Hearing of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs - U.S. Policy in the Middle East

Interview

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REP. JOE WILSON (R-SC): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Madame Secretary, for being here. I appreciate your extraordinary successful efforts to promoting democracy, opportunity and peace around the world.

I last month was in Iraq. I saw tremendous progress being made, but all of us are concerned. What is the State Department doing to reduce corruption in Iraq?

SEC. RICE: Thank you.

And first of all, we fully acknowledge that there is a serious corruption issue in Iraq -- not all of this a new issue. I would just note that some of these problems are -- have been endemic; even under dictatorship there were problems with corruption. But it is now our responsibility to press the Iraqi government as hard as possible to deal with corruption. We have spent about 46 (billion dollars) -- almost $47 million on anti-corruption programs and measures. We've supported their own anti-corruption panel. We've supported judges who carry out these corruption trials.

One of the problems that we have is we very much have to protect the identity of people who will come forward and report corruption because, as you might imagine, in these circumstances it could be dangerous for people to report corruption, and if we want to keep a steady stream of people who are going to report it, we're going to have to show that we don't play fast and loose with the information that they give us, and in fact, we protect them and protect the information.

So we're working very hard on it. We have not been shy about saying publicly and saying to the Iraqis that corruption is a pervasive and serious problem and that we intend to help them deal with it, but it is something that we're very concerned about.

REP. WILSON: And also, I have the perspective -- my oldest son served for a year in Iraq. I'm very proud of his service there. What do you see as the most recent achievements in terms of infrastructure development for the people of Iraq?

SEC. RICE: I think the most recent is that -- just let me say electricity is finally up in Iraq, and that is a good sign.

But I think what has happened, Congressman, is that we have found a formula that puts the reconstruction efforts more at the local level, where it can get to the people. Some might say we, the United States of America, should have understood this one with -- if you're sitting in Cincinnati or you're sitting in Baltimore, you would look not to Washington, D.C., to deliver certain kinds of projects, but to local government. And we've been really working hard on local responses to infrastructure and reconstruction.

It has helped also -- it's an iterative process -- it has helped us to get local people engaged in the security. And so in a place like Anbar -- when we were out in Anbar, one of the interesting parts of that whole discussion was that the Anbari sheikhs were clearly quite proud of what they had done in terms of helping to expel al Qaeda and being our ally. But they were hammering their central government about getting resources out to Anbar, so that they can deliver for their people. And that kind of development of local responsible government that's close to the people can provide infrastructure support, I think, is extremely important.

We've provided clean water for Iraqis. We've provided the most -- a lot of the infrastructure that will lead to more energy production. But probably the real breakthrough -- and it goes also to how the American military is operating -- operating in classic counterinsurgency mode, where you have to expel the bad people, but you also have to work with healthy forces in the region. And we've developed with the military 10 embedded PRTs, as we call them, provincial reconstruction teams, where our diplomats and USAID people and civilian experts are literally embedded with the brigade command teams and can both clear areas and then help in infrastructure development.

REP. WILSON: Thank you so much for your service. And I'm so grateful for your backing up our troops and the cooperative and partnership efforts on behalf of our country. Thank you very much.

SEC. RICE: Thank you, and thank you for the -- (inaudible).

REP. WILSON: Thank you.

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