will to act against all instigators of the violence in Bagh- dad. This is, I think, the pivot point in Iraq as the Iraqi govern- ment insists on assuming the mantle of leadership in the effort to regain control of its own capital. I want you to know that the timetable for the introduction of ad- ditional U.S. forces will provide ample opportunity early on and be- fore many of the additional U.S. troops arrive in Iraq to evaluate the progress of this endeavor and whether the Iraqis are fulfilling their commitments to us. With apologies for the miscommunication, Mr. Chairman, at the end of my remarks, General Pace will summarize the military as- pects of the plan, but let me make just two points. First, this strategy entails a strengthening across all aspects of the war effort, military and non-military, including the economic, governance, and political areas. Overcoming the challenges in Iraq cannot be achieved simply by military means, no matter how large or sustained, without progress by the Iraqis in addressing the un- derlying issues dividing the country. Second, we must keep in mind the consequences of an American failure in Iraq. Multiple administrations of both political parties have concluded that what happens in Southwest Asia, the Gulf Re- gion, and the Middle East is of vital interest to the security and prosperity of the American people. As I said in my confirmation hearing, developments in Iraq over the next year or two will shape the future of the Middle East and impact global geopolitics for a - long time to come. Whatever one's views of the original decision to go to war and the decisions that have brought us to this point, there seems to be broad agreement that failure in Iraq would be a calamity for our Nation of lasting historical consequence. The violence in Iraq, if un- checked, could spread outside its borders and draw other states into a regional conflagration. In addition, one would see an emboldened and strengthened Iran, a safe haven and base of oper- ations for jihadist networks in the heart of the Middle East, a humiliating defeat in the overall campaign against violent extre- mism worldwide, and an undermining of the credibility of the United States. The actors in this region, both friends and adversaries, are watching closely what we do in Iraq, and will draw conclusions about our resolve and the reliability of our commitments; and should we withdraw prematurely, we could well leave chaos and the disintegration of Iraq behind us. Further, governments in the region already are asking themselves, “If Americans withdraw in defeat from Iraq, just how much farther and from where else" might we withdraw? I would not have taken this position if I did not believe that the outcome in Iraq will have a profound and long-lived impact on our national interest. Mistakes have certainly been made by the United States in Iraq just like in virtually every war in human history. That is the na- ture of war, but however we got to this moment, the stakes now are incalculable. Your senior professional military officers in Iraq and in Washing- ton believe in the efficacy of the strategy outlined by the President last night. They believe it is a sound plan that can work if the Iraqi government follows through on its commitments and if the non- military aspects of the strategy are implemented and sustained. Our senior military officers have worked closely with the Iraqis to develop this plan. The impetus to add U.S. forces came initially from our commanders there. It would be a sublime, yet historic, irony if those who believe the views of the military professionals were neglected at the onset of the war were now to dismiss the views of the military as irrelevant or wrong. Mr. Chairman, that concludes my opening statement, and with your permission, I will ask General Pace to say a few words about the military plan itself. [The prepared statement of Secretary Gates can be found in the Appendix on page 79.] The CHAIRMAN. You bet. General. 10 STATEMENT OF GEN. PETER PACE, CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF, U.S. MARINE CORPS General PACE. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Hunter, members of the com- mittee, thank you for this opportunity to be with you. I would like to echo the secretary's thanks to all of you for your very strong, consistent, bipartisan support of all of us in the mili- tary. Thanks to many of you who have traveled to see the troops and many of you have gone to see our troops in the hospitals. Your attention to that, your concern, makes a difference to all of us in uniform, and we thank you for that. I would also like to thank the incredible young men and women who serve in our Armed Forces. It is my honor to sit before you as their representative as they continue to amaze us all with the way that they strap on the duty that they have sworn to uphold and the way that they do it. And especially to their families—every decision to deploy forces impacts families, and this one will as weli. Our military families serve this country as well as anyone who has ever worn a uniform, and I will say that publicly. The military plan that has been developed has been developed jointly by General Casey and his U.S. commanders and his counter- part in the Iraq army and his commanders, and we have worked it through in great deal in support of Prime Minister Maliki's ini- tiative, and the number one, most important difference between this plan and other plans is the political environment in which it will be executed. But to the plan itself, it calls for the deployment of an Iraqi com- mander of all of Baghdad; that has begun, the assignment of two Iraqi commanders, one east of the river and one west. The selection of those commanders was done jointly by the Iraqi ground forces commander and by General Casey to have Baghdad divided into nine districts. Each of those districts will have an Iraqi brigade in it. Those brigades and their leaders were also jointly selected by the Iraqi and American leadership. In support of each of those Iraqi brigades will be a U.S. battalion so that in each sector, as Mr. Hunter has said, it will be several Iraqi battalions plus a U.S. bat- talion, and in each sector, there will be three or four police stations that will serve as the hub of operations from which the forces that are located there—which will be a minister of the Iraqi army, the Iraqi national police, the Iraqi local police, and U.S. and coalition forces—from which they will do their daily patrolling, the door-to- door work to let the population know that they are there to take census-type information and to provide the street awareness and presence that allows the security to come to the fore. From those stations will be conducted the raids that may be necessary, and from those stations will come the quick reaction forces for some of the Iraqi forces that get into trouble. In analyzing what we call “troop to task,” meaning what do we need to do and how many folks do you need to do it, in analyzing that, General Casey and his Iraqi counterparts have determined that there are more forces needed-more Iraqi forces, for sure—and the Prime Minister and his government have promised that they will allocate three more Iraqi brigades into Baghdad—the first of those is already moving; the next two are scheduled within the 11 month—that the commander will have the freedom of operations to do what he must do to impose the rule of law on all, that there will be no political interference with those troops on the ground who are carrying out the mission that they have been given, and that the rule of law and the rules of engagement will apply to all criminals regardless of which community they come from, that mixed communities and Sunni communities and Shi'a communities will all be treated the same. To do this, we are going to need additional U.S. forces. General Casey and General Abizaid have asked for those additional forces, as have the commanders below them. The additional forces will do what I have mentioned, which is to be able to have a battalion of our forces available with each Iraqi brigade, and that will also strengthen the size of the embedded teams that we have on each Iraqi brigade, battalion, and company so that when the Iraqi units get into trouble or need fire support, we are able to provide it to them quickly and efficiently. In addition, for success in Al Anbar province, the Marine com- mander out there has asked for and General Casey and General Abizaid have asked for an increase of about 4,000 troops out there The Sunni sheiks in that region have led the way in fighting al Qaeda. They have recruited their own sons in the thousands to join their local police forces. In fact, about 1,000 Sunni youngsters right now from Al Anbar are in Jordan at the police academy, and these additional U.S. forces at Al Anbar will allow those sheiks and the Iraqi armed forces that are out there to provide continued security to take advantage of this window of opportunity as represented by the leaders out there. So, collectively, the military commanders, both U.S. and Iraqi, have asked for this interest, and those of us in advisory positions agree with their request. Mr. Chairman, I will save any further comment about how I got to my own convictions about this to the Q&A piece, but I do want to state for the record that I am of the conviction that this military plan, properly part of the new political emphasis and the new eco- nomic plus-up, can provide the success we are looking for.. Thank you, sir. The CHAIRMAN. General, thank you very much. We all know the conflict. This is not going to be won on the bat- tlefield. We know it is going to be a matter of will with leaders of the Iraqi force as well as the Iraqi people; and we spoke-both of you spoke about commitments by the Iraqi government and Prime Minister Maliki. Mr. Secretary, are there any additional commitments made by the Iraqi prime minister or the Iraqi government other than the ones General Pace just outlined for us? Secretary GATES. Mr. Chairman, I think that those are the prin- cipal ones. Clearly, the ones that have been most important to our forces are that the Iraqi military will be in the lead in these oper- ations. Another is that no parts of the city will be immune, that there will be no more calls from government offices to Iraqi or U.S. forces who have detained someone who is politically connected, demand- ing that they be released. That will not—we are assured that will not happen. 12 We have been assured of additional Iraqi forces that will be brought into the capital. I think those are the principal commitments. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. I noticed in your remarks, Mr. Secretary, you used the phrase "if the Iraqi government follows through on its commitments,” and General Pace and you have just told us of the Iraqi commitment that they made. And we all, of course, know the importance of gov- ernance, as well as individuals living up to commitments. Mr. Secretary, what if the Iraqi government does not live up to those commitments? What is the punishment or the outcome of such violation of their commitments? I think this committee should know should that come to pass. Secretary GATES. First of all, I think it is important to note that the commitment is not just a commitment that has been made by Prime Minister Maliki. The President, the Ambassador and others have talked to President Talabani, to Sunni representatives in the government, to other Shi'a representatives, such as Mr. Hakim, and made it quite clear that this is not just a burden on the prime minister but on the entire Iraqi government. As I indicated in my testimony, I think that we will see fairly early whether the Iraqi government is prepared to complete its- to carry out its commitments, and there was another one that I should have mentioned, and that is that they have committed to spend up to $10 billion of their own money on economic develop- ment as part of this effort. Because we will know that fairly early and before very many American additional troops have been sent to Iraq, we will be in a position, obviously, to go back to them and point out their failure to live up to their commitments if we see that in a tactical situa- tion in one place or another, or if we hear that there has been a call from a government office. I think the thing to remember about this is, it is going to unfold over time, and so you are likely to see perhaps a small violation of these commitments, perhaps some- where along the road, and that is the point at which we quickly go back to the Iraqi government and make sure that they enforce discipline in their own house. Beyond that, the President has made very clear both in his speech last night and in his talks with the Iraqi government that American patience is limited, and obviously if the Iraqis fail to maintain their commitments, we will have to revisit our strategy. But I would say this—and it is an important difference this time—it is the Iraqis who have come to us with this plan. It is the Iraqis who are insisting on leading this undertaking. It is the Iraqis who are insisting that they have to get control of their own capital and that they need some help from us to do that. So I think this is really—when I refer to my remarks to a "pivot point,” it is the apparent willingness of the Iraqis finally to step up to their re- sponsibilities in this arena that we think is a change. The willing- ness to make these commitments, in itself, is a change, and we all ill be watching very closely to ensure that they adhere to the commitments that they have made. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Secretary, the bottom-line answer to my question is, we would revisit our strategy; is that it, sir? 13 Secretary GATES. If the Iraqis fail to keep their commitments, I think we would have to do that. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. Mr. Hunter. Mr. HUNTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a couple of questions—and, General, perhaps we need to talk in one of the following briefings, talk in a classified setting- but I think it is going to be crucial in these sectors in the city, in these urban areas, to ensure, one, that the American forces are used efficiently in the way that the agreement proposes with Iraqi forces in the lead, Americans in backup; and second, that there be a lot of attention to detail with respect to force protection of Amer- ican forces in this situation. And I would just ask you, have you scrubbed_have you looked at the details of the plan as it exists now with respect to those two factors? General PACE. Sir, I have, and I am very confident in what is laid out. First of all, very importantly, all U.S. forces will remain at all times under U.S. command. Second, as we embed U.S. forces down to lower levels, down to the battalion and company levels, they will be of large enough size to protect themselves as they go about doing the advisory work that they are doing. Third, as an example of the way this would work, on the last couple of days of operations in Baghdad that have been on TV, you see Iraqi units in the lead being supported by U.S. firepower and U.S. advisors in a way that is an example of how this will unfold as we go forward. Mr. HUNTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Spratt. Mr. SPRATT. Thank you both for your testimony. I understand that, on a smaller scale, these tactics—"clear," "build” and “hold”—have been tried before and in specific, in Bagh- dad itself. On 24 August, the mission failed for several reasons. One was, the battalions to be provided by the Iraqis did not show up. Two of the—four of the six that were promised never showed up. Sec- ond, the police showed up, but they also showed their sectarian col- ors and were prone to take the side of the forces that were part of the problem. Number one, how do we overcome these problems this time, and number two, is there some way that we could test this on a smaller scale before we drive five brigades into it to see if these problems are still going to plague the operation? I will put the question to both of you or to either of you. Secretary GATES. Mr. Spratt, let me begin and then turn to Gen- eral Pace. As I understand it, the problem with “clear,” “build,” and “hold” last year was that the “clear” part of the operation went fairly well and fairly smoothly. The problem is that there were insufficient forces, both Iraqi and American, for the “hold” phase of the operation, and so one of the lessons learned that the President referred to last night is the need 14 for additional forces to hold these areas and keep the violence at bay long enough for some of these immediate and then near-term economic development opportunities to begin to kick in, wheth is making the quality of life better quickly by getting some electric power in there or connecting the sewers or picking up the trash, on down to job creation and so on. So the “clear” part was well done. As to the “hold” part, there were insufficient forces. And the analogy that I have used is “the tide came in and the tide went out,” and there was no—at the end, you could not tell there was a difference. The difference is, this time, to try and get some time under the “hold” phase for the "build” actually to take place. One of the things that is different this time is the additional forces. Another thing that is different this time is that there is con- siderably more focus on the “build” phase in terms of our own ef- forts, but also in terms of the Iraqi understanding of the need for them to show up and with their money begin to take some action on the economic front. So I think that, very quickly, is my assessment, looking back on it, as I have understood it since arriving. But let me ask General Pace to add. General PACE. Mr. Spratt, your concerns are well-founded. You are correct that the Iraqi armed forces did not show up as was promised last time. This time, the first brigade of Iraqis is already en route to their capital, and some of them are there. Our first bri- gade, as we speak, is moving forward into Iraq. The second and the third Iraqi brigades are due to arrive in Baghdad before our second brigade arrives in Baghdad, so as this force flow is laid out- Mr. SPRATT. We reserve the right to abort, and the expectation is we may abort the whole operation if their forces do not show up? General PACE. Sir, we expect this to work, and we are focused on making this successful, but we do expect the Iraqi government to provide the resources that they say they will provide, and we have alternatives available to us, as the secretary said, to relook at the strategy if the premises on which this plan is based turn out to be inaccurate. However, all of what the Iraqi leadership is saying is different and all of what has happened to date has been positive with regard to the things they said they would do and what has happened. Ev- erything they said they would do by now they have done. Mr. SPRATT. Thank you very much. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you so much. Mr. Saxton, plea ase. Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Secretary, welcome. Thank you for what you are doing. General, good to see you again. Thank you for what you are doing. I am interested to know how the activities—how the presence and activities of al Qaeda were taken into consideration in develop- ing this plan. I would like to just frame the question if I may. It seems to me to be a very, very serious part of our problem and our efforts that are geared toward solving the problem. I have here a letter that was written from al Zawahiri, of course, the second in command of al Qaeda, to Zarqawi. The letter is dated 15 July 9, 2005, and it was declassified by the Director of National In- telligence on October 11, 2005, and I just want to read some very brief parts of it. After the perfunctory opening, it says, “It has always been my belief”—this is, of course, al Zawahiri talking, writing: "It has al- ways been my belief that a victory of Islam will never take place until a Muslim state is established in Lavant and Egypt and in the neighboring states of the peninsula and in Iraq.” And then he goes on in another part of the letter to talk about “our long-term strategy.” He says it has four stages. The first stage is to expel the Americans from Iraq. The second stage is to estab- lish an Islamic authority and then to develop it into the level of a caliphate. The third stage is to extend the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq, and the fourth stage is to clash with Israel. I have another document here that comes out of West Point from the Combating Terrorism Center. It is a writing by Brian Fishman of that organization, and it says that, on October 15, 2006, al Qaeda in Iraq announced that it had seceded from Iraq and de- clared an independent state in the country's Sunni-dominated west- ern regions. This new political entity is called the “Islamic state of Iraq.' I wanted to bring this question to you in that context because I believe that this is an extremely serious part of the problem that we face and is, in fact, at the root of much of the sectarian violence that is currently going on in Iraq. Would you comment on that for us, Mr. Secretary? Secretary GATES. Yes. It clearly has a major impact on the explo- sion of sectarian violence. There were the al Qaeda and the insur- gents, but especially al Qaeda had been working for some time to try and stoke sectarian warfare in Iraq, and they finally succeeded last February with the bombing of the Samarra mosque. So the no- tion that this was a spontaneous outbreak is, I think, mistaken. The fact is that there have been a number of provocative acts by al Qaeda trying to provoke sectarian warfare, and they finally suc- ceeded. One of the areas where we actually see some positive signs al- ready is in Anbar province, which is the province that you were re- ferring to in the correspondence that you read. As General Pace in- dicated, the local sheiks have decided to try and contest al Qaeda's ambitions in Anbar. They have aligned themselves and aligned with us, and we are seeing some signs of success and weakening in al Qaeda in that area. In fact, it was during General Pace's and my visit to Baghdad a couple of weeks ago that General Odierno talked to us about these successes and indicated that he thought he could reinforce this success with the addition of some additional forces, some additional Marines in Anbar province; and that was really the origin, I think, of the request for the additional forces for Anbar province. So it is clear that Anbar is critical to the ambitions of al Qaeda in Iraq, and I think we have made some headway. General, would you like to add anything? Mr. SAXTON. A great summary sir, thank you. Thank you very much. 17 Mr. ORTIZ. My time is up. Thank you very much. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. Mr. McHugh. Mr. McHUGH. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Sec- retary, let me add my words of congratulations and appreciation to you. General Pace, always a pleasure and honor to see you. Thank you both for your service. Let me say that I am encouraged somewhat by the words I hear as to the intention of the Iraqi government. I share the words of Mr. Spratt, my colleague, that I just have my doubts the Iraqis will show up. The track record isn't there. And words are fine but ac- tions are what count here. So let me rephrase a question that has been asked a couple of different times. Let's concede they will show up. What do we do if they don't act? We have talked about benchmarks; the President talked about benchmarks. I think those have been sorely missing. I think they are critical. Where in the benchmark time frame does the disar- mament-disarming the militias occur, and what if they don't meet that benchmark? Secretary GATES. I think that, again, what we will see is this un- folding over time, and I think that the operation that we saw just in the last couple of days indicates their willingness to fight, as I understand it. And I will invite General Pace to add on, the oper- ations will begin in mixed neighborhoods, both Shi’a and Sunni. That will provide an early indicator. I think the notion that the Iraqis are sitting on their hands while we are doing all the fighting is a mistaken notion. I was informed by one of our military folks a couple of days ago that now more than half of the casualties coming into our military hospitals in Iraq are Iraqi army. Mr. McHUGH. Mr. Secretary, I don't want to be impolite, sir, but the Chairman is going to be very strict on his clock. I have been to Iraq six times and I never suggested or meant to suggest the Iraqi army is not stepping forward and taking heavy casualties. I was at Forward Operating Base Speicher when they brought in helicopter loads to the hospital there. Couldn't agree more. I want to be clear so you can direct your comments. The politicians, the prime minister, what if they order us again, as they did just a number of weeks ago, to remove the barriers we had placed in Sadr City to control traffic and flow of air? What do we do and at what point? That is what I am concerned about. Be- cause I view this at best as a last opportunity and a lost hope, and I am just wondering if I am being too dramatic about that. Secretary GATES. As I indicated in my response to the chairman, I think the first reaction, if we discovered that they were not fulfill- ing their commitments, would be to go back at them hard in terms of the commitments that they had made to us. And in terms of the entire leadership of Iraq, if at the end of the day they don't keep the commitments that they have made to us, as I indicated before, we would clearly have to relook at the strategy. Mr. McHUGH. Let me rephrase it, if I may. What is the time frame of the surge? A year, 18 months, 6 months, and where do the benchmarks fit in that surge time frame? 18 Secretary GATES. I don't think anybody has a definite idea about how long the surge would last. I think for most of us in our minds we are thinking of it as a matter of months, not 18 months or 2 years. We clearly will know, as I indicated, I think within a couple of months or so, whether this strategy is in fact beginning to bear fruit. It is going to take a while. We are at the mercy of anyone willing to strap on a bomb and blow themselves up in terms of more blood- shed and more violence. But we will obviously be monitoring it, just as I know you all will be monitoring it as this situation unfolds. I think one of the benefits, if you will, of the way we will be send- ing our forces, the way the Iraqis will be sending their forces in, is that we will have a pretty good indication whether they are keeping their commitments and we can assess at the time what we need to do. General PACE. Sir, if I may, two key benchmarks: one, command of Iraqi forces. Nine of the 10 Iraqi divisions are going to be under direct Iraqi command by the end of the March, the tenth by the end of the June. And then of security in the 18 provinces, all 18 es are due to be under the direct control of the provisional governors no later than November of this year. Mr. McHUGH. Thank you. Let me just say in closing, as someone who has supported the President and who believes in what he is trying to achieve here, the frustration I think some of us feel is cer- tainly not with our military. God love them for the challenges they face and the sacrifices they have made. But the civilian leadership in Iraq, I am afraid, still raise questions about their commitment. But I hope this is a step in the right direction. Thank you. The CHAIRMAN. Thank the gentleman. Mr. Taylor. Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Secretary Gates, and General Pace, for being here. Thank you both for agree- ing to serve our country. A poll published by the Brookings Institute just last month shows that really an appalling 92 percent of the Sunnis approve of attacks on U.S.-led forces; 62 percent of all the Shiites leads to a total throughout the country of 61 percent of Iraqis approve of at- tacks on U.S. forces. Now, Mr. Secretary, you have only been here a few weeks, but I will remind you that early on, taxpayer-funded polls of Iraq showed that we had about an 80 percent approval rating. Within about a year and a half that number had flip-flopped to about 80 percent disapproval of U.S. presence. When the numbers went sour, our State Department quit furnishing those numbers to Con- gress on a regular basis. So if your numbers are contrary to this, I would like to hear them. But if your numbers are anywhere close to this, what I would like to know is how the addition of 21,000 troops changes a situation where 61 percent of Iraqis approve at- tacking American forces. How do you turn that around? Secretary GATES. Well, sir, I think that first of all, those are the first poll numbers like that I have heard, and I haven't seen any that are independent. I have no reason— . Mr. TAYLOR. If I may, it was done, to the best of my knowledge, by an oufit called Zogby, paid for by American taxpayer dollars 20 simply tell you what they have said they are going to do. If they do what they say they are going to do, then this will succeed. So far on appointing the commanders, on collaborating between U.S. commanders and the Iraqi commanders, on selecting the units to move to other places to Baghdad and on moving those troops, on the things they should have done by now, they have done it. Mr. HAYES. I appreciate that. It is very important, I think going forward, for people to understand it is a new plan, it is a new team. It does have support of this committee and the Congress because, as we speak, a brigade combat team of Airborne folks from Fort agg, the 82nd, are in Baghdad, as are other units from other lo- cations. They, and their families particularly, and the folks back home need to know that we are supporting them, which we are. We are not supporting the idea of withdrawing funds for folks in the field. Having said all that, to follow up on what Ranking Member Hunter said, we have been asking that the Iraqis take possession and control of their fight. Now he said three to one. My math—and I think we make a mistake in explaining to the American people when we talk battalions and brigades instead of numbers—my math gives us a four to one Iraqi match to every new U.S. military commitment in Iraq. Can you be a little more specific or can you kind of narrow that down three to one, four to one, somewhere in between? If that is true, it indicates the Iraqis are taking the fight, that that is impor- tant. Can you help clarify that a little bit? General PACE. Sir, I can. Let me just use Baghdad as an exam- ple. Today when you add together the Iraqi Army, Iraqi National Police and Iraqi local police, there are some 42,000 Iraqi security forces allocated to Baghdad. Today we have about 24,000 U.S. troops allocated to the Baghdad region and then their three bri- gades and our two brigades will be added to that mix. Mr. HAYES. When you get through adding, with the surge what do you get? For 20,000 U.S. troops—make it 15 because part are going to Anbar-15 into Baghdad where the majority of the vio- lence is, how many Iraqi new troops from safe areas, trained and equipped by U.S. forces, how many new ones are coming in? General PACE. Sir, the 42,000 Iraqis in Baghdad right now will be augmented by about 8,000 more Iraqis, taking that to 50,000. The 24,000 U.S. in Baghdad right now will be augmented initially by two brigades, a total of 7,000, taking it up to 31,000. In the pipeline will be another three brigades of U.S.—another 10,500 that can go to Baghdad, al Anbar, or not go at all depending upon the situation on the ground. Mr. HAYES. The math is still unclear but again I am trying to determine and reinforce my notion and Mr. Hunter's notion that to the American people this is becoming much more of an Iraqi right. We are going to occupy territory with Iraqis, not with Americans, so that we can hold it once we win it, which our military has done before. Any clarification that you can give there would be again very helpful. General PACE. Sir, it is about two to one right now is as about as clear as I can make it. 22 manders are partnered with our U.S. battalions and they will oper- ate in those areas just like they are operating in the streets of Baghdad right now with the Iraqis doing the, patrolling, Iraqis doing the sweeping. And when they need the kinds of skills and ca- pacity they don't have, like air power, we will do it like we have been doing the past couple of days in Baghdad, provide it to them. But the U.S. will stay under U.S. command, and the Iraqis will be under the Iraqi command, and General Casey and his counterpart, Iraqi partner, will work together on the command and control of that. Mr. ABERCROMBIE. How is that any different than what has been done since November of 2005? General PACE. The main difference is the political atmosphere in which they are allowed to operate. There is no number, there is no number of additional U.S. troops that will make a difference, ab- sent—long-term difference-absent the political will of Iraqi leader- ship and the religious leadership. Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you, General. Secretary Gates, I sug- gest it won't take you 18 months to figure that out. It will take you 6 months to figure that out. I don't think there is going to be any change, I am sorry to say, that is likely to take place in the next 6 days, let alone the next 6 months or 18 months. Finally, Secretary Gates, if there is time for it, in all of the dis- cussions so far-let's suppose General Pace's description of this plan works, for conversation's sake. What is the exit strategy? Secretary GATES. The exit strategy is that as the level of violence goes down and as the Iraqis gain control of—restore control in Baghdad, that the presence of the United States would diminish. Mr. ABERCROMBIE. If that doesn't occur, is there an exit strategy? The CHAIRMAN. Answer the question, then we go to Ms. Davis. Secretary GATES. I think at the outset of the strategy, it is a mis- take to talk about an exit strategy. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Ms. Davis from Virginia. Thank the gentleman from Hawaii. Mrs. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Sec- retary, welcome and look forward to working with you over the next couple of years. General Pace, it is always great to see you. I want to focus on a specific impact of the surge of forces into Baghdad and now Anbar province, and that is the risk to our readi- ness associated not only with increasing troops but also their equipment. I want to know if you can give me a risk assessment of the proposed surge on the strategic posture of our forces. In other words, would this increase of troop levels in 2007 prevent or degrade the military's ability to respond in other parts of the world if we are called upon? And I think most of us on this committee understand that resetting the force is going to take years and a large amount of funding, but I want to make sure that we are not backing ourselves into some sort of corner, given the situation that we have got in other parts of the world besides just in Iraq. From the information that has been provided today, I understand brigades are being extended. Some units are deploying early and others will be mobilized in the coming months. I am very glad to hear that DOD is doing what we on this committee has asked, and that is to increase the end strength of the Army and Marine Corps. 25 Iraq with little or nothing to show for it, because the contractors have been hired to be put in. It is too violent. They can't have con- tractors go in because they get killed. Why is it going to be any dif- ferent now that we are going to take a billion dollars more? I just don't see any light at the end of the tunnel here. Secretary GATES. Mr. Skelton and I talked about this last evening. The question is, are you optimistic or pessimistic? It is pretty—my own view is that the one source of optimism is that for the first time in this process you have the Iraqis insisting on tak- ing the lead, insisting on being out in front, and insisting on begin- ning this attempt to get control of their own capital, with us only in a support role. As I indicated at the beginning, we will know fairly quickly, I think, whether they are prepared to follow through on these commitments. I think one of the things we sometimes lose sight of is that there was an election, for the first time in Iraqi history, just a year ago, a little over a year ago. This government wasn't stood up until last spring. These are people who have never run anything in their lives. They have been in opposition. Frankly, the challenges that have faced them in trying to deal with the problems they have I think have been pretty extraordinary, and the fact that it has taken them some period of time to get themselves in the position where they are ready to take the lead and charge of this thing is not surprising. The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. We are supposed to have three votes and I was in hopes we could continue the hearing while we switched off to do the votes, but with three it is going to be im- possible. We will try to go as long as we can and make the recesses as short as we can. But with your indulgence and, General, with your indulgence, please stay when we do make the necessary trip over for those three votes. We appreciate it. Mr. Forbes. Mr. FORBES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Sec- retary, General, for being here and for your input today. I want to try to follow up on what my friend Congressman Hayes was asking a little bit ago about some of the math that is involved. We see peo- ple come in and testify; they are writing articles. One person says we need more troops; another person says we need less troops. We are oftentimes just kind of caught in-between saying, “What do you base that on?” What I want to try to do in the few minutes I have got is to get my hands on what you are basing the 20 plus-up upon. Let me go back, General, to your numbers. As I understand them, and per- haps I did the math wrong, but you indicated on total Iraqi secu- rity personnel today in Baghdad we have about 42,000; that after the full implementation of the plan we would have about 50,000 total. For our troops we have about 24,000 today. We would be add- ing another 7,000, which brings us up to 31,000. And then another 10,500 we can put wherever we could. Let's assume we put them all there. That would give 41,500 U.S. troops. That is a total of 91,500 troops. And as I look at—the only way that I can get my hands around numbers that makes sense is to look at previous conflicts and where we were. If you look across the United States for just police 28 Mr. REYES. But, Mr. Secretary, again we have to look at the po- tential for success of this commitment based upon the historical record that the Maliki government has had, and frankly it hasn't been a very stellar track record. That is why we can't afford to get snookered again, because we are putting another 21–22,000 of our troops in harm's way, and there have to be real consequences. I see that my time is up. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The CHAIRMAN. I am going to ask one more member to ask ques- tions and then we will break. Mr. Wilson. Mr. WILSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Sec- retary, and thank you, General, for being here today and thank you for your service to our country. I was very pleased that Congressman Hayes and Congressman Forbes were able to establish that in Baghdad that there would be substantially more Iraqi forces than American forces. This is in- deed a joint operation. I, Mr. Secretary, heard you say that the Iraqi forces will be tak- ing the lead. I am a parent of four sons in the military. I will be meeting with other parents. Could you and the General please ex- plain to family members what it means that the Iraqi forces are in the lead, and how would this work practically as our forces are facing the enemy in the streets of Baghdad? General PACE. Sir, "in the lead” means that they are the ones who are doing the day-to-day patrolling. They are the ones who are doing the knocking on the doors, do the census work and tell the inhabitants of that home that the Iraqi armed forces are there for their protection. They are the ones who will be the responders to any kind of phone calls, tips and the like. But we will be the ones that will give them the additional capacity that they don't have. And I will repeat what I said today about what is happening in the hydra street the last couple of days. The Iraqis were sweeping through that area. The Iraqi army was—they got into a firefight. They needed additional fire support. They got that from our heli- copters and our fixed wing. That does not mean that U.S. forces will not be patrolling. It does not mean that U.S. forces will not be doing the things we need to do for our own self-protection and for the stability of the areas around which we are living; but it does mean that most of that work will be done by Iraqis with our backing. Mr. WILSON. And this is substantially different from what is being done now? General PACE. What is substantially different, sir, is the armed forces of both countries will be able to do it throughout Baghdad. Up until now, each time we have tried this, when we were operat- ing in Sunni neighborhoods, that was okay; when we got into mixed neighborhoods, that got a little dicey; and when we tried to go into Shi'a neighborhoods, often the Iraqis were told to stop or recapture somebody and we were asked to give them back. What is substantially different is the intent to apply the rule of law across Baghdad without regard to which neighborhood the criminal lives. Mr. WILSON. And then I was happy to hear the President indi- cate, and you have just indicated too, in terms of rules of engage- ment, that there will be changes in terms of catch and release. I 29 have had troops express concern to me about safe houses. They se- cure terrorists and they leave the home, and the next week it is restored again as a safe house for terrorism. And the experience in many countries is those homes are demolished. What would be how can I answer that? General PACE. Part of the problem in the past, sir, is we have not had, because in part the Iraqi units did not show up, we did not have enough units after we did the clearing to be able to do the hold. So there were not enough Iraqi troops to do the hold, and we left. Then the people came back to that house. With this plan there are sufficient troops to do be able to do the clear and the hold and, most importantly, to do the build, primarily with Iraqi money, so that the citizens start seeing progress and de- cide because of that progress to become part of the community as opposed to trying to kill each other. Mr. WILSON. Again, thank you very much. I visited Iraq six times. Mr. Chairman, I go to inspire the troops; they inspire me. Thank you for all of their service. God bless you. The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. There are three votes on the floor. We will be in recess, and again I appreciate the indul- gence of our witnesses. We will be back as soon as possible. [Recess.] The CHAIRMAN. As soon as the witnesses get here, we will call on Dr. Snyder. The witnesses are back at the witness table. Before I call on Dr. Snyder, please note the charts that are being placed on the wall. There are copies in front of each member. I think you will find them of interest. They are as up to date as possible. All of the in- formation was not available, in some instances, past October, but the staff did the best that they could. Dr. Snyder. Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, thank you for being here. General Pace, it is good to see you. I also want to acknowledge the presence of Mr. Rangel here- today, our former Staff Director, and for some of the members here, Mr. Rangel got a start on this committee as a staff member on the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation, so I do not want you to think that this is somehow—we have not had it for ten years. It is a good subcommittee, and it is something that Mr. Rangel be- lieves in. I look forward to working with you on that subcommittee on issues. Mr. Secretary, you know the old line about, “Good managers do not make their money when things go well; they make their money when things are struggling''; and you are going to have a lot of op- portunity to earn your money in this job, and the troops are count- ing on you. The American people are counting on you. One of the chores that you have is coming before these committees, and frank- ly, we have had difficulties, in my opinion, with the kind of forth- rightness that I think the American people and this Congress de- serve, and I know that, at times, sometimes as members of Con- gress we say dumb things, stupid things, wrong things, partisan things, angry things, but when all of this comes out in the wash, our process is better because of the kinds of questions and the vari- E 31 some important early indications on the “hold” part of the strategy. I think that is probably a little early on the "build" side. Dr. SNYDER. General Pace, you had mentioned earlier on that General Abizaid was part of the group that supported and re- quested additional troops. How does that jive with his testimony of November 15th before the Senate in which he stated, “I do not be- lieve that more American troops right now is the solution to the problem”? Has General Abizaid changed his mind? Has he been convinced to change his mind? What kind of interaction has there been with General Abizaid, who, as you know, is very well re- spected by this committee? General PACE. Sir, I have had many conversations with General Abizaid on the phone, and the secretary and I were with him and General Casey in Baghdad when they both asked us for these addi- tional troops. As with all of us in uniform who had been saying, “Do not just add troops to do more of what the troops have been doing,” if there is a difference, if there is a definable mission, if there is a new po- litical environment, if there is going to be economic activity, then it makes sense. So, with the commitment of the political side, with the commitment of the economic side, it does make sense to provide additional troops for this military piece of that three-pronged at- tack. Dr. SNYDER. Thank you very much. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Cole. Mr. COLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank both of you for being here and your service. We have had a lot of talk this afternoon about the importance of Iraqi rformance and how you measure it, and you each have made the point in separate contexts the Sunni Sheiks' cooperating with us in Al Anbar. That is a welcome development of a Shi'a gov- ernment in Baghdad that seems to be stepping up a little bit more than we have seen. How many instances do you see of the Sunnis and the Shi'a co- operating with one another, because that is really the gist of our problem here. We were said to have had a much better year in many ways than occurred until the sectarian violence, you know. So are you seeing signs that that is subsiding within the govern- ment? Secretary GATES. I think that—I will ask General Pace to talk about the military side because there is, perhaps, a greater mix there. What we have seen is the minister of defense, if I remember cor- rectly, is a Sunni. Certainly, one of the vice presidents is a Sunni, Mr. Hashimi, and as I said earlier, the President and others have not just talked to Prime Minister Maliki about the commitment of the government, but to Hashimi and Hakim and the others, so they certainly all seem to be on board with the commitments that we have been given. Below that level, I think the picture is still very mixed, but general. General PACE. Sir, in the military and the Iraqi army, the Iraqi government has gone to great lengths to recruit and build mixed units, and the Iraqi army has proven itself to be loyal to the cen- - 32 tral government and, for the most part, doing the central govern- ment's bidding. In the police, it is a little less well-defined. It is different in the police. There are still some units that are more sectarian than non- political. As those units are identified, they are taken off the line, and they are disassembled. Those who are loyal are kept. Those who are not are replaced. That unit then goes through a retraining and is put back into the mix. So the military, itself, the army, is leading the way, I would say, with regard to cooperation in the ranks amongst different Shi'a, Sunni, and Kurd, and the police are behind them. Mr. COLE. So, as far as you can tell, this operation on the Iraqi side will have largely mixed units carrying out their end of the se- curity operations? General PACE. Sir, I am not 100-percent sure of that. I do know that the commanders have selected their units based on their capacities, on their mix, but I will have to find out for sure, of all of the units that are there, how many are one kind and how many are another. I just do not know. Mr. COLE. Okay. If I could, I would like to go back to pick up Mr. Forbes' and Mr. Hayes' questions about the math. In just looking at the numbers, at the end of the day, if I under- stand the calculations, there are around 50-some-odd thousand Iraqi security personnel of all sorts, not just military-engaged, and just over 40,000 American troops potentially engaged assuming your ten-five were all deployed in Baghdad. That is a five-to-four ratio and, frankly, a much bigger kick-up on our side in terms of personnel involved in this operation than on theirs. Why is it two-to-one or three-to-one? Do they not have the forces or why aren't those forces being committed in addition to simply 8,000 additional people on top of 42? General PACE. Yes, sir. When the troop-to-task analysis was done, the determination of the commanders on the ground was that they needed about 8,000 more Iraqis and about 7,000 more U.S. If the commanders get- when the commanders get what they have asked for, there will be 50.000 Iragis and about 31,000 U.S. What we have U.S. pipeline, because it takes us a month to get the gear shipped over, et cetera, is to put the additional three brigades into the pipe- line so they can arrive and be available to the commanders on the ground. At the same time, we are doing that, not yet asked for by the commanders, but it is available to them, the Iraqis are looking at the other units around the country to see what they might add as well. So we put our insurance policy into our plan because it takes us a while to get there. Mr. COLE. Okay. Let me just close with a quick point. I appreciate very much what you have to say and particularly your emphasis on the importance of the Iraqi participation there and, frankly, not just military but political. If we do not see things like a reasonable distribution of the oil money, if we do not see pro- vincial elections, if we do not see a revisiting of the extent of the de-Baathification program, then I do not think that your efforts- 33 that are as good as I know they will be—and those of our people will succeed. I would just ask you—and I do not even remember if this com- mittee feels this way. I agree, Mr. Gates, Secretary Gates, with your assessment of what is at stake here. I think you hit it spot on, but I also think this is the last effort. So I would just ask you to be frank with us if the other side is not keeping their commit- ments and do that quickly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The CHAIRMAN. Adam Smith. Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Secretary Gates, General Pace, for being here. First of all, I concur with Mr. Snyder. You do have a very difficult job, and you took it at a very difficult time, and we thank you for step- ping up and doing that. I share my colleagues' skepticism about this plan for a number of reasons. I mean the two biggest ones are that, when you do a classic counterinsurgency strategy of “clear, hold and build,” you have to have the hearts and minds of the populace. I mean that is sort of at the top of it, and as Mr. Taylor pointed out, we have lost that, and I have no confidence whatsoever that we will be able to get it back, and I think that undermines a lot of what we do, and second, you know, because of the points Mr. Forbes raised about the numbers, we do not have the numbers or the long-term sustainability to really implement that strategy at this point. I think you have addressed those concerns. I will not say they have been alleviated. But my bigger concern is, even if we succeed in what we are doing here, it is sort of “Then what?” And what exactly does suc- cess look like? It is virtually impossible for me to imagine, and I would imagine you would agree, that in six months, eight months time, there is not still violence in Baghdad. It is impossible to imagine that Mr. Sadr is simply going to blow up and disappear or that his forces are. We may be able to sort of simmer it down for a little while, but I do not think there is any real prospect of a long-term reduction in the causes of the violence in Baghdad. So we are doing all of this to sort of wind up in a similar place because the causes of the violence, by and large, will still be there. One of them will be exacerbated, and that is our presence. As has been pointed out and I do not think emphasized enough, you know, a lot of the insurgents, the terrorists, are motivated by driving us out, and our unwillingness to even say that we are leaving at some point adds fuel to that, and certainly adding more troops and launching a military campaign in Baghdad is not going to reduce that. So that will still be there. We will still have the problem with Syria and Iran, which I want to ask about in just a minute, and it is also reasonable to assume that we will still have, you know, conflicts between Shi’a and Sunni and even within the two groups. So I do not see us really making a lot of progress, and there is an enormous .cost to us in terms of American lives at risk and the further strain on a military that is very strained as you both know. So I am just not sure that, at the end of this, we will wind up in a much better place, and that is what I am very concerned about, and I also want to make a point. 34 You know, it was referenced about, you know, we can not afford to fail. One of e of the things that always concerns me in launching a plan is when we start spinning out nightmare scenarios if we do not do this. Whenever that is sort of at the top of your list for argu- ments as to why you are doing something, that is a warning sign to me to basically say, well, we cannot really get behind our plan, but we can tell you, if we do not, all of these horrible things are going to happen, and I am not saying that they are not possible, but they are not as guaranteed as the President said last night, as you, yourself, have said. I mean, one of the scenarios that I have heard is that, well, Iran will effectively take over Iraq, and at the same time, al Qaeda will operate as a safe haven in Iraq. You know, to have a Shi’a extrem- ist group in a country with a Sunni extremist group having a safe haven is pretty hard to imagine, and yet, that is what we are argu- ing will happen if we do not do this. So I would urge us to sort of tone that rhetoric down just a little bit to understand the true consequences of going forward or not going forward. The political solutions are not easy either—no doubt about that, but they are a lot less costly than continuing to rely on the military at a time when it does not seem like they can bring security for many of the reasons that have been raised. Two quick questions. Syria and Iran, they are a major problem- porous borders either allowing them to pass back and through or actively sending them. This plan does not address that at all, and I am curious how you think we stop that and your feeling about how critical it is, and last, where do you see Sadr and his forces at the end of this? Secretary GATES. First, with respect to Iran, as you will have no- ticed over the last couple of weeks, we are beginning to move ag- gressively to try and identify and root out the networks that are involved in helping to bring Iranian-supplied improvised explosive devices (IEDs) into Iraq and making it clear that those who are in- volved in activities that cost the lives of American soldiers are going to be subject to actions on the part of the United States in- Iraq. Our view is that we need to deal—that we can and will deal with this problem inside Iraq. With respect to the Syrians, clearly, a lot is going on on the bor- der of Syria in terms of trying to control what the Syrians are sending in. Quite frankly, the Syrians and the Iranians are playing a very destabilizing role in Iraq. The CHAIRMAN. You have to wrap the answer up, please. Did you finish answering? Secretary GATES. Yes, sir. The CHAIRMAN. All right. Mr. Turner. Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Secretary and General, thank you for being here. The chairman in his opening questions had stated that, if Iraq fails to deliver, what do we do to hold them accountable, and that has been a consistent theme throughout each of the questions that you have been asked and is in the concerns that members have ex- pressed. It is also an issue that is expressed in the Iraq Study Group report as a limit on our success as we go forward. 36 sion that they drew was based on that failure, and frankly, I think the President has drawn the same conclusion. General PACE. And as to the other parts that you asked about with regard to other recommendations, clearly the recommendation about increasing the size of the embedded trained teams is a great recommendation and is part of this process. We are going to double and triple the size of the embedded teams. Equally important from the State Department's standpoint, they are going to double the number of provincial reconstruction teams, and that is very impor- tant. So there has been a lot of the Baker-Hamilton report that has been cross-walked with these recommendations, and there are very few things that have not been accommodated one way or another. Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The CHAIRMAN. The gentlelady from California, Ms. Sanchez. Ms. SANCHEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Gentle- men, for being here with us today. As one of my colleagues mentioned, the Iraq Study Group really said, you know, troops are not the answer to this. On November 15th, General Abizaid said, “I believe that more American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more and taking more responsibility for their own future.” I have met with every divisional com- mander—General Casey; the Corps commander, General Dempsey. We all talked together, and I said, “In your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, will it add con- siderably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq?” And they all said, “No.” On November 30th, Prime Minister Maliki and Bush met in Jor- dan, and from all accounts, it came out in the newspaper at least he did not ask for any more troops, American troops. Last summer, Operation Together Forward, we surged the size of the U.S. forces in Baghdad from 7,500 to 15,000. We doubled the force, and yet, the operation failed to stabilize the city and to reduce the level of sectarian violence, and General Odierno said that the operation failed for three reasons: we could not hold the areas we cleared; the Iraqi army failed to perform; and no effort by the Iraqi government to rein in the Shi’a militias, especially the Mahdi army, which is the al Sadr folks. So, now you all are telling me there is a political change going on with the government in Iraq, and they are going to do more. I mean it is hard for me to imagine that the prime minister sits around and says, you know, “I want to be the guy that is holding onto the power in a failed country.” So, I think he has been trying to do as much as he can. So I am looking at that, and I am thinking he has got five min- isters that are al Sadr people. Thirty percent-a third of his par- liament are al Sadr positions. They are his power base in a lot of ways. So my question is, “What now?” What change in tactics or condi- tions would lead you to believe that our operations can succeed when they have failed so recently? Someone once said that the defi- nition of "insanity” is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result each time. Why do you believe a surge will work this time? What specific assurances, measures, have you gotten from Maliki that would show us that he is going 41 lines, et cetera, et cetera in the $10 billion that you spoke of of Iraqi money. Is it truly Iraqi money or was that money that we had given them that they just have not expended yet, if you could? Secretary GATES. It is Iraqi oil money. It is $10 billion of Iraq's own money from the sale of their oil. General PACE. Yes, ma'am. Mrs. MILLER. Okay. Let me quickly ask one other question then. Everything that we are talking about here is predicated on the ability for us—and I will switch gears here—to train the Iraqis to stand up, to embrace their own freedom, and the Iraq Study Group as well has indicated that that is a priority, and I am just wonder- ing, if you could enlighten me a bit, about what the training that we are doing to the Iraqis actually entails when you look at our Army and Marine troops and how long it takes them to get through boot camp—9 weeks, 11 weeks, 13 weeks—and at what point they are ready to be combat-ready. How long is it taking us to train the Iraqi people, troops, to be able to be combat-ready to embrace their own freedom? General PACE. Ma'am, we start with raw recruits. There are about 30 different locations throughout Iraq, different academies for non-commissioned (NCO) training, different brigade-level head- quarters where they do the actual training, but we start with the basic troops, and we basically help build a cadre of Iraqi trainers who do what we do in boot camp, with our assistance, which is to bring in PFC. Mohammad and train him up to the standard of being able to protect himself on the battlefield, and then take them to the field and learn to work in teams of 4, then teams of 12 or 13, then teams of about 30 or 40, then teams of about 150, et cetera. Once they get up to about the battalion level, which is about 500 or 600 troops, then they are put into the Iraqi army available forces, and that is where the embedded U.S. teams stay with them and do on-the-job training, basically, as they go on, starting with lesser intense missions like patrolling and the like and learn through doing and learn through coming home and saying, “Okay. What went right? What did not go right?” just like we do with our own people. The leaders then go to some of the leadership academies, and we are assisted in this with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) training teams that are there helping with some of the leadership training, and countries like Jordan have schools to which we send people. . So it is very much modeled on our U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps boot camp through the fielding of units. The timeline—I -check this figure. I think their boot camp period is about ten weeks, but I would need to check that, and let me get back to you. Mrs. MILLER. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. Let me also mention that I appreciate everybody staying within the five-minute rule. It is very, very helpful. Mrs. Tauscher. 44 job? top of that? Why aren't there 57,000 Iraqi troops ready to do this Secretary GATES. Well, sir, Air Force First Lieutenant Robert Gates is no expert on military matters, and frankly, that is the judgment. The numbers on both the Iraqi side and on the American side are the result of conversations between the commanders in the field who are on the ground and familiar with the situation. I have to take their recommendation. Mr. ANDREWS. How much have we spent training Iraqi security forces in the last four years? Do you know? General PACE. Sir, I do not know the answer to that. We have trained 325,000. We are going to train 37,000 more. I do not know the exact number. It is available. I just do not have it in my head. Mr. ANDREWS. The department data from your department indi- cates that the defense forces of the Iraqis is now 137,500 give or take as distinguished from the interior forces. I understand the dif- ference in quality. You have 66,000 in now, so you need to ramp up 15,000. Aren't there 15,000 trained and competent Iraqi defense forces that could be shifted into Baghdad instead of these additional Americans, and if not, why not? General PACE. Sir, there are well-trained Iraqi forces. There are 15 relatively stable provinces right now. We have learned in the past that when you take forces—whether they are Coalition or Iraqi—from one place to another, unless you continue to cover the spot that was stable, that it becomes instable, number one. Num- ber two, you need to take a look at the mixture of the forces you have versus where they are going to be deployed. It does not make good sense to take a mostly Shi'a organization and put it into ac- tion in a mostly Sunni neighborhood, for example. Next, we have capacities in the U.S. military that the Iraqis do not yet have. So the combination of where they are in their current capacities and our ability to reinforce them is how we came up with these numbers of 7,000 additional U.S. in Baghdad to help the 50,000 Iraqis. Mr. ANDREWS. General, again, if I may, that explains some of our skepticism. You just said, I think, accurately that putting Shi'a forces in a Sunni neighborhood is a problem. Well then, how is the plan ever going to succeed? If we are eventually going to turn this over to a military force supposedly loyal to this government, aren't we eventually going to have to put Shi'a forces in Sunni neighbor- hoods and vice versa? General PACE. Absolutely, sir, and we are going to have to do that over time and build the confidence. I do not understand the kind of hatred that festers for centuries, much less for minutes, but centuries—and we are going to have to build the kind of con- fidence where there are first mixed Iraqi units work neighborhoods and Shi’a units working in Shi'a neighborhoods and Sunni units working in Sunni neighborhoods, and taking care of criminals builds the confidence of the Iraqi people in their own armed forces, and that is going to take time because o that they think about each other, and we are just going to have to have some patience. Mr. ANDREWS. Thank you, Gentlemen. 46 General PACE. Sir, it has been effective. It does have accounting rules. We do keep track of what works and what does not work; cleaning up the streets, hiring Iraqi youth to clean up the streets and do those kind of small construction projects might work ex- tremely well. What is really telling, and the Congress has been very helpful in this, and we thank you for it because we would give one of our troops a $90,000 weapon and tell them to fire it when he needs to, and then we wouldn't give him $5 to go hire an Iraqi youth to go police something up if it would take that young youth off the street. You have fixed that by giving us this ability to do that. There is accounting. It is used primarily for short-term em- ployment to be able to have impact like building schools, building hospitals, cleaning up the streets and the like. Dr. GINGREY. Thank you, General. Thank you, Mr. Secretary Mr. Chairman, I want to make sure that I yield my time back now back to Mrs. Drake, and I appreciate her yielding. The CHAIRMAN. I think she probably has ten seconds left. Let me say that I did not learn until a few moments ago, Mr. Secretary, that you had to leave before everyone had the oppor- tunity to ask questions, and then you are kind enough to extend your time for a short period of time. I was in hopes that you could stay for the entire, because those down in the front row have as much right as we do on the top row to ask questions, and I have to comment that everybody is doing their best to stay within the five-minute time limit. But let's sail on as far as we can, Mr. Sec- retary. Mrs. Davis. Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Sec- retary Gates. Before following up on a few of my colleagues' ques- tions, I wanted to get sort of a simple response, if I may, Mr. Sec- retary. There is some question about the reserve mobilization policies and whether or not that would be a cumulative service for 24 months or consecutive 24 months of mobilization. We have some anxious families out there that I think are concerned about that. Can you clarify that for us? Secretary GATES. For that reason it is important you get an accu- rate answer, and so let me turn to General Pace. General PACE. Ma'am, from this day forward, based on what the secretary decided, when a reservist or a guard member is called to active duty, it will be for no more than 24 months from the time they mobilize at home station until the time they are demobilized at home station, irrespective of any previous service; 12 months maximum from the time of mobilization to the time of demobiliza- tion from today forward. Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Would you say for those you are not extending the length of time then for any reservists that are mobi- lized in an involuntary fashion? General PACE. There are Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. That exist today. General PACE. There are reservists currently serving on active duty, specifically the guard members from the Minnesota Guard who are currently in Iraq whose duty will be extended, but for 47 those who are going to be called to duty from today forward, their total time maximum will be 12 months on that call to duty, and then the policy is they should have 5 years before they were to come back into the bin to be potentially called back to active duty. Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you very much. If I could go on and just mention a few other issues. I think that your clarification of the makeup of the Iraqi forces did cause some of us some concern, particularly because you noted the police forces that would be combined with the Iraqi forces, partly because we know that there has been an amount of corruption within the po- lice forces, and that they weren't well trained as some of my col- leagues have mentioned. What concerns me is that there is a key al shift in the rules of engagement from being more re- strictive to more permissive. Does that cause you any concern given the fact that those police forces may not be necessarily as well trained, and does that increase what might be beyond an accept- able risk of friendly fire? General PACE. Ma'am, the rules of engagement term really ap- plies to what we allow PFC Pace to do or not do, and with regard to his or her ability to engage the enemy or protect themselves, that is not changing at all. What is changing is inside the Iraq gov- ernment and the authority that they are going to allow their forces and our forces to do what we must do to impose the rule of law regardless of what neighborhood we are in. So if we confuse the issue by using rules of engagement, which has a very precise mili- tary meaning, with what we are really talking about, which is free- dom of action inside of the communities— Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. So we are talking about where they go and General PACE. Yes, ma'am. Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. That is helpful. I wanted to clarify that. There hasn't been much focus in the discussion today about the training camps and what we might do to disrupt the operations there. There was activity in about mid-November in Turkey by the Diyala province where there was an assessment made that, in fact, the Sunni insurgents there were more disciplined, better trained than they had anticipated. Can you respond to what in addition we will be doing to disrupt those training camps, and are we redis- covering that those troops are far better disciplined and able to en- gage in more traditional firepower than initially was anticipated? General PACE. I will try and answer you, ma'am, and if I mis- understood your question, please give me another shot. We do, and still have, have had and will continue to have a good chunk of our resources apply to the al Qaeda problem. We are working that every day and every night, and we will continue to work against the al Qaeda elements and foreign elements in Iraq without respect to the plus-up that is going to happen in Baghdad. So we will con- tinue to pursue them. Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you. The CHAIRMAN. I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Hawaii for an inquiry. Mr. ABERCROMBIE. General Pace, so that we are absolutely clear with regard to Mrs. Davis's question, because this thing has gone 48 out over television now to the whole country, you said in clear terms, at least the way I understood it, that the guard and reserve units will remain one year of being mobilized, followed by five years demobilized. However, the secretary's testimony then states: however, today's global demands will require a number of selected guard and reserve units to be remobilized sooner than this stand- ard. Our intention is that such exceptions be made temporary.”. So, Mr. Secretary, can you—that is a contradiction of what Gen- eral Pace just said. Is the mobilization for one year, period, fol- lowed by five years of demobilization, period, or will there be cer- tain select guard units that will be remobilized? Secretary GATES. Let me let General Pace clarify his remarks. General PACE. Thank you, sir. Sir, the policy is— Thé CHAIRMAN. As quickly as possible, please, General. General PACE. One year mobilized followed by five years is the policy that the Secretary articulated this morning. That will be for those units that are mobilized in the coming period. Some of the units that will be mobilized in the coming period will not have had five years since their last mobilization. That is, I think, where the discrepancy is. There will be some units that have four years, per- haps as little as three years, between the time that they were last demobilized and this mobilization. But- Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I don't have all the time, General. Mr. Gates, I think you have got to clearly delineate after this hearing is over precisely what the policy is. The CHAIRMAN. Thank the gentleman. Mr. Conaway. Mr. CONAWAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thank you for being here today. I will try not to be any more redundant than everybody else has been. Prime Minister Maliki is getting immense pressure from us, and others. Can you comment briefly on pressure from within, groundswells of pressure from within his country? Also, decisions that we make have consequences, and in despite of what was previously said by one of my colleagues, I think it is very important that we understand the consequences of failure in Iraq. When the chairman and I were in Iraq late last month, we asked the State Department, we asked the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and others what they thought the doomsday narios were like. None of them were acceptable, and I think it is important for the American people to understand what those con- sequences can be and in all likelihood could be. So if you could flesh out your comments there. And then finally, as we look at Al Anbar, we were told that the sheiks ought to kick al Qaeda and Iraq out of their own province. It is just an acknowledgment that we understand the risks of creat- ing additional Sunni militias in a province that at one point in time could become our enemy, and that we at least understand the con- sequences of that. Any comments on those three areas? Secretary GATES. First of all, we think there are pressures on Prime Minister Maliki from inside; that there are a number of ele- ments of the government and olitical factions that are dissatisfied 50 isting training is sufficient to meet our military-specific mission re- quirements in Iraq? Secretary GATES. Let me answer your first question and ask General Pace to address your second question. With respect to whether the United States military is being used as a police force in Iraq, in a civil war, I would make two observa- tions. The first is I think in many respects there are four wars going on in Iraq at the same time. The first is Shi’a-on-Shi'a vio- lence in the south, the second is sectarian violence in Baghdad and in its environments, the third is an insurgency, and the fourth is al Qaeda. Whatever was the case in 2003, the reality is that all the bad ac- tors in the region are now active in Iraq; Hezbollah trainers, Iran, Syria and so on. So I think that to call it a civil war frankly over- simplifies the complexity of the problems in Iraq today, and I think that the U.S. forces are not being used as a police force, but are, in fact, being used in an effort to try and first of all, and over the past couple of years, train and bring up an Iraqi military force able to exercise the writ of the government around the country and now, under this, to support an Iraqi effort to try and get control of the sectarian violence in Baghdad. General PACE. Sir, the additional troops are for combat and to strengthen our combat units, the numbers. What you have right now is sufficient force to have one year in combat in Iraq, home for d back over. What happens in that year that you are home is after you take leave and have the people who are going to get out get out, and the people join join, you have enough time left in that year to train your unit to be well trained for the kind of operations they are going to be doing in Iraq, but you don't do the kinds of combined arms training that you may need elsewhere in the world. By adding to the strength of the Army and strength of the Ma- rine Corps, you will be able to have more time between deploy- ments for units and then be able to train them not only for mis- sions like they are doing in Iraq, but also for the kinds of capacities and capabilities that we need to be able to defeat other challenges in the world like the troops were trained before they went into Iraq in the first place. Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you. I will yield back the balance of my time. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. I hope we can get, Mr. Secretary, through the next four mem- bers, Franks, Larsen, Drake, Cooper, and we get Mrs. Drake be- cause of a mistake made on the list. And you will be back with us in three weeks, as I understand it. With the concurrence of the gentleman from California, Mr. Hunter, priority will be given to those who do not have the opportunity today to ask you questions. I would hope, General Pace, will you be able to stay after these next four members? General PACE. I will stay. The CHAIRMAN. Could you, please? All right. Call Mr. Franks. Five minutes. Mr. FRANKS. I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you Mr. Sec- retary, General. 51 You know, sometimes I think that those of you who carry the shield of freedom for the rest of us do so often in such a noble and effective way that it is easy for us to forget the challenges and lo- gistics you face in a war situation, and I am absolutely convinced that that is the case in this circumstance, that you face a changing, dedicated, committed enemy that is perhaps the most dangerous ideology and fighting force that we have ever really dealt with in terms of ideological commitment. They change so quickly that you have had to change your strategy as you go, and it has been my observation you have done that. And yet somehow the American people to a large degree seem unable to understand some of those doomsday scenarios that everybody points out. It occurs to me that failure in Iraq will ultimately lead to terror- ists gaining control of that area, that oil-rich province, and possibly even the entire human family. If this ideology is germinated into the greater populations of Islamic countries throughout the world, n't think any of us can overstate the danger of that happening. With that said, I am convinced that the greatest challenge those of you in the military and those of us here at home face is the po- tential loss of will among the American people, and it occurs to me that that is something that has to be addressed, and it is a non- military approach. It is something to help not only our people un- derstand just how serious and dangerous this enemy is and how se- rious the challenges that you face are, but to somehow also sup- press the fallacy and propaganda that the other side puts forth through al Jazeera and other places. So my question really is basically twofold: how can we help the world and even our own citizens understand the danger and the po- tential of the enemy that we face and the challenge that you face more clearly so that we are all on the same page, and how can we suppress the false propaganda that seeks to recruit additional ter- rorists to this growing danger to the world? Secretary GATES. First of all, I think that one of the ways to help educate the American people, quite honestly, are through hearings like this and through the hearings that this committee and its counterpart on the Senate side and other committees will hold on this matter and this kind of dialog. I have not had the opportunity to respond to a couple of things that have been said, but let me assure this committee one of the things that I am proudest of is the relationship that I established with our congressional overseers in the intelligence business when I became acting director in 1986. There was never a single addi- tional scandal or conflict or major conflict between CIA and the In- telligence Committees after I became acting director of Central In- telligence until I retired in 1993. And one of the things I was proudest of was the relationship I established with Mr. Boren’s fa- ther when he was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. And I worked very closely with Mr. Hamilton when he was chair of the House Intelligence Committee. This committee will not get spin from me. It will not get canned—it will get straight answers, and I am not afraid to tell you what I think. I didn't take this job, as I told the Senate, to be a bump on a log, and I didn't take it to compromise my reputation for being a straight talker. So that is what you will get from me. 52 So I think the first answer to your question is that hearings like this, speeches like the President's, the more dialogue we can have, the more questions that you all can ask that get at what is on the minds of the American people I think contributes to public edu- cation. One of the sad things that we did after the end of the Cold War, in answer to your second question, the second part of your ques- tion, was dismantle the entire apparatus in the American govern- ment for communicating the message about what this country is about and what goes on in this country, and we are trying to recon- stitute that now. But right now until very recently, we have had very limited capability. The old capabilities we had through Voice of America and Radio Free Liberty and those things have largely disappeared, and we are trying to rebuild those, but we have to have that kind of a capability to get our message out. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Larsen. Mr. LARSEN. Mr. Chairman, thank you, and, Mr. Secretary and General Pace, thanks for being with us today. Mr. Secretary, you were born in Kansas, came from Texas A&M, but you are one-we are all proud of you in Big Lake, Washington, so we are looking forward to your return in a couple of years. Secretary GATES. Mr. Larsen is my representative now. Mr. LARSEN. So I have to be very careful. Some days the view of Mount Constitution seems farther away than 3,000 miles, and I know today is one of those days for you and for me. But I have a couple of questions for the both of you. First, actually, for Gen- eral Pace. And I want to plant a quick image here, and it is the image of the “can you hear me now” Verizon Wireless guy, because he is just a guy holding the phone, and there is this huge network behind him. That is the image Verizon is trying to portray. Like that image, the Iraqis are supposed to take the lead, but I think for many of us they are like the guy holding the phone, and the U.S. military is the network behind the guy, making everything work and taking all the risks, and I think that is part of the frus- tration that we have, certainly on this side of the aisle, certainly from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle as well. nt to ask you about this deployment in Iraq, or in Bagh- dad. You mentioned earlier that right now the Iraqis have 42,000 security folks, variety of security folks, allocated to Baghdad. Does that mean that they are there, or there are 42,000 Iraqis that are supposed to be there but it is actually a lesser number, or is it 42,000 of a higher base that didn't show up, first. Second, we expect three Iraqi brigades additionally equaling 8,000 personnel. What is the current unauthorized absence rate or absent without leave (AWOL) rate for Iraqi military personnel, and how many of those 8,000 do we actually expect to show up? And will we stop send being brigades if the Iraqis do not show up? General PACE. Sir, thank you. Your analogy I appreciate. I would tell you that right now the guy holding the phone has a crowd behind him that is mixed Iraqi and U.S., and what they need is a guy to put the advertisement on the television from their politicians to say, "Pay attention to these folks, they are here to help you.” That is what we need, sir. 53 w Forty-two thousand present for duty in Baghdad. Of the 325,000 total that we have trained of the Iraqi forces, about 89 percent are still on active duty, given the attrition rates, and I don't know the absent without leave number. I will have to get that for you, sir. But there is a percentage of that, and I don't want to guess what that percentage is, but that is already factored into the 42,000 on the ground. Mr. LARSEN. Of the 8,000 Iraqi personnel that are going to be put into Baghdad, do we have an expectation that 8,000 will show up, or do we have an expectation that it will be fewer than that based on what we know about AWOL rates and attrition rates? General PACE. Their table of organization calls for 2,500 per bri- gade, so my math rounded up from 7,500 to 8,000. If they perform to normal standard and they have some of their folks go on leave, probably 2,000 per 2,500 will be on duty, so probably about 6,000. Mr. LARSEN. What do you mean by saying 500 per brigade being on leave? Does that mean they are not showing up? If they are going to be ordered to Baghdad, we want them in Baghdad; we don't want them on leave. General PACE. Fair. I misspoke, and I appreciate the opportunity to fix that. In fact, I should point out another thing, and that is for the units that are moving to Baghdad, that the Iraqi govern- ment is going to pay them a stipend of $150 deployment money per month, which is big bucks. They are going to get the first month before they leave to give to their families, and they will get the multiple of $150 per month for the deployment time when they get back. So there is no leave; I misspoke. Mr. LARSEN. Before the red light goes on, I need to know the an- swer to this. Will we stop sending brigades if the Iraqis don't show up? That was the last question. If the Iraqis don't fulfill their com- mitment, what is the standard we are going to use to say we are not sending our folks? If they are taking the lead, they should be taking the lead. General PACE. Sir, they should be taking the lead. I expect them to take the lead. I am going to plan for success. I am also going to understand that there is potential for lots of things to change. If the situation changes, we will reassess, but I can only reiterate that each of the commitments that they have made to date have been met, to include the beginning of the movement of their first brigade to Baghdad. Mr. LARSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If I may, Mr. Secretary, the burgers at Big Lake Bar & Grill are on me next time you are in the district. The CHAIRMAN. Had I known that there was a time problem, Mr. Secretary, and that you had a presidential commitment, I would have been able to announce that earlier, but to rectify that, we will call—when you appear three weeks from now, we will call upon those who did not get the opportunity to have preference. We will call on Mrs. Drake to correct the mistake of the listing, and Mr. Cooper, and he will be the last questioner of you We, of course-if you could, General, if you would stay, we would appreciate that, after the Secretary leaves. I hope that meets with your ability to meet your presidential commitment. 54 Secretary GATES. Yes, sir. I don't want to mislead; it is a commit- ment with the Secretary of State. The CHAIRMAN. You will be a couple minutes late, but we appre- ciate it. Mrs. Drake. Mrs. DRAKE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, thank you for being here. I would like to welcome you to our committee and certainly to thank both of you for being here, especially in such a timely manner when we are discussing such a new strategy. So thank you for that. Truly I believe that it is painful for everyone to have American troops serving in harm's way, and especially to be here talking about increasing the number that would be currently serving there. But I would argue that we don't talk enough about the threat to America and the threat to the world if the terrorists are successful in their goal of taking over Iraq and controlling those very vast oil resources. General Pace, I would like to take a moment and thank you and every man and woman that has served in Iraq or Afghanistan for your determination that this fight with this enemy will take place on their soil and not on our soil. And I thank God every day that you have been successful in keeping our enemy busy, in taking out their leaders and shutting down their money, and that we have not had another attack here. Now, one of the problems with being at the end of the list is most of the questions have been asked, so I have been sitting here think- ing that there is something even more I want to ask you, and that is one of the things we talk about often in here, is: what is the greatest threat to America? We identified in one of our gap panels what we think is the greatest threat; that is, the American people grow weary of this war and demand of their leaders that we leave before the Iraqi people can accomplish what you are working on right now. And I wonder, do you think the intent of our enemy is as intense right now to attack us again, or are they waiting until they accom- plish the thing we are most concerned of, and that is wearing the American people down, knowing that they would grow tired? Ev- eryone is familiar with the quote that said when Americans cut and run like they did in Vietnam, they leave their agents behind. So is that another reason that we haven't had an attack on this soil is they know they would awaken the resolve of the American people and that we would understand the threat, or do you think we have just been successful with the things that we are doing and the work of our very brave military men and women? General PACE. Ma'am, I do not know what I don't know about what they have tried. I do know that thanks to the good Lord and a lot of hard work, and probably a good bit of luck, that since 9/ 11 we have not had another attack here. It is clear to me based on the things we do know about, like those who tried to put explo- sives on multiple planes leaving Europe several months ago and other intelligence that we have, that our adversaries continue to look for ways to attack us now while they try to set themselves up to destroy our way of life long term. 55 So this fight is worth it, and if we leave, we are fighting them now, they will follow us home. So those of us in uniform, although we do not like to fight, are proud of the contribution we are making right now to the safety of this Nation. Thank you. Mrs. DRAKE. We are very grateful for that. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Mr. Chairman, I yield back. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Mr. Cooper, wrap it up, at least with the Secretary. Mr. COOPER. Thank you, Chairman, and thanks to each of you gentlemen for your patriotic service to America, particularly to Mr. Gates. We appreciate your candor and humility. Thank you. Secretary Gates, the bottom line of page four in your testimony, you say the President, Ambassador Khalilzad, and General Casey are persuaded that Prime Minister Maliki has the will to act against all instigators of violence in Baghdad. Now, as a Shi'a-sup- ported leader Prime Minister Maliki has been reluctant to take on the Mahdi Army. Can you tell me that now our troops or coalition forces with the Iraqis will be able to go into Sadr City and start disbanding the Mahdi Army? Secretary GATES. The assurances that he has—that Prime Min- ister Maliki has given to the President and to General Casey and to others is that the coalition forces and the Iraqi forces will be per- mitted to go into all parts of the city to go after all lawbreakers regardless of their sectarian allegiance. Mr. COOPER. There seems to be a disconnect here, because David Brooks in today's New York Times has a pretty tough column say- ing basically the plan put forward by the President last night is the opposite of the plan that Prime Minister Maliki was proposing. He suggested we exit all U.S. troops from Baghdad. And so David Brooks, who is usually pretty friendly with the Administration, says that the impression the Administration is trying to give is, quote, “the opposite of the truth.” And in his final paragraph, Mr. Brooks goes on to say: "the enemy in Iraq is not some discrete group of killers, it's the maelstrom of violence and hatred that in- fects every institution including the government and the military. Instead of facing up to this core reality, the Bush Administration has papered it over with salesmanship and spin.” Is Mr. Brooks wrong? Secretary GATES. Well, I don't know what-as I indicated earlier, I don't know exactly what Prime Minister Maliki gave to the Presi- dent, but my recollection is that within the last few days he has said publicly to the Iraqi people that he welcomes the additional U.S. help. Mr. COOPER. General Pace, it is my understanding that the regu- lar training regimen for Iraqi forces is three weeks of training- then, they get one week off to take their pay back to their families, and we really don't know where they go—and that there is no pun- ishment for AWOL Iraqi soldiers. So we don't really know as a practical matter whether all this training-if we trained, as you said, 325,000 Iraqis, we don't really know whether we have really just trained a lot of militia members. If we don't know where they are one week a month, and there is no punishment for being AWOL, how is that effective training? 56 General PACE. Sir, there is punishment for being AWOL, which al from the service. They do take their paychecks home once a month because they don't have a functioning banking sys- tem, and if we want to help increase the size of the Iraqi army by 25 percent, it would be good to help them build a banking system inside their country so we don't have to have all their troops carry their money home. Your comparison, for our folks we have four weekends a month normally when we are home. They are on duty 21-plus days, and then they are off 7 days. So the best answer I can give you, sir, is that 89 percent of those who have been trained are still in the armed forces; the rest have either completed their time or have been dismissed for, as you mentioned, being AWOL. Mr. COOPER. General, with the limited language capacity of our troops, do we even know who is Sunni or Shi'a or which tribe indi- vidual Iraqis belong to? General PACE. Sir, I can't imagine that all of our troops know what tribe each of their fellow Iraqi soldiers come from. I can't imagine they do know that. Mr. COOPER. I see that my time has expired. I thank the chair- man. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. Mr. Secretary, we really appreciate you giving us your maiden voyage. We look forward to seeing you in three weeks, and we wish you all the best. It is a tremendous challenge that you have for our country, and we look forward to seeing you and visiting with you three weeks from now, if not before. Let me say, General Pace, we appreciate your staying. For the record, we are keeping the notes, staff is keeping notes, as to who did not have the opportunity to ask questions of the Sec- retary today. We will lead off with those three weeks from now. General Pace is going to stay, and let me tell our new members this: General Pace is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Under a law that we passed that has origination in this committee, by the way, called Goldwater-Nichols, his job is to advise the Sec- retary of Defense and the President, and he may—underline the word “may” because I looked it up the other day, General—he may advise us as well. He is not a policymaker, he is the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and consequently if a policy question is put to him, he would be in his rights to say, “Ask the Secretary.” So with that, Mr. Secretary, we really appreciate it. If there is a time constraint next time, I wish at least I will know about it so we can make the announcement. We appreciate your indulgence, and I am sorry we had the votes in the middle of everything also. I think we would have gotten through. Secretary GATES. Mr. Chairman, it is a pleasure to be with you here today and to embark on my maiden voyage here. If I may, be- cause of the importance of this subject, if I could take 30 seconds to clarify on an issue that Mr. Abercrombie raised on the guard and reserve. General Pace properly described our reserve mobiliza- tion process; one year mobilized, five years demobilized is our pol- icy goal. However, there will be this transition period during which some units will be mobilized sooner than the five-year demobiliza- tion period. 57 Our intention, particularly through the growth of the services and so on, is to get to the one to five rotation, get back to the one to five rotation cycle as soon as possible, but the important point is that even though they may be mobilized, remobilized sooner than the five years, involuntary mobilizations will not exceed one year, where they have been from anywhere from 18 to 24 months. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Secretary, look forward to seeing you very shortly. Thank you again. Mr. Marshall, do you wish to ask questions of the general? Mr. MARSHALL. I would be delighted to. Thank you, Mr. Chair- man. General Pace, I appreciate your service to the country. I am over here. General PACE. Thank you, sir. Mr. MARSHALL. I especially appreciate the service of all the men and women who have gone over there in the lower ranks, actually out there doing patrols and worrying about IEDs and snipers 5 and things like that every single day. The CHAIRMAN. Would the gentleman yield? Excuse me. The Re- publicans are meeting at 5:00 to choose subcommittees. Mr. Gingrey is staying, as I understand, to represent them, and I want- ed the rest of the committee to know where they are as of this mo- ment. Go ahead and start again. I am sorry. Mr. MARSHALL. I am starting all over again? Thank you, sir. Mr. Cooper raised this issue, and others have spoken about it also, the commitment of Iraqis to this effort, and that is terribly important. I think we both agree on that. In fact, it would be very nice if we could say that this is an Iraqi idea entirely; Iraqis are taking the lead. We are retaining our discretion to say no, we are following their lead and assisting them with their effort to regain control of their capital. We have talked about a number of pre- conditions that are being set by us, and there have been a lot of references to Prime Minister Maliki having agreed, and yet it is clear he initially proposed a different plan. He did welcome addi- tional U.S. forces, but those forces were to surround Baghda be inside. His units were going to take care of what was going on inside Baghdad, and that was just going to be Shi’a and Kurd units, principally focused on Sunnis. . So it is a different plan altogether, and it would be very helpful to all members of this committee if you could provide us with translations of video of Prime Minister Maliki actually saying to the Iraqi people that the plan being described by the President is the plan that he supports; that he does contemplate mixed units of Iraqis working with Americans in Shi'a neighborhoods in Sadr City without restraints, the sorts of things that we have heard. That is terribly important to building our confidence that this plan can work. And so is it possible for you to maybe provide that to members of the committee? [The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on page 89.] General PACE. I can help search the record. I know he gave a speech on 6 January, which is his Armed Forces Day, wherein he not. 59 General PACE. Sir, that is why I think benchmarks are good when they are within a time frame as opposed to a specific date, because there is room then to modify and to adjust as needed. Mr. MARSHALL. Thank you. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Udall. Is he there? Mr. Ellsworth then.. - Mr. ELLSWORTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, General. I appreciate your being here. I want you to know that the reason I asked to be placed on this committee was so that I could be closer with you and for all our men and women that wear our uniform, as well as my constituency. I heard a lot today about that this needs to be solved politically, not militarily sometimes, and I guess that would bode that there would be those that would lobby that we send 21,000 politicians to Iraq as opposed to our military. That might make some people very happy. When I was asked in my district about Iraq, my comments were that I wanted to talk to the military leaders, not to the politicians, and so you being of that nature, I would like you to look me in the eye as I mull over this plan and tell me that this plan in the near future will produce less violence, fewer roadside bombs; that Iraq will be closer to freedom, because I think the President said his goal was freedom and democracy, so that it be closer to democracy; and probably most important that this plan will bring America closer to a time when we are at peace. If you can touch on that, I would appreciate it. General PACE. Sir, first, no guarantees, because the enemy gets a vote, and the Iraqi government has to perform. Second, with regard to violence, because there will be increased presence of troops in Baghdad, there will be most likely an increase in violence, not a decrease in violence for the short term. Having said that then, as they clear and hold, you can expect the violence to go down. The goal of a free Baghdad that supports its people will be closer, and our ability to bring our troops home will be closer. But I need to look you in the eye and tell you at least short term there is as much probability that there will be more vio- lence because there will be more troops as there is that there will be less violence. Mr. ELLSWORTH. Thank you, General. Mr. Chairman, I yield. The CHAIRMAN. The gentlelady from Kansas, Mrs. Boyda. Mrs. BOYDA. Thank you, Chairman Skelton. It is an honor for me to serve with you on this committee, and I look forward to working under your stewardship to support our working men and women and their families. I congratulate President Bush last night for saying that our troops in Iraq have fought bravely, and they have done everything that we have asked them to do. General Pace, Kansas is rightly proud of their service and their sacrifice, and it is with the welfare of their family first and foremost on my mind that I address you today. I would like to go back to my colleague Mrs. Davis's question a little earlier about the guard and reserve and try to make my ques- tion as clear as I possibly can here. And I would like to tell you 62 Mr. MURPHY. Thanks, sir. I have a couple other questions real quick. When I was there, I saw firsthand, and I know I have pictures that are up on this wall, sir, those two pictures, the color photos over there, we trained 600 Iraqi Civil Defense Corps members, now Iraqi National Army. What you will notice in that picture, sir, is that this is in late 2003 when I was there. They didn't even have uniforms, and we took the initiatives as good troopers do to buy Chicago White Sox hats so they could be recognized that they were a uniform. I heard your testimony today, sir, to say there is a ten-week basic training. We only trained them for two weeks. Actually, we trained them one week, and we took the initiative to train them an additional week. I know you said there is basically 30 places where they do basic training. Is there any thought of training them outside so it is not necessarily nine to five, where they go home; training them outside either in Iraq or remote Iraq where there is one commingled place? I remember when I went to Ft. Knox, Kentucky, over a decade ago, sir, I wasn't going to the Jersey shore in a weekend; I was going to basic training, because it is a profession, something you take very seriously. You can't be worrying about your fam- ily back at home or your imam back at home, whatever it is. So is there a thought on changing the way we train these soldiers so they can commingle and they understand how to take orders for one Iraq and not for one certain imam? General PACE. I will take the note and check on that. I like the idea. To give you a little bit of comfort, now we are, in fact, giving each soldier helmet, flak jacket, uniform, rifle, machine guns, Humvees, communications gear, and the like so that when they go into the field, they have the protection that you would expect them to have to be able to fight as soldiers, feel like soldiers, act like sol- diers, fight like soldiers. I take your point on the training, sir. Thank you. [The information referred to can be found in the Appendix begin- ning on page 100.] Mr. MURPHY. Since I have very quick time as a freshman, is the AK-47 still the biggest weapon they will get, or anything higher than that? Do they train higher than an AK-47? General PACE. Machine gun; yes, sir. The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Johnson. Let me interrupt if I may. Mr. ABERCROMBIE (presiding]. General, and those from the Sec- retary's staff who are with you, could I urge you—on those ques- tions that are taken for the record, would you urge them as well as the staff who is with you to get them back to us in a timely manner? Sometimes we have gotten them back so late it did not make that much difference, so I would appreciate that. General PACE. I will do so. Mr. ABERCROMBIE. So carry that message back. General PACE. I will, sir. Mr. ABERCROMBIE. The gentleman from Georgia. Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General Pace, it is an honor for me to speak with you today, and I want to thank you for serving your country as well as all of the 63 other military personnel throughout the globe that have served this country, and I am speaking to you today, which is the same day that President Bush is in my home State of Georgia, speaking to the very troops which will be subject to this escalation, or “surge,” as some call it. It is the second and third brigades of the 3rd Infantry Division based respectively in Fort Stewart and Fort Benning, Georgia, and both of those brigades would be deployed to Iraq a little sooner than originally planned. They would make up approximately one half of the proposed troop surge, and it has been our strategy in Iraq, at least since, I would say, probably 2004, to clear, hold and build. Isn't that a fact? General PACE. Yes, sir. Excuse me. Yes, sir, it is. Mr. JOHNSON. And we seem to have no problem when it comes down to clearing, and we can clear for a certain period of time be- fore we get, you know, new impact from the insurgency coming right in once we depart, but we can hold but to-excuse me. We can clear, but to actually hold and then to build at the same time is a problem that has not been solved over the last 4 years since we have been in Iraq, and now we are being asked to dedicate an- other 22,000 troops to hold in Baghdad for 12 to 18 months. We should have cleared the whole area, and are able now for the Iraqis or then for the Iraqis to hold the police indefinitely, while at the same time we will have sunk money in to build the place up, to build Baghdad anyway, in the hope, I guess, that the situation in Fallujah would not deteriorate any further as well as other parts of Iraq. So how much is it going to cost us—you may not be able to an- swer this question. How much will that hold and build part cost in dollars, given the fact that I think folks say that about $9.5 bil- lion is missing in Iraq right now, missing in action in Iraq? How much are we talking about for the hold and build part, and how much is it going to take for this surge of troops for the next-we are talking about 12 to 18 months, but even through November, how much is that going to cost the American taxpayers? General PACE. Sir, clear, hold and build has worked in places. It has worked in Fallujah. It has worked in Mosul. It has worked in Ramadi, the difference there being that there were enough Iraqi troops who were allowed to do their job, and they would have been successful had they been allowed to perform their mission. Mr. JOHNSON. As to those same troops, by the way, we do not know whether or not they go home at night and take off their mili- tary uniform and put on their insurgent uniform, correct? General PACE. Šir, the vast majority of the Iraqi troops are very loyal to their government and are doing what we expect them to do in the Iraqi army. The Iraqi government is going to spend $10 billion of their money in Baghdad, so that amount is about all I can project for you there. Mr. JOHNSON. That will be for “hold” and “build," and I heard the term $1 billion is what we are being asked to—or you are not asking this committee, but you are asking the American people. General PACE. Sorry. I do not know what the U.S. might kick into that pile, sir. That is State Department business, but I do know that Iraq is going to put in $10 billion, and I can tell you that 64 . the cost of this operation if all 20,000 troops end up going and if they were to stay through 30 September of this year, then the addi- tional cost to the U.S. is $5.6 billion. Mr. JOHNSON. All right. Thank you. General PACE. Sir. Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Are you finished, Mr. Johnson? Are you fin- ished? Then the next would be Mr. Courtney. Mr. COURTNEY. Thank you, Mr. Abercrombie, and Mr. Chairman, I guess, temporarily. General Pace, like everyone else, I want to thank you for your service and for your endurance here today. I come from Eastern Connecticut, which on December 27th, we actually had a funeral at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Norwich because we lost a guardsman in Afghanistan, another brave example of human excellence, which I think saddened the whole state, but it also reminded us-it was a very harsh reminder—that there is still a pretty nasty situation still going on in Afghanistan, and my question to you, really, is about the impact of the President's plan on our troop levels in Af- ghanistan. There was a press report in The Baltimore Sun earlier this week which quoted, I believe it is, General Tata, who is com- mander over there, Anthony J. Tata, Army Brigadier General An- thony J. Tata. Hopefully, I am pronouncing his name right, but he indicated that a U.S. Army infantry battalion fighting in a critical area of Eastern Afghanistan is due to be withdrawn within weeks to deploy to Iraq where President Bush is expected to announce the dispatch of thousands of additional troops as a stopgap measure, and the General also went on to state that, this spring, the Taliban is expected to unleash a major campaign to cut a vital road be- tween Kabul and Kandahar and that the Taliban intended to seize Kandahar, the second largest city of Afghanistan and where the group was organized in the 1990's. I guess my question is, number one, is that correct that we are actually taking troops out of Afghanistan and deploying them to Iraq as part of this plan? And frankly, the second question is, is that very wise, given the fact that it is a pretty tenuous situation? A NATO commander says that we actually do not have sufficient troop levels there, and the number of attacks by the Taliban has tripled in the last two years, and I think a lot of people would have a great concern about whether we are not only risking a lot in Iraq in terms of if there is a failure there, but we may be actually put- ting at risk a very tenuous situation in Afghanistan as well. General PACE. Sir, it is not correct. It would not be wise. We have 22,500 troops in Afghanistan today. About half of those are in the NATO command. Ăbout the other half are in the U.S. com- mand doing the training and equipping. That number is not going to change. I do not know where that rumor came from about a unit that is currently in Afghanistan being moved over to Iraq. That is not going to happen, and I am aware of the troop plans for replace- ments in Afghanistan. We are going to maintain our current strength in Afghanistan. So, sir, it is just not true. Mr. COURTNEY. Well, hopefully, someone will correct. The Balti- more Sun because, actually, I got calls in my office because this seemed like, again, robbing Peter to pay Paul in terms of the situa- tion. 65 General PACE. It would not be a wise thing to do. Mr. COURTNEY. I have one quick question—I do not know if I have enough time-regarding the rules of engagement with our troops in Iraq. I, again, have constituents, a gentleman whose son served at the Abu Ghraib Prison who was one of these troops who was very frustrated about the fact that we were rounding up mem- bers of the militia and then, in many cases, releasing them for what appeared, at least to this gentleman's son, to be for political reasons—which was about as demoralizing and as frustrating for his father, who was a veteran, a former Judge Advocate General (JAG) officer who actually supported my opponent in the last elec- but a good friend nonetheless—and whether or not those rules of engagement are going to change as part of this new operation. General PACE. Sir, we do have a problem with the capacity of the Iraqi penal system to maintain the population that they should maintain in captivity and then to prosecute them. To my knowl- edge, it has not been because of politics, but because of the system unable to handle the load that, unfortunately, some of the folks who were captured on the battlefield—after about two to three weeks, if there is not enough evidence against them to prosecute them in the Iraqi system, they are set free. That is extremely frus- trating to our troops, and we are working as fast as we can with our State Department and with their government, wit government, to be able to have enough capacity in their system, both judicial and in their prison system, to handle the load of these folks. Mr. COURTNEY. Mr. Chairman. The CHAIRMAN (presiding]. Thank you very much. Before I allow Mrs. Gillibrand to ask questions, let me introduce two friends of mine from Kansas City who have been very patient and who have sat through this hearing. It is a very special hearing because the gentleman helped me get elected my very, very, very first time to Congress, and I just wanted to recognize his being here, Doctor and Mrs. Gary Everett from Kansas City, Missouri. I appreciate your being here, and I appreciate your helping me be here very much. Mrs. Gillibrand. Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Thank you, Chairman. It is an honor to speak today. I begin my remarks with just an expression of gratitude to the men and women in the armed forces who have served so ably and given so much sacrifice to our Nation, and I am very grateful to you for your sacrifice, General, and thank you for being here to an- swer the questions of the committee. General PACE. Thank you, ma'am. Mrs. GILLIBRAND. My first question is, throughout this testi- mony, both you and Secretary Gates have said statements such as, with the commitment of a political and an economic side, a troop surge makes sense. Adding any number of U.S. forces will not suc- ceed absent political reconciliation and progress given the right eco- nomic and political climate to do the job, and in the President's speech last night, he talked about giving every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy by encouraging Iraq to pass legislation to share oil revenues amongst all Iraqis and then show commitment 66 to deliver a better life by spending $10 billion on reconstruction in- frastructure projects for jobs. This may not be your area of expertise, but to the extent you have been briefed on these issues, with regard to the Iraq oil reve- nues, who currently controls them, and when will this process take place of transferring the control to the Iraqis? General PACE. The Iraqi money belongs to the Iraqi people and is controlled currently by the Iraqi government. I believe that the money is held for the Iraqi government in banks in New York City, I believe, but they control the expenditure of those funds. I also was told that during the time of the recess of their assembly, that their parties worked through the wording of the law that they are working on right now in their assembly, that would allocate the re- sources of their oil revenue to Iraqi families, so that families actu- ally got X amount of money per month from the oil proceeds. That is about as far as I know. Mrs. GILLIBRAND. So you are saying that the U.S. currently does not control the Iraqi oil or the oil revenue? General PACE. Fundamentally, that is correct. We do have their money in our banks that they draw down as they see fit, and I am way out of my lane right now, but there are some kind of inter- national controls about which I know nothing that apply to that. Mrs. GILLIBRAND. And with regard to the reconstruction con- tracts, presently, the public understands the majority of those con- tracts are being managed by U.S. companies. Is there a plan or does part of this economic development change for those contracts to be transferred to Iraqis so that their 20-year-olds have the jobs to rebuild the roads and the schools and the hospitals? General PACE. Ma'am, I do not know. That is State Department business, but that makes sense to me. Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Okay. Let me talk about strategic issues. That may be more in your area. Is there a plan B? There was some dis- cussion in The New York Times today that the Administration staff have intimated there is a plan B that may include some measure of redeployment or containment or a breakup of the country. Have you been briefed on that or on part of those discussions? General PACE. Ma'am, you are asking a Marine who is focused on winning whether or not he has a plan in case he does not win. So my answer to you is we are going to focus on winning- Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Okay. General PACE [continuing]. And we are allocating enough re- sources to be able to handle the unexpected. Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Sure. Under the first Bush Administration, the President had a strat- - egy that there always had to be an exit strategy. Is that something that has been discussed under this Adminis- tration as part of your normal policy for military operations? General PACE. The term “exit strategy,” to me, is pejorative. Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Okay. General PACE. It sounds like you are leaving no matter what. That is not the plan. The plan is to be successful and then to be able to come home because the Iraqis are able to take care of them- selves. Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Okay. My last question. With regard to this current deployment of 20,000 troops, is there an estimation of how long they will be deployed? During the testi- mony today, we have heard a few months, several months; we will reconsider after six months. Do you have a sense of what your timing is for that need for es- calation? General PACE. I do have a sense of that. I would be happy to talk to you off-line about that. I would not want to tell our enemies how long they have to worry about this. Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Thank you. I give back the rest of my time. General PACE. Thank you, ma’am. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. General, along that line, it was in a previous hearing that I raised the issue with the—my recollection is it was with the former secretary about one of your predecessors that General Colin Powell had four requirements before going into battle, and number four was an exit strategy. I will just point that out to you, and I am sure my recollection is correct. You may wish to go back and re- fresh your recollection at your convenience. Mr. KLINE. He was not a Marine, was he, Mr. Chairman? The CHAIRMAN. He was not a Marine. You are right. The gen- tleman-Mr. Kline, you are not recognized. Mr. KLINE. Thank you. General PACE. Sir, I do recognize the term "exit strategy.” I just think it has become a pejorative, get-out-of-town word, why I prefer not to use it. When General Powell used it, it did not have the meaning it has today. The CHAIRMAN. I understand. You know, I will take it back. It was General Abizaid that I made the comment to. Mr. Sestak. Mr. SESTAK. General, thanks for staying late this evening. General PACE. Sir. Mr. SESTAK. I understand that the prime minister came to us with this idea or this plan. What would we have done if he had not in view of the President's saying this situation was intolerable to him? General PACE. Sir, that is a fair question. We collectively have been working here in Washington as joint chiefs—I'm sorry. I have got to back up. It was around June or July of this year that it became apparent that the Samarra bombing, in fact, had had an effect on the popu- lation that we had not predicted, and it was at about that time that we realized that instead of being able to do what we thought we would do this year, which is cut back our troops significantly, that we were not going to be able to do that. Clearly then, around July or August of this year, we were saying we are not where we thought we wanted to be by now. Our goal is over here. What do we need to change to attain our goal? We then began in Washington, the joint chiefs, working sepa- rately, Central Command working separately, and the guys in Baghdad working separately to take a look at the various options. We worked that for a couple of months. We called in—we chiefs called in outside experts. We called in guys and gals who had just 69 If you feel you can answer that I hate to interrupt you, Mr. Sestak, but- Mr. SESTAK. I was over my time. I'm sorry. The CHAIRMAN. No. No. We will make up for that. I am eating it up for you, but for the gentleman, if you can answer it, please do. General PACE. Sir, as best I can. I will try my best. Mr. SESTAK. I withdraw the question then. The CHAIRMAN. No. No. No. Ĝo ahead and ask it. General PACE. Sir, I will try to give you my best answer. I will give you my best answer, and you can see if it answers your ques- tion. It is a supposition that, really, I would not want to try to apply to the future, but I can tell you this. You have we have problems. The world has problems in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Chad, Sudan, and keep on coming around the globe. So, as you look at it, whether or not—no matter what you think about Iraq, there is going to be a need for U.S. strength for the foreseeable future, and based on that, with or without Iraq, then, yes, I would want a larger Army and a Marine Corps. The fact is, the necessity of having to plus-up in Iraq has caused me to get to that conclusion sooner than I might otherwise have come without the stimulus. Mr. SESTAK. General, thanks for your answer just because my major concern about Iraq is not Iraq in isolation. It is Iraq and what it is doing to the rest of our security around the world, not just the regional contingencies you plan for, but Chad, other places where we are not able to engage or be able to respond to a smaller contingency, and that is my major worry about putting more troops in Iraq. In my belief, we are in a tragic misadventure, and I am concerned about the security interest in the rest of the world. Thanks for your time, sir. General PACE. Thank you, sir. The CHAIRMAN. Thanks so much. Ms. Giffords, and then we will go to a second round, if any. I do - know Mr. Hunter has a question, but Ms. Giffords, go. Ms. GIFFORDS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, General. I appreciate the honor to be here today. You can imagine this is my first hearing in the House Armed Services Committee, and let me assure you that it will be a memorable one. I would like to start by asking you a couple of questions that per- tain to my district. I now represent the 8th Congressional District of Arizona, and in my district is Fort Huachuca, an Army intel- ligence post, but it also does training beyond the Army, of course. I would imagine that, in order for any plan to work in Iraq, reliable and timely intelligence would be essential. Would this new plan in- clude proportional requirements for intelligence services? General PACE. The units that deploy will need the embedded part of their own units that are dedicated to intelligence, but we will not need more intelligence about what is going on-I said that . We will not need more assets on the U.S. side to have more intelligence about what is going on in Baghdad. What we need is more citizens of Baghdad to come forward with human intelligence to tell us what we need to know and what the 71 se what job duty station. I don't mean to be pejorative about that. That was very important to do. Since that time, the Army and the Air Force have changed dramatically, and they are deploying all over the world all of the time. Folks who join the Army now understand that. So, as long as we ensure that we properly advertise wha we are asking them to do, we will be okay. More significantly and to the point, yes, I do worry about recruit- ing because we are asking our young men and women to go in harm's way, and we need to make sure that the missions we ask them to do are worthy of their sacrifice, and that is where we need to continually pay attention so that, when we ask them to serve, we ask them to serve for a reason that is vital to this country. Ms. GIFFORDS. Thank you, General. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. That completes the round. As far as I know, Mr. Hunter and Mrs. Davis are the only ones who wish to ask an additional question. General Pace, you are a real trooper for sticking it out with us. We appreciate it. Mr. Hunter. Mr. HUNTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General Pace, how are you doing? General PACE. I am doing great. Thank you. Mr. HUNTER. Can you hang in there a little bit longer? General PACE. You bet. Mr. HUNTER. Just for the record, this committee raised the end strength of the Army from 482,000 to 512,000, and we raised the end strength of the Marine Corps from 175 to 180, and this review that we did, this committee defense review that we did last year for the new gentleman from Pennsylvania, concluded that we need- ed nine more Marine battalions and eight more Army brigades, and depending on how you mix that in the Army, particularly with re- serve and active, that is not too far from what the Administration is requesting according to the secretary's statements to us today. With respect to precision munitions, this committee has led the effort, and we have more than doubled the stockpile of precision munitions. The exact number of every type of munition is classi- fied, but I can assure the gentleman from Pennsylvania that we have more than twice the precision munitions right now, in fact, far more than twice than we had in the year 2000. General, I have got a question, and I think it goes more to what you can do for us later than what you can do for us now. There is a lot of complexity to this combined arms operation with the Iraqi forces in Baghdad, and we have had—you have met nec- essarily with a big committee, and you have made the statements following the President. You have given briefings to the press, and you have given us a good statement on this. We are going to need to have more detail on the operation. I think that the operation in general is a good concept to the idea of the Iraqi brigade, and again, the brigade from the Tawani charts that I saw were three maneuver battalions and an Iraqi brigade. Although, it may not be as full up with personnel as the U.S. brigade. Three maneuver battalions and one backup American battalion, is that your general concept in each of these ninę sectors in Bagh- dad? General PACE. Sir, that is close. 73 look at the details because the details here are pretty important, especially around the Baghdad area. So, if you could accommodate us on that, we would certainly appreciate it. General PACE. I understand, sir. Mr. HUNTER. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. Just a footnote that I appreciate your mentioning the end- strength situation. As I understand it, General, the increase which Chairman Hunter mentioned of 30,000 Army and 5,000 Marines will be rec- ommended in the base budget this coming year plus an addi- tional—am I correct?–7,000 soldiers—am I correct?—and how many Marines or can you say at this point? General PACE. Sir, I know the numbers. I do not know the budg- et. As far as budget supplement or budget base? The CHAIRMAN. We are a few-days' premature. That is fine, but at least that is a starting point. General PACE. Yes, sir. The numbers would be the 30,000 Army plus 7,000 for the new year- The CHAIRMAN. That has got it. All right. General PACE [continuing). Plus 5,000 Marines, plus 5,000 for the new year. The CHAIRMAN. That answers the question. General PACE. How it is funded, I am not sure, sir. The CHAIRMAN. Yes, that answers the question. Mrs. Davis, wrap it up. Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. [Inaudible. Off mic.] General Pace: Yes, ma'am. That is a great question. We have got about 40 percent of our Army's equipment either.' currently in Iraq or in the depots, being repaired. So, as we move these new forces forward, we need to be very careful about ensur- ing that they have the proper equipment to go into harm's way, and the Army is working on that very hard. Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Are those M1117 armored vehicles going to be available to them? General PACE. Which, ma'am? Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. The latest in the armored vehicles, are they going to be available to them? General PACE. There will be a mixture of what we call “Level 1,” which is the latest version that you just mentioned and Level 2, which is a little bit less capable than that because the production line has just delivered about the 95-percent level to theater for the forces that are there now. There are, for example, about 1,800 Ma- rine vehicles that have been replaced by the newer vehicles that are up already and almost as protective that are parked there right now that can and will be used by our troops, and we will make sure through use of the vehicles that those who are going into harm's way have the best equipment we can give them. That is something that the Army and Marine leadership is very attentive to, to make sure that PFC. Pace is getting as good equipment whether he is in a unit that is there now or one that is about to arrive. 74 Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you, General. Thank you for being here. General PACE. Thank you, ma'am. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. A formal—those who have questions for the record should get them to our staff immediately. I would strongly suggest by the end of tomorrow. General Pace, thank you again, and I express our appreciation to Secretary Gates. It has been an even five hours since we started. Thanks so much. [Whereupon, at 6:03 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] A P PENDIX JANUARY 11, 2007 PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD JANUARY 11, 2007 80 I am aware that the Armed Services committees have been leading the national debate over the proper size of the military. Accordingly, I hope that you will join in supporting this important initiative. While it may take some time for these new troops to become available for deployment, it is important that our men and women in uniform know that additional manpower and resources are on the way. Second, for several months, the Department has been assessing whether we have the right policies to govern how we manage and deploy members of the Reserves, the National Guard and our active component units. Based on this assessment and the recommendations of our military leadership, I am prepared to make the following changes to Department policy. First, mobilization of ground reserve forces will be managed on a unit basis instead of an individual basis. This change will allow us to achieve greater unit cohesion and predictability in how reserve units train and deploy Second, from this point forward, members of the Reserves will be involuntarily mobilized for a maximum of one year at any one time, in contrast to the current practice of sixteen to twenty-four months. Third, the planning objective for guard and reserve units will remain one year of being mobilized followed by five years demobilized. However, today's global demands will require a number of selected guard and reserve units to be 85 I would not have taken this position if I did not believe that the outcome in Iraq will have a profound and long-lived impact on our national interest Significant mistakes have been made by the U.S. in Iraq, just like in virtually every war in human history. That is the nature of war. But, however we got to this moment, the stakes now are incalculable. Your senior professional military officers in Iraq and in Washington believe in the efficacy of the strategy outlined by the President last night. They believe it is a sound plan that can work if the Iraqi government follows through on its commitments and if the non-military aspects of the strategy are implemented and sustained. Our senior military officers have worked closely with the Iraqis to develop this plan. The impetus to add U.S. forces came initially from our commanders there. It would be a sublime, yet historic, irony if those who believe the views of the military professionals were neglected at the onset of the war were now to dismiss the views of the military as irrelevant or wrong. · In the Name of God, Most Gracious, Merciful Republic of Iraq 191 .. · Premiership Media Office Saturday 6/1/2007 In the Name of God, Most Gracious, Merciful Dear Iraqi people . · Sons of our brave armed forces Today we celebrate the 86th anniversary of Iraqi army foundation, which gets rid of the odious dictatorship ruling, this ruling which harmed the army severely, as well as harming the other community's sectors due to its savage, individual policies. - The government of national unity showed a great concern to the army as the country's protector · from the enemies' evil outside, and maintains security and stability inside the country. The refoming of the armed forces, according to national basis that exceed the ethnic, partial, racial, and sectarian loyalties, is considered to be among the government's priorities. The army should be for everyone - its for the Arab, Kurdish, Turkmen, Muslims, Christians, and Sabbians, and should not side with any political or sectarian parties and should be away from the interference of political parties and trends. I announce here and prevent all parties and political organizations, with no exception, from performing its partial activity among the armed forces because this will increase the strength and tenacity of the military institutions. (89) 93 We definitely refuse the interference of political parties in the execution of the security plan in harmony with our responsibilities and our care on the country's high interests. The execution of the Baghdad security plan will not provide a harbor for outlaws, regardless of the sectarian or political affiliation, and we will punish those who will underestimate applying the orders or those who work according to political or sectarian backgrounds. They will be legally tracked and will be subject to severe punishments. According to the Baghdad security plan, the military commander will be given all authorities to execute the plan in the sector he supervises. The Baghdad security plan will last util achieving all missions to strengthen security and to serve the people. We realize the execution of the plan will cause some annoyance to the dear people of Baghdad, but we do trust the people of Baghdad will provide support and assistance to the sons of our armed forces. Glory and immortality to martyrs of the armed forces, and long live a strong Ira Peace be upon you Nouri Kamil al-Maliki Iraq's Prime Minister Armed Forces General Commander 6/1/ 2007