Question 32: Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-CA):
Summary: Do you go for a very quick hand-off to the Iraqi military or a slower, more extended hand-off?
(question summary by incap)
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Response from General Wesley Clark
transcript by Reg NYC
Oh, I'd go for a longer hand-off, but we'll have to support that. Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Duncan Hunter comments: ...
Longer, the more extended hand-off in terms of advisors and other things, but you'll have to support it. And it means increasing the instrength, the active instrength of the United States Army, and that's billions of dollars additional resources we're talking about to do that.
Chairman Duncan Hunter comments: ...
I think it depends on how you define "the tougher security jobs." There's two things that are tough about the- there's three thing that are tough.
There's first of all, the intelligence collection. They cannot do, and we're not going to give them the techniques to do right now, all of the sophisticated technical stuff we've got. So, they're not going to have that.
Chairman Duncan Hunter interrupts: ...
Number two is, there's the sort of kicking down doors in the middle of the night and pulling people out of their homes. Now, it's my understanding they've hired back a lot of people from the old regime, who were part of the Ministry of Interior and are really good at doing this. And that's a very dangerous thing to have done, but that's what's being done, I'm told. And that means that we're building in an automatic conflict in between the government and it's own servants, in terms of standards of dignity and law, rule of law and so forth. That's a tough task. We've already started turning it over to the Iraqis, and I'm in favor of really close supervision of that one as long as you can get away with that without infringing too much on Iraqi sovereignty.
And then there's the tough task of using big battalions, combat support, air-ground coordination and so forth. You got to walk up to this one. It takes us in the United States Army sixteen years to train a battalion commander and longer for a brigade commander.
So, assuming we've got some captains that have come in, two or three years of training, that's not asking too much. At this point, having invested all these lives and all these hundreds of billions of dollars and all of our national prestige in this, then I think we need to do as much as we can to minimize the risk that something's going to go seriously wrong during this phase of the operation.
And that means that I would err on the side of planning for, resourcing and preparing for a longer stay. Then if you can reduce it, fine, but not to try to cut corners now.
Chairman Duncan Hunter comments: ...
Richard Perle comments: ...
Duncan Hunter comments: ...
Thank you Mr, Chairman.
Response from Richard Perle (not transcribed but available on audio)
