Energy Policy Act of 2003

ENERGY POLICY ACT OF 2003

IRAQ

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I wish to take this opportunity to discuss the issues involving our ongoing conflict in Iraq. I will discuss the issues of intelligence, planning, and the challenges ahead.

These topics are critically important in their own right. But, they take on even more profound and consequential aspects when you recognize that failures and missteps in Iraq could play out again as we face future threats, the most alarming of which is the deepening crisis over North Korea.

Today, I find myself expressing many of the concerns that I initially stated last October when I opposed a unilateral approach to confronting the Saddam Hussein regime. But the obligation to review our activities in Iraq is less about the past and much more about the demanding present, both within Iraq and around the globe.

With each passing day, the struggle in Iraq claims additional American lives. These losses are the most tangible and poignant symbols of the increasingly difficult burden that we have chosen to bear. Our stunning military success in the first phase of the war gave us the hope that our conventional victory would lead quickly to a decisive and final cessation of hostilities.
Our hopes are periodically renewed when our forces are able to capture or kill another prominent member of the regime.
Most recently, the 101st Airborne routed Saddam's sons, Qusay and Uday, from their hiding place and killed them in a fierce firefight. We even seem to be closing in upon Saddam himself. Yet still the attacks against our troops go on. Our military leaders have wisely cautioned us that we can expect more attacks and more casualties. The situation in Iraq will likely get worse before it gets better, and our military presence will be of long duration.

But, also, with each passing day, several important aspects of the preemptive attack on Iraq become clearer.

The intelligence used by the administration to justify the war was selectively shaped to support their preconceived views of the threat posed by Saddam. Their declarations of the presence of weapons of mass destruction posing an imminent threat to the United States and their statements linking the Iraqi regime to terrorists associated with al-Qaida were questionable when uttered and, to date, have been unsubstantiated. These distortions were deliberate and calculated to sway opinion rather than to properly inform it.

Planning for occupation activities was woefully lacking. The administration appeared to believe its own oversimplified view of Iraq; namely, that it was a country that would welcome us with open arms once we removed Saddam. This was the line advanced by Iraqi exiles who had for many years been the proteges or associates of numerous administration officials.
Apparently, the view of Iraq from Paris or London was just as distorted as the view from Washington think tanks.
Complicating this unrealistic view of Iraq was a power struggle between the Department of Defense and the Department of State over responsibility for post-hostility planning. The Department of Defense won and the planning process lost.
Expertise was sacrificed for enthusiasm and loyalty. Then, with the avalanche of pressing details concerning the pending attack, post-attack planning took a predictable back seat.

Today, American forces are engaged in suppressing a well-armed and well-financed insurgency. Iraq is awash in weapons.
The coalition provisional authority acknowledged the obvious when it authorized each homeowner to retain an AK-47.
Even so, it is amazing to read on a daily basis of the seizure of hundreds of RPG's and hundreds and hundreds of pounds of explosives. And, there appears to be a lot more that has yet to be discovered. More serious, of course, is the daily casualties among our troops caused by these weapons. Also, the insurgents to date appear to have an ample supply of cash. Another amazing revelation of my recent trip to Iraq was the frequency that our forces turned up sizable quantities of cash and valuables as they rounded up even low ranking members of the Saddam regime.

The insurgency in Iraq has not been transformed into a popular movement to attack American forces and to eject us from Iraq. That is good news. But we are in a frantic race to improve security, reinvigorate a devastated economy and establish an Iraqi government deemed legitimate by the people of Iraq before popular frustration and incipient nationalism are ignited by those who do wish to attack and eject us from the ground.

One of the more thoughtful and even-handed military analysts, Anthony Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has accurately summarized the record of the administration's intelligence activities leading up to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

[T]here are many indications that the U.S. intelligence community came under pressure to accept reporting by Iraqi opposition forces with limited credibility and, in some cases, a history of actively lying to either exaggerate their own importance or push the U.S. towards a war to overthrow Saddam Hussein. In what bore a striking resemblance to similar worst case interpretations of the global threat from the proliferation of ballistic missiles under the Rumsfeld Commission, U.S. policymakers not only seem to have pushed for the interpretation that would best justify military action, but to have focused on this case as if it were a reality, rather than a possibility. In the U.S., this pressure seems to have come primarily from the Office of the Vice President and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, but it seems clear that the Bush
Administration as a whole sought intelligence that would support its case in going to war, and this had a significant impact on the intelligence community from 2002-onwards.

The administration did not use intelligence to help make a difficult decision. It used intelligence to sell a preconceived notion. The long-term, fixed view of the administration held that deterrence and international inspectors were inherently incapable of containing Saddam. Only the elimination of the regime could suffice. Moreover, regime change could have the added benefit of precipitating a transformation of the entire region.

In January of 1998, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Wolfowitz and other prominent neo-conservatives wrote to President Clinton urging him to use military force to remove Saddam.

In their words:

The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.

This letter predated the attack on Iraq by 5 years. Indeed, it predated September 11 by more than 3 years. This last point is instructive. Recently, Secretary Rumsfeld has been defending his judgment regarding the military campaign against Iraq as simply seeing intelligence in light of September 11. But it seems clear that he reached his conclusion about Iraq well before September 11, and September 11 certainly did not change his mind.

September 11 did, however, horrifically foreshadow the gravest threat facing the Nation: sophisticated terrorist cells armed with nuclear weapons. And, in so doing, gave the administration the template for its arguments. The President's assertion, that Iraq was actively seeking uranium from Niger, was false and known to be false at the highest levels of the
administration, but it provided an irresistible element in the case the administration wanted to make against Iraq. Similarly, Secretary Rumsfeld made claims that he had "bulletproof" evidence of active collaboration between the Saddam Hussein regime and al-Qaida. In the weeks since the fall of the regime, no evidence has emerged to validate this claim.

These distortions and exaggerations are a dangerous disservice. They undermine confidence in the information that the public and decision makers must rely upon to make difficult judgments. Moreover, they suggest that the administration is not interested in understanding the world, but simply changing it along lines agreed to in policy seminars years ago.

Despite warnings of the difficulties inherent in stabilizing Iraq after the defeat of Saddam Hussein, planning for post-hostilities was an afterthought. The Defense Department wrested control of the process from State and insulated the planners from broad-based collaboration. Then it went on to bet that Iraqi gratitude, together with an exile government, would provide for a cheap and easy exit strategy.

Defense officials point out that they planned for many events that did not take place and executed a military plan that minimized potential humanitarian, economic and environmental problems. In fact, the military plan executed by CENTCOM was brilliant and did seek to minimize collateral damage through judicious targeting as well as actively seizing key installations, particularly oil facilities, to avoid sabotage.

But, the further one moves away from formal military plans into the province of policing, civil administration and economic development the clearer it becomes that the post war planning was grossly inadequate.

The first overt sign of planning inadequacies was the initial indifference to large scale looting. The collapse of the Iraqi police was not compensated for by aggressive action by our military. The systematic looting went unchecked for a prolonged period and undermined an already fragile and antiquated infrastructure.

The failure to incorporate experts on Iraq from the State Department and other agencies led to reliance on an ad-hoc group of retired military and administration operatives to try to organize a political and economic response. Initial efforts were disappointing and led to General Garner's early departure. Ambassador Bremer has filled the leadership void with more of a presence, but the realization is taking hold that this will be a long and expensive process with a still uncertain outcome.

The United States faces serious challenges in Iraq.

The preeminent challenge is security. Our forces are facing increasingly sophisticated attacks. In the first few days of the occupation, our troops were engaged with small arms on an opportunistic basis. The attacks have stepped up with more organization and more lethal weapons like RPGs. Lately, the insurgent's use of remotely detonated landmines and explosives demonstrates an increasing sophistication in training and planning.

A disturbing escalation in potential lethality of these attacks came with the recent report of a man-portable antiaircraft missile attack on an aircraft over Baghdad International Airport. This attack begs the question of the number of these MANPADS in Iraq and whether any have been removed from Iraq for use elsewhere. One or more successful attacks on aircraft would have a serious impact on both the security climate and the closely related efforts to restore a sense of predictability for economic investment and development.

Our military forces are aggressively attempting to preempt these attacks. The key to any successful counter-insurgency is intelligence, and we have begun an all-out effort to target the middle range of former Iraqi security officials to identify the insurgents and their support mechanisms. Nevertheless, the number of desperate and determined regime diehards with access to weapons and knowledge of the terrain and our dispositions indicates that these attacks will continue. In addition, it is reasonable to assume that infiltration of foreign terrorists will take place. This development could add an even more lethal, sophisticated and longer-term element to the battle. Our forces will likely face successive waves of violence over many months.

The next military challenge is to sustain our forces in Iraq. We cannot do so over the next year without additional international support or by activation of additional National Guard and Reserve forces. Our quest for international support was compromised from the beginning by the administration's insistence on an essentially unilateral approach to Iraq. Unless the administration is able to recruit an additional international division, the current rotation plan will have a huge gap next February when the 101st Airborne Division is scheduled to return. Since the administration has yet to ask NATO for support and major European countries like France and Germany remain estranged on this issue, likely candidates are Turkey and, perhaps, Pakistan. Each of these countries would demand significant financial and logistical support. And, the introduction of the Turks could cause problems within Iraq. The introduction of Pakistani forces could further incite
domestic criticism of Musharraf at home.

The need to activate reserve forces is becoming more pressing with each passing day. I support General Barry McCaffrey's recommendation that we immediately activate nine National Guard Brigades, not just the two currently planned to be activated. Such a decision cannot be deferred much longer since these brigades must receive intensive training before they are deployed. Given the indefinite nature of our mission in Iraq and the potential for additional crises around the globe, these brigades should be made part of our active force structure and replenished through active duty recruitment.

The security challenge is matched by the need to create a functioning government that is legitimate in the eyes of the Iraqi people. We have begun this process through some arduous efforts in Baghdad. However, even more difficult and controversial actions lie ahead. The selection of a Governing Council was a start, but also revealed the problems that we face.

First, we are still saddling ourselves with Chalabi and the exiles. My initial instincts, that I shared with Ambassador Bremer in Baghdad, questioned the wisdom of placing these individuals in positions of power. Since that time, the first credible survey of Iraqi opinion conducted by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs has been published. Among its conclusions is the finding that there exists "[c]ynicism about leaders, especially acute regarding some exiled leaders who were objects [of] vilification campaigns led by the previous regime. . . ."

Second, we have necessarily put off the most divisive political decision. Who will be the "face of Iraq"? The Council represents a broad spectrum of Iraq, but it has yet to produce a personality that will be that Iraqi face. The "executive" of the Council is a nine member body dominated by the exiles. One member rotates as the "Executive" each month.
Eventually, a personality will emerge. Will that emergence set off a political crisis when disgruntled factions realize that they will not lead Iraq? I believe that there is a substantial likelihood of such a development and that would further complicate our presence.

Finally, our political tasks in Iraq must be accomplished with greater speed and a more deliberate and effective strategy to explain our actions. After the Saddam regime, the people of Iraq are steeped in misinformation and cynicism. According to the NDI survey, "antipathy for the United States and Britain is not overcome by the fact that these two countries are responsible for the country's liberation from the tyrant they despise." Moreover, "virtually no one, excepting some Kurds in the north, believes the United States intervention in Iraq is motivated by a desire to help the Iraqi people. Usually people say the U.S. 'is acting in its own interest'—which is often viewed in terms of access to Iraq's oil reserves."

The political situation in Iraq is not without some encouragement. According to the NDI Survey, there is no widespread support for the attacks against our forces. However, Iraqis do want foreign military forces to depart. There is a strong commitment to the integrity of the Iraqi state. Nevertheless, continued security problems, economic difficulties and political controversies can quickly sap these encouraging signs.

The serious consequences of selective intelligence and poor planning are playing themselves out today in Iraq. But, of equal or even greater concern, is the effect of the administration's operating style in other areas and issues of concern. The most notable and, to my mind, the most dangerous of these issues is North Korea's rush to develop significant quantities of fissile material and nuclear weapons.

In North Korea, we have, according to their demonstrated conduct and their public declarations, the type of threat that the administration claimed required a preemptive military attack in Iraq. Nowhere in the world do the lines of sophisticated terrorists and nuclear material come closer to intersecting than in the conduct of the North Koreans. By all accounts, North Korea is one of the most persistent and prodigious proliferators in the world. They sell military products to the highest bidder. With plutonium, they will likely get offers from terrorists.

The administration's response has been slow to develop and characterized by many of the pitfalls found in the prologue to Iraq with one other major factor. Our commitment to Iraq has seriously strained the capacity of the Administration to deal with North Korea and other problem areas.

The stress on our land forces inhibits a diplomatic strategy complemented by unquestioned military power. The public preoccupation with the turmoil in Iraq makes it very difficult to marshal the necessary popular support to engage in another high profile international confrontation at this time. The amount of energy and time that is devoted to Iraq crowds out the agendas of decision makers.

Thus, the administration is in a holding pattern. It is promoting a multinational, diplomatic approach that is laudable but not productive. It appears that just below the surface, some of the Beltway battles that preceded our operations in Iraq are being fought to a standstill. Once again, it seems that dogma is clashing with diplomacy. The doctrine of regime change is pitted against a diplomatic approach that requires as a prerequisite the tacit recognition, at least, of non-aggression against the North Korean regime as part of an overall, verifiable agreement to eliminate nuclear weapons.

The effect of all of this is that crucial time is being squandered. As former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry declared, the situation in North Korea—

was manageable six months ago if we did the right things. But we haven't done the right things.

The President has to address this issue now by settling the debate within his Administration in favor of diplomacy and not dogma. He has to take steps now to bolster our military forces to complement a diplomatic approach.

It would be tragic if our efforts in Iraq allowed a more ominous situation to develop in North Korea.

I yield the floor and the remainder of my time.