Winning the Peace: Coalition Efforts to Restore Iraq

WINNING THE PEACE: COALITION EFFORTS TO RESTORE IRAQ HEARING BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION OCTOBER 8, 2003 Serial No. 108–90 Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform ( Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house http://www.house.gov/reform U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON : 91–303 PDF 2004 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800 Fax: (202) 512–2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402–0001 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00001 Fmt 5011 Sfmt 5011 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM DAN BURTON, Indiana CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York JOHN L. MICA, Florida MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio DOUG OSE, California RON LEWIS, Kentucky JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania CHRIS CANNON, Utah ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma NATHAN DEAL, Georgia CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio JOHN R. CARTER, Texas WILLIAM J. JANKLOW, South Dakota MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman HENRY A. WAXMAN, California TOM LANTOS, California MAJOR R. OWENS, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri DIANE E. WATSON, California STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of Columbia JIM COOPER, Tennessee CHRIS BELL, Texas ——— BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont (Independent) PETER SIRH, Staff Director MELISSA WOJCIAK, Deputy Staff Director ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk PHILIP M. SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director (II) VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00002 Fmt 5904 Sfmt 5904 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 C O N T E N T S Page Hearing held on October 8, 2003 ............................................................................ 1 Statement of: Brownlee, Les, Acting Secretary of the Army; Philo Dibble, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs; Tom Korologos, senior advisor to Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, ad- ministrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority; Major General Carl Strock, U.S. Army, director of operations and infrastructure, Coalition Provisional Authority; and Bernie Kerik, former director of the interior, Coalition Provisional Authority ................................................................... 14 Haidari, Alaa H., Iraqi-American; Beate Sirota Gordon, constitutional scholar; and Lamya Alarif, Iraqi-American ................................................ 148 Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by: Alarif, Lamya, Iraqi-American, prepared statement of ................................. Brownlee, Les, Acting Secretary of the Army, prepared statement of ......... 167 17 Burgess, Hon. Michael C., a Representative in Congress from the State of Texas, prepared statement of .................................................................. 193 Chocola, Hon. Chris, a Representative in Congress from the State of Indiana, prepared statement of ................................................................... 191 Davis, Chairman Tom, a Representative in Congress from the State of Virginia: Letter dated October 6, 2003 .................................................................... 182 Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 5 Dibble, Philo, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, prepared statement of ............................................. 25 Frelinghuysen, Hon. Rodney P., a Representative in Congress from the State of New Jersey, prepared statement of ............................................... 140 Gordon, Beate Sirota, constitutional scholar, prepared statement of .......... 160 Haidari, Alaa H., Iraqi-American, prepared statement of ............................ 150 Kerik, Bernie, former director of the interior, Coalition Provisional Au- thority, prepared statement of ..................................................................... 39 Korologos, Tom, senior advisor to Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, admin- istrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, prepared statement of ... 30 Maloney, Hon. Carolyn B., a Representative in Congress from the State of New York, prepared statement of ........................................................... 124 Rogers, Hon. Mike, a Representative in Congress from the State of Michi- gan, prepared statement of .......................................................................... 195 Shuster, Hon. Bill, a Representative in Congress from the State of Penn- sylvania, prepared statement of .................................................................. 196 Van Hollen, Hon. Chris, a Representative in Congress from the State of Maryland, followup questions and responses ......................................... 110 Waxman, Hon. Henry A., a Representative in Congress from the State of California, prepared statement of ........................................................... 11 (III) VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00003 Fmt 5904 Sfmt 5904 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00004 Fmt 5904 Sfmt 5904 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 WINNING THE PEACE: COALITION EFFORTS TO RESTORE IRAQ WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2003 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, Washington, DC. The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:13 a.m., in room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Tom Davis of Virginia (chairman of the committee) presiding. Present: Representatives Tom Davis of Virginia, Shays, Ose, Platts, Miller, Murphy, Turner, Carter, Janklow, Blackburn, Wax- man, Maloney, Cummings, Kucinich, Davis of Illinois, Tierney, Clay, Van Hollen, Sanchez, Ruppersberger, and Norton. Also present: Shuster, Rogers of Michigan, Shimkus, Walsh, Sherwood, Kolbe, Tiahrt, Hoekstra, Frelinghuysen, Pomeroy, Dicks, and Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas. Staff present: Peter Sirh, staff director; Melissa Wojciak, deputy staff director; Keith Ausbrook, chief counsel; David Young and John Hunter, counsels; Robert Borden, counsel/parliamentarian; Ellen Brown, legislative director and senior policy director; David Marin, director of communications; John Cuaderes, senior profes- sional staff member; Teresa Austin, chief clerk; Brien Beattie, dep- uty clerk; Jason Chung, legislative assistant; Corrine Zaccagnini, chief information officer; Phil Barnett, minority chief counsel; Kris- tin Amerling and Michael Yeager, minority deputy chief counsels; Karen Lightfoot, minority communications director and senior pol- icy advisor; Anna Laitin, minority communications and policy as- sistant; Jeff Baran, minority counsel; Earley Green, minority chief clerk; Jean Gosa, minority assistant clerk; and Cecelia Morton, mi- nority office manager. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Good morning. A quorum being present, the Committee on Government Reform will come to order. I want to welcome everybody to today’s hearing on the U.S. coali- tion efforts to restore peace, freedom, security, and dignity to the people of Iraq. On August 24th, I led an 11-member bipartisan del- egation to see firsthand our efforts in Iraq. Before leaving the United States, I had no real idea of what to expect on my visit. After all, most press accounts of our efforts in Iraq were full of gloom and doom. But what we witnessed was an Iraq of great promise, vibrancy and vitality. We saw a nation with potential and a people that were enjoying the fruits of freedom in its infancy. We saw a remarkable progress throughout the country, whether it was a hospital in Baghdad or a new police station in Mosul. (1) VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 2 We witnessed a busy market in Mosul where one could buy any- thing under the sun, including items that were forbidden under Saddam Hussein’s regime, such as satellite dishes, one of the hot- test selling items in the country. We met with newly elected re- gional council members—men and women, Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis—who spoke of embracing democratic values and represent- ing all of Iraq, not just their own religions, tribes and home towns. We also witnessed the greatness of our military; not of their might, but of their humble actions in assisting a people in need. Our soldiers are firm in their resolve to stay until the job is fin- ished. These young men and women are not only soldiers but also peacekeepers, and when called upon, diplomats and friends. There is no doubt, we still have a lot of work ahead of us. Our military is still in harm’s way, but, from what I have seen, we can be suc- cessful as long as we remain steadfast, patient and committed. The coalition’s work is far from over. Iraq is still a work in progress, and new challenges arise every day. We must overcome the many security threats that, to this day, continue to be the greatest challenge to our troops and the stabilization of Iraq. Re- building efforts, although well under way, and perhaps well ahead of schedule, will not succeed in the end if we cannot overcome the prevailing threats against those who are there to help. While I am confident that we will succeed in ridding Iraq of ele- ments that want to see the coalition fail, we need to keep in mind several important lessons, such as: while the rotation of military forces in Iraq is essential, increasing the number of military per- sonnel in the area may not be necessary or advisable to accomplish the mission. Second, reconstituting a qualified and effective Iraqi military po- lice force and border protection guard is a key element to improv- ing overall security in Iraq. The development of functioning institu- tions in a secure environment is essential to Iraq’s success. Fur- thermore, the sooner Iraqis can take responsibility for their own af- fairs, the sooner U.S. forces can come home. For human intelligence to improve, we need the participation of Iraqi-Americans who have the skills, the knowledge and the will- ingness to assist in the intelligence gathering and analysis. How- ever, we need to actively recruit, vet and train these individuals. In order for these people to be effective, we need to expedite the security clearance process. Iraqi citizens can provide vital intel- ligence about the whereabouts of weapons of mass destruction, but the coalition forces need the authorization to grant relocation and protective status to informants and their extended families. Saddam Hussein misappropriated much of the money loaned to Iraq for his own personal benefit to the detriment of the Iraqi peo- ple. My colleague, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, has intro- duced H.R. 2482, which could greatly benefit the people of Iraq by canceling Odious Debt in accordance with customary international law. This is potentially a very wealthy country, second largest oil reserves in the world, the Fertile Crescent there between the Tigris and the Euphrates River, the Garden of Eden, Ancient Mesopota- mia, but with a debt structure that is four times the gross domestic product, no nation can survive under that structure, so that is obvi- ously going to have be revisited as this country is succeeding. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 3 While operations in Iraq are still young—we are only 160 days into the rebuilding effort—we have accomplished much. We are building schools, upgrading hospitals and modernizing the utilities infrastructure at a pace that surpasses operations we led after World War II, and we are well ahead of the pace of our reconstruc- tion efforts in the Balkans. Still, most of the media accounts of post-war Iraq discuss ramp- ant chaos and mismanagement. However, according to a public opinion poll conducted in August by the Zogby Group, more than two-thirds of those Iraqis who expressed an opinion wanted coali- tion troops to remain in Iraq for at least another year, and 70 per- cent of Iraqis said they expect their country and their personal lives to be better in 5 years. During our visit to Iraq, the delegation visited a site southwest of Baghdad, in a sector guarded by the U.S. Marines known as Al- Hillah. One cannot begin to describe this site. There are no land- marks to identify its location, but we know of this place because once we overthrew Saddam, the Iraqi people themselves were our guides. In those early days after we swept through this area, Iraqis by the dozens came to Al-Hillah to do something that is hard to put into words: they dug. Yes, many came to this nondescript place to dig, many with their bare hands. They dug because it is here that we learned of Saddam’s brutality. Al-Hillah was a killing field. For reasons unknown except to Saddam and his henchmen, men, women and children were summarily executed over a span of many days. They were buried, and the process was repeated time and time again, people buried on top of one another. This was a scheme designed by a sociopath bent on crippling the Iraqi people. Now the people return, most with kitchen utensils and their hands, to find and dig up remains of loved ones. Under the protection of coalition forces, Iraqis are learning what it means to be free. Our role in Iraq has just begun, and it is a new fight, a fight that is far greater than simply ridding Iraq of Saddam Hussein. We need time, patience, and, most of all, the re- solve to finish the job we started. The people of Iraq deserve no less. Our men and women serving in Iraq want to finish the job, and we need to support them while the Iraqi people savor freedom and bring stability to a region that desperately needs it. Through this hearing, the committee hopes to gain insight from the on-the-ground experience of the people performing reconstruc- tion projects in Iraq, as well as the viewpoints of Iraqi-Americans, scholars and others who have recently observed the reconstruction process. I also welcome my colleagues, many of whom are not mem- bers of this committee but have traveled to Iraq and have their own views, emotions and experiences that they want to share. With that in mind, we have assembled an impressive group of witnesses to help us assess our efforts and our progress in Iraq. We will hear from the Department of Defense and the Coalition Provi- sional Authority. We will also receive input from some distin- guished Iraqi-Americans, as well as a constitutional scholar who will provide us her thoughts regarding the inclusion of women’s rights in the yet-to-be-determined constitution. I want to thank all our witnesses for appearing before the committee; I look forward to VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00007 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 4 their testimony. I also want to acknowledge and welcome the many non-committee members attending today’s hearing. Due to time constraints, we intend to limit opening statements, the ranking member and myself. Members will have 5 legislative days to submit opening statements for the record. All Members will have ample opportunity to give their views and question today’s witnesses. I do intend to recognize committee members first, fol- lowed by the other Members in order of their appearance. And, Mr. Waxman, I am going to have to leave in the middle of the hearing and come back, because we have bills that will be pending on the floor, but it shouldn’t take much time, and I will yield at that point to another committee member to preside. I would now yield to my ranking member, Mr. Waxman, for his opening statement. [The prepared statement of Chairman Tom Davis follows:] VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 5 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 6 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 7 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 8 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 9 Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am very pleased that you have called this hearing on the important subject of the restoration efforts in Iraq, and I want to commend you for traveling there to seek firsthand information. All of us here share deep appreciation for the efforts of our military and our civilian employees in Iraq to promote stability in Iraq and improve the well-being of its citizens. Congressional oversight is essential to help ensure that recon- struction is proceeding in a manner that gets results and makes ef- ficient use of American taxpayers’ dollars. My own oversight efforts began in March, when I wrote the administration about the multi- billion dollar contract it entered into with Halliburton on a sole- source basis. Since then, I have written many other letters seeking basic information about how taxpayer funds are being spent in Iraq. This August I sent senior staff to Iraq to gather additional information as part of the chairman’s delegation. Overall, this has been a frustrating process. Transparency is the only way to dispel public concern about the lucrative contracts that the administration has entered into with Halliburton, Bechtel and other large campaign contributors operating in Iraq. Yet, with the exception of the Corps of Engineers, the administration has pro- vided virtually no meaningful information to Congress, or the pub- lic, about how it has spent taxpayers’ dollars in Iraq. For example, in April I asked the Administrator of AID for basic information about the contracting process with respect to contracts worth over $1 billion that were limited to only a few handpicked companies. AID has still not provided copies of the contracts or information on source selection. Despite a recommendation by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to allow public scrutiny of a no-bid sole-source oil field contract with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, the Defense Department continues to classify the details of the contract as a national security secret. The administration still has not responded to my letter on September 12th, requesting that it explain why the President’s request for an additional $2.1 billion to repair Iraq’s oil infrastructure is over 2.5 times larger than a de- tailed estimate prepared just a few months ago by the CPA, the Corps of Engineers and the Iraqi Ministry of Oil. This secrecy is simply unacceptable. Two companies alone, Halliburton and Bech- tel, have been given contracts worth over $3 billion relating to the conflict and reconstruction in Iraq. Members of Congress and tax- payers who are footing this enormous bill should know how this money is being spent. While the administration has declined to respond to basic re- quests about its contracts, information I have received from a vari- ety of sources is painting a disturbing picture. It appears that big American contractors are receiving too much money for too little work and too few opportunities are being afforded Iraqis. Members of the Iraqi Governing Council, for example, have told my staff that costs to the American taxpayers could be reduced by 90 percent if the projects were awarded to Iraqi contractors, rather than to large American companies. Anecdotal information from innovative field commanders in Iraq confirms this account. During the chairman’s congressional delegation, the members and staff met with Major General David Petraeus, the general in VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 10 charge of Northern Iraq. General Petraeus said that the U.S. engi- neers estimated that it would cost $15 million to bring a cement plant in Northern Iraq to western production standards. But be- cause this estimate was substantially higher than funds available, General Petraeus gave the project to local Iraqis, who got the ce- ment plant running for just $80,000. Think about this. General Petraeus reduced the cost to U.S. taxpayers by 99 percent by using local Iraqi contractors instead of Halliburton or Bechtel. Many people don’t realize this, but the billion dollar contracts with Bechtel and Halliburton are what is known as cost-plus con- tracts. These contracts are structured so that the bigger, the more complex and the more expensive the project, the greater the profits for these companies. This is obviously a good deal for the compa- nies, but is it a good deal for the taxpayer? The administration’s supplemental request for an additional $20 billion for reconstruction raises many questions. It includes numer- ous proposals for complex, state-of-the-art Western facilities that almost certainly will have to be performed by large government contractors under abuse-prone cost-plus contracts. Of the 115 dis- creet projects described by the CPA in the supplemental, fewer than 25 mention employment opportunities for Iraqis. I hope that the Army and CPA witnesses here today will be able to shed light on some of the questions about reconstruction con- tracts that remain unanswered to date, and I encourage the major- ity on this committee and in the rest of the Congress to move for- ward with the minority in conducting meaningful oversight of the restoration process in Iraq. Mr. Chairman, I hope this hearing will be a beginning of that op- portunity for oversight. I thank you for holding this hearing, and I look forward to the testimony of the witnesses. [The prepared statement of Hon. Henry A. Waxman follows:] VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00014 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 11 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00015 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 12 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00016 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 13 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00017 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 14 Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you. I just want to say, on the cement plant, I remember talking to General Petraeus about that, and he awarded the contract to an Iraqi firm, but he never said it would be up to Western standards. But he did what he could with the money, and I know firsthand, and our witnesses can talk about this, that we are trying to give Iraqis as much of that work as we can, because their economy is a major part of what is happening. But our witnesses can address that, and we will have ample time to do questions and answers, so why don’t we move to our panel? Members’ written statements will be in the record, and all of you will have ample time under questions and answers to make state- ments. If you will all rise with me and raise your right hands. [Witnesses sworn.] Chairman TOM DAVIS. Please be seated. We have the Honorable Les Brownlee, the Acting Secretary of the Army, former staffer with Senator Warner, and we are happy to have you here; Philo Dibble, the Principal Deputy Assistant Sec- retary of State for the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs; we have Tom Korologos, senior advisor to Ambassador Paul Bremer; U.S. Major General Carl Strock, who is the director of operations and infrastructure of the Coalition Provisional Authority; and Mr. Ber- nie Kerik, who is the former Director of the Interior, Coalition Pro- visional Authority and former police chief in New York. Why don’t we start, Secretary Brownlee, with you, and we will move right down. I think you know the rules. Your entire state- ments are in the record. Our Members have a lot of questions and comments they are going to want to make, and I won’t start with questions, I will start moving down the way. So welcome. And when the light turns orange, that means 4 minutes are up, and when it is red, 5 minutes. We want to give you an opportunity to say what you need to say, but your entire statement is in the record, thank you. STATEMENTS OF LES BROWNLEE, ACTING SECRETARY OF THE ARMY; PHILO DIBBLE, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE, BUREAU OF NEAR EASTERN AF- FAIRS; TOM KOROLOGOS, SENIOR ADVISOR TO AMBAS- SADOR L. PAUL BREMER III, ADMINISTRATOR OF THE COA- LITION PROVISIONAL AUTHORITY; MAJOR GENERAL CARL STROCK, U.S. ARMY, DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS AND INFRA- STRUCTURE, COALITION PROVISIONAL AUTHORITY; AND BERNIE KERIK, FORMER DIRECTOR OF THE INTERIOR, COA- LITION PROVISIONAL AUTHORITY Secretary BROWNLEE. Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the committee, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to testify on the tremendous accomplishments of our soldiers, both active and reserve components, and the great progress they are making in winning the peace in Iraq. I know that many of you have just recently returned from Iraq, and on behalf of the soldiers who are serving our country, let me begin by expressing gratitude for the exceptional support you provided to them and their families as well. I am happy to join you here this morning to talk about the VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00018 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 15 marvelous work our soldiers are doing and the great progress that is being made every day in Iraq. I visited Iraq in June and again in late September, and I am pleased to share with you what I learned. The insurgency being waged in Iraq includes foreign fighters and terrorist groups, along with former Ba’athists, making this the cen- tral battlefront in the war on terrorism. After our lightning ground attack into Baghdad, an overwhelming military victory by coalition forces, the mission in Iraq now remains clear: to win the peace. Our soldiers understand this mission, and their commitment to get- ting the job done is having an extraordinarily positive effect on the people of Iraq. Soldiers are working with the Iraqi people, our coa- lition partners and the international community to achieve a better Iraq for the Iraqis, the region and the world. During my visits to Iraq, I have witnessed the progress being made, and I can tell you that things are getting better, and will continue to get better both for the people of Iraq and for our men and women serving there. Here are a few of the great things that are happening: local government councils exist in over 90 percent of the country and are taking increasing responsibility for civic ad- ministration and services; our Army divisions are training Iraqi po- lice, facility protection forces, and civil defense corps to assume re- sponsibility for local security and law enforcement; our units are helping getting Iraqi schools running again—in the Baghdad region alone, we will have 820 schools refurbished by the end of October. We are continuing to make things safer for the people of Iraq and our own troops by removing ammunition caches from around the country. The nation’s infrastructure was badly neglected under the Ba’ath region, and we are helping to restore and modernize it. For example, we are hiring Iraqis to help restore the oil industry and power generation, and to repair roads. These are but a few of the thousands of things our Army is busy doing for the people of Iraq, and for our own troops. Last month soldiers began taking advantage of the R&R leave program, which allows them to spend 2 weeks away from the thea- ter during their 12-month tour. Since my last visit to Iraq in June, we have opened 31 new dining facilities for our troops, as well as Internet cafes, chapels, and exchanges. Most soldiers are living in hard structures or climate-controlled billets so troops returning from patrols can adequately rest and refit. In Iraq, the mission for our soldiers continues. They must attack and eliminate remaining anti-coalition forces and assist interim governments to deliver basic services to their people. Our soldiers must simultaneously conduct combat operations and provide hu- manitarian assistance, often shifting between these two in the same day. The administration is aware of our concerns and re- quirements. President Bush has asked Congress for the resources to help fight the war on terror, and they are addressed in the fiscal year 2004 supplemental. We urge Congress to assist us by quickly passing this legislation. Despite remarkable successes, our fight is not over. Our enemies are committed and believe we lack the resolve to win the peace in Iraq. I can assure you this is not true. Our commanders and troops are determined and optimistic, and feel that we are gaining mo- VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 16 mentum in the fight. In years to come, when historians write the story of this critical period, they will note that in Iraq and around the globe, the unwavering commitment, courage and compassion of the American soldier led the way in the fight against terror. By carrying the fight to the enemy, the Army is destroying terrorism today in its home nests and spawning grounds, providing protec- tion to the American people and striking fear in the hearts of our enemies. In closing, I would like to take this opportunity to thank this committee for the opportunity to appear today and for your contin- ued support for the men and women in uniform deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world fighting terrorism. I would like to take this opportunity also to thank all our soldiers for their serv- ice, and their families as well, for the sacrifices they are all making for our Nation. Mr. Chairman, I look forward to answering your questions. [The prepared statement of Secretary Brownlee follows:] VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00020 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 17 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00021 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 18 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00022 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 19 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 20 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00024 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 21 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00025 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 22 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 23 Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much, Secretary Brownlee. Secretary Dibble, thank you for being with us. Mr. DIBBLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am grateful for the op- portunity to appear before the committee this morning, and I will keep my remarks brief. Several senior administration officials, including Ambassador Bremer of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad and Dep- uty Secretary of State Armitage have testified in recent days on key issues concerning U.S. policy on Iraq. Their statements stand alone as the administration’s position on Iraq but I am here to at- tempt to address any questions you may have. It is in the interest of all Americans and, indeed, the inter- national community, to see peaceful and prosperous countries across this important region. For far too long Iraq exported desta- bilizing waves of violence and terrorism across its borders and around the world. Iraq now has the potential to turn the situation around and become a source of stability and prosperity in the re- gion, around the world and for Americans here at home. Meeting our military objectives in Iraq was only the beginning of reaching that vision, however, not the end. While it is in our inter- est to stabilize the situation, we also owe it to our men and women in uniform, to their courage and sacrifice, to accomplish the entire mission. In addition, we need to support our own people who also serve on the front lines of this fight, providing assistance in what are often dangerous circumstances and insecure settings. I would like to continue by paying tribute to my friends and col- leagues throughout Iraq on both military and civilian sides. They are working extraordinarily hard, at heavy personal risk, to restore stability and security, reestablish normal life for Iraqis, and help lay the basis for Iraqis to succeed in the election of a representative government, and they deserve all our thanks. Mr. Chairman, succeeding in this project in all its aspects is of vital interest to the United States, and we cannot fail. The task has three main dimensions: security, restoring normal life for Iraqis and establishing a political process. Each dimension is relat- ed to the others and is a necessary condition for success. Security is a fundamental requirement for normal life and for a legitimate political process. Restoration of normal life meaning access to em- ployment, to health care, to education, and clean water, among so many other things, is desirable in itself and underpins security. Fi- nally, a political process provides confidence to the Iraqi people that they will soon take on the task of governing themselves. That confidence, in turn, contributes to security. These are difficult times, as the situation in Iraq continues to shift and take shape. With the clarity of hindsight, however, I be- lieve we will know this Nation had the courage to take tough deci- sions to safeguard our future peace and prosperity at the time when it mattered most. In so doing, the U.S. Government has the opportunity to help not only our own people, but also the people of Iraq, the region and around the world. Success in Iraq, however, is also of vital interest to the international community. As such, we have sought and achieved international participation in the coali- tion. We look to the United Nations to contribute a substantial ex- VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 24 pertise and experience in this connection, and we are aggressively seeking substantial financial support from the international com- munity for the reconstruction effort. This outlines the main elements of our policy on Iraq, and I would be happy to respond to the committee’s questions. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Mr. Dibble follows:] VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00028 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 25 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00029 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 26 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00030 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 27 Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much. Tom Korologos, thanks for being with us. Mr. KOROLOGOS. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, my name is Tom Korologos. I am a senior counselor to Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, the Coalition Provisional Authority Special Envoy in Iraq. My responsibilities include working with three other senior counselors, the various coalition ministers, and staff, and also han- dling visiting congressional delegations as they come through Iraq; and your group was among them, and I see other members here on the committee who were there. When I first got to Baghdad last May, it was a city burning. We were given earplugs to shut out gunfire so we could sleep. Today we are living in the midst of a rebirth for this maligned country that has enjoyed more religious and political freedom in the past 4 months than in the past 40 years. I have traveled the country extensively with Ambassador Bremer and with the Members of Congress, and I have seen firsthand the successes that have fol- lowed the ceasing of these hostilities. As many of you who visited us this summer know full well, Baghdad is not a war-ravaged city. Baghdad is a hustling and bus- tling city where you can buy everything on the streets from air con- ditioners to refrigerators to satellite dishes to shoes. To be sure, all of us dread hearing about the shootings or attacks on American sol- diers in Iraq, and as Ambassador Bremer said 2 weeks ago, our day begins 8 hours ahead of yours here, and we learn about those at- tacks before you awaken. We deplore those losses and wish they weren’t so. Mr. Chairman, as you have heard us say time and again, and as my colleagues on the panel have stated, we have three goals in Iraq. Our plan from the start has been to restore security, restore the economy and restore the government. We are making progress on all three fronts, and those of you from the committee who joined us know this firsthand. What we have in Iraq is a rich country which, as the chairman said, is temporarily poor. It has oil; it has water; it has an energetic, smart population. It is not unlike Cali- fornia, as a matter of fact, including problems with the economy and the government. Let me list a few facts. Schools reopened last week, as Secretary Brownlee said, and we are luring children back, where attendance had plummeted 50 percent of the eligible attendees. We have prepared and distributing 5 million new math and science text books minus Saddam’s ideology. When I first ar- rived there, we had 9 mile-long gasoline lines. Today we have traf- fic jams. We love traffic jams; they mean that gas is flowing and people are out working. General Strock will give you the details of the oil business. The central bank is now open, providing loans and conducting commerce. In 2 weeks we are distributing a new cur- rency to the Iraqis. Foreign investment is poised to come to Iraq. One member of the Governing Council told me 2 months ago, when Ambassador Bremer first approached the issue, that if anybody had said the word foreign investment under the old regime, he would have had his throat cut. Independent voices are being heard for the first time in 40 years. We have almost 200 newspapers up and run- ning, 27 TV stations and 26 radio stations functioning. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00031 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 28 The coalition, as Secretary Brownlee and General Strock, in a minute, will tell you, has completed more than 8,000 projects around the country, refurbishing everything from soccer fields to health clinics, to roads and bridges throughout the country. Sad- dam budgeted $13 million for health care in 2002. We have allo- cated $210 million, a 3,200 percent increase. On April 9th only 30 percent of the hospitals were running; today, all 240 around the country are open; 4 million Iraqi children have received 22 million doses of vaccine. Prewar, the country was averaging 4,000 megawatts of power. The demand was 6,000, we are now around 3,900, closing in on that issue. Oil is pumping: we are about 1.7 million barrels a day, and hope to get back to prewar levels, around 3 million. The Governing Council is up and running. They have just named 25 various ministers to run the government, and those ministers probably constitute the most educated cabinet group in the world, since most of them have Ph.Ds. And as Secretary Brownlee also said, there are more than 700 democratically selected district coun- cil members. They include Sunnis, Shiites, Christians, Arabs, and Kurds, with more than 75 women among them; 90 percent of the Iraqi people are now under local representative governing councils; 90 percent of the courts are up and running, and last week I saw they even created the Iraqi Bar Association. On and on the list runs, Mr. Chairman, and those of you who have been there can see those lists as we present them to you. The lament for those of us enduring 50 and 60 straight days of 100 de- gree heat—we had a 137 degree day once this summer—of wearing flak jackets when we leave the compound, we run around in ar- mored cars when we go downtown, and in talking with about 95 to 98 percent of the Iraqis who support us, our lament comes from the fact there are good things happening that very few Americans know anything about. The reporting of those accomplishments, un- fortunately, takes a back seat to the police blotter-type journalism that fills the front pages of the American papers. And as the chairman said, those of you who went to the Al- Hillah grave site on our trip, I repeat what I said then: I find the silence on the mass graves deafening. A total of 1.3 million Iraqis are missing from wars and mass murders. Human rights groups es- timate that 300,000 of those are in mass graves. One mass grave alone holds the bodies of 1,200 children. There are some 35 or 40 mass grave sites all around Iraq filled with Iraqis who opposed Saddam. If there is any doubt about our going in there in the first place, come see me, I will take you down to Al-Hillah for a poign- ant awakening. Yes, there are bumps in the road, and, yes, Ambas- sador Bremer has made audibles throughout the process. We are going to need many, many dollars to bring this country back to some semblance of freedom. And once that happens, the entire Middle East hopefully will stand up and take notice and some san- ity will come to that part of the world. Let me close with a couple of points. Everybody wants to know when our troops are coming home. The troops will start coming home when Ambassador Bremer comes home and the CPA suc- ceeds. And when will that be? Let me cite a Rand Corporation study, which took a look at post-war rebuilding efforts in Germany, VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00032 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 29 Japan, Kosovo, and Bosnia. The study said of Iraq: ‘‘Staying there does not assume success. Leaving early guarantees failure.’’ Thank you very much. [The prepared statement of Mr. Korologos follows:] VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00033 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 30 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00034 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 31 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00035 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 32 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00036 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 33 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00037 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 34 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00038 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 35 Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you. I was feeling pretty confident until you told me the lawyers were getting organized over there. General Strock, thanks for being with us. General STROCK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am Major General Carl Strock. I am the Director of Civil Works for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. As a soldier and a citizen I would like to start, as the other members did, by thanking this committee and the Congress for your continued and unwavering support of our mili- tary as we pursue the global war on terrorism. Sir, I have recently returned from Iraq after 6 months, where I served with the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assist- ance and then with the Coalition Provisional Authority. I held sev- eral positions, culminating as deputy director of operations and in- frastructure for Ambassador Bremer. I was also the Senior Corp of Engineers Officer in Iraq and had responsibility to ensure that my agency was adequately and appropriately represented in support- ing the effort. We do that in many ways. We have responsibility for the restoration of Iraqi oil infrastructure; we are supporting the U.S. Agency for International Development in the administration of their large construction contact; we are providing forward engineer support teams to each of the regional coordinators to assess, plan, prioritize, and execute projects in their areas; we provided ministry advisory teams to eight of the ministries of the Iraqi government; we are supporting the creation of a new Iraqi army with facilities; we have recently sent a task force in to assist in the restoration of electrical power. In all, 39 of our 40 districts are represented with about 400 people, mostly civilians, all volunteers, who are out there on the front line on a daily basis risking their lives in sup- port of the Iraqi people and our country. Sir, we are working in partnership with many, many agencies and international organizations: the USAID, other departments from our Government—State, Transportation, Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Commerce. We are working with inter- national organizations: UNICEF, UNESCO, UNDP. Non-govern- mental organizations: the International Committee for Red Cross- Red Crescent, CARE and others. We are also working with the coa- lition military forces who have been a tremendous augmentation to the CPA capability to reconstruct infrastructure, as has been men- tioned by the committee. Sir, most importantly, though, I think it is important to note that it is the Iraqi people themselves who are really doing the heavy lifting in this. The ministries and the private sector there have proven to be competent, committed and courageous in their support of this effort. We simply could not do what we have done if the Iraqis had not been involved from the very beginning. We came into a situation which is desperate. The infrastructure of this country has suffered a 30-year insult. There are many rea- sons for that. First of all, and fundamentally, is a neglect of the system; in some cases benign neglect, in some cases very deliberate neglect on the part of Saddam’s regime. Services under Saddam Hussein were used as a reward or punishment. You can see a dra- matic difference in the quality of life in Baghdad, where citizens typically enjoy 22 to 24 hours of power a day, and Al-Qud, where they only get 2 hours of power a day. So the infrastructure was VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00039 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 36 built around those who supported him and were denied to those who did not. We also suffered war damage but because we made very careful efforts to limit damage through what we call effects-based target- ing—where you decide what effect you want to create and do it with minimum impact to the infrastructure—we were able to keep actual war damage to a minimum, a very insignificant aspect of the problems we are facing now. We suffered tremendous looting after the fall of the regime. Much of this was individual looting by people out for personal gain, and much of it then turned to a criminal element of deliberate and structured dismantling of the infrastructure. There has also been— and I think the largest factor has been—deliberate sabotage by the former regime loyalists who are doing everything they can to thwart our efforts and make it difficult for us to restore some level of normalcy to this country. The result of all these things has been almost a total devastation of this country; not only the physical infrastructure, but the human infrastructure. Those people who are committed to maintaining the infrastructure have suffered dramatically in how they were able to do their jobs, and they continue to suffer intimidation and coercion as they support the effort. The other panel members have already discussed some of the re- sults, so I won’t go into the details of those. One of the most impor- tant, though, that I would mention is the electrical power restora- tion, which now exceeds 4,500 megawatts, which is more than enough to provide for the daily needs of the Iraqi people. Oil pro- duction has now reached the 2 million barrel per day level, and we are simply now in the process now of developing the export facili- ties. There is much work to be done, a good foundation has been laid, and, I might add, largely with Iraqi resources supplemented by our taxpayer’ dollars, but resistance continues. Those within Iraq and outside of Iraq that have an interest in this outcome are working very hard to counter our efforts. We are fighting for the will of the Iraqi people and, to a degree, we are fighting for the will of the American people. Our soldiers won this war because they had the will to fight for what they believe in, and I think the Iraqi soldiers lost because they did not have the will to fight for a corrupt regime. I firmly believe that they melted away because they knew that was in the best interest of their country. We must not disappoint those Iraqi soldiers, and we must not neglect the sacrifices of our sol- diers. We have to continue this effort. There is no option but to see it through. As you mentioned, sir, Iraq is an impoverished country with tre- mendous potential; vast natural wealth and tremendous human capital. All they need from us right now is continued support and substantial assistance in accelerating their return to normalcy. I am intensely proud that I had the opportunity to serve this Nation and the people of Iraq, and I thank you for the opportunity to ap- pear before this committee today. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you, General. Bernie Kerik, thanks for being with us, chief. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00040 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 37 Mr. KERIK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I too would like to echo the General’s comments in thanking the committee here and other Members of Congress for coming to Iraq and seeing for yourself, seeing firsthand what has happened there, what it was like before, what it is like today, and the great successes we have had in the CPA. I am Bernard Kerik. For 4 months I oversaw the Ministry of In- terior as the senior policy advisor to Ambassador Bremer for the Interior. The Interior houses the police, customs, borders, immigra- tion, emergency management and fire services for the entire coun- try. The Iraqi police service, as they stand today, are unable to inde- pendently maintain law and order and need the assistance and guidance of the coalition forces to accomplish this task. They have suffered years of neglect, coupled with a repressive command struc- ture that prohibited training, proactive initiative, and stifled at- tempts toward modernization of the police. Unless redesigned and redeveloped, the Iraqi police will not constitute a suitable, viable, supportable, or sustainable police service for a free Iraq. Although the police force in Iraq was only a part of the security apparatus used by Saddam’s repressive regime, they are the only institution which remains somewhat intact following the conflict. In the opinion of many citizens, the police are inexplicably linked with a cruel and repressive regime that has been substantially tainted by their association. Generally seen as a part of the re- gime’s enforcers, the populace normally describes the police as cor- rupt, unprofessional, and untrustworthy. The police force was a quasi-military institution heavily steeped in military tactics, doc- trine, discipline, and philosophy, concurrently staffed with active military personnel who were tightly controlled by Baghdad and Saddam. Because of this restrictive control, the police services lan- guished for the last 35 years and now displays the results of poor standards, inadequate expectations and performance, absence of understanding and appreciation for human rights, poor manage- ment, and insufficient and inadequate training. Following the conflict, most of the police infrastructure was badly damaged, stolen or destroyed during the cathartic looting which succeeded the end of hostilities. As the public order situation has improved, many of the police who fled coalition forces have re- turned to work, not only within Baghdad but across the country, now nearly 40,000 in strength. Their ability to operate effectively in general was hampered by their inadequate knowledge of basic police skills such as patrol techniques, interviewing and crime scene investigation and was hampered by a lack of equipment. As a result of the training, oversight and assistance by the coali- tion, and their willingness to cooperate with the coalition, they have demonstrated enormous progress in securing and stabilizing Iraq in the last several months. Establishing a sufficient proactive deterrent police presence remains one of the principal priorities of the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Iraq police services are presently engaged in extensive administrative and operational re- forms. The thorough vetting of existing personnel was and is re- quired, along with extensive retraining of those who survived this process. The recruitment and screening of new Iraqi police has VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00041 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 38 begun, and the training of new recruits untainted by the vestiges of the former regime must be accomplished as soon as possible. This infusion of new ideas, ideals and expectations will invigorate the police service, while forcing existing personnel to challenge paradigms of behavior that have held them hostage throughout their careers. Complimenting these ideas is the installation of a proactive and aggressive office of professional standards that will hold officers accountable to a standardized set of intentionally ac- cepted policies, rules and regulations that will guide the police service long after international advising and police assistance have ended. The reform of the police is a long-term program that will require considerable international assistance through financial in-kind con- tributions and qualified police personnel to train, monitor and ad- vise their Iraqi counterparts. As there are too many accomplish- ments to mention in the Interior in this statement, I welcome the opportunity to go over them with you and other members of the committee at your request. And, again, thank you for the oppor- tunity to be here. [The prepared statement of Mr. Kerik follows:] VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00042 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 39 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00043 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 40 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00044 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 41 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00045 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 42 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00046 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 43 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00047 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 44 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 45 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 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6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 91 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00095 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 92 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00096 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 93 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00097 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 94 Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much. And I have made an opening statement. Tom, let me just ask you one question. I get a lot of questions from my constituents when I go out; they say, well, even if every- thing goes well in Iraq, even if we rebuild this country, it is taking tremendous resources from America, minimum of $87 billion, prob- ably well in excess of that, American lives and American dollars to rebuild Iraq. Ultimately, is this a good use of our resources, or could they have been better used to rebuild our own infrastructure and our own cities, and help our own people? Mr. KOROLOGOS. Mr. Chairman, the $87 billion includes $20.3 billion which is for the coalition; the other piece of it is for the mili- tary side. The short answer is yes, it is in the national interest of the United States to go in there and provide stability, create a country in the heart of the Middle East, which has been in turmoil for 2,000 years, a democratic state where even today you have the Iranians all nervous over what is going on in Iraq. My view is that it will stabilize that whole part of the world. In addition, the example that we can use historically is the Mar- shall Plan. Ambassador Bremer keeps mentioning that in his testi- mony as an example of American interest and American support for a war-torn Europe that has brought us today the Europe we know. Right after the war, World War II, it was a shambles, and American generosity went in and created the stability that we have had in Europe ever since. World War I ended, and it was the war to end all wars, but it wasn’t long before we had the creation of a Hitler and we had the creation of a Mussolini, which created even more problems for the world in World War II. So, yes, it is worth it. And to wipe out a regime like Saddam Hussein shows other regimes around that, ‘‘Holy cow, these Americans mean busi- ness, we better perhaps shape up.’’ Chairman TOM DAVIS. OK. Thank you very much. Let me recognize Mr. Kolbe, one of the key appropriators in this area, and somebody who has taken a leadership role. Mr. KOLBE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you very much for holding this hearing and for the opportunity to be here. I really applaud you for doing this. It is, as we have heard from the wit- nesses already in their opening statements, a very important issue. Mr. Chairman, as you suggested, because I do chair the Foreign Operations Subcommittee, I am keenly involved, deeply involved, in the reconstruction of Iraq. In fact, I was first there in Kuwait in April, just shortly after the fall of Baghdad, with our USAID Disaster Action Response Team [DART], and our Mission Director, Lou Luck, as they prepared to deploy to Iraq. At that time I had the opportunity to see my good friend, Chris Shays, a member of this committee, who was there at that time and made the first entry into Iraq. Initially, last winter, going back even before that, part of the U.S. Interagency Team in Washington, USAID was tasked with getting contractors ready to hit the ground running in Iraq for var- ious sectors such as reconstruction and governance. USAID used what they called a ‘‘limited competition system,’’ in which the Agency personnel selected particular vendors and solicited bids. USAID then selected the winners from this limited competition and VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00098 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 95 the Bechtel contract, of course, for reconstruction of the infrastruc- ture is probably the best known of these awards that were made. Since then we have been arguing to the administration and USAID that they need to begin efforts now so that the next set of contracts is awarded through full and open competition; and I am talking about the $20.3 billion that Tom Korologos just referred to as the part that is in the supplemental for the next round of recon- struction. That is on a track, we are moving rapidly forward with that, but we have no time to lose if we are going to be prepared to make sure those are awarded on a competitive basis. Frankly, there has been some reluctance downtown to do this, in part, I must say, Mr. Chairman, because the roles and missions of the U.S. agencies and the Coalition Provisional Authority have never really been sorted out completely. As recently as the hear- ings of our subcommittee 2 weeks ago, it still was unclear; the ad- ministration still hadn’t decided who was going to do what in the Iraqi effort. The regular fiscal year 2004 bill that passed the For- eign Operations subcommittee and then the full committee and the House, included a provision that does require full and open com- petition, and I am happy to say, Mr. Chairman, we have been working with you and your staff very closely to develop language for the Iraq supplemental bill that we will mark up tomorrow, and I think that we have agreement on that language. I really just want to conclude with this comment, and I can’t overstate the importance of this issue. If we are going to have credibility with the American people, they need to know that Amer- ican companies that either they represent or have done their work through the sweat off the brow of American workers are going to have a fair shot at securing contracts in the rebuilding of Iraq. That is what America is about, open competition, about giving ev- erybody an opportunity; it is about basic American values and doing the right thing. The perception, the very perception, Mr. Chairman, that we might use something other than open competi- tion would really undercut, I think, the support of the mission of the CPA. There are some good signs; we have heard some of them here today, there is no doubt about it. And I think USAID has gotten the message. They have recently published a request for proposals for $1.5 billion in additional construction projects. That is in prepa- ration, and I am glad to see that, for the fact that this $20.3 billion will be coming. Clearly there are emergency situations that may re- quire sole-source or other than fully competitive methods, but I think it is fair to say that full and open competition ought to be the rule; it is fair and transparent, and I think it usually results in savings to the taxpayer as well. And so, Mr. Chairman, I would thank you again for this chance to be here. And if there is an opportunity to ask one question of Mr. Korologos or any of the members of the panel there, it is, do you feel we are ready to win this next round, to have true open competition for these contracts? Mr. KOROLOGOS. Mr. Chairman, Ambassador Bremer testified be- fore the committee and said, yes, indeed, it will be transparency, it will be open competition, and the process, I think, has already begun toward that end, yes, sir. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00099 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 96 Mr. KOLBE. Thank you. I appreciate that answer. I certainly hope that will be the case. I will be over there in about 3 weeks, Tom, to visit with you, and we will have a chance to talk some more about this. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Kolbe, thank you very much. Mr. Van Hollen. Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Pomeroy is here. He had some business on the floor, so I would ask unanimous consent. Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, are you calling people as to when they came? Chairman TOM DAVIS. I am asking minority staff how they would like me to recognize them; I am working with them. So I am letting your leadership call the shots. Ms. NORTON. Well, if the gentleman has to go to the floor, I would be pleased to let him go now. I was the first member here. Chairman TOM DAVIS. I understand. The gentleman from North Dakota, Mr. Pomeroy. Thanks for being here. Mr. POMEROY. I thank both of my colleagues. There is a pension issue on the calendar on the floor now, the Ways and Means juris- diction, and I am asked to speak on it, so I do apologize for going out of order, and I will be brief. I went to Iraq in August with the House Intelligence Committee CODEL, led by Pete Hoekstra. I especially appreciated the work of Tommy K., as we call him, because I have trouble with that last name, Korologos, in the extraordinary time and commitment you made to making certain we saw everything that could be seen. Also very much appreciated the briefing we had from Commissioner Kerik right in the middle of a very busy time for you there. I think it is important for Members coming back to draw a very clean line of what we saw and what we, therefore, could learn from firsthand exposure, and what we didn’t see, and not assume by see- ing something that we have an expertise in other areas. In my case, what we saw was extraordinary performance by the military, absolutely extraordinary. Our troops made me so very proud about the resolute way they were carrying out their functions under ex- cruciatingly difficult conditions. It was 133 degrees there one of the days during our trip, and yet there they were, full field dress, Kevlar vests, helmets, getting the job done and not complaining a whit. The members of the CODEL had plenty to say about the con- ditions, but our military escorts performed absolutely as one might expect, the highest conditions of the military. That was reflective, I believe, of what we saw in true performance right across the board. We were also very impressed by military leadership. The division commanders impressed us a great deal. And, in fact, some of the ad-hoc successes that I believe we have seen in the country have been achieved by a great deal of initiative and just flat out creativ- ity of the military division commanders making the best of what was available to them without particular guidance from any central planned authority. So for the military component of it really the highest thoughts relative to being impressed. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00100 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 97 Due to security conditions, we didn’t visit with one Iraqi, not one member of the Provisional Council. That was a significant flaw to the trip. It left us with just half the picture. In visiting with Am- bassador Bremer, Ambassador Kennedy, it is still unclear to me the organization running the reconstruction efforts or the stabiliza- tion efforts, whatever you want to call them. Ambassador Bremer was boxed out by Ambassador Kennedy, but Ambassador Kennedy was a direct report not to Ambassador Bremer, but to the Secretary of Defense. It appeared that the Office of Secretary Defense had a very major imprint on the reconstruction efforts, but all of that was shaken up recently, and today’s Washington Post reports that Sec- retary Rumsfeld did not learn about the new commission being es- tablished in the White House under Condoleeza Rice, the Presi- dent’s Security Advisor, until he received a memo from Condoleeza Rice. This kind of unclarity, lack of certainty about the structure that I got on the ground in Iraq has only been amplified by what I have been reading in the paper upon my return. It just seems to be a very chaotic organizational structure, and, unfortunately, the resi- dent expertise, in terms of actual program implementation, resid- ing in the Secretary of State or the State Department, residing in USAID, do not appear to have prominent and well defined roles in this part of the action, and I think that has to happen. Finally, we really didn’t learn about a well-developed plan. Even going over there, I didn’t come back with the sense that we have a global plan we are operating on. And the money requested fills neatly into specified priorities on a time line appropriately sequenced. We learn of ad-hoc successes and now we have a signifi- cant budget request. It doesn’t all fit together in some kind of framework that really makes sense. Finally, I did come away with significant concern about the treat- ment of National Guard troops. They were called up, in North Da- kota’s instance, with 5 days notice. When we were there, General Sanchez said he was anticipating re-deployments in October, No- vember. Two weeks after our return we learned that the plan is that the National Guard will remain in-country until April. That is a deployment away from their families of 15 to 16 months. I be- lieve that is disastrous for their morale; it is very hurtful to their families; and I am not at all sure how we are going to keep Na- tional Guard recruitment up in light of this experience, this very experience our National Guard soldiers are having. That concludes my impressions. I have a written statement for the record. Again, my deepest gratitude to the efforts being made on the ground, it is really heroic. Thank you. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much. Anyone want to respond? Secretary Brownlee. Secretary BROWNLEE. Sir, if I could, when I was there just a week or so ago, I specifically went and met with some of the troops of the National Guard who, of course, have had their mobilizations extended. When we made the decision to keep everyone there, boots on the ground for 12 months, there were really three factors in- volved. One was that the combatant commanders were very inter- ested in continuity and stability of the force, and keeping the team together. The second factor was predictability for those troops, both VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00101 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 98 active and reserve components. And we also have to look at the re- sources we have remaining, both within the active and reserve, for future rotations. So it all became a matter of trying to balance this, and all of the troops that I talked to there, from units that were expecting that their deployments would be shorter, while they all clearly expressed, as most soldiers do, that what they would really like to do is go home, they also acknowledged that they understood their mission and they were perfectly prepared to conduct it. And we understand this creates hardship for the reserve components, and I assure you that we continue to look at this, and we will do everything we can in that regard. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you. Secretary BROWNLEE. Thank you, sir. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much. Mr. Sherwood. We are recognizing Members in the order they came. We are going to try to get to everybody. Mr. SHERWOOD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the hearing. I just came back from Iraq, and a lot of the things that have been said I certainly agree with. My initial impressions when you fly over were how much water there is, and we don’t understand that in this country. And another initial impression was how little dam- age our military did to their housing and their structures and their infrastructure. You drive down a street in Baghdad and it looks a lot like Palm Springs in places; they didn’t even blow up or cut down the royal palms. But there are some things that I think we have to pay attention to. Secretary Brownlee, I have to followup. The morale over there of the regular Army people is sky high, but the reservists don’t feel they are being treated properly. They are there, they are glad to be there, they are glad to do their job, but they want to tell you about a million little indignities that they feel they suffer under, like having to input their time manually every time to get their hazardous duty pay. We have a lot of things that we could do in that regard. What is your comment on that? Secretary BROWNLEE. Sir, I agree. One of the things that has im- pressed me the most about this, and I am sure you would agree, is how the forces have acted as a total Army, the reserve compo- nents and the active components. When you go out there, you can’t tell the difference; that is how good they both are. Mr. SHERWOOD. Except when you talk to them. Secretary BROWNLEE. And, of course, as I said, most soldiers in any war would prefer to go home, but, again, I was impressed by their commitment. I have said before that I think that what we have here is another greatest generation; the sacrifices they are making, both financial and otherwise, are extraordinary. And all of them acknowledge to me that while they may have difficulties and they, of course, would like to go home, they understand their com- mitment, their mission, and they are prepared to do that. And as I have said before, we are going to continue to look at each one of these and try to do the best we can, but we have to respond to the commander’s requirements also, and so we are trying to balance that with predictability for the families and the resources that we have. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00102 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 99 Mr. SHERWOOD. Sir, you entirely missed my point. Secretary BROWNLEE. I am sorry. Mr. SHERWOOD. Those folks are willing to do what they have to do. They don’t like to be there an extra 6 months, but they are going to do it. But they feel they suffer a great deal of indignity from the regular Army people who don’t pay attention, who don’t treat them right. They are so willing to do what they have to do, and I don’t want to belabor this point, but I think we have some administrative details to work over. The other thing that was impressive to me was what was going on in the north and how, when a commander has some resources and is able to take control of a sector, he can really get things done. In Baghdad, though, it was impressive to me. We were at the Al- Durah power plant and is there anybody here that can tell me what we are going to do with that monstrosity? We have this huge power plant which doesn’t even have a 50-caliber machine gun hole in it, as near as I can tell, but where there are four huge turbines. There is one that is working relatively well, one that is working about 35 percent and the other two are shut down. Now, we didn’t cause this, I understand that, but I think we have a relatively short window to keep the Iraqi people coming our way before we are seen as occupiers. What are we doing to get that power plant going? General STROCK. Yes, sir. We are in fact working in Al-Durah right now, sir. We have reactivated the U.N. contracts to rebuild the boilers there and we are rewinding the turbines and that power plant is going to be brought back in service. But you are absolutely right, it is antiquated technology and part of the supplemental is to actually create new generation there, state-of-the-art generation that is reliable and stable. But Al-Durah is very definitely one of the key projects we are working on right now, sir. Mr. SHERWOOD. But it was a little surprising to me that with all our resources we couldn’t get that thing cranked up a little better. I mean, that needs some management. That needs somebody to go in there and kick ass and take names. It is a mess. General STROCK. Sir, we have that. The U.S. Agency for Inter- national Development has created a project management team headed by a Mr. Dick Dumford, who is a power expert, and they are doing marvelous things. In the last month we have increased generation in the country by about 1,000 megawatts. Al-Durah is not yet online, but it will be very shortly. That power plant was down before the war. Mr. SHERWOOD. Yes, I understand. General STROCK. And we will get it back up. And, sir, as far as security goes, I know that is one of our prime security objectives and I know that is being well secured by the U.S. forces there. Mr. SHERWOOD. I don’t want anything I have said to be critical of our troops over there they were of the highest caliber; you just can’t understand the commitment. I am trying to talk about the support from the top. Those young men and women are the highest caliber people I have ever been around in my life. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much. Mr. Clay. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00103 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 100 Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank you for holding this hearing and thank the panel of witnesses for being here. I have not had the pleasure of visiting Iraq, but would like to know the extent of collateral damage to the Iraqi infrastructure by the U.S. military. I mean, was there much damage to hospitals, schools, bridges, and roads during the war, and are we building or repairing that infrastructure that was damaged? Mr. KOROLOGOS. Congressman, I can respond by saying smart bombs work. They knocked down the military targets, they knocked out the Ba’athist ministries, they knocked out the palaces where Saddam was thought to be. The infrastructure troubles occurred for two reasons. First, 30 years of mismanagement, coupled with sanc- tions. Saddam used to use them for political purposes; he would shut down electric plants, he would shut down mills and textile fa- cilities for political and ideological reasons. In addition, after our soldiers got close, the looting began in all of those areas. The popu- lation decided that they were going to take it out on the 30 years of repression, and they went in and not only looted, but sabotaged. What can you loot at a power plant? They took away anything that moved; they took windows out, they took bars off the windows, and were using those for their own way of retribution. So the infrastructure, and those Members that have been to Baghdad and to Iraq saw firsthand , was not damaged. It is amaz- ing how little damage was done. And most of the damage that we are reaping the whirlwind on now, and the power plants, as Gen- eral Strock said, and even in the ministries around, the prisons and what have you, was all done by looters. Mr. CLAY. So you are telling me that most of the damage was minimal due to the war. Mr. KOROLOGOS. Yes, sir. General STROCK. Could I just add one thing, sir? Our military now uses a process called effects-based targeting when we go in with these kind of operations, and that is to understand the effect you want to create. And sometimes we do have to attack civil infra- structure to deny power to military facilities, for example. The easy way to do it is to take out the power plant; it is big, it is a one- stop shop, and you can do it quickly. The tough way to do it is to take out the transmission lines, but they are much easier to repair post-hostilities. And that is what we targeted, transmission sys- tems and distribution systems, not the generation systems. The only exception I would say was the communications systems of the country. In Iraq, the civil communications and military com- munications are one in the same, and while we protected those and did not attack those early on, we learned late in the war that we really had to go after them to accelerate the collapse of the regime. So we did attack the communications structure, which we are now rebuilding. Mr. CLAY. Did you take out many bridges or roads? General STROCK. Only where it was military necessity, sir, and those were typically on-the-spot decisions by commanders in com- bat. Mr. CLAY. OK. I don’t know who can tackle this question, but re- cently Senator Kennedy, citing a Congressional Budget Office re- port, said that only about $2.5 billion of the $4 billion being spent VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00104 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 101 monthly on the war can be accounted for by the administration. He goes on in this AP story to say that, ‘‘My belief is that this money is being shuffled all around to these political leaders in all parts of the world, bribing them to send in troops.’’ And I don’t know if I want to use that strong of a term, but can any of you explain to this committee and account to this committee for where the other money is going? If $2.5 billion is going to the troops, where is the other $1.5 billion going? Can anybody, or is it a national security consideration? Mr. KOROLOGOS. I am not a budget officer, Congressman, except to say that we have inspectors general, we have GAO over there, and OMB even had a representative there. We account for every dime that is spent. Having said that to you, there were two funds that we were using. First, we had the vested and seized assets that Saddam had put in plastic bags and was trying to take out of the country as he fled. That was Iraqi money, and the vested assets that we have taken from other countries that he had in banks, and have used that to restore Iraqi infrastructure. And what happens with that money is, money that the coalition presents to the com- manders in the field to go around and repair schools, repair soccer fields, repair whatever damage has been done, clean up the envi- ronment and garbage-strewn areas. This is called a rollover fund, which is not appropriated. Mr. Kolbe was there and we showed him some of those projects, as other members of the committee saw. That money also is accounted for. It does not go through the regu- lar appropriation process because it is Iraqi money that we are using for Iraqis at the discretion of the commanders in the field and the new ministers that have been formed to say, ‘‘we need this, we need that;’’ and it is a rollover account. Chairman TOM DAVIS. OK. Mr. CLAY. I thank you for your answers. It seems like a pretty fast clock, Mr. Chairman. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Time flies sometimes. I just want to make one comment that may help the gentleman. As we drove through Baghdad and areas that were heavily bombed, how little damage there was. It was a normal city, up and operating. Once in a while you would see a pile of debris here or there, and those were gen- erally military installations or governmental installations that we had bombed with precision. Nobody wages conventional war as well as we do. Nobody has ever done it as well, that is very clear. The problem is, of course, the aftermath; when we are sitting there in an occupying status, it becomes a lot more difficult. But conven- tional war, all of the predictions we heard about mass casualties, didn’t come true; we did an outstanding job there. I recognize the gentleman from Kansas, Mr. Tiahrt. Mr. TIAHRT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also had the oppor- tunity to go with Mr. Sherwood, Mr. Shimkus and others to Iraq about a week and a half ago, and I was a little bit shocked to find out that the country wasn’t in chaos like they were reporting on the news, that the criminals were not controlling the streets and the lights and water were actually on. So I was a little bit sur- prised. One thing that I did notice is that we have troops over there who are doing an excellent job, and our generals and those in charge VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00105 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 102 over there have excellent plans in place, but there seems to be a lack of interagency support. Now, I am told that there is good co- operation over in Iraq, but we have people in our military training border guards. I think the INS probably has more experience doing that job. We have people in our military who are training police of- ficers. We probably have FBI agents that have more experience in those areas. We have military people teaching them how to become highway patrolmen, as far as Iraqis are concerned, and I thought we may have some reservists that have highway patrol experience. But, in general, we have the military taking on a whole lot of tasks besides trying to bring peace and security to the country, and it just seems to make sense to me that we should have more inter- agency cooperation, that we should have personnel from other agencies that have experience along those lines do the training with the Iraqis, rather than put that burden on an overloaded work force right now in the military trying to bring peace to the place. So if you could sort of let me know what you think, whether there is cooperation, if it is increasing. Do we have plans to increase it, or are we just going to tolerate the status quo? Mr. KERIK. No, sir. We have made a number of requests to the FBI, to the Department of Homeland Security, and they are dis- patching people from the United States to assist us in training the Iraqis. On the border and customs side, we will be getting agents, and we have had agents. In fact, when we put together the team that stood up and put together the Baghdad airport, we had U.S. Customs agents come in to train the Iraqis on the Pisces System and other systems that we would need to have in place for us to open up the airports at Baghdad and Basra and in the north. Those programs are continuing. We have had the military assist us in the area of in-service training, in transitional training. We brought back, as you may know by now, nearly 40,000 police officers. There were several more pre-war; many of them, most of them probably that did not come back didn’t come back because they were violators of human rights; they figured they would be ar- rested. Some came back and they were terminated, fired or retired. Several were members of the Ba’ath party, the senior levels of the Ba’ath parties, and they were removed. We have created a 3-week transitional program, and that is what the military police are assisting in the training of, and that is to make sure that the people that we have brought back and rein- stated are learning principles of policing in a democratic society. You know, simplistic things like police patrol and understanding that an interview and an interrogation doesn’t mean that you hang somebody upside down by your feet and beat him until he is uncon- scious. Those things have to be taught to the people that are on the ground right now and that is what we are doing with the help of the military. But as the program continues, and as the President mentioned last Friday, we are now going to be working with the Jordanian au- thorities to train the Iraqis that we are recruiting to stand up the rest of the police. We need a number of between 65,000 and 75,000 civil police and probably another 15,000 border and customs offi- cials to secure the civil end of the country. Those people that have to be trained, recruited and vetted will be trained in Jordan with VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00106 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 103 the assistance of the Jordanian police and military; and that pro- gram is continuing. And just one last point. There is an 8-week training program for the police that will be trained in Jordan, but they will come back into the country of Iraq and for 6 months they will have field train- ing officers assigned to them. Those will probably be people out of the United States and some of the other 37 countries that are working in Iraq. We now have Italians, Poles, Spanish, more than 30 countries that we are working with as a part of that program to train them when they come back into the country. Mr. TIAHRT. One of the things that we did while we were in Iraq was tour the Al-Durah power plant, which was mentioned by Mr. Sherwood. It is like a 1950’s, 1960’s old power plant put in place by the Germans, and they are trying to get it back up and running; I suppose it is a holdover, because there must be much more effi- cient power generating facilities. I know we have peak power plants in America, we have municipal power plants that are cheap- er, less capital, much more efficient, and we ought to be looking at that rather than rebuilding this 1950’s technology; that makes about as much sense as flying these old tankers when we could be flying KC–767 tankers, at least for the Air Force. So we ought to be thinking about what is the best technology available, and not being stuck in the past. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much. Mrs. Norton. Thanks for being patient. Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think we all agree, when we say, ‘‘turn the country back to the Iraqis,’’ we mean first democracy and then turn over their own economy to them, and my questions go far less to contracts for American companies than contracts for Iraqi companies, particu- larly since there are numerous press reports that, now that Iraqi businesspeople are talking to the press about how they feel shut out of our contracting process, they complain that they could do the work for many times less than the work is being done. Now, I don’t know if this involves the ability of our companies or our own Army Corps of Engineers to translate price bids as be- tween our companies and their companies. Obviously, they will un- derbid us all the time, given the difference in the economies. But how do you deal with these complaints? How do you respond to these complaints? They know their country, they can do the work for a whole lot less than we are doing it and they are not getting the contracts. Mr. KERIK. Good morning. I want to talk about the Ministry of Interior, for example, for one moment. And I have read some of the things in the newspapers and I have heard some of the criticism. In the Ministry of Interior in the city of Baghdad, we stood up 35 police stations in 4 months. Faster than anything you could have done in the United States, and we did so with Iraqi contractors. Ms. NORTON. I would like a response to this question. In other words, are you saying that this is all anecdotal? I want to know about the ability to translate the price information so that the Iraqis understand why, for example, we are paying more than they have bid, because, you know, in this country, if you bid and you VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00107 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 104 had the lower bid and you don’t get the work, then you think some- thing is crooked. So I am trying to find out whether or not we have the capacity to make them understand our bidding process and to translate their bids to meet our system. Or what is the reason for these reports that are cropping up everywhere with complaints from Iraqi businessmen? I don’t doubt that you are able to build. I don’t doubt that you are using Iraqi businesspeople. I am asking a more technical question, about how the bidding process works, when you are dealing in a foreign country with people with a bid- ding process that is very different from the one we use here. General STROCK. Well, ma’am, I can’t comment. I am not aware of any case where bids have been received and it did not go to the low bidder, unless it was a best value sort of contract. So I don’t know any specifics on that. I do know we are making great efforts, though, to employ as many Iraqi companies as we can. One of our problems early on was the fact that most of the infra- structure-related companies in Iraq are state-owned enterprises, and as parts and extensions of the government, they suffered the same amount of destruction and devastation as the rest of the economy; and so to even get them to mobilize and be prepared to come to work was very, very difficult, and that is getting better and better all the time. Ms. NORTON. Actually, I very much appreciate what you are doing in trying to deal in a foreign country, trying to get the work done quickly. Let me suggest this. Among the complaints I have read, again, these are Iraqis talking to the press, that, for example, the bidding period is so short, a couple of days, that they can’t pos- sibly deal with that kind of turnaround. There have been com- plaints that the information on the solicitations are inaccurate and misleading. Somebody doing these solicitations doesn’t even under- stand the country and understand what needs to be done. There are complaints that because the bidding process opens and closes so quickly, probably because you are trying to get the work done quickly, it looks like a prefix setup, and that you have already cho- sen. Now, let me just say something to you. I am on another sub- committee that has jurisdiction over the GSA. In this country, the GSA has to do weekly meetings in order to tell people how to get on the GSA Schedule and how to bid, and what I want to know is, whether you are doing the job that it will take to bring Iraqis into the process or if you are just throwing out a bid and saying, ‘‘we need a response in 2 days.’’ How do you expect people to be able to bid, especially when you look at figures like Bechtel, which has $900 million in contracts and only $50 million in subs to Iraqis. Part of the reason may be that we haven’t done our job in inform- ing, teaching, training Iraqis how to use our bid process, so you just simply go along with whoever looks like he can do it and gets the work done. So I want to know what you are doing to bring them into the process so they know how to become a part of the process you are using. General STROCK. Ma’am, Bechtel Corp. did hold a session for all Iraqi contractors about 2 months ago to explain the opportunities and processes to compete. There are some challenges, many of which are associated with just the lack of communication in the VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00108 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 105 country, the inability to even know when there are opportunities presented. So that is definitely a problem we are working on. I know that when the supplemental comes through, there is a plan afoot that will have, as part of the performance specification, the contractor’s plan to employ Iraqis and how they are going to go back doing that, educating them on the process and then actively soliciting their support. So we are very aware that this is a prob- lem and we are working on it. Ms. NORTON. I know my time is up, Mr. Chairman. I wish you would make the committee aware of how you inform, in writing, of how you inform contractors that they are to, in turn, inform Iraqis of how to use this process so that we have a greater understanding of what you are doing to bring Iraqis into your own bidding and contract process. Chairman TOM DAVIS. That would be helpful to get that informa- tion to us, and we will circulate it to the Members. Secretary BROWNLEE. Could I respond for just a moment? Chairman TOM DAVIS. Sure. Secretary BROWNLEE. The Army is the executive agent to assist. Ms. NORTON. I can’t hear you. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Go ahead. Secretary BROWNLEE. The Army is the executive agent to assist Ambassador Bremer’s organization with contracting. Could I please provide for the record how we are doing that and what we intend to do to try to make sure the process is perceived as fair and trans- parent by both United States and Iraqi companies? Ms. NORTON. That would be very useful, I believe. Thank you very much. Chairman TOM DAVIS. That would be helpful. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. The gentleman from Connecticut. Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I would like to take the opportunity, first, to thank you for holding these hearings, thank all of our patriots who are our panel and thank them very much, and to recognize Dr. Julian Lewis, who is a mem- ber of Parliament, if he would stand, from Great Britain. We ap- preciate your great country’s help in this effort. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you. Welcome to the committee room. I hope he enjoys his stay over here in the colonies. Mr. SHAYS. In my first visit to Iraq, I met a gentleman in Unm Qasr, whose name was Mohammad Abdul Hassan. He said, ‘‘you don’t know us and we don’t know you.’’ And that spoke volumes to us in this rebuilding effort. Winning the war on a scale of 1 to 10 is an 11; winning the peace, I don’t know where it is, but it is not an 11 or a 10, maybe not even a 9, and we need it to be up much higher. I would love to ask you, not because I agree with all of his criti- cisms, but because I think you should respond to them, in the next panel we have Dr. Alaa Haidari, and he basically expresses grati- tude for the United States coming into Iraq—he is an Iraqi-Amer- ican—and he then proceeds to be somewhat critical. I am going to state his criticisms up front and then have you just respond to them. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00109 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 106 One of them is, he said the current council makeup—the govern- ing counci—simply does not reflect Iraqi reality. He said, sadly, most of the members of the current council have neither the sup- port nor the approval of the people in their respective groups; nor does the current council provide any representation for many Iraqi provinces, and so on. In disbanding the army, he said Iraqi police forces must take over as soon as possible. I think you have spoken somewhat to that. He said the U.S. administration must accept the fact that dis- banding the Iraqi army and police force was a huge mistake. His other point is on ministry employees. He said qualified Iraqis are more knowledgeable than anyone else in the affairs of their country, and can quickly determine the steps needed to rebuild the economy. And he said, except for the top echelons of Ba’athist lead- ership, it is essential that employees of the Iraqi ministry be re- hired. So those were his basic points and I will just end by saying, when I met with Colonel Buhani, who was the individual who al- lowed us to go into Iraq from Kuwait, he said ‘‘you Americans don’t get it. You need to be hiring more Iraqi-Americans, you need people who speak the language and you need people who know the cul- ture, and you need people who know the tribes.’’ So I would love you to respond to that. And just a quick first question to you, Mr. Korologos. Why should you basically be answerable to Defense? Why shouldn’t you be an- swerable to State? I have never quite figured that one out. Mr. KOROLOGOS. Well, the short answer is, because Congress passed a law creating the supplemental the first time in March, placing the Coalition Provisional Authority under the President, re- porting through the Secretary of Defense. You saw, when you were there, Mr. Shays, the co-mingling of the coalition forces and the co- alition Joint Task Force 7, which is General Sanchez. We are in the same building, we use the same lunch rooms, we use the same fa- cilities. They are an integral part of each other’s operation. The sol- diers and the commanders out in the field are rebuilding, through their civil affairs operation, a great deal of the country. The Coali- tion Provisional Authority, through creating the general council and the ministers who are now operating, is creating a governance side. All of us are working on the security piece, which is a huge undertaking; and the co-mingling and the putting them together works a lot better for reporting purposes. There is a big State De- partment presence, as you saw. Mr. SHAYS. I am sorry, I think you answered the question. Could you get on to the other points that were made by our panelist, the second panelists, the quotes that I did? Could some people respond to those? The issue of the ministries, the issue of the representa- tion of the council not being true, can people address that, please? Mr. DIBBLE. I can address that, or at least I hope in part. Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. Mr. DIBBLE. With respect to the council not reflecting reality, in fact, that is true. The council, we have to remember, is an interim body; it was selected, not elected and does not perfectly reflect Iraq’s population. It was necessary to get a body in place as soon as possible. A lot of work went into that; I don’t want to minimize VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00110 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 107 that. The council does, broadly speaking, reflect Iraq’s general makeup. It is not perfect, and I think the coalition, and Ambas- sador Bremer in particular, are making an enormous effort from now to reach out to those parts of the population who believe they may not be perfectly represented on the council, because at the end of the day what will represent the Iraqis is an elected government, not something that has been appointed in any case. Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, that is helpful. How about the issue of the ministries? Mr. DIBBLE. We take the point that the people who know how to run Iraq are probably Iraqis; they know where the keys are, they know where the supplies are, they know the people, and they know the language; this is their country, after all. I think CPA is making an enormous effort to get the ministries up and running and to bring back those employees who are necessary to make the min- istries run; I think that is a priority. It is not a high profile prior- ity, but it is definitely happening. Mr. SHAYS. I know my time is up, but maybe in the course of this panel they can address some of those questions that were raised by the next panel. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much. The gentleman from Maryland. Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank all of you for being here today. As you all know, we have a request of about $20 billion, asking the American taxpayer to help with construction, reconstruction in Iraq. That is on top, of course, of billions that have been spent and billions that probably will be spent in the future. Given that, I think we would all agree that we would like to share the financial burden, as much as pos- sible, with our allies and others in the international community. We have been working, trying to get a resolution out of the United Nations. The news today looks bad. I mean, the reports are that it doesn’t look likely that we are going to get a resolution. My ques- tion is this: If we do not get a resolution out of the U.N. Security Council, what is your prediction as to what kind of support we are going to get at the upcoming donors’ conference in Madrid? And I would like you to be as specific as possible in terms of what exactly you anticipate in terms of dollars we’ll receive from other potential donors. Mr. DIBBLE. It is very difficult for me to give you specific num- bers because the campaign is now underway to persuade donors to come to Madrid to pledge significant amounts of money, both for the coming year and for out-years. The needs are enormous. The U.N. and the World Bank have either just released or are about to release their needs assessment. Other donors will be looking at that and will be looking at specific areas where they can slide in their contributions. I don’t think we can abandon that effort, obvi- ously, no matter what happens to the Security Council resolution. We need the international community up front, we need them with their checkbooks out, whether we come to some agreement in the Security Council or not. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00111 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 108 Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Would you agree that failure to get a resolu- tion in the Security Council will make it more difficult for us to get support? Mr. DIBBLE. Yes. Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Let me ask you this. I mean, we have had some talk about the current Iraqi Governing Council and whether it reflects the country. I assume, regardless of exactly how rep- resented they are, it is our goal to enhance their credibility rather than to undermine their credibility. Would that be a fair assump- tion? Mr. DIBBLE. Yes, sir. Mr. VAN HOLLEN. OK. In light of that, given the fact that all re- ports indicate that the Iraqi Governing Council does not support the addition of Turkish troops, 10,000 Turkish troops, into the country, will we honor their request if they were to make that re- quest official? Mr. DIBBLE. I don’t want to speculate on what may be happening now between the Governing Council and the CPA on discussions. What I do understand, however, is that the expression of opposition to the presence of Turkish or other foreign troops in Iraq was the opinion of a single member of the Council attributing that opinion to everybody else too, but it was not an official act of the Council. Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Understanding that, if the Council were to take an official position in opposition to the 10,000 Turkish troops, would we honor that request, given the fact that although they are an imperfect reflection of Iraqis, as you just said, they are, broadly speaking, reflective of the Iraqis? Mr. DIBBLE. The best answer I can give you is that we would cer- tainly weigh their opinion very heavily against the obvious military necessity for the additional troops. Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Well, it seems to me if we are trying to dimin- ish the view that we are an occupying force that does not represent the will of the Iraqi people, we should honor the request of what- ever group exists now that has at least some reflection. Let me ask you this: Did the United States make any commit- ments to Turkey with respect to actions we would take against the PKK in the event that they were to provide their forces? And if so, what specific commitments have we made to the Government of Turkey with respect to the PKK? Mr. DIBBLE. I would prefer not to go into specific commitments in open session. The PKK has been an issue for us as a terrorist organization for some time, irrespective of any specific commit- ments the Government of Turkey may have made to help on Iraq. Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Well, let me ask you this. As part of our agree- ment with Turkey, do we expect that U.S. forces will be involved in any military actions against the PKK? Was that part of our un- derstanding with the Turkish Government? Mr. DIBBLE. Sir, I would prefer not to discuss that in open ses- sion. Mr. VAN HOLLEN. OK. Well, I am going to pursue an answer with you, then, in closed session, if that is classified. Mr. DIBBLE. By all means. Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Let me just ask one last question, if I could, Mr. Chairman. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00112 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 109 The $9 billion loaned to Turkey that has been held up pending this question on forces, do you expect that to go forward? And is my assumption correct that is not part of the $87 billion; that is in addition to? Mr. DIBBLE. I don’t know the answer, but I will get it for you. Mr. VAN HOLLEN. OK. If I have a little more time, I would like to ask you, with respect to Iran, what role you see Iran’s Government currently playing in Iraq? Are they being constructive? Are they undermining our ef- forts? What is your assessment of that as of today? Mr. DIBBLE. The role is difficult to assess with any precision be- cause it is ambiguous. The Iranian Government has come out with a statement of objectives that are broadly consistent with ours— stability in Iraq, they have supported establishment of the govern- ing council—all of which is positive. However, we also note that there are present in Iraq elements of the Iranian Government whose purpose is not obvious to us and who may be positioning themselves to undertake activities that are not consistent either with our objectives or the stated objectives of the Iranian Govern- ment. So it is hard to assess with any real precision at this point but we are watching very carefully. Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would just like to say I would like to followup later on some of these questions that were raised. [The information referred to follows:] VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00113 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 110 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00114 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 111 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00115 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 112 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00116 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 113 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00117 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 114 Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much. Mr. Shimkus. Mr. SHIMKUS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for al- lowing us to join with you in this hearing today. I want to mention a couple of things and I will try to go quickly. Rick Jenkins, Dave Brown, John Agoglia, Ben Hodges, Mike Lenington are all classmates of mine from West Point, also colonels serving in theater. I got a chance to visit with them all and am very proud of their service. I think they are very reflective of what the Army and everybody is doing over there. I just want them to see that I remembered their names and mentioned them. I have also been impressed and I would encourage Members to get over to Iraq. We have had a lot of Members go. I have been really pleased with the response from a bipartisan group of Mem- bers who have been on the ground, have seen the needs, seen the progress, and are in essence vocally supporting what the emer- gency supplemental is trying to do, especially the $20 billion. The field commanders say this is what we now need to move forward. I think everything I have read—and hearing others comments will confirm that. I would encourage Members, there are going to be a lot of opportunities to go. The third thing is, I had dinner with four soldiers from the 101st and I said, ‘‘what one thing do you want me to bring back.’’ One, a female Sergeant E–5 from Chicago said, ‘‘family has to be with us 100 percent.’’ The second one said, a Sergeant E–5 was con- cerned about the care that was being given to an Iraqi friend. He had made a friend, a truck driver, and this Iraqi was injured and he is just not receiving the care a soldier would. What a great statement; here this soldier is in harm’s way, he drives in the com- munity and he is concerned about an Iraqi citizen, a great com- ment. Another said, ‘‘we are willing to pay the price.’’ They know they are in a tough environment. The last one said, ‘‘America needs to be patient.’’ You can’t turn over things overnight. I want to make sure I put that out on the record. The first question kind of goes with my colleague, Congressman Shays’, line of questioning. What would be the political result if we would move sooner rather than later on turning power over to the Iraqi people without a developed constitution and without elec- tions? What party is in the best position to recover and gain con- trol? Mr. Dibble or Mr. Korologos. Mr. KOROLOGOS. It is hard to say. First of all, the religious free- dom that has grown as a result of the war and the new status of the country has created a whole group of religious groups: the Shi- ites, the Kurds and what have you. So I suppose the short answer is that it would probably end up being a religious decision. Mr. SHIMKUS. I was told in theater that even the Ba’athists still have money squirreled away, they are still organized and you real- ly risk a return of the Ba’athist regime. I think that really makes sense. I also want to turn to one of the other people who will make com- ments on the second panel, Beate Sirota Gordon, who has this line in her testimony, ‘‘When General Whitney, General MacArthur’s fa- vorite advisor, called in about 20 members of the staff and said, you are now a constitutional assembly and, by order of General VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00118 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 115 MacArthur, you will draft the new constitution of Japan in 7 days.’’ This kind of goes to the point of where are we in Iraq. We have to move and get a constitution drafted and then we have to move to free and fair elections; that will take time. The question is, we don’t want to push the Iraqis too fast and push our own constitutional positions on them, although that is what happened in Japan. We want them to have ownership but we don’t want to wait too long. How do we balance that, because the key to success here will be a constitution followed by free and fair elections and then letting the Iraqi people make their decisions? Mr. KOROLOGOS. Ambassador Bremer has testified and said that the Iraqi constitution will be written by Iraqis. The Governing Council has appointed the Constitutional Preparatory Committee that is going around getting advice and counsel from these advisory committees throughout the country on what they may want in the constitution. That process is now underway. We don’t want to put a timetable on it. Will it happen in 3 months? I doubt it. Will it happen in 3 years? No. Somewhere in the middle of that. Secretary Powell said, and all of us hope, that it happens sooner rather than later. The sooner the Iraqi constitution occurs, the sooner you have an election which means when we turn over the reins of the gov- ernment to the Iraqis. That process is underway and I say again, it would be written by and for Iraqis. Mr. SHIMKUS. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for your diligence in allow- ing me to join you here today. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much. Mr. Davis. Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and let me thank you for calling this hearing. I also want to thank the witnesses for coming to testify and share with us this morning. Let me also express my appreciation to our soldiers and all of those who are on the ground in Iraq given the highest order of their service as well as the indefinite situation of what may very well take place and happen to them while they are there. So I ap- preciate all of the efforts being made to try and reconstitute and rebuild this country. I want to get back to the line of questioning that has been start- ed by Delegate Norton relative to contracting which seems to be very complex, very difficult, hard to understand, and hard to get at. I can certainly understand the fact that we need to be on a fast track—that is, things need to move with some rapidity—and also the complexity of what is needed in many instances to rebuild what has been torn down or what did not exist in the first place. Iraqis have expressed concern about not really understanding how they can get cut in or if there is an opportunity to do so. I am concerned as to whether or not, as we deal with this complexity, there is any room for small businesses? We have developed a concept in this country that small businesses, women-owned businesses, minority- owned businesses, ought to have an opportunity to participate in economic development activity. Although that is not the main rea- son for the redevelopment, there ought to be those opportunities. My question is, what kind of opportunities exist for small busi- VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00119 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 116 nesses, for minority and for women-owned businesses to participate in the rebuilding of Iraq? Mr. KOROLOGOS. Congressman, there is in the plan that we have submitted to Congress a request for a good deal of money for some- thing called essential services and infrastructure. The objective is to restore to acceptable standards and try to create a civil society to provide the foundation from which Iraqis can rebuild Iraq. In that piece, I guess a month now, the Central Bank has opened, has already started making small business loans. They are starting, I think on October 15th, to distribute the new currency. This was an economy flat on its back. They had 50–60 percent unemployment before the war. We have made every effort to start- up small businesses. It is our feeling that small businesses are going to be the basis for the restoration of this country. From the small businesses, you are going to get political input and political extensions so they can start governing themselves. There is a big effort; small business is a big piece of what we are doing. Today in Iraq, you can walk or drive down the streets and see, as those Members who have been there have seen, huge marketplaces that are selling, as I said in my statement, satellite dishes, shoes, refrig- erators, air conditioners, commodities that had not been available to the Iraqi people, all of it run by small businesses. Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Let us talk about American companies that might want to try to get a piece of the action that Bechtel and Halliburton are getting. We have these big umbrella contracts and they are indefinite in terms of delivery or indefinite relative to quantity of what they are to provide and to deliver. Are there any ways to ensure that American small businesses can interact with the Halliburtons and the Bechtels of the world and get a piece of these large umbrella contracts? Mr. KOROLOGOS. The answer to that is that Bechtel and the big umbrella companies have held seminars both in the United States and in Europe. At one I recall there were 2,500 subcontractors who showed up to get in on the process of how to do this. Understand something else here: all the contractors that have come through Iraq and by hopeful guidance from the Coalition Provisional Au- thority have been asked to make sure that Iraqis are put to work on these projects. There was one contractor, I understand, who wanted to bring in some Pakistanis to do some labor tasks. That contractor was turned down and said, no, you must go out and hire Iraqis, even to the extent that we are paying Iraqis to go dig irriga- tion ditches, to go clean up streets, restoring pension plans and what have you. So the whole effort is aimed at getting people to work. I understand and you understand that when you build a bridge or restore something, that project is over and we have to find something else for them to do after that, but small business has an input. I will let General Strock comment on the bidding process that has been made through these contract service semi- nars held throughout the United States and Europe in order to spread the subcontracts around. General STROCK. I can’t add much more to that, sir, except to say it is just standard practice in the Federal acquisition regulations that we include a component of small business opportunity. Again, we can provide the specifics of that for the record of how we are VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00120 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 117 doing that, but I know it is certainly encouraged. As Mr. Korologos has said, that is a fundamental aspect of the economic stimulus package that is being discussed in CPA, how to encourage small business entrepreneurs. Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your answers and we know that standard practices do not really work for small businesses and minority-owned busi- nesses, so I appreciate your answer. Secretary BROWNLEE. May I add one thing, sir. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Sure. Secretary BROWNLEE. There are also efforts within the Army’s di- visions to demonstrate innovativeness and ingenuity and a desire to help. There are efforts within these divisions to go out and assist in standing up small businesses so they are capable of bidding for some of these contracts. That is being done by the Army within their respective areas of operation. Mr. SHAYS [presiding]. The Chair would recognize Mr. Murphy. Mr. MURPHY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank all of you for your important testimony. You have helped remind us that there is another point of view, a reality of what is going on in Iraq, and helped us understand that eco- nomic and social instability breeds vulnerability. Of course, that is the root of terrorism and how the Taliban and Al-Qaeda were able to lay such a strong foundation in Afghanistan after the Soviet Union played cut and run; or how an effort more focused on pun- ishment than rebuilding after World War I led us into World War II and gave birth to the likes of Hitler and Mussolini and others that ended up killing millions. So we have a lot of work to do. I want to focus primarily on some of the health issues, if I may. We have heard that prior to the war, many medical supplies and humanitarian assistance that was sent to Iraq was diverted by Saddam Hussein for personal use or some other uses. We had some testimony that the number of clinics is growing and improving as well as vaccinations. I wonder if you could give me a little more detail on pre-and post-war conditions of hospitals and clinics in Iraq in terms of were they filling needs before and what is happen- ing now? I am not sure who would answer that. Perhaps Mr. Korologos. Mr. KOROLOGOS. When the war ended, we fully expected several things to happen. We expected a food crisis, refugees, health crisis, the oil fields to be burning, flooding, and none of those happened. The health crisis was a creation of Saddam not funding any health projects. Before the war, as I said, he budgeted $13 million for health care in 2002 which came to about 50 cents per person. We have struggled and have sent in more than 9 million tons of health equipment, oxygen, beds, and what have you. When Ambassador Bremer and I first got there, we visited hospitals that were hor- rible. It was open windows, flies, the sanitary conditions were as grim as you can imagine. We still take congressional delegations to those same hospitals and they come back aghast at how bad they are. I hate to say you should have seen it before we fixed it. They are still way below any standard that we have all come to know. We are doing our best to rebuild the hospital structure. They had an excellent medical operation that existed in Iraq. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00121 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 118 One other interesting thing, is Saddam forbade anybody from at- tending international conferences so the entire science community, including doctors, was forbidden from leaving the country to attend any seminars to find upgrades in medical treatment. One of the first things Ambassador Bremer did was open the doors to let this very brilliant medical operation running this thing under those cir- cumstances to go find out what is new. Health care is a big priority and has been. We have opened all the hospitals, we have opened clinics. The budget we have re- quested shows a huge increase in requests for health facilities. We have asked for clinics, hospitals and what have you all over the country and I hope we can get them. Mr. MURPHY. Is there an adequate number of positions for nurses and medical staff in Iraq or is there also a need for people? Mr. KOROLOGOS. I didn’t hear you. Mr. MURPHY. I was wondering if there are adequate numbers of medical staff and physicians in Iraq? Is there also a need for peo- ple? Mr. KOROLOGOS. I don’t know how to answer that. Probably not, given the conditions I have seen in the hospitals. They could al- ways use more. There are a lot of NGO’s that have come in to pro- vide assistance. I can’t give you a precise answer but just in observ- ing when you are at these hospitals, the crowds that are outside, the lack of wheelchairs, the deterioration of the hospitals, is a hor- rible thing to observe. One of the first things we have to do is start building the facilities in which these doctors can start functioning. Mr. MURPHY. Mr. Chairman, I would like to request that if we could get more information on such things, I would appreciate it. I know there have been programs for more inoculations and vac- cines provided, information on some of the disease risks that con- tinue there and other medical needs. I certainly think we need to know for future budget reasons but I also have to think the Amer- ican people would like to know because that is something with which we can all identify and our hearts go out to folks who have been subjected for so many decades to a medical disaster. Thank you very much. Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Tierney. Mr. TIERNEY. I thank the chairman and thank all of you gentle- men for your testimony and for the work you are doing. I think the recent edition of Time pretty much says a lot about what the American people are thinking. The mission is not accom- plished and how Bush misjudged the risk of fixing Iraq. I don’t think anybody raises issue with the performance of our troops or the military aspects of winning the battle. The fact is, there was total misjudgment apparently of what it was going to take to go in and put this thing on solid footing. On May 1, 2003, clearly the mission was not accomplished. We have had 170 deaths of U.S. sol- diers since that date and we have many, many wounded. To my knowledge, I am not aware that the President has visited any of these returning wounded soldiers to this country. We have had two potential Iraqi leaders assassinated. Sergio deMello of the United Nations has been killed. The oil flow which this administration told the American people would be used to fund reconstruction is some VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00122 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 119 days doing less than one-half of what it was producing pre-war and all the administration says is that there are challenges greater than we anticipated. That probably should not be the case and I don’t, Mr. Korologos, do you want to tell us, was there too much reliance by this administration on Mr. Chalabi or people like him? How was it that with the intelligence they claimed to have had and all the information they claimed they knew about this country pre- entry, that we now hear stories of things that weren’t anticipated? Mr. KOROLOGOS. First of all, Congressman, the President has visited the troops, the wounded troops here in the hospitals, so I want to set the record straight on that. There are problems. The war, quite frankly, and I say this with careful thought, ended too soon. What I mean by that is, as we got closer to Baghdad, the Ba’athists and the fedayeen disappeared and melted into the population. They took their AK–47s with them and still harbor hope of trying to come back. Our soldiers are out there on dangerous missions trying to root them out. I also must say very quickly that it is in what we call the Sunni Triangle, which is an area between Tikrit and Baghdad and over to Ramadi, where most of these problems occurred. That is about 1 or 2 percent of the country. It is about 1 or 2 or 3 percent of the population that has hope they might return to their old glory days. The poll the New York Times and the Zogby people had 10 days ago, 2 weeks ago, showed that there is support for what we are doing. Those of you who have been there have seen the population and the children on the streets waving at our soldiers and waving at us as we go by. Yes, there are problems. Security issues have arisen. First of all, those people who are Ba’athists and fedayeen who disappeared into the population. Second, the 100,000 prisoners that Saddam released 10 days or 2 weeks before we got into Bagh- dad are all murderers and thugs; we are trying our darnedest to get them back. There are no records, no computers, no files on who these people are. Yes, there were some political prisoners, but most were criminals and if you can imagine a criminal being put in jail in Iraq, he must really have been bad. So those guys are out there doing damage to us. The third element, as the military will tell you, is the outsiders who seem to be wanting to come in from Iran and Syria and disrupt and throw oil on troubled waters. So the se- curity issue is one that has taken a lot of emphasis and a lot of support from General Sanchez and our soldiers over there and it is a problem with the Coalition and it is a problem with the U.N. Mr. TIERNEY. I don’t think anyone disputes that we have prob- lems. I think the issue is the failure to plan ahead of time to do this. I think now, in the face of this $87 billion request that con- fronts the American people, apparently we didn’t have a plan going in. What is the plan now, what happened to the almost $400 billion that we have budgeted in our regular Department of Defense budg- et, and the first $69 billion supplemental appropriation? Why do we still hear stories of people being over there without kevlar vest protection, some of our equipment still needing repair not from nor- mal wear and tear that should have not been anticipated but from things that should have been anticipated in an effort when you go in on this basis? I think that is what people are having a hard time getting their arms around. Why should we be looking at passing an VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00123 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 120 entire $87 billion at this point in time when there is some evidence that we have existing funding to take us into next year that clearly we want to know more about what is happening with international- izing this effort. Perhaps, Mr. Dibble, you can tell us. Today’s newspapers don’t seem very encouraging, but what is happening on the diplomatic front? Do we have anybody else that is going to be coming in to help us out here? What is going on with the inter- national conference in Madrid that is planned for October? Are any other countries stepping forward to give us something more than the $1 billion small amount we hear about? Mr. SHAYS. Candice Miller. Mr. TIERNEY. My apologies. I would have thought the Chairman would let you answer. Mr. SHAYS. Do you care to answer? I thought it was a statement. I am sorry. Mr. DIBBLE. I can speak in general terms. The conference in Ma- drid is scheduled for October 23–24. There has been a meeting of the core group which is the lead donors for this effort earlier this week. There is a systematic campaign underway, diplomatic as well as personal, to ensure that we get as much as we can as soon as we can, if possible before Madrid to ensure the burden is ade- quately spread across boundaries. Mr. SHAYS. Ms. Miller. Ms. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the oppor- tunity to ask a question. I certainly appreciate the panel for coming today. I have listened to your testimony. It is fascinating to hear what is happening in Iraq. I think we are at such a pivotal moment in world history, quite frankly. We have the ability, I think, to either get the job done or not, to really have a positive impact on what is happening in the Middle East positively or not, and I think the question for us is whether or not we actually have the political will to finish the job, to reconstruct as necessary and to do what needs to be done there. I also believe that Al-Qaeda certainly has underestimated the re- solve of the United States. It certainly underestimated the resolve of George W. Bush. I think they thought that after September 11, a couple of cruise missiles, we would go back to our football games or something. They never thought about Afghanistan, they cer- tainly never considered the possibility of what has happened in Iraq. As I listened to some of you gentlemen talk about the Ira- nians being a little nervous, I am glad to hear those kinds of things. I think we are having the desired impact on some of these rogue regimes. I think it is also important, and it was very interesting to hear all of you, to continue to point out that the kinds of problems that are occurring in Iraq, that we are encountering in Iraq, are not be- cause of collateral damage, because of the theater there. If you have inadequate underground, inadequate transmission lines, prob- lems with the water supply, that would have been there whether we went in or not. It is because of the Saddam Hussein regime and what happened there. My question is probably to Mr. Kerik. I listened to you talk about how you were vetting the various individuals that you are putting into the Iraqi police force there. I think that is making certain the VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00124 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 121 ability to police themselves, such a critical component for any soci- ety. But it is also my understanding that there were several, per- haps two, Republican Guard units that were not engaged during the war. As you mentioned, some of these have sort of faded into the country and a free Iraq to them is a dangerous thing. They are apparently the ones, certainly some of them, who are causing a lot of the terrorist problems in their own country, among their own people. Can we be certain, do you feel comfortable, that these indi- viduals who have to be quite intelligent individuals are not infil- trating the police force and that they don’t appear at a later date and manifest themselves with further problems? Mr. KERIK. The vetting process we have gone through in Iraq from the beginning was ordered by Ambassador Bremer. Within the police force, the police services, customs, immigration and bor- der services, we took the top three levels of the Ba’ath Party and eliminated them from the agencies. From that point on, we tried to identify leaders within the agencies, within the different depart- ments, that we felt confident were trustworthy, loyal and had in- tegrity and honor. Today, the Senior Deputy Minister of Interior is a man by the name of Ahmed Ibrahim, who before he was appointed by me as the Senior Deputy Minister, was the chief of operations for Bagh- dad and before that, he was the Commandant of the Academy. In all of those positions, over about a 4–5 month period, we gained an enormous amount of trust in him beginning with the fact that he had been arrested by Saddam, been imprisoned for more than a year, been tortured on a weekly basis, had been electrocuted, and was adamant about his opposition to the regime, to Saddam and Saddam’s loyalists. In the time that we have been in Iraq and Ibrahim has been in charge of the police service, he has put together special operations units and special enforcement units to go out and hunt down the Fedayeen Saddam which are Saddam’s trained assassins and kill- ers, to hunt down the former Ba’athists out there committing at- tacks against the Coalition. We have found that if you pick the right Iraqi leaders, they will find the people they need to get the job done. I will give you one example before I close. I told Mr. Ibrahim when he had the Academy that I didn’t want anybody affiliated with the Ba’ath Party or with former ties to Sad- dam involved in the Baghdad Police Department. The next day I came back to the academy where he had his office and there were about 1,000 Iraqis outside the gates. He was on the inside with a small staff of people. When I finally got through the crowd and pushed through the gates and got inside, I said to him, ‘‘what is going on, what are you doing?’’ He said, ‘‘you said no Ba’ath affili- ations; they are outside, I will pick one by one who is going to work for the new Iraqi police service.’’ I think that is the key to our suc- cess. Let the Iraqis do their job. They know who the fedayeen are, they know who the Ba’athists are, they know who the loyalists are. Pick the right ones at the top and let them do their job and that is what we are doing. Ms. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman and the lady. Mrs. Maloney. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00125 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 122 Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you. First, I would like to welcome Bernard Kerik, the former police chief from the city of New York who led us so brilliantly after Sep- tember 11. Welcome. I would like to know how the members of the Governing Council are being protected? I was deeply concerned when the woman member was murdered. I have read reports where women cannot even go out on the streets. Second, I would like to thank the chairman for including Mrs. Beate Gordon who I think is one of the world’s most extraordinary women. She single-handedly created civil rights for Japanese women; she is on the next panel. I personally believe it would be a disaster beyond words if the women of Iraq are not included in the constitution with the right to vote, the right to health care, the right to education. It would be a tragedy if women’s rights were rolled back because of American invasion. My most troubling question deals with two articles that were in the paper today and I ask permission to put them in the record. It talks about Secretary Rumsfeld not even knowing about the reor- ganization of the Iraq reconstruction. He is supposed to be in charge of the reconstruction. I deeply believe, Mr. Chairman, that he should come before this committee before we vote on the $87 bil- lion and the reconstruction to give us an update. Mr. SHAYS. Without objection the articles will be inserted in the record. Mrs. MALONEY. There has been a lot of talk about contracts. I have a positive story on contracts. When I was in Iraq, I met with General Petraeus from the 101st Airborne. He is doing a remark- able job. He told us this story: he had a contract—he needed ce- ment to rebuild the houses in the area—and a $15 million contract was given to an American company. He kept prodding them, prod- ding them, prodding them to act. They never acted so he put on a bulletin board the fact that he needed to build a cement factory, could anyone help him. An Iraqi businessman came forward, used $80,000 from the confiscated money from Saddam Hussein and the cement factory is up and running. So the story shows, I think, bril- liant management. He saved taxpayers money and he employed the Iraqi people so they are on our side, not fighting us. Another moral of this story is that you don’t have to build the cement factory to American standards, build it to Iraqi standards; it is working. Let the Iraqi businessman follow the American model of investing his profits into making the business bigger and stronger. I am dis- turbed by the fact that one sole-source contract to an American contractor of $900 million, only $50 million is contracted to the Iraqi people, employing them and saving taxpayers’ dollars. I want to come back specifically with an issue that I feel so strongly about that I place the question in writing to the panel. It concerns the request for rebuilding the oil fields. According to the supplemental request and the Army Corps of Engineers, it would cost $1.1 billion to restore the oil production to prewar levels of 3 million barrels per day. Then the supplemental asks for twice that and then you include the $1.4 billion we have already spent. That means we are paying three times what the final work plan pro- VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00126 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 123 posed by the Army Corps of Engineers projected. This shows, I would say, mismanagement, but I will wait for your answers. Second, I would like to place in the record page 28 of the Rehab and Reconstruction for Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority, and that says, and I question this with great sincerity, ‘‘The funding will also initiate the development of new oil and gas fields.’’ I be- lieve many Americans would like to help with reconstruction but I don’t think they feel they need to build new fields in another country when we have so many problems at home. Mr. SHAYS. If the gentlelady would suspend for a second, we just have 20 seconds left. You have to give him a chance to answer some questions. Mrs. MALONEY. Very quickly. It said that, ‘‘Funding will allow commencement of the planned new refinery that will increase do- mestic capacity.’’ I am for rehabbing but are we going to invest in new structures, particularly when the Army Corps of Engineers said it would only cost $1.1 billion and we are now up to $3.3 bil- lion? I for one would like to go back to the Petraeus model of doing things cost effectively, saving the taxpayers money and employing the Iraqi people. Otherwise, congratulations to the Army for your brilliant bravery and the fine job you are doing. I met many wonderful members of the military from the district I represent who are really putting their lives in harms way every day. The American people are very proud of them and I am particularly proud of the work that Gen- eral Odinaro and General Petraeus are doing. Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Janklow, you have the floor. Mrs. MALONEY. Can I say one thing because we don’t have much time. Chris, this is very important. Some of the generals told me that in creating the domestic centers in Iraq, they are putting women on those centers. I think that is incredibly important. I would like a listing from the CPA of all the women who have been put in positions. I think this is tremendously important. And sec- ond, the point that Senators and Members of this Congress cannot get the information on the contracts. In all sincerity, I want to be supportive but we have to have this information before we vote. We have to know where is the money, where was it spent. Petraeus gave us the information, the CPA should be able to give us the in- formation. [The prepared statement of Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney follows:] VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00127 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 124 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00128 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 125 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00129 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 126 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00130 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 127 Mr. SHAYS. Mrs. Maloney, hold on for a second. You had 61⁄2 minutes and I just wanted to say to you we will have a second round if you have specific questions, but there was so much to be said. I am going to go to Mr. Janklow and we can come back if you have specific questions you want to ask and we will make sure he answers. Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, before Mr. Janklow. Mrs. Maloney asked a couple of questions. Maybe we can see if anybody wants to respond to her. Mr. SHAYS. Just wait a second, please. The way we are going to do it is, we are going to Mr. Janklow. We will come back to Mrs. Maloney and she can ask her specific questions and we will take them up. She will have her time. She had 61⁄2 minutes to make a statement. Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, if I might just—— Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Waxman, please don’t. Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I know you like to do what you like to do, but we do have rules and the rules are that Members can take 5 minutes to ask questions. They can, within that 5 minutes, ask for responses to the questions. Mrs. Maloney did ask some questions. I think we ought to give the panel, if they want to say something in response to some of the questions she asked, give them an opportunity. If they choose not to, they don’t have to. Mrs. Maloney did ask for things for the record. Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. This is what I would prefer and I think Mrs. Maloney knows me to be a very fair person. She had 61⁄2 min- utes and I would like Mr. Janklow to ask questions. We will come back to her, she can ask specific questions and we will take each one. I will be happy to yield her my time in the second round. Mr. Janklow. Mr. JANKLOW. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. As you folks can see, we try and put tight timeliness on you in getting stuff done in Iraq and you have to meet it by the deadline but we have a very difficult time ourselves meeting our own speech deadlines when it comes to working within the framework that we have allocated to us. Back a long time ago when I was a Marine in the 1950’s, we used to say we dealt with scuttlebutt, we dealt with rumor in ascending order, we dealt with gossip, we dealt with speculation and if it was really rank, we called it grapevine. That is what is going on and I am picking up from what Mr. Sherwood said about the issues vis- a-vis the National Guard and Reserve versus the full-time military. All of us are getting a huge amount of correspondence from our constituents who were called to active duty who feel they may not be getting equal treatment in terms of rotations and other things. It may not be the case, but as my mother used to say to me when she sent me to my room, ‘‘you are going up there not for what you said to your sister but for the way you said it to your sister.’’ I am wondering is there a better way, Mr. Ambassador, that you can communicate to those troops as to what the policies and procedures are? By the time it gets to their families at home and then gets to us, it is third, fourth or fifth-hand and it is pretty rank. I guess I am making a statement is what I am making but do you think there is a better way the military can pursue the information to VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00131 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 128 their troops in the field so at least they get the feeling of the re- ality, that they are being treated equally because I don’t think there is anyone who really believes you are treating the active forces differently than the Reserves or National Guard you called up but people feel they are being treated differently. Do you under- stand what I am saying? Secretary BROWNLEE. Sir, we have been frustrated by this too be- cause it seems there would be a discussion of something and the next thing you know, it is on the Internet and in the papers. Mr. JANKLOW. Let me give you an example, and I am interrupt- ing you and being rude, but I wrote on behalf of constituents of mine a letter to the Department of the Army. I got back June 25 the most sterile generic letter you could possibly get dealing with rotations, to the point I didn’t send this back to my constituent. I felt all they would do was become offended by what they felt would probably be bureaucratic runaround. I will leave a copy of this with you but the point is, you need to be a little more hands-on in terms of how you treat people given the fact that they have been called up a lot over the last 8 or 10 years. It used to be we called them weekend warriors and if there was a big war, they would be called up. Now they are called up for Panama, for Grenada and to work with the Norwegian Air Force on a mission, they are called over to Bosnia, they are being called up all the time. They are having to drop the plow, drop the pen, shut down the cash register and go off to war or a mission and come home. That is all well and good. It was the Minutemen who saved us at Concord Ridge but the point I am making is, it is the way people feel they are being treated as opposed to the way they are being treated. Can you go to work on a better plan? That is all I am suggesting. Secretary BROWNLEE. I assure you that we are and in fact, one of the reasons we put down the policy we did of up to 12 months on the ground was because we wanted to establish clearly what the policy was and try to stop just what you are discussing, the rumors and those things floating around. Mr. JANKLOW. I am switching subjects now but we hear the trag- edy virtually every day or every couple days of more American troops being wounded or killed in the theater of operations. I think it would be important for the American people to know and I wish you would place in the record in the first 12 months after the peace accord was assigned on the battleship Missouri, how many Amer- ican soldiers were killed in the Pacific? It would be important to know how many American soldiers were killed or injured in Europe after the Germans surrendered in World War II. It would be impor- tant to know how many Americans were injured in other theaters of operations. As a Marine in the 1950’s, I can remember Japanese still surrendering in islands in the Pacific where they held out for great periods of time. I think it is important that we put history into perspective, that this is not a friendly place. We had to go over there and invade it and trying to bring the peace is incredibly im- portant. My time has expired, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Secretary BROWNLEE. Thank you, sir, for your interest. Chairman TOM DAVIS [presiding]. Mr. Waxman. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00132 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 129 Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I do want the chance to ask some questions. I let others go ahead out of cour- tesy to them. As I indicated earlier in my opening statement, based on the in- formation I have received from many different sources, I am con- cerned that taxpayer money is being wasted in Iraq. Billion-dollar contracts are going to well-connected companies like Halliburton and Bechtel when the work could be done much more cheaply by local Iraqi companies. I want to go through some examples. I mentioned earlier, and Mrs. Maloney mentioned, the general in charge of northern Iraq, General David Petraeus, told a congres- sional delegation that included my staff that it would cost $15 mil- lion to bring a cement plant up to working order. He ended up giv- ing that to local Iraqis to do and it cost only $80,000. Another ex- ample, according to Judge Wael Abdul Latif, a member of the Iraq Governing Council from Basra, western contractors charged ap- proximately $25 million to refurbish 20 police stations in Basra by providing new doors, windows, paint, and furniture. Latif contends that a qualified Iraqi company could have done the work for just $5 million. Ms. Sondul Chapouk, another member of the Iraqi Gov- erning Council and a civil engineer, described an instance in which the Coalition Provisional Authority renovated 10 houses in Bagh- dad for Council members at a cost of $700,000. Ms. Chapouk be- lieves an Iraqi firm could have built 10 houses from scratch at that price and employed more Iraqis in the process. The estimates from the CPA confirm this point. According to the CPA, when the work is done by Iraqis, ‘‘cost of construction is one-tenth the U.S. stand- ard per square foot in general construction.’’ Despite the fact that we are overpaying U.S. contractors like Halliburton and Bechtel, there seems to be almost no attention being given to restructuring how we are awarding contracts to take advantage of low-cost Iraqi contractors. The CPA’s justification for the $20 billion supplemental, for example, contains no discussion about how to restructure these contracts. General Strock or Mr. Korologos, why aren’t you doing more to reduce costs to the U.S. taxpayers by using local Iraqi companies? Mr. KOROLOGOS. I am going to yield to General Strock who does the contracting. The short answer, Mr. Waxman, is that when we first got in there and found this devastation and found the economy flat on its back, we had to get started. We had a security problem, we had to get this country off the ground quickly and contracting was done as quickly as possible. For these individual anecdotal events, I don’t have any answers except to say there is a lot of mis- information coming out of these Iraqi companies. I am not sure they could have done it for $80,000; I am not a contractor. Mr. WAXMAN. This is what they maintain. So your position is, and it is understandable, that faced with all the chaos, you turned to the companies with which the Army had contracts, Bechtel and Halliburton, and asked them to jump in immediately and do the work. Is that what happened, General Strock? General STROCK. Sir, I think that is essentially correct, yes. We went into a nation that had no power, no communications, no water, nothing, and we did not have the ability to even inform peo- ple of opportunities, much less that they would have the oppor- VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00133 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 130 tunity to mobilize their forces and come to work. It has been very, very difficult. Mr. WAXMAN. I would submit that part of the problem is a struc- tural one. As long as we are hiring big government contracts on a ‘‘cost plus’’ basis, these contractors have little incentive to reduce their costs. The more elaborate the project, the bigger they get paid, the more money they make. One example of that is, the ad- ministration offered points to Bechtel as an example of a contractor that is using local Iraqis as subcontractors. Although Bechtel’s cap- ital construction prime contract is currently at $920 million, Bech- tel has said that as of October 1, only $54 million in subcontracts have been awarded to Iraqi firms. That is 6 percent of this work that is going to Iraqi firms. I think what we are doing, and I would be interested in your re- sponse, is we are over-relying on large umbrella contracts with no opportunity for competition on task orders. We give a contract to Halliburton and it is broad—IDIQ or indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract. That means once the contract is awarded, the Government can award task orders worth tens or hundreds of mil- lions of dollars without any competition. Isn’t that the way it is done, General Strock? General STROCK. In essence, I think that is correct, sir. The rea- son we go to those kinds of contracts is due to the great uncer- tainty. We were not able to definitize the requirements and do in- cremental competition for each of those task orders. In a situation like this, we typically operate in an indefinite delivery and indefi- nite quantity mode. Mr. WAXMAN. In the case of oil infrastructure work in Iraq, the Army gave Halliburton a sole source contract with no competition whatsoever. There is no other company that is allowed to compete even though there are other corporations on the ground in Iraq that could do some of the work for less. The Government task or- ders to Halliburton are not subject to any competition and together they are now worth $1.39 billion. I would submit to you that there are a lot of jobs that either Hal- liburton or Bechtel could do but, the way the situation is set up, they never submit competing bids. Instead, Halliburton has a mo- nopoly on the oil work, Bechtel has a monopoly on the reconstruc- tion work. It seems to me if we either issued smaller contracts with competition or we could award larger, multiple award contracts, that would mean that more than one company would be awarded large umbrella contracts and could compete for individual task or- ders. That is the approach favored by OMB because it imposes greater price competition and results in savings for the taxpayers. Now that we are moving away from the crisis of war contracting to a more orderly and predictable process of reconstruction, shouldn’t we think about moving away from these anti-competitive IDIQ contracts? General STROCK. Sir, in fact, when we determined that the most practical and appropriate way to fix the oil infrastructure was to go sole source, at that very moment we embarked on a competitive process to provide a follow-on contract. Within this month we should see that competitive contract for the oil industry being VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00134 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 131 awarded. We recognize that it is much better to go in an open and competitive way. Mr. WAXMAN. Isn’t that going to give one contract to the north and one to the south without competition? General STROCK. It’s competed. Mr. WAXMAN. But one for the north will be awarded? General STROCK. As I understand, it is one for the north and one for the south. I haven’t been personally involved but I think that is correct. I think the plan for the supplemental is that it will be full and open and we will go to multiple contractors so we can mo- bilize a much greater portion of our capability. Certainly the per- formance measure on that will be their plans and records for em- ploying local Iraqi companies. Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you. Chairman TOM DAVIS. As I understand it, Halliburton’s role in Iraq is based on its Brown & Root subsidiary. Brown & Root holds a very competitive award, one for which they had to compete with other companies, the LOGCAP Contract, which provides a wide va- riety of logistics services to DOD overseas; I think that came out of Bosnia. They were awarded that, it was competitively bid. You come into a new country, there is no economy out there working, it is in shambles, and it sounds like some Members would like to have gone to a competitive bid and waited 6 months before we could have capped the oil fields and done those things. Obviously we couldn’t do that, so we went with a pre-competitively bid con- tract that in fact was a legal scheme to do this and now, as soon as we are up and running, we are going to go out and competitively bid this area again. Is that basically it? Secretary BROWNLEE. Yes, sir. The LOGCAP Contract to which you referred was competitively bid and awarded to Brown & Root in December 2001. This is a contract the Army keeps in place so when there is a contingency, the contractor can respond to provide logistics, dining facilities and all the things we need these days when we go on these contingencies. Chairman TOM DAVIS. And other companies bid on that at the time? Secretary BROWNLEE. Yes, sir, they did. In fact, another company had it prior to Brown & Root getting the contract in December 2001. These are kept in place for the kind of contingencies you mentioned; that is what we took to war. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Let me make one point. When we start to talk about fees and costs, let us remember that we are working under rules and regulations. Only costs that are allocable, specifi- cally allocable under the FAR, the Federal Acquisition Regulations, are allowable. Other costs and fees, and this is scrutinized by the Defense Contract Audit Agency, have to be allowable and reason- able, and only those are reimbursed. It is not uncommon in these situations that they withhold final payment to go through the au- dits to confirm that they are allowable costs; that is standard pro- cedure. Also, the fees in this area are not big fees compared to what you get in the private sector; that is my recollection, and I was a government contracts attorney for close to 20 years before I came here. Is that fair? VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00135 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 132 Secretary BROWNLEE. Sir, I think that is fair although you have to understand also, when you are in a combat zone and the con- tractor has to be indemnified and all those things, sometimes the costs go higher than they would if you were just on normal basis. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Of course. I would be happy to yield, Mr. Waxman. Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you. I thought what you pointed out in this questioning was helpful to understand how it operates. The point I am trying to make is, if you have one big contract without specified tasks, sometimes you can’t specify them but sometimes you can, there is no real competi- tion for the task. So you give a contract to do north and south, and one competitive contractor will compete for the monopoly. I would like to see, and I think OMB is recommending this, if you can set- tle on some of the tasks and have price competition for those tasks. That can help us hold down the price on it rather than give a mo- nopoly to Bechtel for one purpose and a monopoly for Halliburton for the other or divide the country north and south and let them compete for a monopoly for the north. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Let me recall my experience. I don’t know what the right vehicle is. I am not close enough to this, and what Mr. Waxman says may in fact be true, but it may also be true that we are dealing with a foreign country where people there have their lives at risk and you are not going to have a lot of companies move people over there on a contingency that they might get some- thing. In that case, by that doing large contracts you have the in- frastructure up and operating; it is competitively bid originally but if you compete each task you may not get the same kind of commit- ment and economies of scale you could get. I don’t know the an- swer, and I think what we are saying is let us look at this very carefully because obviously the more competition we get, the more we are able to involve Iraqis in doing their own work. It is not only a nation building exercise, it helps their economy as well. I think that is the point. I don’t know what the answer is. Obviously we need to look at this in some detail. Mr. WAXMAN. Just one last point because I think we all want the same objective. My concern is Halliburton has a sole source con- tract to deal with the oil industry and Bechtel has an exclusive contract to deal with reconstruction. They are just sitting there with monopolies. That isn’t going to produce the cost savings. We have to figure out some way, if you will forgive me as a Democrat for lecturing the Republicans, on some way to get competition and market force where it is possible. There are times when it is not, that is why we have these ongoing contracts. But right now we have put ourselves in a position where we have an ongoing, con- tractual monopoly with two major corporations. I don’t think it is serving the taxpayers’ interest or the Iraqi reconstruction. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Aren’t there over a dozen contractors? There are dozens of contractors over there in Iraq, am I right? General STROCK. There are, but in these particular sectors, it is Bechtel on the infrastructure and Halliburton in KBR on the oil. It is our job as the government agency with the technical capacity to monitor how these funds are spentto not simply turn the con- tractor loose with a bag of money. He has to come in, we write the VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00136 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 133 statements of work, we ensure that cost, quality and schedule are met, and we demand that only the necessary things are done. That is the responsibility of our agency. So the competition occurs up front, ideally. Not so in the case of the KBR contract, and I think there are good reasons for not being competitive in that situation, but it is our responsibility to make sure we get best value for the taxpayers’ dollar. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Well, let us get to the nub of this thing. There are some people who don’t like the contractors you chose be- cause they have had affiliations with people in office. A senior Sen- ator’s husband’s company also received a large contract for work over there, just to make this a bipartisan bashing, if you will. We haven’t been complaining about that. Factually, we have people making these decisions that aren’t in the political loop at all. These are professional contracting agents and procurement officials who are doing their job. You need to understand that there is a lot of scrutiny on this and there are political ramifications and there are financial ramifica- tions and I think we need to be aware of that. So to the extent we can get competition, even on the small tasks, to the extent we can involve Iraqis, we think that is a good thing. Is that a fair state- ment? General STROCK. Absolutely. Mr. WAXMAN. No, it is not a fair statement and I take some ex- ception to it because I thought it was rather personal. I don’t think you ought to question my motivation, Mr. Chairman. Chairman TOM DAVIS. I didn’t. Mr. WAXMAN. I am not questioning the contract to Halliburton. Chairman TOM DAVIS. You only mentioned it 20 times. Mr. WAXMAN. Or the administration and Vice President Cheney. I am questioning Halliburton’s contract because it was a sole source, no competition for it. Chairman TOM DAVIS. That is not accurate. Mr. WAXMAN. Just a minute. Chairman TOM DAVIS. They won it. It is my time, Mr. Waxman and they won this competitively in Bosnia, they beat out other com- panies for this, you had an emergency situation and now it is being competed again. Mr. WAXMAN. No, they got a sole source contract to do the work in Iraq. Chairman TOM DAVIS. That was KBR. Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, may I make a sentence? I know it is your time and your committee but when you say that I am moti- vated because of people being close to the administration, I want to make it clear that I am motivated because I think the taxpayers are getting ripped off. If we have a contract where there was no competition for it, on a cost plus basis, to a company that has a record of over-charging the taxpayers of this country. And I will be glad to put into the record of this committee the background for that statement. I would rather see, if we are going to have reconstruction in Iraq, that we try to get competition and not close out the Iraqi people, not close out other companies, from competing for some of these tasks. I don’t think my motivation ought to be questioned. As I VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00137 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 134 said, I think we all want the same goal. I am afraid we are not achieving that goal. I have gone through instances where I believe we are over-paying and these contracts end up being goldplated. I must say, General, the Army does not have a good record, when you look at Halliburton’s history of scrutinizing the contracts where we have overpaid in the past. We want to work with you to do bet- ter, but by its nature, I think we end up hurting the taxpayers’ best interest in some of these contracts. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Let me say this. I didn’t pull this out of the air. There have been numerous statements by my friend and others in point of fact linking Halliburton to administration offi- cials in the same sentences, in the same press releases, although maybe not today. Let us understand that there are political rami- fications and it is important that they understand this, Mr. Wax- man, because as they make decisions at the administration level, they should be more sensitive to those kinds of things and ask for more competition. That is something we both agree on. Mr. WAXMAN. That is one of the reasons why I thought this ad- ministration would have been more sensitive, because of the con- nection of the vice president, not to give Halliburton a sole source contract, with no competition. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Waxman, reclaiming my time, the fact of the matter is, that is not what happened. The fact of the matter is, and let me just restate this because I think it is important ev- eryone understands it: Halliburton’s role was based on its Brown & Root subsidiary, and they won a competitively awarded contract under the previous administration in Bosnia called LOGCAP to provide a wide variety of logistical services to DOD overseas. A task order under that contracting vehicle was used to perform the contingency planning for extinguishing oil fires and to assess the damage to the oil fields. Through LOGCAP, Brown & Root prepositioned people and equipment to be able to provide emer- gency response relating to the Iraqi oil system as well as other needs and services outlined under this contract. As we have heard today, we are now going forward and are going to recompete once we have this up and stabilized but there was nothing there other- wise. We had to move in quickly. Mr. Waxman, you have had your time. Mr. Brownlee. Secretary BROWNLEE. If I could quickly make three points, sir. One, the LOGCAP contract was, as you stated, competed. Two, there was a subsequent contract awarded to restore Iraqi oil. That is being recompeted, as General Strock said, as we speak. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Correct. Secretary BROWNLEE. The third point I would make is, what nor- mally drives us toward these different kinds of contracts is the de- grees of certainty and uncertainty and the degree of urgency; some- times that costs more. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much. I think we have another panel waiting and we have a couple of other questions. If we could be very quick, let us try to do maybe a question and we will start on your side, Mr. Waxman. Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00138 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 135 On another subject, Mr. Dibble, I recently received a letter from the Department of State regarding Iraq that I found confusing. I believe the subject is relevant to the work of your bureau and I am hoping you may be able to provide some clarity on the matter. The letter was dated September 25 in response to a letter of July 21 I sent to the State Department regarding its December 19, 2002 fact sheet entitled, ‘‘Illustrative Examples of Omissions from the Iraqi Declaration to the United States Security Council.’’ This fact sheet listed eight key areas where the Bush administration found fault with Iraq’s December 7, 2002 weapons declaration. Under the heading ‘‘Nuclear Weapons,’’ the fact sheet stated, ‘‘The Declaration ignores efforts to purchase uranium from Niger, why is the Iraqi regime hiding their uranium procurement?’’ Since the issuance of that fact sheet, it has become known that by the time of the December 19 fact sheet itself, intelligence ana- lysts at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Re- search, and at the CIA, had already rejected evidence that Iraq was attempting to procure uranium from Niger. I asked the State De- partment to explain how this statement could have ended up in the December 19 fact sheet and who was responsible for creating the fact sheet. The State Department responded to me that, ‘‘The Pub- lic Affairs Bureau prepared the fact sheet based on information ob- tained from other bureaus of the State Department.’’ The letter didn’t specify which bureaus provided the information. My first question to you is about the creation of this December 19 fact sheet. You are the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. Did the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs participate in the creation or review of the fact sheet? Mr. DIBBLE. Mr. Waxman, I was not there but I will assert for the record that I am sure we were, yes. Mr. WAXMAN. What would have been the nature of the Bureau’s participation? Mr. DIBBLE. I would assume it would have had some sort of co- ordinating role. Mr. WAXMAN. Would the Bureau have provided information or recommendations regarding the language about Iraq seeking ura- nium in Niger, and if so, could you describe the information and recommendations? Mr. DIBBLE. Probably not. Mr. WAXMAN. Probably not. Why not? Mr. DIBBLE. I don’t know the source of the information, how the information found its way into the report or the fact sheet was sourced. I would expect, however, that it would have come either from the intelligence community or from another bureau in the State Department, for example, the Non-Proliferation Bureau. Mr. WAXMAN. Can you describe what else you know about who would have participated in the creation of that December 19 fact sheet? Mr. DIBBLE. I know very little. I would speculate that it was a broad, department-wide effort, led perhaps by the Bureau of Public Affairs but with input from many other bureaus in the Depart- ment. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00139 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 136 Mr. WAXMAN. The State Department’s September 25, 2003 re- sponse also asserted that, ‘‘Both the NSC staff and the CIA were consulted on the fact sheet’’ but we know from CIA Director Tenet’s statement that the CIA had discredited the Niger evidence before the issuance of the December 19 fact sheet. Further, according to a June 13, 2003 Washington Post article, CIA officials denied a role in creating the fact sheet, stating that the CIA raised an objection to the Niger claim but it came too late to prevent its publication. I am wondering, Mr. Dibble, whether you can shed any light on this issue? Could you describe what you know about whether the CIA was consulted about the fact sheet, when such consultation oc- curred and the input the CIA provided with respect to the Niger statement? Mr. DIBBLE. Again, I cannot speak from personal knowledge, so I cannot say when or exactly what input was provided. I can only speculate on the basis of experience that when such products are put together, the CIA and others who may have relevant informa- tion are consulted. Mr. WAXMAN. What is a mystery to me is that you said it might have been the Bureau of Nuclear Non-Proliferation, which would have been Secretary Bolton. They deny they had any role in this. Then you indicated it might have been INR but you say INR wouldn’t have had anything to do with it. I am trying to figure out who had something to do with this? Mr. DIBBLE. It is a fair question. I can certainly take it back. I am speculating myself at this point. Mr. WAXMAN. Perhaps you could help us and get some answers for the record from your colleagues at the State Department? Mr. DIBBLE. Certainly. Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman TOM DAVIS. I think that is really outside your scope. Ms. Norton, you have been sitting there patiently. I think we can wrap up with you and let the panel go. Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am overdue to give a presentation so I particularly appreciate your consideration. I have two questions. One involved the dilemma I am sure you face. Again this comes from reports that we don’t want to do policy with contracting with former members of the Ba’ath Party. Accord- ing to some reports in the press, some of the Iraqis say they didn’t know about that and when informed about that, this is a quote and I wonder what is your reaction and how you deal with the di- lemma, ‘‘I can’t believe that. Saddam was here for 35 years and to work you had to have contracts with the government. It was a gov- ernment-run country. Otherwise, it was impossible, so why should we be punished.’’ How do you deal with the fact that almost any- body who did business had to do business with this government? That may have meant like people who join the Communist Party, OK I have my card and these may be among the most experienced contractors and yet we don’t want to have anything to do with real rogues from the Ba’ath Party. What is your policy and how do you ferret out that? Chairman TOM DAVIS. That is a good question. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00140 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 137 General STROCK. It certainly is a dilemma and so many of the Iraqi people were members of the Ba’ath Party, many for simple survival as you pointed out, because you have access to education and other benefits. The de-Ba’athification order that Ambassador Bremer issued really looked at the upper levels of the Ba’ath Party, those committed members of the Ba’ath Party that competed for in- creased position in the Party. So we try to make a distinction be- tween those. The de-Ba’athification order was very rigid in its ap- plication but it does leave room for reconsideration of those people who can clearly demonstrate they were members of the party strictly for convenience and for survival. You will find that particu- larly true in the academic world where you could not hold a profes- sorship if you were not a party member; it is a dilemma. Ms. NORTON. With contracting, could you have a contract with the government without being a member of the Ba’ath Party? General STROCK. I don’t know the answer to that. Ms. NORTON. That is what we need to find out. Mr. Secretary, do you know that? Secretary BROWNLEE. No, ma’am, I don’t but it is a good question and I will be happy to take it for the record. Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much and I wish you would get back to the chairman on that. One more question. Again, there are reports that are coming up that we know corruption is rampant, we have done lots in our country because we have corruption here too. We have all kinds of rules and regulations and disqualification if we find out what you have been doing. Again, there are reports that companies demand kickbacks. Here is a quote I would like clarified, the claim that, ‘‘when American companies hire Iraqi firms as major contractors, the Iraqi companies then demand a kickback called the ‘commis- sion’ from smaller firms in exchange for a piece of the job.’’ What do you know about commissions? What can you tell us about com- missions? It may have been the practice for doing business before. Are commissions part of the way in which Iraqi firms and sub- contractors believe they have to do business today and what are you doing about it if it is? General STROCK. Ma’am, I heard some peripheral discussions about a process used under the Saddam regime of a 10-percent commission that was paid to a government official for issuance of a contract. That money sort of disappeared and went into accounts. There is a name for it and I don’t recall the name but it was a com- mon practice apparently under the old regime. Ms. NORTON. So what do you do about it now? Now you are faced with a culture that said you had to pay a kickback called a commis- sion what does the Provisional Authority do about it, what does the provisional government in place do about it? Is it possible to issue regulations? How do you change the culture if you just accept that was the way business was done under Saddam? General STROCK. I think we don’t work that way and we make that clear to the Iraqis. Ms. NORTON. But these are subcontractors. You don’t work that way of course but we are saying, what are you doing about the fact that it was a part of the culture to demand a commission from a subcontractor? What are you doing about that practice? VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00141 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 138 General STROCK. As I said, I am not sure the practice currently exists. Ms. NORTON. That is part of the problem. Mr. Secretary, I can’t expect the General to know everything. This is a policy matter. Secretary BROWNLEE. I understand. Ms. NORTON. Obviously you have a provisional government in place that is trying to deal with these pre-Saddam or Saddam prac- tices. Very serious practice if we are allowing this to be built into the way we do business too because we see no evil and do no evil. What can you tell us you can do about the apparent culture of kick- backs that was a part of the way subcontractors had to do business with Iraqi contractors under Saddam? Secretary BROWNLEE. Well, I can tell you, as General Strock was going to tell you, that is not a part of our process, and if we were aware of it, then we would do what we could to eliminate it. I will look into it. I was not aware of it. The kind of kickbacks that you talk about would be considered a crime in this country and I hope would be considered a crime in their country under their new de- mocracy. Ms. NORTON. Could I ask that you look into it. Secretary BROWNLEE. I will. I would be happy to. Ms. NORTON. And two, because this is very difficult to deal with. We find it difficult to deal with in this country and in this country when we are giving contracts to other countries who have such cor- rupt practices, it even gets worse, but this is different. We are re- making this country, we are helping them to do it the way we think it ought to be done, and the way I think most of them would believe it ought to be done. I would like to know from you what it is that you think you can do to halt this practice, if you find there is such a practice. I wish you would give that information to the Chair of the committee. Mr. SHAYS [presiding]. Did you want to make a response? Secretary BROWNLEE. Just a quick point. We are in the process now, as Mr. Korologos can tell you, of standing up a government, standing up a legal system, standing up a justice system, and what you are describing, as I indicated to you, would be considered criminal in our country. It still happens on occasion and we pros- ecute it. So we will do everything we can to eliminate it from the system as we know it, as we are administering it now and also in- sist that it be a part of their legal system and they will have to deal with it also. Ms. NORTON. Thank you. Secretary BROWNLEE. As far as we are doing now, I will do what I can to look into it and see if that kind of practice is existing now as it used to. Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Frelinghuysen and then we will go to Mrs. Maloney and close with me and get to the next panel. Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon. I am Rodney Frelinghuysen. I sit on the Defense Subcommittee on Appropriations and was part of a group of 17 Members of Congress who recently returned from Iraq and had, I think, a very positive experience. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00142 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 139 Let me say, Mr. Chairman, I am most impressed by Ambassador Bremer and his team working in some very difficult circumstances. He has put together a first class team and they are doing so much to support the Iraqi people to be free; they are free but with 100,000 criminals let out by Saddam Hussein just before he hid himself, those people as well as Ba’athists and Saddam supporters and terrorists coming in over the border from Syria, Iran and prob- ably from Saudi Arabia, it is remarkable what the Bremer team has done to establish security and provide the Iraqi people with the means to develop themselves into a first rate economic, freedom- loving powerhouse in the Middle East. Let me pay tribute. It is truly an inspiration to see, have met and all politics is local with some of my New Jersey Army men and women on the ground. It is a damned shame that a lot of the good work they are doing there is not being reported. As it was de- scribed to me, after the 1,000 embedded reporters left, they sort of left the third string of the press corps there. Most of those people file their report from the Al Rashid Hotel and they are not report- ing on what the Coalition and Provisional Authority are doing and what a lot of brave Iraqi leaders are doing, men and women, in provincial capitals and cities throughout Iraq. Yes, the Sunni Triangle is a dangerous place for any soldier or civilian that is helping the country to operate, but I was most im- pressed by General Odinero, who actually is a New Jersey native, and he is on the ground leading in a major way reconstructing the lives of the Iraqi people who have lived under incredible oppression for 35 years. It was said to me, and I think it is an interesting fact, Mr. Chair- man, that 70 percent of the population in Iraq today has known no other leader than Saddam Hussein. So we have a long way to go to tell them and show them the road to democracy. With your per- mission, I would like to enter into the record some more formal, perhaps less strong comments, but certainly cogent comments, with your permission. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [The prepared statement of Hon. Rodney P. Frelinghuysen fol- lows:] VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00143 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 140 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00144 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 141 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00145 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 142 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00146 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 143 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00147 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 144 Mr. SHAYS. We will note for the record that you said different re- porters are now there. We also thank the gentleman for being here and thank him for going to Iraq. At this time, the Chair will recognize Mrs. Maloney. She has the floor for 5 minutes. Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I too had the opportunity to go to Iraq. Progress is being made. There are still some security problems, challenges, but as one New York soldier said to me, ‘‘We are fighting for the greatest gift of all, freedom,’’ and I am hopeful we will be able to achieve it. I respectfully request that my five prior questions be responded to in writing and I will get them to you this afternoon. I would like to build on the questioning of others. There has been a lot of talk about transparency and contracts. I think certainly before we vote on the $87 billion, we should have that transparency, not only in rhetoric but in the reality of numbers and information. I was impressed in Iraq how the generals in great detail could show you how they are spending their money, what they are doing and where they are going. Yet, when we ask for information on tax- payer dollars going there, we are not getting the answers. I think Members of Congress should be able to get detailed information on the process by which contracts are being awarded, the scope of spe- cific contract terms, the details of task orders, and the payments being made to prime contractors. They have said in the press, they have said in this panel they are not getting that information. That is not fair to the people they represent, that they face a vote on $87 billion without having received that information. Likewise, I would like to request an accounting of all the con- fiscated money that our people retrieved from Saddam Hussein. I truly believe it would be a positive story if other generals are fol- lowing the Petraeus model of creatively hiring Iraqi people to re- build their own country. I request that. I have asked for it several times. Again, we should have that information before we face a vote. Again, I am concerned about how decisions are made in the sup- plemental budget request. I have a document from the CPA or the Army Corps of Engineers and the Iraqi Oil Ministry that says it would take $1.1 billion to restore oil to the pre-war levels of 3 mil- lion barrels a day; the supplemental asks for twice that, and when you combine it with what we have already spent, then it is three times what the Army Corps of Engineers in their plan, the agency that was tasked to come forward with what it would cost and I am concerned about this. How did you come up with your numbers? If you are not even listening to the agency tasked to come up with the numbers, then I am concerned. I know General Strock that you are with the Army Corps of En- gineers and possibly you were consulted but as I said, my staff met earlier with the Central Army Corps of Engineers here in Washing- ton and they said they were never consulted or talked to. Why is the number now three times what they projected? General STROCK. I could perhaps quickly respond and will pro- vide a more thorough response in writing. A big part of the additional supplemental was $900 million for the import of fuels that we did not anticipate we would need but VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00148 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 145 we have not been able to get the refinery system to provide those fuels for the internal consumption in Iraq. That is a big portion of that. The other part, about $575 million of the supplemental, is for re- quirements outside of the Corps of Engineers and Ministry of Oil work plan that was submitted in July. So those are longer range and yet very important elements. It is the development of the oil fields you mentioned and it is also building the new refinery, things we know we need to get started on now to put the infra- structure in a position where it can truly support the needs of the nation. The rest, about $500 million of the supplemental, really has to deal with elements of the work plan that require more investment. Much of that has to do with security, the creation of rapid response teams to go in once the infrastructure is hit to reduce the impact of the sabotage by rapidly returning it to service. I think there is a fairly detailed accounting of that in the CPA request that shows those elements which do aggregate to a good sum of money but there is a good reason for each of those. In fact, we were consulted throughout the development of this budget re- quest. Mrs. MALONEY. The Army Corps of Engineers Central said they were not. As I said, there were several items that appeared not to be involved in reconstruction. I mentioned them earlier, I will place them in writing. My final question is, will we get transparency before the vote? Will we get an accounting of the contracts? Senators and members of this panel and others have said they request the information and it is not given to them. I feel transparency means facts and figures and documents, not a statement, we are transparent. You have a tremendous challenge ahead of you. I would say peace in the whole region if we are successful in bringing a democ- racy there, but it has to be well-managed or you don’t have the faith of the American people and you don’t have the faith of the Iraqi people. It begins with documentation and management and so far we haven’t gotten that. Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentlelady. I am going to recognize myself and then we will let this panel get on its way. First, I want to say that I think you realize we could almost just ask one of you the questions. We have such a fine group of individ- uals that I apologize if we haven’t utilized all your expertise. I think, Mr. Kerik, I could spend a day trying to understand what you encountered. I would like to have you give me a perspective be- cause I believe you found yourself interacting with a lot of Iraqis. I want to know if you feel the comment made to me way back in April by Mohammed Abdul Hassan Inemkassa was still a problem today and that was, ‘‘you don’t know us and we don’t know you.’’ One, do you think they are getting to know us? Do you think they are getting to know us in a right way, the Iraqis? Two, are we getting to know them? Is there interaction or are we finding ourselves in the palaces having to do our work not able to interact in a way that would be helpful? Maybe you could respond to that? VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00149 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 146 Mr. KERIK. I can speak from the perspective of dealing with the police, dealing with customs and borders and a lot dealing in the local communities in and throughout Baghdad. I travel throughout Baghdad on a daily basis and when you listen to the press and they talk about lawlessness and looting and chaos in the streets, I am proud to say from my last probably 30 days, I just about ate dinner out every night in Baghdad at a restaurant or a hotel. The shops are open, the markets are open and it is not really what I have read about and what I have seen since I have been back. Do we know them and do they know us? We are getting to know them better, they are getting to know us much better. In dealing with the police, I think initially they were skeptical. I think history between us, they thought initially we were going to come in and would leave. I think as time has gone on, they have begun to trust us, they have learned to trust us and I have seen that with the po- lice but I have also seen it a lot with the Iraqi people. That has helped us when it comes to information to fight the fedayeen and the Ba’ath Party. Initially, no one would come for- ward with information concerning terrorism, concerning attacks, concerning weapons. As time has gone on and we saw a major surge in information flow after the two sons of Saddam were killed. For every day that Saddam doesn’t pop his head out of the ground and take over the country, that information flow is growing and is growing by the people in Iraq and it is growing internally in the police. The police today overwhelmingly want to bring back a new coun- try. They are working extremely hard. The police in Baghdad are working on retraining their own people. They are extremely happy with their new equipment, with their new weapons. As you know, we had a difficult time initially getting uniforms, getting weapons. When we talk about contracts and contractors, we used as many Iraqis as possible but initially, we just couldn’t get a lot of this stuff in Iraq with the local vendors, so we had to go where we had to go to get it done and get it done quick. It is moving along and it is moving along much better at a much faster rate than anyone would have imagined. As I said earlier, think this way; in 4 months we went from zero precincts or zero stations in Baghdad to 35. There is no way you could have done that anywhere in this entire country in 4 months. It just couldn’t happen. We stood up 35 police stations, 400 cars, 3,000 radios and I can go on and on but that is a result of this relationship. I will share with you one last thing. It is rather frustrating to sit here and listen to a lot of the criticism based on press and media reports. I will share with you a comment that was made to me by the Senior Deputy Minister of Interior just a few days ago. I told him I was going to see the President on Friday and he said, ‘‘please tell the President to stop the complaining. The people in the United States have to stop complaining, the politicians have to stop complaining. You are making friends of our enemies.’’ I said, ‘‘what do you mean by that? He said, ‘‘the fedayeen and the Ba’athists, today they can watch television, they have satellite dishes, they can see things today they have never seen before. They see that criticism, they hear it. In their minds, they are winning. In their minds, them attacking our people, them attacking the po- VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00150 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 147 lice, them attacking the Coalition, they are winning, they are doing a good job. That criticism is hurting us.’’ Mr. SHAYS. I just want to say you said they are winning, that is what they think. Mr. KERIK. That is what they think. Mr. SHAYS. Based on what they see? Mr. KERIK. Based on what they see and I think it is hurting us. Mr. SHAYS. I would like to ask you, General, if you feel that our troops are getting the opportunity to interact with Iraqis or are they having to be very distant? I want to also ask you, I had so many Iraqis tell me that they did not like seeing Americans killed and it hurt them, but they said, why can’t we stand guard over a hospital? Why does it have to be an American? What skill would prevent them from having that opportunity? If you could speak to both issues, the interaction of our troops and the guarding of places like hospitals. General STROCK. Sir, perhaps the Secretary could talk more about the interaction of troops. Most of my attention was as a member of CPA and I was not out on the streets with the troops a lot but as I did have occasion, I thought it was a developing rela- tionship and one that I think our troops are forming a bond with the Iraqi people. They know why they are there and they are serv- ing the Iraqi people just like they are serving our people. We are in fact trying to transfer the responsibility for security of places like hospitals to the Iraqis by facility protection services by the police forces. That is an ongoing effort of ours to relieve our troops from that responsibility. That is very much happening. Mr. Secretary, perhaps you would like to comment? Secretary BROWNLEE. My experience is based on my visits there on two occasions and talking to all the soldiers I could and their commanders. Some of the frustrations they mention are that they do have contact with the Iraqi people and there may be an incident and they are out there with the Iraqi people and there may be 35 or 40 Iraqis coming to try to help them and pointing out areas where something might have happened or might happen but the press reports will go find one disgruntled Iraqi and that turns out to be the story. Our soldiers are even frustrated by that. They do have contact with them, they are out in the streets on a daily basis running patrols and doing the security things they do. Hopefully it will continue to grow and get even better. Mr. SHAYS. Before we end this panel, is there any comment any of you wants to put on the record before we get to our next panel? May I say parenthetically, the chairman of this committee is on the floor of the House now and wanted me to let you know that is why he is not here right now. Secretary BROWNLEE. You talked about turning things over to the Iraqis and of course all of our division commanders are busy and I think all of us see that as a way to replace troop strength there is to replace it with Iraqis. Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. I would conclude by saying to you that I have known Ambas- sador Bremer the entire time I have been in Congress and I am very proud of the work that he and his people are doing, very proud of what our military is doing and very grateful, Tom, that VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00151 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 148 you are there to help. He is blessed to have you help him. You have a difficult job, we thank you. I am absolutely certain that Repub- licans and Democrats alike share that sense of gratitude to all of you. Thank you. We are going to get to our next panel. We have Mr. Alaa H. Haidari, an Iraqi-American from the chairman’s district; Dr. Lamya Alarif, an Iraqi-American from the chairman’s district as well; and Ms. Beate Sirota Gordon from the great district in Man- hattan of Congresswoman Maloney; she is our Constitutional schol- ar. [Witnesses sworn.] Mr. SHAYS. It is an honor to have you here. I have been looking forward to this panel and we will start with Mr. Alaa Haidari. You will start with your testimony, sir. STATEMENTS OF ALAA H. HAIDARI, IRAQI-AMERICAN; BEATE SIROTA GORDON, CONSTITUTIONAL SCHOLAR; AND LAMYA ALARIF, IRAQI-AMERICAN Mr. HAIDARI. I would like to thank all of you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you about the situation in Iraq. First of all, I would like to say that ridding Iraq of Saddam Hussein and his regime was the best thing the United States could do for the Iraqi people, regardless of any controversies about how Saddam was re- moved from power. Second, this administration is putting forth a tremendous effort in rebuilding Iraq and establishing a normal life for the Iraqi people. In spite of this huge effort, we still have a dif- ficult road ahead of us because we don’t have a clear and com- prehensive plan. Allow me to put out a few issues which will help us and can be accomplished in a 6-month period. First, the current governing council does not reflect the Iraqi population. Also, it does not have a representative for many Iraqi provinces which have more than 1 million people in each of them. So, we need to revise and enhance this current council structure. The second issue is the disbanding of the Iraqi Army. We must accept the fact that disbanding the Iraqi Army and police forces was a huge mistake. Police forces played a vital part in keeping law and order. Most of the soldiers and policemen were against Saddam Hussein. Bringing them back will allow the U.S. military to move the bases outside of the cities and this will keep U.S. sol- diers out of harm’s way. The third issue is the economic situation. The Iraqi economic sit- uation today is horrendous. Power, drinking water, health care, education and infrastructure, almost everything has been destroyed and there are millions of unemployed Iraqis. Reconstruction and economic revival must be top priorities. I think it is necessary for the United States to initiate a Marshall Plan-style program with funds of $100 billion over the next 4 years. Much of this money should be financed by neighboring oil producer states such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and the Emirates. I am surprised that this has not happened yet. Also, we must encourage invest- ment by American business with cooperation with OPEC and the Import/Export Bank. The fourth issue is ministry employees. Qualified Iraqi people are capable of managing their own affairs and we should let them VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00152 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 149 do so. They are more knowledgeable than anyone else in the affairs of their own country. Ex-employees of Iraqi ministries should defi- nitely be rehired and the U.S. administration can oversee their work. The fifth issue is the local governments. Each of the 18 provinces must choose a Governor and a governing council. This will build confidence and a better relationship between the U.S. administra- tion and different groups in Iraq. It will also relieve some of the burden of the U.S. administration in Baghdad. In summary, there are five things that must be done in Iraq. One, revise and enhance the Governing Council; two, rehire the Iraqi soldiers and policemen who were not a part of the Saddam regime; three, bring back Iraqi employees of the ministries except those who were loyal to Saddam Hussein; four, organize the admin- istration of all 18 Iraqi provinces; and fifth, revive the Iraqi econ- omy with a Marshall-style plan by using money from neighboring oil producing states for Iraq. These countries have the money and it is for their well being and for the stability of the region. Thank you very much for the time. I would be happy to answer any of your questions. [The prepared statement of Mr. Haidari follows:] VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00153 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 150 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00154 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 151 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00155 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 152 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00156 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 153 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00157 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 154 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00158 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 155 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00159 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 156 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00160 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 157 Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much. Our next witness will be introduced by her Representative. Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you so much and I want to thank Chair- man Davis and you, Acting Chairman Shays, for including in our panel one of the most extraordinary women I would say in the world although she is often non-recognized, Beate Gordon. Her story is groundbreaking and important because she single-handedly created civil rights for Japanese women. I hope we will be able to create civil rights for the Iraqi women and the Afghani women. She was born in Vienna, grew up in Tokyo and became fluent in the Japanese language. Just before World War II she came to America to attend Mills College. Because of her fluency in Japa- nese, she was hired by the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service during the war to listen to and interpret radio broadcasts from Japan. At that time, she was 1 of 66 Caucasians who could speak Japanese. This is a thing you raised, Mr. Chairman, many times in Iraq that we need more people who speak Arabic, not only here in the United States but in Iraq working with the Iraqi people and with our people there. She became the American counterpart to the notorious Tokyo Rose, writing radio scripts each day. Following the war she returned to Japan and worked for the Su- preme Commander, General MacArthur. She became one of the drafters of the 1947 Japanese Constitution, the only woman at the table, and she wrote a book about her experiences. She was as- signed to draft the section of the constitution relating to women’s rights. At the time, Japanese women had no say in marriage, di- vorce, education, property, or inheritance rights. The provisions she drafted gave Japanese women fundamental constitutional rights that literally changed their lives and the society. She ultimately worked for the Japan Society and the Asian Society in New York and I believe in her presence today she will have very important insights because of her experience in Japan. She originally drafted 25 provisions guaranteeing civil and social welfare rights for women. Only one of these provisions made it into the constitution. She was told the rest would be adopted by the government, the bu- reaucrats. Fifty years later, not one of her other provisions made it into law. Her experience shows that if women’s rights are not ex- pressly spelled out in the constitution now, the civil authority in Iraq cannot be counted on to adopt these rights later in legislation. I thank her for the role she played in guaranteeing rights for women in Japan and I earnestly hope that the drafters will be as successful as she was as they draft the new constitution for human rights for all people in Iraq. Thank you for your life service, Ms. Gordon. Mr. SHAYS. That was a lovely introduction. My only regret is that the chairman is not here to introduce our other two witnesses. It is wonderful to have you here. You have the floor. Ms. GORDON. Thank you so much, Representative Maloney, for your wonderful words. I am honored to have been invited by you to talk about my work as a drafter of the women’s rights of the Japanese Constitution, and how that might apply to Iraq. In the last 4 years, I have testified about these rights in both Houses of the Japanese Diet. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00161 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 158 Since Japanese women had no rights at all under the constitu- tion before World War II, I drafted 25 separate provisions. Only one survived, as Representative Maloney said, and I will read that to you now. ‘‘Marriage shall be based only on the mutual consent of both sexes and it shall be maintained through mutual coopera- tion with equal rights of husband and wife as a basis. With regard to choice of spouse, property rights, inheritance, choice of domicile, divorce, and other matters pertaining to marriage and the family, laws shall be created from the standpoint of individual dignity and the essential equality of the sexes.’’ I also collaborated on Article XIV which in part reads, ‘‘All the people are equal under the law and there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin.’’ In 1946, I was working for the Government Section of General Headquarters in Tokyo. On February 4, 1946, General Whitney, called in about 20 of his staff members for a top secret meeting. He said, ‘‘You are now a constitutional assembly and by order of General MacArthur you will draft the new constitution of Japan.’’ He also said the task had to be accomplished in 7 days. I was in the Political Affairs Division which was ordered to write the chapter on civil rights. My division chief assigned the article of Women’s Rights to me because I was a woman. I immediately researched many of the world’s then existing constitutions and compiled detailed women’s rights articles including specific social welfare rights for women and children. When I presented my draft to the Chief of the Steering Committee, Colonel Kades, he said, ‘‘Beate, you have given the women more rights than are in the U.S. Constitution.’’ I replied, ‘‘That is not difficult since the U.S. Con- stitution does not even mention the word woman.’’ Eventually, the social welfare rights in my draft were eliminated because the Steering Committee felt they were not appropriate for a constitu- tion but belonged in the civil code. I argued that the Japanese bu- reaucrats would never write such laws into the civil code. Colonel Kades said, ‘‘Don’t worry, we will be here for a long time and we will see to it that they get in.’’ Unfortunately, this did not turn out to be so. Fifty-six years after the constitution was promulgated, so- cial welfare rights for women have not entered the Japanese civil code. When I lecture in Japan, I am always told, ‘‘If only your social welfare rights had been in the constitution, how much struggling we would have avoided.’’ It took 11⁄2 years between the drafting of the constitution and its adoption. Now, Japanese women are exer- cising the constitutional rights they received as a result of Amer- ican participation in preparing the post-war constitution. Japanese women participate in central and local governments, as legislative representatives, mayors and Governors. Women have held positions as Speaker of the House, chairman of a political party and Su- preme Court justice. Women are also prominent in the media as re- porters, talk show hosts, documentary filmmakers and editors. Women practice law. One woman is even the CEO of the largest publishing firm in Japan. The one field where Japanese women have not made enough progress is in the corporate world but they are trying very hard. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00162 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 159 Although conditions in Iraq are quite different from the condi- tions in Japan in 1946, certain lessons can be learned. Women who have been suppressed all over the world for many centuries must be made equal with men in any real democracy. Women every- where are peace loving, interested in social issues, in education for their children and in living a useful life. Women all over the world are demanding equality. I think that Japanese women who have gone through the miseries of war, the deprivation of housing and food, the reconstruction of devastated cities and the institution of a new constitution are in a unique position to serve as models and advisors to the women in Iraq. I am sure they will urge the women of Iraq to make sure their new constitution includes not only fun- damental rights but also social welfare rights. May the United States help them in this noble cause as it did so successfully in Japan. Thank you very much. [The prepared statement of Ms. Gordon follows:] VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00163 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 160 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00164 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 161 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00165 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 162 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00166 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 163 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00167 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 164 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00168 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 165 Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much, Ms. Gordon. As I look at you, I think you must be an imposter to tell me that somehow you were involved in legislation in the 1940’s. Dr. Alarif. Ms. ALARIF. Thank you. I will read my summary in the interest of brevity. I wish to thank the office of Congressman Davis for giving me the opportunity to appear before this distinguished committee to share some observations and reflections on the events of post-war Iraq from the perspective of an American who was born in Iraq. The mere fact that I am appearing before you in this public forum is a sign of significant accomplishment directly resulting from the fall of Saddam Hussein. Prior to this time, I would have had seri- ous concerns for the safety of my family had I taken such a public position on any matter relating to Iraq. Many questions were posed by Congressman Maloney and by Congressman Shays on some things that are happening in Iraq. I hope some of them might be answered during my testimony. I hope you will forgive me for diverting the conversation into a little bit more of a historical perspective of the social and forces that have shaped the political destiny of Iraq and they continue to do so. These are contradictory, religious, ethnic and social factors which can be grouped into four groups. One we are all very familiar with, the religious and ethnic diver- sities. The second is the traditional tribal conservative value sys- tem. This has played and continues to play a very divisive influ- ence on Iraqi politics. The third is the ever growing middle class which was the unifying factor among all these political factions and finally, there is the working classes. A combination of the various wars that were initiated by Saddam and the crippling effects of the embargo effectively gave Saddam Hussein a free hand in eliminat- ing any and all opposition to his party and his politics. Therefore, the Iraqi people could not overthrow him and needed the help of outside power like the United States and its allies. My humble observations as to the situation in Iraq in winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people are as follows. I agree with my esteemed colleague and several of the members of the ad- ministration that the reconstitution of the Iraqi army should re- duce the need for more American troops. The use of a reconstituted Iraqi military can serve multiple purposes. One is to relieve the CPA troops from various security details; two is to have additional military support without having to ask other countries for it; three is to put an Iraqi face on the various operations among the civilian population; and fourth is to provide some gainful employment for those soldiers who have been laid off. I would say it would be any- one below the rank of major, a lower ranking officer. We are talking about winning the hearts and minds. Wherever possible, alternative methods should be sought to reduce the direct contact between the Coalition military forces and the Iraqi civilian population. Since this is a long term association, it is better to set a pattern of peaceful coexistence such as removing some of the in- timidating hardware, and that can happen over time, slowly, so as to restore normal civilian life. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00169 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 166 In traditional tribal areas, much of the violence, I feel, is caused by cultural misunderstanding of the conservative norms. I would put a special effort into friendly persuasion and cultural under- standing and dialog. The final point of my presentation touches upon what my col- league said earlier and that is, there has been an undue emphasis on quotas and ethnic and sectarian differences in Iraq. We all know that Saddam used those differences effectively. Therefore, we should try to avoid that. Most Iraqi families I wish to emphasize are ethnically and religiously mixed. There are millions of Sunnis who have never supported Saddam; they are the silent majority. I don’t like to mention Mr. Hussein’s name too much but he feared the Sunni leaders because they posed the most direct threat to his rule. Other than his immediate tribe, 90 percent I would say of the Sunnis were oppressed like every other sector in that country. They did not support his regime. This group included or happened to in- clude the middle class technocrats, the bureaucrats and those who have been the engine driving the country for years. Therefore, we need to be more inclusive of that group and open dialog with them. At this juncture, I will add a few factors that might shed some light on your questions, Congresswoman Maloney. A law was pro- mulgated and established in 1959 after the first Iraqi Republic giv- ing women equal rights, social and political rights with men. That law was promptly abolished by the Ba’athist regime. During that period, women enjoyed equal inheritance, rights in divorce and so forth. That law was enjoyed for 31⁄2 years. After the Ba’athist re- gime, it was abolished. You can imagine what an uproar that cre- ated among the religious clerics but this was a secular government, the first Iraqi Republic. There was an unsuccessful attempt by the first Iraqi Republic to establish democracy, so a constitution, a secular permanent con- stitution was written. It took a year to write it, by the minds of the Justice Department at that time. It was finished after about a year by 1963 but unfortunately was abolished and not adopted when the Ba’athist coup came, so that was out too. Also just some- thing everyone should know or perhaps you are aware that Iraqis have always had free access to education, medical care and have no income tax, although all of them do pay social security. In conclusion, I have tried to condense a lot of information with a historical perspective. However, I have provided a bit more detail in my written testimony. I believe that Iraq has a good chance of being helped through its rebuilding process. I am optimistic for the future because all the ingredients are now in place for success. Thank you for your time. [The prepared statement of Ms. Alarif follows:] VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00170 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 167 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00171 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 168 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00172 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 169 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00173 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 170 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00174 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 171 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00175 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 172 Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much. Thank you all. I apologize for missing the first three speakers, I was on the floor managing a bill that came out of the committee—the chairman had to do that. I am going to start the questioning with Ms. Blackburn. Thank you very much. Ms. BLACKBURN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to say thank you to each of you for taking your time to come and to talk with us and be before us today, looking at Iraq and the reconstruction efforts and your moving forward and having a healthy, productive, viable country is so very, very important to us. Dr. Alarif, I enjoyed your comments very much and appreciate those. I have a constituent who is an Iraqi-American physician and he is currently back in Iraq and working with the Coalition part- ners in rebuilding the medical training facilities and the programs that will train nurses and doctors. Some of the correspondence that I have had with him is that if anyone doubts that we have made an impression, they need to be here. If anyone doubts that Saddam Hussein had or used or exposed his people to chemical weapons, they need to be here and see some of the children that are suffering from leukemia and other diseases. I think he holds the position that many of us do that Saddam Hussein himself may have been the biggest weapon of mass destruction. I would like you to talk just another brief moment if you will about the medical care deliv- ery systems and how quickly you see all of that coming back up to what you would consider to be par. Ms. ALARIF. Please forgive me if I keep looking at the historical perspective because I think there was much achieved in Iraq in the 1960’s in the pre-Saddam era. Therefore, I don’t know how bad it is right now but I can tell you how good it was before. Iraq was considered the most advanced Middle Eastern country in terms of medical care. It had the best medical schools, had the best doctors, had enough doctors and Ph.D.s per capita than some of the western countries who had more per capita. Of course all of that I imagine, thank God I had not seen the mess he had created. So I think the basis is there. The Iraqi people are highly sophisticated and edu- cated. I just don’t see those ones on the street. I just see some young rabble rousers but most of the Iraqi people are easier to work with than any other country in the Middle East. You have an excellent cadre of people, of scientists, of medical professionals but they just haven’t had the support they should have had from Sad- dam. As far as the leukemia, I have heard that. I have not seen it but I have heard that from our relatives and it is frightening. I don’t know what he was doing there. Nobody knows what he was doing there and what he did to the population but we do know there is an increased frequency of susceptibility to leukemia and other ma- lignancies that were not there, especially among children. Ms. BLACKBURN. Thank you. I certainly appreciated the work this constituent has relayed he is doing. As I said, he is Iraqi by birth, an Iraqi-trained physician, left there in 1991, came to the United States, received his citizen- ship, has worked and lived in my district, has a wonderful family and now he is back there to help his people and to share the excite- VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00176 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 173 ment that I know all of you share and have with the opportunities for freedom. That leads to my next question. Ms. Gordon, I have been so in- trigued with what I see as a fabulous opportunity for the Iraqi peo- ple as they move forward with writing their constitution. I appre- ciated your comments on that. To me it is a little bit miraculous to look at the fact that we are 160 days into this process and it seems they are moving forward really rather quickly, with a gov- erning council in place, with the 25 heads of different ministries in place. I would like to see if you could speak for just a moment as to what you think the timeframe will be for completing a constitu- tion and then moving that to ratification by the people and moving from that to election of their officers. Do you think we are looking at a 5-year period, a 3-year period or what would be your thoughts on that? Ms. GORDON. In Japan, it took a year and a half from the begin- ning to the end but I think it was a much easier task. I have a feeling that in Iraq it will probably take longer. Ms. BLACKBURN. Dr. Alarif, do you have some comment you would like to share with me? Ms. ALARIF. I agree with her in the fact that, academically speaking, that is appropriate. But in reality, as I said, we have had maybe two constitutions. One was the monarchy constitution and then it was redone as I said earlier by the first Iraqi Republic, and this was done by professionals, the Justice Department, Court of Appeals, all the judges. This was a functioning government with highly educated people. They wrote a secular constitution that could serve as a base for perhaps the new constitution. I don’t know where that constitution is, I am sure there are some copies somewhere that the Ba’athists have hidden in Iraq, but that ad- dressed a lot of the questions at that time. It could be updated to the present because it was highly secular and it was opposed by the clerics and the religious groups, so it must have contained something quite good for women. Ms. BLACKBURN. Thank you, Dr. Alarif. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much. Mrs. Maloney. Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you so much and I thank all of the panel- ists. I want to publicly thank you, Mr. Chairman, for including Ms. Beate Gordon at my request to testify. She has brought important insights. Dr. Alarif, your historical perspective is tremendously helpful and I would really like to organize a meeting with the Women’s Caucus for you to come and share your insights. I think it would really be very, very important. I can’t underscore, particularly after reading Ms. Gordon’s book, how important it is to get these rights in the constitution because even in America you can’t get rights into the Constitution; it is very hard. The document is tremendously important and I was very concerned about a news report, and I am going to find that article and send it to you, about a Gallup poll that was taken in Iraq which I found disturbing. It said that the Iraqis didn’t want the women to have as much freedom as they had under Saddam Hussein. I found that hard to believe but I am very concerned VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00177 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 174 about the constitution because it would be a tremendous travesty if the women do not, at the very least, hold on to the rights they had in the constitutions that were written in 1963 and whatever you said, 1958. When I was there, I met many educated doctors, teachers—women—who were very involved in rebuilding their country and actually very much a part of the fabric of it. I just want to know, do you think there will be difficulty in draft- ing the constitution? I understand there will be a number of women on the constitutional committee, getting these rights in the constitution—the right to vote, the right for medical care, the right for education, the rights that Ms. Gordon outlined in her testi- mony? Do you think there will be any problem? Ms. ALARIF. It is a little different. We are addressing two dif- ferent things. I will explain myself in 1 second very briefly. In Iraq, in that culture, especially in Iraq, women have always had rights guaranteed under whatever things but they were not all specifi- cally equal. They had the right of inheritance. A woman my age— I am not young, but my mother is in her late 80’s and was a teach- er—her classmates were doctors, judges. Show me what country that at 85, has these people. So they had that right but they did not have social rights such as the divorce. These have to do with religious sharia—divorce, inheritance, we have one for women, two for men, it is guaranteed. You get an inheritance but it is not equal. Therefore, I see only a problem if the religious clerics start objecting to the fact that this is against this and so forth. It has to be a completely secular, social welfare for women. As far as rights are concerned, I am appalled to be honest with you as to the condition of women under his regime. I don’t want to mention his name continuously, under the old regime of Saddam Hussein versus the first Iraqi Republic, even the second Iraqi Re- public. By the way, we are going to be on the fifth Iraqi Republic now. In the 1960’s and 1970’s, women had a lot more rights and even in the 1950’s, we began to have these rights only to be re- versed by Saddam by adopting this so-called phoney religious over- tone which he never believed in anyway but it served its political purpose. So he abolished that. Mrs. MALONEY. I have a few seconds left. In this book by John Dower, ‘‘Embracing Defeat,’’ which really goes through the Japa- nese experience in writing their constitution and building their country, Ms. Gordon you are treated very positively in this book with your role in the constitution. They talk about a peace clause that they placed in the constitution and this was about the defense of the country. I would like Ms. Gordon to respond to it and also Dr. Alarif, you were saying we need to employ and build the army, you said to protect the people, to protect the streets and so forth. In our structure, that would be the police. The police protect the government building, the police protect the people. Why would you want the army instead of the police to have this function because the army sometimes has a vision of invading others or whatever. Ms. Gordon, could you briefly talk about the peace clause and its importance? Ms. GORDON. It is a very short paragraph in chapter two of the constitution of Japan. It is called ‘‘Renunciation of War’’: ‘‘Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00178 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 175 Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the Nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling inter- national disputes. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea and air forces as well as other war potential will never be maintained. The right of the belligerence of the state will not be recognized.’’ It is true that the Japanese have built a defense force because it doesn’t say here that you can’t defend yourself. It doesn’t specifi- cally say you can defend yourself but it doesn’t say that you can’t. So they have built a defense force. However, in these 56 years since the constitution has been active, no Japanese soldier has been sent outside of Japan, no Japanese soldier has killed another soldier, neither has any Japanese soldier been killed. Not many countries can say that. Costa Rica also has a constitution in which an army is not permitted. They don’t have an aggressive army. They also don’t have a defensive army. I think that is one of the great things about this constitution, that it leads to peace if other countries in the world would also have such clauses that are against war. The interesting thing is that it was the women in Japan who mostly supported this clause of peace and they have kept on being behind it even though the government right now is trying to change the constitution, especially this Article IX. They want to participate in peacekeeping forces for the U.N. and they want to be ‘‘a normal na- tion.’’ It is very sad to think that the ability to make war is normal. I don’t know what will happen but in the meantime, I think 65 per- cent of the women have come out against any amendments to the constitution, especially not to the renunciation of war. I think very few people know about this. I am so glad Representative Maloney asked about it because very few people in general in the United States know about this clause. I think it is something to think about. Ms. ALARIF. Do you want me to address your question? Chairman TOM DAVIS. Sure, go ahead. Ms. ALARIF. The reason I have given in my written testimony a brief history of the Iraqi Army is it never belonged to Saddam. He did not organize the Iraqi Army. The Iraqi Army was organized in 1921 by a British mandate. It became the most highly respected and educated group of people that came in there; its history is very rich. I don’t know what Saddam did to the army but I don’t think most of them, the rank and file, were loyal to him. Mrs. MALONEY. My specific question was why the army and not the police force for protection of people which in our structure. As you know, the police protect our people, protect our buildings. The army is the army. Ms. ALARIF. Well, because of the historical role that the army played versus the police. Police in Iraq—psychologically, the Iraqis don’t like their police because they were always used as spies, as intelligence agents and it is a psychological turnoff. So when they see a policeman, there is no respect. But the army has always been on the side of the people, so they always liked to see an army man. They trust them more. Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00179 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 176 Mr. Haidari, can you tell us how we can get the Shias to help us with the old Ba’athist regime, turning in these people and breaking their underground network? Mr. HAIDARI. I think to fix the situation in Iraq we need to talk about Iraqi total people, not one group. If we talk about one group, that will be very dangerous for us in the future in Iraq. As I see it, the Governing Council, we need to extend it to enhance it, put people who have mandates from their groups to make a big influ- ence. I will give you a simple example. In the Sunni Triangle, we have five new members in the Iraqi Sunni, a five-member Sunni in the Iraq Council. Where is there a role in the Sunni Triangle? There is no role. We didn’t find it. How to convince the area. I can’t see anything. You can’t see anything. We need people who make influence in their roles not only Shiite or only Sunni, no, that is not enough. We have five Sunni now in the Council. There is no influence in the Sunni area. We have 13 Shiite, some of them have some influence but also there are a lot of Shiite who have good in- fluence outside the Council. These people are not against the United States. The people who are not in that Council, are not against the United States but we need to open nice dialog with them. About the Army, Shiite and Kurd in general against the army because they believed Army is Sunni organization. From 1921 until 1963, you can’t find high rank in the Iraqi Army from Kurd, from Iraqi Turk, from Arabic Sunni but it is very, very few people Shiite with high rank. From 1963 until 2003, the most of the high ranks in the Iraqi military, the Iraqi Army are Arabic Sunni. So now when we want to rebuild the Iraqi Army to help United States, we need at last 300,000 Iraqi soldiers, soldiers, all of them, against Saddam Hussein. I will not say most, I say all of them. That means it is not right to disband the army, all the soldiers against Saddam Hussein. High ranks avoided them but lower ranks keep them to help us. In Iraq there was school and high school, high college for officers and high officers. This school started in 1930’s, so we need to depend also on the army. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Let me ask everybody, what can we do to try to get more Iraqis maybe to go back and help us with trans- lations and intelligence gathering? We actually have a shortage of people that can do that kind of communication right now. We would have to have proper screening. Is there anything we can do, any signals we can send to American Iraqis that may want to help us in that? Let me start with Dr. Alarif. Ms. ALARIF. I will comment on one thing he said because I basi- cally agree with Mr. Haidari, except I will just correct you once and that is that General Qasim was a Shiite. We basically are in agreement about the Iraqi Army and I did suggest earlier that we do use the lower ranking officers, so that is an agreement. To galvanize the Iraqi-Americans, what you need are some basically on the ground going with the soldiers, translat- ing. So you can’t have Ph.D.s doing that for you. You perhaps need to look at where the Iraqis are concentrated, maybe around the De- troit area, I don’t know where they are, northern Virginia, put out some kind of a feeler that we would like them to participate in this for ‘‘x’’ amount of time and you may be surprised. But they do have VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00180 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 177 to go through the screening mechanism and all that. I am sure in your district, for example, in northern Virginia, there are a lot of Arabs and Iraqis, but mostly we need Iraqis. Chairman TOM DAVIS. The Governor of one of the provinces over there who was just elected had been in the PTA with me at Bel- vedere Elementary School. He had gone back to Iraq and was elect- ed Governor of his province. Mrs. Maloney was there with me when we had a reunion. We are seeing some of that, but I think more of that would be helpful. When we talked to military leaders, they thought that would be helpful as well. Ms. ALARIF. Absolutely. Chairman TOM DAVIS. A lot of people came here because of Sad- dam and the fact that they were being oppressed. We could use their help. So we need to figure a way to do our best recruitment on that. I think that can help our cause. Ms. ALARIF. Absolutely. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Ms. Gordon. Ms. GORDON. May I comment on what Mr. Haidari said? Chairman TOM DAVIS. Of course. Please. Ms. GORDON. Because in Japan, I think General MacArthur had very much the same idea of using the Japanese in various phases of the society and what we had was a political purge. We also had an economic purge. It was a little bit like the ‘‘denazification’’ pro- gram in Germany. As you said, the higher-ups in the army maybe should not be used but the people lower down. That is exactly what we did in general; we had lists of who had been in what kind of militaristic group, who had been an ultra, ultra conservative, etc., and the Japanese Government provided that for us. If anybody was going to be elected to parliament or a high official in the army or whatever, they would have to be scrutinized according to that list that we and the Japanese Government together had formed. So there were many people later on who were brought back into gov- ernment or brought into the army who had not been on the correct side but they were on a lower level. They did not have the power of the higher level and it worked very well in Japan. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Let me ask, it seems that much of the Ba’ath Party, instead of fighting us in the north, took off their uni- forms and went back into the population. Their strategy seems to be to become terrorists, take out as many Americans or whoever else they can to get publicity and hopefully Americans will dis- sipate, America will give up, go home and they can come back into power. It seems to me that is their strategy. They are not winning strategic victories by what they are doing but they are hopeful they can have an effect back here and discourage us from pulling out early and they have a shot to come back into power. What is your analysis? When I say that, is that a fair analysis? Ms. ALARIF. You know, the Ba’athists have now had two shots at Iraq and they’ve messed it up both times. This last time was a total disaster for the people. After what the Iraqis have seen right now, I think we are making too much of an issue of these people; I think they are just going to die a natural death. Chairman TOM DAVIS. But the problem is that is where the dis- turbances are. If you didn’t have that, it would be a much different situation. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00181 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 178 Ms. ALARIF. I understand, but if you look at Iraq’s history, there have been several revolutions. Whenever there is a new revolution, and let us assume this was like a revolution but from the outside, it takes time to purge the old regime. So La Regime Marcienne has to be gone but you can’t kill everybody, so eventually, once the leaders are gone and for me, for all intents and purposes right now, I see just discontented people who are without work and losing power. There are not that many of them. They should be rounded up at some point and isolated. I think with the passage of time, I don’t think really they’re lethal. They are lethal to the persons who get killed but they are not that lethal in terms of numbers, let us put it this way. During revolutions, as I said in the past, there have been more killings. Chairman TOM DAVIS. I understand, but from an American per- spective, it is lethal. If you remember what one sniper did to the Washington area last year, here you have literally 1,000 snipers sitting around and it is having a very chilly effect on Americans’ perception of this war. We have to take them out as quickly as we can, and we can’t do it without cooperation from the Iraqi people. Ms. ALARIF. I basically stated here how you can get the coopera- tion of the Iraqis—by including them all, by getting cultural under- standing. They come around, they really do come around. I think they are so tired of those wars and Saddam and his problems and they need to live a normal life. I think by inclusiveness and making life more normal for the civilian population, you may be seeing it now, I think. I don’t know. I haven’t been to Iraq but I think things are a lot better now than they were before, aren’t they? Chairman TOM DAVIS. Right. Ms. ALARIF. So perhaps. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Haidari. Mr. HAIDARI. I believe there are two ways to eliminate Saddam’s party. First, we need to open investigation. We will not know Saddam’s loyal followers, about 10,000, not more. We need to de- pend on the Iraqi people to know them. How? By investigation. Let the Iraqi people come to this kind of office and give us their names, give us their history and then we can find them or Iraqi people will help us to find them; this is one way. Another way, we want to build a good relationship with the Iraqi people. Iraqi people should be our eyes in all areas. If we can build a good relationship, we can eliminate Saddam and his party. Until now we didn’t build that well. I give you the best example. Shiite suffered from Saddam a lot, massacres the best example, and until now they don’t help us well. They are watching the situation. We need to deal with them to attract them to our side. If we do that, we eliminate Ba’ath. Ba’ath is not a problem, Ba’ath is a small group, I know them. I don’t read about them in book, I know them. We can eliminate them very easily but we need to depend on Iraqi people. When? How? This is the question. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much. Mr. Janklow. Mr. JANKLOW. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Gordon, if I could ask, when did the occupation by the Allies end in Japan? Do you remember? Ms. GORDON. When did it? VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00182 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 179 Mr. JANKLOW. When did the occupation by the Allies end in Japan? Ms. GORDON. As you know it started in 1945 and it ended in 1952. Mr. JANKLOW. So it was really 7 years after the surrender of the Japanese regime that finally our soldiers left Japan as an occupy- ing force? Ms. GORDON. Right. Mr. JANKLOW. I lived in Germany in 1948, 1949 and 1950 and my father was part of the army of occupation in Germany. The point I am making is, we become pretty frustrated in America when we haven’t solved all these problems in 6 months after the invasion of Iraq when in reality, it takes a while to write a con- stitution, assemble a provisional government, unless we are going to write it for them. We can write a constitution for people but if they are going to write a constitution, it takes a while. Then they have to go through a process of debate—it isn’t like ours gets changed very often after an awful lot of debate and discussion— and then they get around to elections. The point I am trying to make is, these things take time; Iraq wasn’t just waiting there to throw off the yoke and rise up and do all of these functions. Mr. Haidari, let me ask you, as I read your resume, you were a member of the Ba’athist Party. As a matter of fact, you were part of the regional command wing at one time. So when you speak about the Ba’ath Party, you obviously speak from very personal knowledge, am I correct? Mr. HAIDARI. Yes. Mr. JANKLOW. When did you decide you weren’t a member of the Ba’ath Party, that you no longer believed in their ideals or goals? While you are thinking, go ahead, Ms. Alarif. Do you have a re- sponse to that? Ms. ALARIF. I have never been a member of the Ba’ath Party. Mr. JANKLOW. I was talking to Mr. Haidari. Mr. HAIDARI. I was a friend for Ba’ath in 1958. Mr. JANKLOW. It says in your resume, ‘‘In 1962, I became a mem- ber of the Regional Command Wing of the Ba’ath Party.’’ Mr. HAIDARI. Yes. In 1959, we left Ba’ath Party as original mem- ber but in 1962, I was in the top of the responsibility. Mr. JANKLOW. If I could ask you two gentlemen and also the lady, the three of you of Iraqi heritage, are we doing anything right in Iraq? Is our country doing anything right, in your opinion? Yes? Ms. ALARIF. Yes, many things right. Mr. JANKLOW. Could you elaborate a little, please? Ms. ALARIF. First of all, as I said earlier, the fact that Iraq is actually for the first time in its life—and they have been trying for 50 years now to be free—they are free. The Iraqis are free. As I said earlier, I am a testament when I am talking. I have never done this in my entire life. I have been in the States since 1957 and I have never done this, my family would have been shot. Second, Iraq has longed to be a modern Iraq. It is the cradle of civilization but it has remained in the dark ages. It has not come into the industrial age. It has longed to belong to the 21st century and America is bringing it to the 21st century. Mr. JANKLOW. Mr. Haidari. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00183 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 180 Mr. HAIDARI. The most important thing we did in Iraq, we have rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein. Mr. JANKLOW. Are we doing anything else? Mr. HAIDARI. This is the most important thing. How can we in- vest this truth? We have good balance in Iraq. Mr. JANKLOW. If I can personalize this for a moment, have you gone back to Iraq since the war has been over? Mr. HAIDARI. Yes. I went in June. I stayed there 3 nights, 4 nights and came back. Mr. JANKLOW. Do you consult with our Government on what they should be doing? Mr. HAIDARI. I have a long talk with our Government people. I talk with them about many things but now I have been talking for 2 years. Mr. JANKLOW. How long do you think it should take to write a new constitution for Iraq? Mr. HAIDARI. A new constitution? First, how will we do the con- stitution? Not only the constitution, now I think we are not in cor- rect way to put this constitution. We appoint people for that and Iraqi people are not support this direction. Some of them support, others don’t support. Mr. JANKLOW. My time is up but I notice from your testimony that you do say the Iraqi people don’t support the provisional coun- cil that has been appointed. How should we select one and how long should it take to select the appropriate council to help draft the constitution for Iraq? I understand you suggest who should be included but how should they be selected and how long should that take? Mr. HAIDARI. It doesn’t need more than 6 months, I believe, enough to make everything stable in Iraq, 6 months, not more. I don’t want to say to cancel it, extend it, enhance it. We can choose a lot of people to make this council stronger, make good influence on Iraqi people. Mr. JANKLOW. In other words, the basic council is OK, it needs to be enlarged? Mr. HAIDARI. I would not say OK, I said some of the members are OK, some of them are not OK from point of view of Iraqi peo- ple. Some of them are OK, some of them are not OK. Mr. JANKLOW. Isn’t that the way democracy works, some are OK, some are not OK? Mr. HAIDARI. When you want to choose, especially in these days, the people choose this guy or that guy, they are free to do what they want, but we want to appoint some people to help us in our plan in Iraq, I think we have to look for the good people who can help us and be a good influence on the Iraqi people. Now we need to understand this concept. Mr. JANKLOW. All of you emphasize that we must do something about the former police and the former military. Clearly the history in most countries, be it Japan, Germany or Panama, it doesn’t make any difference, there is a long history of bringing the protect- ing forces back into play after some of the leadership and the trou- blemakers are eliminated or removed, not eliminated in the phys- ical sense but removed from the possibility of being involved in con- trol. My question is, the former police commissioner from New York VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00184 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 181 testified today that they have 40,000 policemen employed back in Iraq. Is that a good start? Mr. HAIDARI. In Iraq, we need policemen and soldiers, at least 300,000. Mr. JANKLOW. You need 300,000 for a nation of 26 million? Mr. HAIDARI. We need them to help our administration and Iraqi people to reach the peace inside Iraq. I prefer in my opinion if we let our army be outside of the Iraqi cities. We don’t want to see our army to have any conflict with the Iraqi people. We have army in Iraq, not policemen, so we want to depend on Iraqi police, not American soldiers. That is much better to us. Also, it is much bet- ter to us than asking Turkey and we have some differences now in Iraq about asking Turkey army to come to Iraq. Let us depend on Iraqi army. Mr. JANKLOW. Dr. Alarif, you say the Iraqi people don’t like the police, so have the army do it. He says, they don’t like the army, have the police do it. Ms. ALARIF. No, no, he didn’t say that, his English—— Mr. JANKLOW. He said the Army should not be in the cities. Mr. HAIDARI. The American Army. Ms. ALARIF. The American Army. Mr. JANKLOW. I apologize. I thought you meant the Iraqi army. Mr. HAIDARI. The American Army should not be in the cities. Ms. ALARIF. We are in agreement. Mr. HAIDARI. Also, we don’t need to invite Turkey army to come to Iraq. We want to depend on Iraqi army. Mr. JANKLOW. We agree with that. Chairman TOM DAVIS. I think we agree with that. Thank you very much. This has been very, very helpful to the committee as we move forward. I want to ask unanimous consent to put into the record a letter from Gary Sinise, a Tony and Emmy Award-winner and Academy Award nominee; he wrote the committee. Also, an article from Van- ity Fair by Mr. Hitchens on the situation that I think will be help- ful for the record. Without objection, these will be put into the record. [The information referred to follows:] VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00185 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 182 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00186 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 183 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00187 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 184 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00188 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 185 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00189 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 186 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00190 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 187 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00191 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 188 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00192 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 189 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00193 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 190 Chairman TOM DAVIS. Any other questions from committee mem- bers? [No response.] Chairman TOM DAVIS. Let me thank this panel. It has been very helpful to us in our deliberations. We appreciate your staying with us through the afternoon and being here to answer our questions. Your total testimony will be made a part of the record. Thank you all very much. The meeting is adjourned. [Whereupon, at 2:37 p.m., the committee was adjourned, to re- convene at the call of the Chair.] [The prepared statements of Hon. Chris Chocola, Hon. Michael C. Burgess, Hon. Mike Rogers, Hon. Bill Shuster, and additional information submitted for the hearing record follow:] VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00194 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 191 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00195 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 192 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00196 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 193 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00197 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 194 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00198 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 195 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00199 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 196 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00200 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 197 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00201 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1 198 Æ VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:40 Mar 11, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00202 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6011 D:\DOCS\91303.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1