Fiscal Year 2005 National Defense Authorization Budget Request from the Department of Defense

Federal News Service March 3, 2004 Wednesday

HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE

SUBJECT: FISCAL YEAR 2005 NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION BUDGET REQUEST FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

CHAIRED BY: REPRESENTATIVE DUNCAN HUNTER (R-CA)

LOCATION: 2118 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.

WITNESSES: GENERAL JOHN ABIZAID, COMMANDER, U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND; PETER W. RODMAN, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS

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REP. ADAM SMITH (D-WA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, gentlemen, for your service and for your presentation today.

I want to follow up actually in that line of questioning and specific to bin Laden's location. There's been a fair amount of opinion that he's in northwest Pakistan, the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and there were interesting reports-I guess it was about a month ago now we started seeing the news media that a major offensive was going to be launched in the spring. I found that interesting that we would give advance notice of that. And later it turned out not to be completely accurate. But I get a lot of questions from people that if, you know, if we know where this guy is within a, I don't know-I don't know what the mileage is there, within a fixed point on the map anyway, why not just drop 50,000 troops over there and go get him? I'm sure there's an answer to that, in terms of where-the logistics of it, or whatever. But there is that feeling.

Because, you know, my opinion, and I think the opinion of many people-I mean, the threat that bin Laden and Zawahiri in particular continue to pose to us is extreme, and al Qaeda's capabilities would be significantly reduced if those two people were out of commission. So what's the thinking in terms of do we really have some certainty as to where he is, even if we know he's in that area? Still does it work militarily? What is the approach to that?

GEN. ABIZAID: Congressman, we do not have any certainty of where bin Laden or Zawahiri happen to be. And I've seen the reports. I've seen all this talk about the spring offensive. I've seen reports by some of our younger enthusiastic officers in the theater about how we're closing in on him. And I've had people say I understand we've got him surrounded and he's under observation. If he was surrounded and under observation, we would have him exactly where we want him. But the truth of the matter is that individual manhunts in this part of the world in particular, and in addition to the fact that it's complicated by the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, make it very difficult to say with any degree of certainty where one human being happens to be. On any given day, I could probably roll out four or five different reports from four or five different agencies that widely report him as being in Afghanistan, in Pakistan and other places.

REP. SMITH: Is there confidence though within that region-I mean, there aren't any reports saying that, you know, he's in Central Africa all of a sudden? I mean, is there a fair amount of confidence that he and Zawahiri are staying in that region at least?

GEN. ABIZAID: My belief is that the two of them happen to be located in-somewhere in Pakistan or somewhere in Afghanistan. But that's a lot of territory.

And so the other thing that I think we need to give the Pakistanis important credit for is the fact that they are stepping up their operations in an area where they haven't had a lot of military capacity, and they are putting pressure on their side of the border on the al Qaeda organization as we are on our side of the border.

But the notion of a spring, winter or fall offensive and counterinsurgency is really kind of an outdated World War II sort of notion. We are conducting offensive operations now in areas that we think are high pay off.

REP. SMITH: Any idea where that story came from? Because it seemed to be fairly persistent. It should have come from somewhere. I mean, I don't-the media doesn't usually just totally make things up. They frequently get it very wrong, but there's-is there any idea where that came from?

GEN. ABIZAID: Well, I think there's been a-there's always this idea that there is-spring is the campaigning season in Afghanistan. And there is clearly a desire on our part to continue to step up operations. And when there's areas that have 10 foot of snow in them-right now we don't operate in them, and we'll be able to operate in them better in the springtime. So to the degree that we will pick up operations in certain areas that are now inaccessible to us, as the weather improves then I would say that's where it might have come from.

REP. SMITH: Can I ask about one other area? And that's the Shi'a in Iraq and our relations with them. Certainly it's been a tense but not always negative relationship, and certainly there is developing an enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend potential there that it's-I mean, the Sunnis and the other-not all Sunnis, but certainly the Islamists are targeting Shi'a far more than they are targeting us. Has there been an improvement in the relations? Obviously we saw from the attacks yesterday, as you mentioned they're trying to blame it on us, and there was certainly a hostile reaction, even when the forces showed up to help.

Is there any way to exploit this sort of new reality that is developed there that we and the Shi'a have a lot of common goals all of a sudden?

GEN. ABIZAID: Sir, I think, ever since the first day we entered into Iraq, the large majority of the Shi'a population understood that this was an opportunity for them to have a stake in the future of the new government, however it would emerge, that they've never had before. And to the degree that they consider us to be successful, there is a commonality of interests that emerged there that allow us to move forward together.

My relationship with the members of the various Shi'a Governing Council members has been quite good. It's been collaborative. It's been cooperative. We pass an awful lot of important collaborative security information between us and key Shi'a leaders in order to help them understand the dynamic that's going on in Karbala and Najaf, to the extent that we understand it.

But sometimes we undercomplicate our description of Iraq, to our disservice. It's almost kind of a Bosnia sort of mentality where we want to say, "Look, there's three ethnic groups-the Kurds, the Shi'a and the Sunni Arabs, and those three are somehow or other never going to be able to make it together."

But the fact of the matter is this is a hugely complicated intermingling of people where you have tribal elements that are both Sunni and Shi'a, where you have a lot of intermarriage, where you've got a very high percentage of people in the Shi'a community that are very secular-oriented, where Sunnis and Shi'a professionals operate together at a whole range of different levels.

And I think, because there is this sense of being Iraqi and there's this sense of the nation being able to overcome all these obstacles, that it's unlikely that things will move toward civil war. But are there going to be people on all sides that blame us for whatever goes wrong in Iraq? I think as long as we're there, the answer is unfortunately yes.

But I think most people, given the opportunity to think about it and walk away from the emotion of the moment, understand that our role there is essential if they are to emerge as a moderate and responsible member of the international order. And the Shi'a will play a very, very important role in that, although not necessarily the dominant role. I know of no Shi'a bloc that people talk about that I would say will emerge dominant.

REP. SMITH: Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.