Questions 27-28: Mr. Mark Udall (D-CO)
Question 27: Mr. Mark Udall (D-CO):
Summary: Would you comment on the actual number of casualties, including those wounded and suffering from PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), in the Iraq war?
(question summary by incap)
Play Audio
Response from General Wesley Clark:
Transcript by Melange
Well, first of all, I tell you with respect to US casualties, that nobody has the exact number of people who will end up injured, wounded and psychologically damaged after the combat.
My guess is it will be significant because…I think when you kill people at close range, under stress, for a prolonged period – as many of our soldiers have – even if you’re totally unscratched, that psychologically that comes back to haunt you. You may feel totally justified by it at the time. It may be a fear reaction, but there are likely to be several thousand, tens of thousands, who experience long-term after effects in terms of anger, depression or other symptoms.
You can’t calculate the impact on families from the separation and the stress that this entails. And, this is why the Army is undergoing such care in bringing people back and post processing but if you talk to the people in the units, they’ll tell you that divorces are rampant, family problems are everywhere these are just…these are enormous scars that people carry for the rest of their lives, physical or emotional or mental from these conflicts.
And in addition, I just want to say one other thing that strikes me is that we’re talking about American casualties. One of the things we didn’t do, and I understand why General Franks didn’t want to do this – he said he’s not doing a body count so he didn’t keep track of the enemy losses, but we just don’t know what the figure is on total Iraqi losses. I don’t have any idea.
I’ve heard the figure of 100,000, I’ve heard the figure refuted, said it’s way too high but I think that the important point is that when you talk about costs, you have to not only talk about the cost to Americans but you have to talk about the cost to the Iraqis.
People in Iraq are citizens of the region. They’re not only that, they’re related to people in the region so when I’m in Kuwait or Bahrain, I find people who have cousins in Iraq and their family…some of them speak English, some of them have been educated in this country – they’re part of the casualty total of this operation.
And I just think it makes sense when we talk about the costs, and we’re…especially, as the chairman was talking about with democracy and how we can help impel it forward in the Middle East – we recognize it’s not just American lives that are at risk here, it’s a lot of lives from a lot of different groups.
Question 28: Mr. Mark Udall (D-CO):
Summary: Would you comment on the idea that we are using an outdated model or old mindset by confusing the situation with Soviet States and Communism with the invasion of Iraq and Islamic fundamentalism? That we are using a nation-state symmetrical model when we look at deploying our military force and using it?
(question summary by incap)
Play Audio
Response from General Wesley Clark
Transcript by Melange
I think you’re exactly right, I think that, um, and I can’t speak for why it was done inside the administration – I’ve read it, I guess Richard Perle should speak for it more directly, um, it was told to me by the generals who were involved in the discussions that this administration more or less decided to go after Iraq because they didn’t know what to do, didn’t feel confident they could really deal with the problem of terrorism directly so they went after it in a proxy form by going after states.
If they couldn’t get the terrorists, at least get the states that support it and then it looked like the best state to go after was Iraq and there were a host of other reasons why you could do that.
But, the truth is that we do have to fight terrorism, not only through democratization and the improvement of living standards around the world, but we also have to fight the ideology and, we need to be able to confront the ideology of Islam. We can’t do it – I can’t do it, I’m not Islamic – but people who are Islamic scholars can debate on the interpretations of various sections of the Koran and they’ve had some success in doing so and even changing the minds of some of these people who are terrorists. I think ultimately that’s the way you win.
We should be trying to take terrorists and turn them around. During the Cold War, there was a guy named Eric Hoffer who was…many of us read it in school, and he was a Communist. He was, as I recall, a dock worker in the 1930’s and he became the greatest apostle for freedom because he’d been there and he knew how to address it. We should find people who are Islamics, who have been terrorists, who have changed their minds. We should be letting those people speak, giving them platforms, encouraging them because we can win ideologically and that’s the best way to win this war.
Response from Richard Perle (not transcribed but available on audio)