Hearing of the House Armed Services Committee Subject: GAO's Iraqi Government Assessment
Statement
HEARING OF THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE
SUBJECT: GAO'S IRAQI GOVERNMENT ASSESSMENT
CHAIRED BY: REP. IKE SKELTON (D-MO)
WITNESS: DAVID WALKER, COMPTROLLER GENERAL, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
REP. VIC SNYDER (D-AR): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Walker, for being here. I guess I spent too much time with Mr. Thornberry because he and I are -- are coming at this in similar ways, I think, from an independent view.
Over 30 years ago, when I worked for a community action agency, I attended what we thought was this brand new concept of measuring by objectives and -- which I think makes a lot of sense. You come up with what the goals of the organization are and then you come up with some measurable ways of dealing with it. At that time, I was a supervisor of VISTA volunteers, and it wasn't enough just to have good people roaming through poor communities. You actually wanted to see was there something measurable. And so we have these benchmarks that we're -- you know, we're all looking at as something measurable.
The concern I have is getting back to a line that you have at the very end of both your summary and in the main text in which you say, "As the Congress considers the way forward in Iraq, it should balance the achievement of the 18 Iraqi benchmarks with military progress and with homeland security goals, foreign policy goals, and other goals of the United States." And my concern is I'm not -- I don't believe that we are spending enough time talking about what are our goals for the region and for individual countries, and I came up with just quick list here. One would be the goal of fighting terrorism, international terrorism organizations such as al Qaeda. What is -- should our relationship and what's our long-term policy goal with regard to Iran? With regard to Syria? And it's both on the Iraqi border but also it's involvement with Lebanon. Saudi Arabia, we recognize it as an energy state, a stabilizing state, but also has not developed much in terms of democratic principles. Turkey, one of our NATO allies, but also has issues with regard to Kurdistan and the border. The whole issue of energy policy and where oil fits into that. Jordan, and the influence that it has, not only with regard to -- to Iraq, probably a million or so Iraqi refugees that it has there, but also Jordan's big relationship with the Palestinians and its relationship with Israel. The whole issue of genocide. One of the things we don't have is what would happen if we didn't have any military force there. Would the numbers of violence go -I'm talking about a trend. This perspective would be looking at what -- what would happen to human rights down the line. The whole issue of intelligence; our ability to gather intelligence throughout the world. How does this -- our military mission fit in, and the future of Iraq fit in to gathering intelligence? Our relationship with the Muslim world as a whole, the view of the Muslim world as a whole is the worst the United States has seen in a long time.
Anyway, my point is I'm not asking you what do you think the individual goals are for each of those nations, what is our strategic goal for that region, but we have a series of what we think are measurable objectives, but I'm not sure how they relate to any of these specific strategic goals or -- or we don't have an articulation of the goals for that -- that area. And I'll use one specific example with regard to Iran. The president, in his, I think, speech in Australia, talked about Iraq being an ally against international terrorism, and we've heard people talk about it being an ally against Iran. Well, a democratic Iraq may have a different view of what its relationship with Iran will be.
So my question is should we be having a hearing here -- we've had this one today on measuring the objectives -- shouldn't we be having a -- a bigger discussion on what are the foreign policy goals of this nation with regard to some of those areas I outlined, and then have a discussion about what are the objectives that we're going to look at with regard to achieving those specific foreign policy goals that you mention in your -- your statement.
MR. WALKER: Well, first, Mr. Snyder, let me say that what we did in issuing this report is what the Congress asked us to do on the time frame you asked us to do it.
REP. SNYDER: No, I --
MR. WALKER: In my professional opinion, to answer your question --
REP. SNYDER: I understand that completely.
MR. WALKER: Well, but let me --
REP. SNYDER: I'm not -- I'm not talking about this should be your burden. I'm talking about this should be our burden here in terms of the goals. Yeah.
MR. WALKER: But I think we can help you. In my opinion, I think we need to fundamentally reassess what our goals ought to be -- micro in Iraq, and macro within the region and with regard to the Islamic community, et cetera.
Secondly, we need to define objectives in order to try to help achieve those macro and micro goals. We need metrics and milestones that will help to assess where we are, how we're progressing, which ones are more important than others, and what's a realistic path -- you know, an expectation to have on making that progress -- and we need to have periodic reporting on that based upon relevant and reliable data that is reviewed by independent parties. We would be happy to work with the Congress to try to achieve that, should you so desire.
REP. SNYDER: Thank you.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source