Hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee - The Petraeus-Crocker Report on Progress in Iraq

Interview

Hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee - The Petraeus-Crocker Report on Progress in Iraq

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SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TX): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

General and Mr. Ambassador, you have my respect and admiration and I appreciate your service to our country, particularly in the challenging jobs that you have -- you are performing now. It's because of my respect and admiration for both of you that I was particularly shocked and chagrined when I happened to open The New York Times on Sunday to see this ad purchased by MoveOn.org.

I don't know if I've ever witnessed a more reprehensible slander of a public servant and a patriot than as represented in this ad. And it's my hope that members of this committee will join me -- and matter of fact, all members of the United States Senate will join together without regard to partisan affiliation and condemn this ad and restate our confidence in General Petraeus, the same confidence that was manifested when he was confirmed by a unanimous vote of the United States Senate just this last January.

It's a pretty tough environment, I know, you're working in, Ambassador and General, in Iraq. It's a pretty tough environment here in Washington in another way.

General, when you were confirmed in January, you announced, not only as the new leader there, you announced a new strategy in Iraq, something people had been calling for for a long time. People had been asking for some signs of progress in the security situation. You've come back here today, as the Jones commission did last week, as did the National Intelligence Estimate in August, and report some security progress being made in Iraq, positive news in any other context.

You've announced here today that you would likely recommend significant cuts in troops over the next year, something that people in this room and on Capitol Hill have been calling for for a long time. And you would again think that that would be met with some appreciation, some gladness.

Mr. Ambassador, there have been those who said that we weren't doing enough to talk to the people in the neighborhood -- Iran and Syria and others. And indeed, since that time, since January, since General Petraeus was confirmed, that's happened. And you've reported on that, here again something I would think that would be met with an appreciation for the progress or at least the effort that that entails.

And then, of course, there were those, General, that announced -- shortly after the president announced the surge of troops into Iraq -- announced it a failure or predicted a failure at the outset before the surge had even occurred. And I guess it just goes to show that it's a bad bet to bet against the men and women of the United States military, because it has demonstrated some significant successes.

So I guess this is an unusual case, General and Ambassador, where you come bringing what otherwise might be regarded as good news or progress, and it's the first case, I guess, I've seen of shooting the messenger for bringing good news. It's a strange time we find ourselves in, a strange environment here in Washington.

But my question -- really what I want to ask you about in particular are the consequences of failure, because it seems to me that there too often is a debate in the abstract about what's happening. And, General, you've already said that you believe what we're doing in Iraq is making us safer here at home. But I would like to ask if we embraced the suggestion of some here on Capitol Hill that we would pull out our troops before the Iraqis are able to govern and defend themselves, what the consequences would be. I know we've talked about providing a failed state, a power vacuum into which al Qaeda would fill. You've talked about Iran. But in particular, I'd like to get your assessment, General and Ambassador, about the humanitarian crisis that would likely occur. Could you speak to that, please, General, first?

GEN. PETRAEUS: Well, Senator, first of all, there has already been a humanitarian crisis in Iraq, as you know. The estimates run as high as 2 million that have left the country, and perhaps that number that have been displaced within the country. So this is already a tragic situation.

One of our areas of focus has, as I mentioned, been to try to stabilize and to reduce the ethnosectarian violence; that is really the engine of that displacement. Some of that has continued. Some has risen to the level of cleansing. But in many areas, again, it has stabilized it and kept it from continuing, because this is not something, again, that just stops of its own accord. It doesn't reach the highway to the airport, let's say, and say that's it. It then hops over and it keeps on going. And so that has been a big effort.

And we have a lot more work to do in that regard. As I mentioned up front very clearly, we're not a point that is at all satisfactory but that the trendline, again, is good. But the level to which that could go if it got out of hand again and became even worse obviously could be horrific.

SEN. CORNYN: I believe the figures I recall off the top of my head about genocide in Darfur were roughly 400,000 people killed there. Would this be -- would rival or exceed the magnitude of that sort of death by ethnic cleansing?

GEN. PETRAEUS: Sir, it's obviously very -- it's very difficult to predict. My previous experience, for example, in Lebanon in the early '80s -- I was there at the time of the massacres in the Palestinian camps following our withdrawal in 1982 -- when those massacres took place, I knew that some very bad consequences were likely to be set in train.

But I couldn't begin to predict where we'd be a year later, for example, with the resurgence of Hezbollah and the bombing of both the embassy and the Marine barracks with horrendous consequences for us. I had a failure of imagination, and I don't think in the intervening years my imagination has gotten any more accurate or strong.

But I would be very concerned that in a context in which the U.S. was seen to be definitely backing away and backing away in a sense that projected the signal in Iraq and elsewhere that we were not coming back -- there's not going to be a second surge. It's over for us. I think the prospects of a truly catastrophic humanitarian disaster would be considerable.

SEN. CORNYN: On the order of hundreds of thousands or millions?

GEN. PETRAEUS: It could be that, sir, because it could be a situation that would be so dramatic that it would bring in neighboring states. It would -- you would then -- then you would have a failed state. You would have basically a meltdown inside Iraq. And the ensuing violence within Iraq plus ambitions of some of Iraq's neighbors, like Iran, could bring these states in and we could be looking at regional conflict as well as a horrific humanitarian disaster. I can't say that's going to happen, I can't predict that's going to happen, but it certainly is something that could happen.

SEN. CORNYN: Thank you, MR. Chairman.

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