Hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee - Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2005

Federal News Service

HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE

SUBJECT: DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION REQUEST FOR FISCAL YEAR 2005

CHAIRED BY: SENATOR JOHN WARNER (R-VA)

LOCATION: 216 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING

WITNESSES: GENERAL JAMES JONES, JR., USMC, COMMANDER, UNITED STATES EUROPEAN COMMAND AND SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER, EUROPE; GENERAL JOHN ABIZAID, UNITED STATES ARMY, U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND

BODY:
SEN. REED: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, gentlemen, for your service to the nation, which begins and ends with a profound appreciation of the service and sacrifice of the young Americans you lead, and I thank you for that, too.

General Abizaid and General Jones, you depend, in your theaters of operation, on Army forces significantly. General Schoomaker was here a few weeks ago and said that a current burn rate of spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, he would be out of funds by October 1st unless there was a supplemental appropriation. Secretary Brownlee, this past Tuesday, has miraculously extended that to the spring of '05, yet we have heard from your discussion and Senator Kennedy's questions, shortfalls and Hum V production and gaps between the money he has committed and the money he has from the Secretary of Defense-I would like your observations and perceptions about the situation and when we will run out of money in Iraq and Afghanistan at the current expenditure rate. General Abizaid?

GEN. ABIZAID: General Jones, are you sure you don't want to take that one?

GEN. JONES: You know, the service chiefs can't be relied upon.

GEN. ABIZAID: Until they get promoted to be a SYNC.

GEN. JONES: Exactly right.

GEN. ABIZAID: Thank you. Senator Reed, I think all of us know that we've got to have what we've got to have in order to fight the war in Afghanistan and in Iraq. And I know that the Army may be experiencing difficulty in trying to figure out where they are going to meet all their O&M requirements, but I also understand that may not be the case for the Navy; it may not be the case for defense agencies, et cetera.

So I don't know the answer to the question whether or not there is a problem, defense-wide, but I do know that we have the complete commitment of the Secretary of Defense to spend what we need to spend to fight the war.

SEN. REED: Well, there is no fund, as I understand it, in the president's budget for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. You have the chief of staff of the Army, the commandant of the Marine Corps, and the chief of staff of the Air Force saying they're going to run out of funds before, at least by October 1st, and they haven't communicated those concerns to you? You have not been able to communicate with them your concerns?

GEN. ABIZAID: I am not concerned about running out of money to fight the war, Senator.

SEN. REED: Does that mean that you think there will be a supplemental appropriation?

GEN. ABIZAID: I don't know whether there will be or not. That's a departmental issue for the secretary.

SEN. REED: General Abizaid, you indicated the strategy has changed somewhat. The targets now are civilians, and perhaps the ultimate goal is prevent a civil uprising that will make our position untenable there. Key to our response to that is the Iraqi security forces. I understand that General Eikenberry has conducted a survey of those security forces. Is that survey complete?

GEN. ABIZAID: Yes, sir, that survey is complete.

SEN. REED: Can we get a copy of that survey?

GEN. ABIZAID: I believe so, sir. There should be no reason not to provide you a copy of that. I'll have to discuss it with the secretary, and I will tomorrow.

SEN. REED: Could you share with us some of the conclusions? Is there adequate funding, adequate training? When will they be fully capable of stepping up to a role and relieving us of some of our roles?

GEN. ABIZAID: I think that the Eikenberry report is an important report about the adequacy of Iraqi security forces, the composition, et cetera. But I think it's also important to note that I don't agree with all the conclusions that were contained in there. What is key to us is that we continue to build Iraqi national military capacity for the new Iraqi army, continue to build the militia units that are working for the Iraqi military that are called Iraqi Civil Defense Corps units, and we are in the process now of fielding 36 of those battalions. Clearly, there has been a requirement to speed the equipment that is being issued to the police to obtain the contracts necessary to get the right things to the right police stations that are most under threat, and also to increase the quality and the capacity of training in third party states such as Jordan that will help increase the capacity of the Iraqi police.

Up until recently, most of that police training was coordinated primarily through the coalition provisional authority, but now we are shifting some of that responsibility, and I think rightfully so, to General Sanchez in Iraq. The most important thing to me, Senator, is that we build a quality Iraqi force that is capable of withstanding the pressures that the insurgents and the terrorists will place upon it, and that will be loyal to the Iraqi transitional government and eventually the Iraqi independent government. I think that this quality requires us to curb our appetite about numbers to a certain extent, and it also requires us to build Iraqi chains of command all the way from the lowest private to the Ministry of Defense, and that needs to be work that has to be accomplished, I think, by the first of July, and that will require not only building these chains of command, but officering it with people that will be loyal to the government. I believe that points that I mentioned are generally consistent with the Eikenberry report, with the exception of his belief that we should decrease the speed in which the new Iraqi army is fielded in order to speed the Iraqi civil defense corps units development, and I do not agree with that, nor does General Sanchez, and we've conveyed that to the department.

SEN. REED: My time expired, but you're looking at a July 1st completion date of a daunting task, not just technical training, but changing, in fact, the orientation, the attitudes, the cultural perspective in some cases of these individuals. That seems to be an extraordinarily daunting challenge within the next several months.

GEN. ABIZAID: Well, Senator, I don't believe that we will have completed the task by 1 July, and I did not mean to give you that impression. We will be in the midst of this task for some time. And I think really the most important thing that we'll do with the Iraqi armed forces and the Iraqi security establishment is inculcating in them the idea of civil control of the military and respect for their own population. This is a cultural change that has to take place if a moderate state is to emerge, and it will certainly not be accomplished by 1 July.

SEN. REED: Thank you very much.