The Course of Military Operations in Iraq

THE COURSE OF MILITARY OPERATIONS IN IRAQ

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise to discuss my concerns about the course of our military operations in Iraq.

I returned about 10 days ago from a trip to Iraq with my colleagues. After a brilliant offensive campaign to destroy the Iraqi military forces, we have settled into a very dismal and dangerous occupation. In the last few hours, five more American military personnel were killed by an improvised explosion device. There were four more civilians who were killed. Iraqi security forces have died in much higher numbers.

The administration has not responded appropriately to the military demand within Iraq today. One of the leading points that illustrates this, I think, irresponsible approach to Iraq is the failure to budget properly to fund this effort. The operation in Iraq costs approximately $4 billion a month. Yet in the 2005 budget that was submitted by the administration, there is no money for operations in Afghanistan or Iraq. They are still working off the supplemental that was passed last year. But the Chief of Staff of the Army, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and the Commandant of the Marine Corps testified they are seriously concerned that on October 1 they will begin to run out of money. They are already being forced to reprogram funds, to rob Peter to pay Paul in order to continue this operation.

Having committed ourselves to Iraq, we must prevail, and to prevail, we must fund all of the requirements for our military.
We must do it adequately and promptly, and the administration is doing neither. We have a requirement for many pieces of equipment. But probably emblematic of the difficulties of this operation, the two most pressing items of equipment are body armor and armored vehicles, principally uparmored Humvees. When we went into this operation, we did not understand the consequences of the occupation, the threats to our troops, the political rivalries in Iraq, the ethnic and sectarian divisions of the country.

As a result, we found ourselves with troops in the field without proper equipment. Many lacked body armor, the kind of sophisticated armor with ceramic insert plates that provide a margin of safety for our troops. The Army and Department of Defense claimed they fixed it. But as late as March 26, reports in the San Diego Union, Boston Globe, and USA Today stated soldiers in Iraq are calling home and asking their families to buy them body armor and send it to them, or they are buying it before they deploy. That is unacceptable. That is one example.

With respect to uparmored Humvees, last July I got off of the aircraft in Baghdad and approached the military policemen from the 118th Military Police Battalion from Rhode Island. The first request I had was: Get us uparmored Humvees. We are driving through these dangerous cities and we need that protection.

We have not reached the number of uparmored Humvees we need for critical troops in Iraq. This might be accomplished by November of this year, but it is a long time from the need of over a year ago and finally filling the requirement.

We also have to armor other Humvees, and armor kits have been provided to do this armoring. Again, the administration's budget is not sufficient. The Secretary of the Army said: We are going to get all this equipment done. We are going to run the production line at top speed.

Yet the money is not there in the budget. We have to do more.

Last September, Senator Hagel and I offered an amendment to the supplemental to increase the size of the Army by 10,000 troops. This was vehemently objected to by the Secretary of Defense, but I think they eventually got the message. A few months ago, the Department of the Army announced they were going to increase the size by 30,000 troops. But they are not going to ask for the money in the budgetary process. They are once again going back to the supplemental-to take money from the supplemental, which already is strapped to pay for operations. As a result, we will have, I hope, additional forces in the military, but we will not have the ordinary budget authority they need to continue to be funding when we run out of this supplemental.

Those are examples of some of the failures on our part, but they are failures multiplied with the situation with respect to Iraqi security forces. Our plan is to transfer, we hope one day, security operations to the Iraqis. Yet we have not provided
sufficient equipment for these forces.

Senior commanders in Iraq have commented persistently about the lack of adequate equipment for the security forces, and a March 22 New York Times article stated:

Senior American commanders in Iraq are publicly complaining that delays in delivering radios, body armor and other equipment have hobbled their ability to build an effective Iraqi security force that can ultimately replace United States troops here.

MG Charles Swannack, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, has returned from Iraq and his frustrations on this point are extremely significant. He said, in retrospect, if he knew the equipment was not coming, he would have used his own resources to buy body armor, radios, and vehicles for these Iraqi security forces. We are not doing enough to provide replacement for our own forces, and we are not adequately funding our present forces in the field.

Those points are examples, I believe, of the failings in terms of occupation planning and military occupation of Iraq. But there are also political failures. We are less than 100 days away from transferring authority to an interim government, and yet no one can tell us what that interim government will look like. Will it be an increased governing council with 20, 30, 40 more people? Is it going to be a three-person presidency with a prime minister? We are 100 days or less away from that transfer of authority. We have yet to have a nominee to be the new ambassador to Iraq. Mr. Bremer leaves on June 30, but we have yet to have a name submitted to us for consideration and confirmation for someone who will have extraordinary challenges, extraordinary responsibilities. And yet we are 100 days or less away from the new ambassador of the United States to Iraq taking his or her post.

Probably most emblematic, most symbolic of the political difficulties is the de-Baathiciation program. One of the key problems of this program is it is being run by Chalabi. Chalabi is an individual in the Iraqi National Congress who provided most of the misinformation to the administration as they made their judgments about the imminence of a threat in Iraq. He has been on our payroll to the tune of about $300,000 a month funneled through the Iraqi National Congress for many years. He is still on the payroll. He has seized all the security files of the former Iraqi security agency which perhaps are a treasure trove of names of people who collaborated both inside Iraq and outside Iraq with the Saddam Hussein regime. But most importantly for the moment, he is in charge of vetting former Baathists to take positions in this new government.

He is sitting at the crossroads of billions of dollars of contracts from his position on the Iraqi Governing Council. He is also an individual who has the right to deny people their civil rights, if you will, in Iraq, and he is someone whose record does not, I think, suggest he is capable of discharging those responsibilities in the interest of Iraq or in the interest of the United States. The key to Mr. Chalabi is self-interest and always has been.

As a result, we are giving this individual inordinate power. This is not just a theoretical political argument. When I was in Iraq last November, I spoke to the division commander, and he complained to me he had 1,000 schoolteachers who could not teach because they had been nominal members of the Baath Party. Back in the days of Saddam Hussein, in order to have a job in Iraq of any consequence, you had to have a Baath affiliation. These people cannot work. Schools cannot open. And so this new Iraq we are desperately trying to build based upon not just security, but also economic development and education, has not yet taken off.

This is just one example of the political miscalculation I believe in which the provisional authority, Ambassador Bremer, has engaged in Iraq.

All of this is very important. We are, again, weeks away from transferring authority to some form of government of which we know not the exact details. We are also in a situation where each day we see the cost in terms of American lives.

Let me make one final point. When I was in Iraq talking with American soldiers about 10 days ago, the palpable concern they had with these explosive devices was obvious. We have soldiers who are paying Iraqis to put some type of armor on their doors because canvas doors do not stop a lot of small arms rounds or anything else.

We owe much more to those troops. We owe a budget that is real and timely, and we owe leadership here that will respond to their needs.

I yield the floor.