Hearing of the House Armed Services Committee, Subject: Independent Assessment of Iraqi Security Forces

HEARING OF THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE
SUBJECT: INDEPENDENT ASSESSMENT OF IRAQI SECURITY FORCES

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REP. RICK LARSEN (D-WA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you all for your service.

Your report is one of several, of course, that we're sifting through -- the NIE report from a few weeks back, the unclassified version, as well as others. The GAO report came out and we had a hearing on it yesterday. We had outside Defense experts today and your report, and then, of course, two important reports -- or one, depending on how it's presented -- General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker's reports, whether that's one report or two reports given to us.

The consistent theme that I've found so far in all these reports really as you all summed up pretty well -- we all want to refer to page 130, and so I'll do my bit and do that. "At the end of the day, however, the future of Iraq and its prospects" and so on "hinges on the Iraqi people and government to begin the process of achieving national reconciliation and ending sectarian violence. All progress seems to flow from this most pressing requirement." That theme is consistent throughout everything -- every other report that we have heard, every other report that we have heard so far with regards to a review on Iraq.

As a result of that, I think on Monday the most important testimony, not that both testifiers won't have important things to say, but the most important testimony will not be from General Petraeus, it will be from Ambassador Crocker, because if General Petraeus has to get 10 things right and only gets five things -- we only have five things right in Iraq on a list of 10, he's at 50 percent.

Ambassador Crocker has one thing he has to work on to get right, and that's political reconciliation in Iraq. And it's a very difficult job, and if it's not all right, it's not his fault. He has one thing he has to get right, and so I think on Monday Ambassador Crocker's hurdle is even higher than General Petraeus' hurdle, because at least from what I can understand from everything I've read, the most pressing requirement is political reconciliation to end the sectarian violence. That is the most pressing requirement in Iraq.

And the surge and all the success or lack of success of the surge is extremely important, but it is only going to help try to create this breathing space, which so far hasn't been -- to my knowledge, hasn't been created because we haven't seen political reconciliation there. And this is -- I -- an observation I want to make as a long preface to an answer I hope I can get from General Jones or one of the other folks.

A couple timelines. If we -- it said if we don't move deployment from 12 months to 15 months that about April of next year we'll begin having to draw down folks anyway. You've said that it's going to take 12 to 18 months for Iraqi security forces to operate independently, largely independently, so that's beyond that eight-month time frame. And then General McKissock just told us that to create a logistics capability, an adequate logistics capability is at least 24 months away. Those timelines don't match up for our military.

So can you help me try to match up those timelines with the end goal of being, you know, at what point can we start doing the strategic shift, because those timelines don't add up to what you have proposed we could do?

GEN. JONES: Regrettably, I'm not sure we could be of much help to you on those issues because we -- what we did not do is obviously assess our own forces and the domestic problems associated with the rotations, although most of us are familiar with the issue.

I want to make sure that we're clear that the commission's finding with regard to the tasking that said will the Iraqi forces -- Iraqi security force be able to defend the territorial integrity of Iraq within 12 to 18 months, we said no, they won't.

But they are able to do more in terms of defeating and fighting successfully the internal threats that they are fighting now -- the al Qaeda, the terrorists, crime and so on and so forth.

REP. LARSEN: Sure.

GEN. JONES: But the territorial integrity of the nation, which is properly done by the army, and the security -- the internal security, which is properly done by the police force, is something they're still moving to. I just want to make sure we're clear on that.

REP. LARSEN: And so that then implies, then, a longer presence --

GEN. JONES: Sure.

REP. LARSEN: -- and potentially pressure on deployment schedules for our own folks, possibly.

GEN. JOULWAN: Could I just add --

REP. LARSEN: Yeah.

GEN. JOULWAN: -- that I -- in looking at this requirement, 12 to 18 months, that we were given, we said that independently they could not -- the Iraqi forces couldn't do it. But I think it's important, if you read in the report, if the progress continues as we have said we think it will continue --

REP. LARSEN: Yeah. Yeah.

GEN. JOULWAN: -- there can be a restructuring of our forces within that 12 to 18 months, if that progress continues. And I think that needs to be understood here. At least that's the point that we were trying to make.

REP. LARSEN: Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen.

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