Hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee - Iraq After the Surge: What Next?

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SEN. CHRISTOPHER DODD (D-CT): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And welcome to both of you. As the chairman has said, you've got a long day and a long day tomorrow coming up, and I'm sure some of these questions will be repeated in one form or another. So we thank you for your endurance and your willingness to share with us your thoughts on all of this.

I'd like to first of all pick up on something Senator Lugar has begun. I think it is very important to making these assessments to look at the broader context, what we're dealing with. And one of the reasons I was a couple minutes late getting over here is we're in the midst of trying to deal with the housing piece of legislation. You've got some 8,000 people a day in this country that are entering into foreclosure on their homes, to put it -- the numbers on inflation, unemployment rates, all of these factors, which are contributing to a lot of people's concerns about generally where things are heading.

I'd like to focus, if I can, just on two quick questions -- one, I think, more specifically for you, General, to respond to, and one for the ambassador. One has to do with the condition of our troops. I think all of us here -- certainly at this dais, representing our constituency, whatever views we have on policy, there's an incredible admiration for what our men and women are doing in uniform. You both raised it. It's been raised by others. It's very important, I think, that our troops know that. Arguments over policy are one thing, but our commitment to these men and women serving know no division whatsoever.

But I was sort of surprised and stunned on some of the recent numbers. A study done by the Department of Defense found that each -- with each additional deployment, soldiers are 60 percent more likely to develop severe combat-related stress issues, while a study conducted by the surgeon general of the Army found that soldiers suffering from high levels of combat stress are twice as likely to find themselves in a situation where they are in violation of the armed forces' ethics, standards, and seven times more likely to hit an Iraqi civilian.

So I'd like to ask you, if I could, General, as someone who has really written the book on counterinsurgency -- and I say that with great admiration for your background and abilities -- what impact is this stress of repeated combat tours having on our military's ability to effectively conduct the counterinsurgency campaign? What effect should such -- could such high levels of combat stress have on soldiers who must regularly interact with and ultimately win the hearts and minds argument?

Both the Army chief of staff, General George Casey, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullen, have both raised serious concerns about our armed forces' capability to react to emerging threats, going to the point Senator Lugar raised about other contingencies where our forces may be called upon.

I'll just quote for you -- which I'm sure you're aware of -- General Cody's comments at recent hearing before the Armed Services Committee, where we were this morning. And I think in relationship to the surge, talking about the surge, he said, "Right now all the units that are back at home station are training to replace (the) next units in Afghanistan and Iraq. If the surge comes down the way we predict, and we get so many troops back and brigade combat teams back, and we can get the dwell time right, we'll start getting those units trained to full-spectrum readiness for future contingencies. I don't know what those future contingencies are," he went on to say, "but I know that this nation and this joint force needs to have a division-ready brigade, an airborne brigade ready for full-spectrum operations, a heavy brigade combat team ready for full-spectrum operations, and a Stryker brigade combat team ready for full-spectrum operations, and we don't have that today."

He went on to say, "Right now, as I've testified -- and I've been doing this for six years -- I was at G-3 of the Army and vice chair (sic; chief) now for almost (four) years, and I've never seen our lack of strategic depth at where it is today."

Now, if we're talking about continuing our forces there, adding to the stress, in the assessments being done by the surgeon general and the Defense Department's own study, and in light of these other issues you're dealing with, obviously, on the ground in Iraq, what additional pressures are we placing on these men and women serving?

What additional pressures are we placing on ourselves and our ability to respond to other contingencies, given the pressures that have been recognized by some of your colleagues here at the Department of Defense?

GEN. PETRAEUS: Well, let me talk about Iraq, Senator. Obviously that's what I'm riveted on and that's what my mission is. And when I got back to Iraq in February 2007, there were two enormous changes. The first was the damage done to Iraq by ethnosectarian violence, as I mentioned, the fabric of society torn; the second, how much more our troopers understand what it is that we are trying to do in this very complex endeavor -- that is, counterinsurgency operations.

By the way, counterinsurgency operations require full-spectrum operations. They require offense, and we do a lot of it. In the past year, we did the Ramadi clearance, Baqubah, south Baghdad. Some of these were multiple -- certainly multiple battalions and beyond brigade combat team operations. These are big operations, in other words, not just hearts and minds activities. Certainly it involves force protection, some defense, and it involves stability and support operations, which a lot tend to associate with counterinsurgency once the security situation reaches that point.

Our troopers really very much understand it, and they are far better at this -- far better because of changes made in the institution, in the army -- General Cody is the vice chief of -- in the training of our troopers or education of the leaders, the collective mission rehearsal exercises, the lessons learned process and all the rest of that.

Now, there's no question but that these multiple tours have put enormous strain on the force. Absolutely. It is something, again, I am personally very keenly aware of.

Paradoxically, reenlistment rates seem to be quite high. Again, I track the units in Iraq, and one of the divisions that is there, on its third tour, in fact, getting ready to come home, is a unit that -- the division commander reported the other day that met their reenlistment goal for the entire fiscal year at this point right now, obviously about halfway into it. So again, while the troopers very much feel the strain, while I would personally welcome -- I look forward to the opportunity for the army and so forth to come back to 12-month tours vice 15(-month) ones, which are particularly difficult, the troopers that we see in Iraq are doing a magnificent job.

They also happen to be the best equipped force. They are vastly better equipped than we were when I was a division commander and we went through the berm, flew over the berm in the fight to Baghdad. And I can give you case after case after case of equipment that places our forces in an absolutely unique position in the world now. And we monitor this. When we saw another country starting to do some operations recently in that area and recognized the vast differences between our situational awareness; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets; the satellite communications; the fusion of conventional Special Forces and special mission units, and all the rest of that, it is vastly better than we were in the beginning. And again, our troopers do an extraordinarily good job despite the enormous strain that clearly they and their families have experienced over the course of the last number of years.

SEN. DODD: While I thank you for that answer, I'm still deeply concerned about these reports on stress levels and so forth that are mounting up and --

GEN. PETRAEUS: Sir, I share that, again, as I stated, and that is a factor in my recommendations.

And again I have, you know, personal experience with --

SEN. DODD: No. I know you do.

I didn't get to the question, Ambassador Crocker, just about these militias. Again the good news is this Awakening and dealing with -- the Sunni militias dealing with al Qaeda is the good news. It's not a long-term strategy and exactly the point, I think, Senator Biden was driving at.

And since here we're arming and engaging these militias and, at the same time, strengthening or calling for a strengthened central government to respond to all of this, how you turn that around, it seems to me, when you're counting on these militias, and then plan to integrate them, is going to raise some huge issues --

AMB. CROCKER: Senator, let me take that one, if I could, because there's a few misconceptions.

We don't arm any of these Sons of Iraq. They are tribal members to begin with. Every Iraqi is allowed an AK-47 in his own house by law. And they are more than heavily enough armed. What we have done is we stood by them initially when the first tribe came forward in October 2006 before the surge.

But then subsequent to that, as the chain reaction took place in Ramadi and went up and down the Euphrates River Valley in the early spring and then summer of 2007, enabled by the additional forces out in Anbar, then in Baghdad, South Baghdad, Diyala and so forth, these individuals have decided to reject the extremist ideology of al Qaeda, their oppressive practices and the indiscriminate violence that they visited on all communities in Iraq, not just Shi'a but Sunni Arab communities as well.

And that's a hugely significant shift. It's a seismic shift in the Sunni Arab world and one that we hope to see extend even farther.

(Cross talk.)

SEN. DODD: But we're paying them, of course.

AMB. CROCKER: We -- well, sir, they started out volunteering and they did volunteer for a long time. And we said, you know, we did the math. And the math is $16 million a month that we pay them with CERP. And now, as I mentioned, the Iraqis are giving $300 million in CERP. Or how many tens of millions of loss of vehicles or loss of priceless lives, and I think that was the best investment that we've made in Iraq.

And now we are transitioning them. As I mentioned, over 21,000 transitioned to Iraqi security forces or other positions. And slowly but surely, not easily -- nothing in Iraq is easy.

SEN. DODD: Thank you.

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