House Armed Services Committee - Operation Iraqi Freedom Force Rotation Plan

Federal News Service January 28, 2004 Wednesday

January 28, 2004 Wednesday

HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE

SUBJECT: OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM FORCE ROTATION PLAN

ACTING CHAIR: REPRESENTATIVE JIM SAXTON (R-NJ)

LOCATION: 2118 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.

WITNESSES: GENERAL PETER SCHOOMAKER, ARMY CHIEF OF STAFF; GENERAL MICHAEL HAGEE, MARINE CORPS COMMANDANT; LT. GENERAL NORTON SCHWARTZ, DIRECTOR FOR OPERATIONS, JOINT STAFF; LT. GENERAL JAMES CARTWRIGHT, DIRECTOR FOR FORCE STRUCTURE, RESOURCES AND ASSESSMENT, JOINT STAFF

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
REP. SAXTON: Thank you very much, Mr. Cooper, much appreciated. Mr. Marshall.

REP. JIM MARSHALL (D-GA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm probably going to ask both of you to think a little bit outside your lane as well. But I want to begin by thanking General Schoomaker for the (privilege ?) trip-and I don't think you benefited at all from my counsel. I certainly benefited from yours.

Just a quick observation before I ask my question. Ms. Wilson's approach to this I think is entirely reasonable. There is a sense on this committee that end strength may be low. The fact that there's an emergency order that is going to increase the permitted end strength by some 30,000 suggests that that may be the case. And you gentlemen are both saying that if we are at a plateau then we need to really rethink end strength. But we don't know that we are. And you are quite reasonable in being worried about increasing end strength, and then not being given in the long run the kind of resources you need in order to train to do all the things that you'd like to do to have a really quality Marine Corps and Army.

Our history, this committee's history and the Congress's history, is not good when it comes to this, and we can talk about providing you the resources and the money as much as we'd like to right now, but then hard choices are made two, three, five years from now-you don't get the money, you don't have the quality force that you want. So I think it's reasonable for you to take the position that you're taking.

I also think Ms. Wilson is quite right that the details behind the talking points would be very helpful to this committee, and I suspect that you'll be forthcoming with those, and that frankly I think you're headed in exactly the right direction in that we ought to be not part of the bureaucracy that gets in your way, but part of the bureaucracy that helps you move in that direction.

Out of your lanes, if you could order-suppose you could order any kinds of individuals-not just in the United States, but I specifically have in mind the interagency folks, State Department, you name it-but if you were in a position to order individuals within the United States and outside the United States to move to a war theater like Iraq, and perform certain functions, to assist in the overall objective here, which is securing security and building a nation-which, by the way, our history is not good at -- 17 efforts in the 20th century, if I'm not mistaken; three successful-and those were South Korea, Japan and Germany. The rest were not successful. So our history isn't good with regard to this. It's a long-term strategic interest of ours to be in a position to do this. So how do we do it?

It's-Mr. Larsen's observation that this one-to-one, can you transfer an Iraqi, one Iraqi into a U.S. military role and expect that you'd have the same capabilities-in some senses they would greatly exceed our capability. I mean, they're there. They're the ones that have to police that country. We can't do that for them. An alien army, no matter how proficient it is, it's going to really struggle to police a foreign country. So we've got to have the Iraqis stepping in. There's a process that we go through institutionally in order to make that happen. Who do you need there that's not there now that you'd like to be able to order to get over there and do something that would help you out? And I would limit myself to Americans. I suspect that there are others around the world that have comparative advantages over us that we simply can't match.

GEN. SCHOOMAKER: Well, without going into a War College lecture here -- (laughter) -- within our own capability, we need to think across all of the elements of national power-diplomatic; informational; military; economic. And of course there's things in between, but those are the major (muscle ?) movements.

Our job, as military people, are to provide the military element of national power, which are principally security based. And our job is to provide a secure environment, and environment in which other kinds of things can happen, the kind of things regardless-and by the way, I think it's important that there's coalition effort, which there is, that there's a wider understanding that this effort in Iraq is a very, very important effort for the future of not only the United States, but the world; and that it's in our best interest to have a coherent country where its populace has bought into a process that they understand and can live with, where we have electrification in the country; we have proper security; we have proper water; we have effective markets; we have all of the kind of great potential that is resident within Iraq coming to bear.

You know, I think those are the kind of capabilities that are going to need to be focused and fine-tuned to make this occur. Our job is to help create a secure environment for those kind of things to happen. That includes not only our presence, but also the efforts that we have in standing up security forces within the country so that they can do much of this for themselves.