BUILDING IRAQI SECURITY FORCES MONDAY, MARCH 14, 2005 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, EMERGING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, Washington, DC. The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 12:10 p.m., in room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher Shays (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Representatives Shays, Turner, and Kucinich. Staff present: Lawrence Halloran, staff director and counsel; R. Nicholas Palarino, Ph.D., senior policy advisor; Thomas Costa, professional staff member; Robert A Briggs, clerk; Hagar Hajjar, intern; Jeff Baran and David Rapallo, minority counsels; Andrew Su, minority professional staff member; Earley Green, minority chief clerk; and Jean Gosa, minority assistant clerk. Mr. SHAYS. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations hearing entitled, "Building Iraqi Security Forces," is called to order. Election day in Iraq saw less violence than most days before or since. Why? Broad travel restrictions certainly helped, but more significantly, Iraqi security forces, knowing crowded polling places made attractive targets, stepped forward to protect their emerging democracy; at times they did so heroically. In Iraq that day, we heard reports of police sacrificing themselves to tackle a would-be suicide bomber so voting could continue. Building on that loyalty, pride and sense of ownership evident that day and every day is the key to security in the new Iraq. Current U.S. strategy seeks to bring Iraqi forces forward in the counterinsurgency fight as quickly as possible while transitioning coalition forces to an embedded advisory role; but as we and the Iraqis learned last year, too abrupt a transfer of front line security to minimally trained, weakly motivated and poorly led Iraqi forces risks defeats and defections and emboldens the terrorists. The fiscal year 2005 supplemental appropriation bill contained $5.7 billion to train and equip Iraqi security forces, adding to the $5 billion provided last year. The fundamental question behind these numbers; how will we and the Iraqis know with the right number of forces with the right skills and equipment are ready to assume the difficult, evolving security mission there? The answer is not just numbers, capabilities matter as much as quantities. Decisions about the strategist roles, doctrines, tactics and command structures of Iraqi security forces will have profound implications on their ability to confront a violent insurgency while nurturing a democratic one. But numbers do matter. We need to know how many have been trained, how many will be trained, and how many will be deployed by the Iraqi Ministries of Defense and Interior to secure their nation. The effort faces daunting challenges. To fill the vacuum created by the abrupt dissolution of the entire army and police force after the fall of Hussein's regime, Iraqi security personnel must learn to fight while they fight. Uneven vetting of recruits and limited offsite training has left local police units undermanned, under-motivated and vulnerable to infiltration by the very insurgents they're meant to fight. Some in the new predominantly Shiite Iraqi government have proposed a re-deBa'athification of security forces, a move which others fear could further destabilize rather than help secure Iraq. But all these efforts should be guided and inspired by individual and collective examples of Iraqi determination to seize a safer future. Mithal a-Alusi is a Sunni and the first Iraqi political official to travel to Israel to address an antiterrorism conference. For his courage, he was removed from his from his position on the DeBa'athification Commission and he lost his personal security protection. On February 8th, his two sons were gunned down in Baghdad, and he still remains a target. When I met him here 2 weeks ago and offered to help him move to the United States for his own protection, all he wanted was to go back to Iraq and help his nation become a democracy. As a recent article on a-Alusi observed, when you hear it asked whether Iraqis will fight for their own freedom, ask yourself whether it is possible to fight harder than Mithal a-Alusi. In the January 30th election, his and more than 8 million other purple index fingers pointed the way to a peaceful and democratic future for the nation. Today we ask how we can best help them fulfill that destiny. [The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:] TOM DAVIS, VIRGINIA, CHAIRMAN CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, CONNECTICUT DAN BURTON, INDIANA ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, FLORIDA JOHN M. MCHUGH, NEW YORK JOHN L. MICA, FLORIDA "IL GUTKNECHT, MINNESOTA AKE. SOUDER, INDIANA EVEN C. LATOURETTE, OHIO FOOD RUSSELL PLATTS, PENNSYLVANIA CHRIS CANNON, UTAM JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR, TENNESSEE CANDICE MILLER, MICHIGAN MICHAEL R. TURNER, OHIO DARRELL ISSA, CALIFORNIA VIRGINIA BROWN-WAITE, FLORIDA JON C. PORTER. NEVADA KENNY MARCHANT, TEXAS LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, GEORGIA PATRICK T. MCHENRY, NORTH CAROLINA CHARLES W. DENT, PENNSYLVANIA Election Day in Iraq saw less violence than most days before or since. Building on the loyalty, pride and sense of ownership evident that The fiscal year 2005 supplemental appropriation bill contains 5.7 billion dollars to train and equip Iraqi security forces, adding to the five billion dollars provided last year. The fundamental question behind these numbers: How will we and the Iraqis know when the right number of forces, with the right skills and equipment, are ready to assume the difficult, evolving internal security mission there? Page 1 of 2 The answer is not just numbers. Capabilities matter as much as quantities. Decisions about the strategic roles, doctrines, tactics and command structures of Iraq security forces will have profound implications on their ability to confront a violent insurgency while nurturing a democratic one. But numbers do matter. We need to know how many have been trained, how many will be trained, and how they will be deployed by the Iraqi Ministries of Defense and Interior to secure their nation. The effort faces daunting challenges. To fill the vacuum created by the abrupt dissolution of the entire Army and police force after the fall of the Hussein regime, Iraqi security personnel must learn to fight while they fight. Uneven vetting of recruits and limited off-site training has left local police units undermanned, under-motivated and vulnerable to infiltration by the very insurgents they're meant to fight. Some in the new predominantly Shiite Iraqi government have proposed a re-deBa'athification of security forces, a move which others fear could further destabilize rather than help secure Iraq. But all these efforts should be guided and inspired by individual and collective examples of Iraqi determination to seize a safer future. Mithal a-Alusi is a Sunni and the first Iraqi political official to travel to Israel to address an antiterrorism conference. For his courage, he was removed from his position on the De-Ba'athification Commission and he lost his personal security protection. On February 8th, his two sons were gunned down in Baghdad. When I met him here two weeks ago, all he wanted was to go back to Iraq and help his nation become a democracy. As a recent article on him observed, "When you hear it asked whether Iraqis will fight for their own freedom, ask yourself whether it is possible to fight harder than Mithal al-Alusi." In the January 30th election, his and more than eight million other purple index fingers pointed the way to a peaceful and democratic future for their nation. Today we ask how we can best help them fulfill that destiny. Mr. SHAYS. The Chair at this time recognizes the ranking member, Mr. Kucinich. Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. To the witnesses, I understand that shortly we're going to have the honor of having our ranking member, Mr. Waxman, here, and I look forward to his presence as well. I want to first begin by thanking the men and women who wear the uniform of this country and who serve in the Armed Forces and who serve valiantly and bravely in Iraq and around the world. I want to thank their families for giving their sons and daughters, their husbands and wives to this Nation for service. Their service is honorable, and no matter what our position happens to be with respect to this administration's policy, we can all agree that the men and women who serve ought to be honored. I want to thank the chairman for holding the hearing, and I want to welcome the witnesses. As the key investigative and oversight committee in Congress, we're the ones who must shine the light of truth on the security situation in Iraq. The truth, however, is elusive. This Congress has been misled time and time again about this war by this administration. This Congress has been told that we needed to strike Iraq preemptively in order to find weapons of mass destruction. We have not found a single WMD. In fact, the administration has given up to not even looking for WMDs anymore. We were also told that the United States would be greeted as liberators, yet 1,500 brave American soldiers have died so far, and the number increases daily, whether it is by suicide attacks or improvised explosive devices. Many Iraqi security forces and innocent civilians have also died needlessly. And there are thousands upon thousands of our soldiers who have been injured, as well as innocent civilians injured as well. We were told that the administration had a plan for the occupation of Iraq and for reconstruction. We were told contracts would be openly bid, and that the process would be transparent; yet the Inspector General for the Coalition Provisional Authority recently reported that the Coalition Provisional Authority could not properly account for a single penny of some $9 billion in funds turned over by the U.S.-led authority to the interim Iraqi government. Congress has spent $5.8 billion already on building Iraqi security forces, and now we're being asked to foot another $82 billion in costs for Iraq, including $5.7 billion to build Iraqi security forces. Is there a plan for spending this money wisely, or is the plan to keep throwing good money after bad? Will this $11.5 billion be properly accounted for as opposed to the $9 billion in funds that have not been properly accounted for? Mr. Chairman, the current course we are on in Iraq is absolutely unacceptable. This administration seems to be blinded by and ignorant to the realities in Iraq. It is determined to see its policies through no matter how many wounded and how many casualties there may be, no matter how foolish and wrong-headed those policies may be. We're told that these security forces need more time and more funds for training and for leaders to emerge to assume chains of command. Mr. Chairman, this administration has had enough time |