Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on Iraq's Future

SEN. RUSSELL FEINGOLD (D-WI): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I think both of you gentlemen -- and I know you're getting some pretty tough questioning and these are the basic questions. I guess what I'm still confused by is why do we give the president a blank check to go ahead with this before we had the answers to these questions. How can we expect our allies to join us when we don't have the answers to these questions? That's what's going on here. We gave the president the authority to go ahead and do this before we knew what we were really getting into. So I frankly have sympathy for your task here that we're trying to make this up as we go along. This is the fundamental question. What happens after, the day after or the 10 years after? And I agree with you that it is a wonderful vision to liberate the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi people need to be liberated from Saddam Hussein. How that exactly can happen or that legitimately happens and at what cost are important questions. But that has to happen.

Just yesterday, the president asserted that the Iraqi government is placing troops in civilian areas to create human shields for its military. In light of this information and various informed scenarios focusing on the likelihood of urban warfare in Iraq, U.S. may well be drawn into fighting that results in fact in heavy civilian casualties if we go to war with Iraq. Then under your scenario we're going to turn to the same people who lost loved ones and were injured in the conflict and the same people who had been told over and over again the lie that U.S. sanctions are the cause of all their hardships in recent years and we're going to tell these people that the U.S. military will be governing Iraq and look out for their welfare. I know that many Iraqis will be delighted to see Saddam Hussein go but I'm also concerned that under these circumstances, the United States may well find itself asserting authority over what may well be a substantially hostile people.

So let me ask you, what kind of stability can be consolidated in such an antagonistic situation? And if you then factor in the many, many actors who will be incensed by the notion of a U.S. occupation of a Middle Eastern country, I have to ask, what kind of conditions will U.S. soldiers be facing for months on end? Grossman?

MR. GROSSMAN: Senator, thank you, and I appreciate the fact that you recognize where we are in all of this. If I could make one general point, which is that when you say that we need to do a better job in putting out answers, I say that is absolutely true and I want to report to you and to the chairman that Doug and I, yesterday, asked that many, many, many of the slides and the briefings on all of these things be declassified so that we might be able to come to you and show you the work that's been done on the humanitarian and reconstruction. That is a challenge for us at the moment but I hope we'll break through that over the next couple of weeks so that you can see that there are answers we'd like to give you in public, and I apologize, we just can't do that right now.

In terms of what the challenge we face, all of those have revolved around two things, it seems to me. One, the commitment that both Doug and I made to you that our objective here is to stay in Iraq as long as it takes but not one day longer, and that will be a judgment that we'll have to make as we go there if there's military action. Second, that if the United States is the authority in Iraq, it will be the job of that authority, of all of us, to make sure that Iraq, for the very first time in a very, very long time, is run for the benefit of the Iraqi people. And I believe that is a case than can be made. And if it's a case that can be made in the humanitarian area, in the reconstruction area and in the oil area, I think we will allow ourselves some space to transit quickly to Iraqi authority. For example, 60 percent of Iraq's people today get their food through the Oil-for-Food Program through government handout. The economy doesn't work.

There is infrastructure there that has been decaying the last 10 or 15 years. And what we learned in Afghanistan was that if we could quickly do things that show people that there's a tangible benefit to this change, then we're able to bring people along. I don't say to you for a second that this is an easy thing, but I think it is a doable thing.

SEN. FEINGOLD: Well, let me ask you this. I mean, obviously you're operating with different scenarios.

MR. GROSSMAN: Yes, sir.

SEN. FEINGOLD: Can you give me some sense of how long this might take under different scenarios? What are the different scenarios you're working with in terms of turning over the occupation from the American forces to Iraqi people? Just -- you know, you must have some kind of a timeframe in mind, I don't mind if it's several different ones, but some sense of what we're talking about here.

MR. GROSSMAN: Let me sort of give you an insight into how our thinking has evolved on this. I think when Doug and I first started on this six or eight or 10 months ago, we saw this as a very -- as a rigid thing. We would do phase one for x number of months, phase two for x number of months, phase three for x number of months. But as we've learned more about this, and as we have made more proposals to our bosses, what we have come to conclude is that you could have this transition take place at different rates in different places. For example, let's say that you went into the Ministry of Health, and after getting rid of the top x layers and dug down and found, as you said, or Senator Biden said, that there are very competent people working in the Ministry of Health, that you might be able to transition the Ministry of Health back to Iraqi control quite rapidly.

But if you went over to the ministry of weapons of mass destruction that might take a very long time.

SEN. FEINGOLD: Give me one scenario where that's all done, how much time does it take? Give me one estimate of how long you think the entire process of turning all those over takes.

MR. GROSSMAN: Two years.

SEN. FEINGOLD: Two years?

MR. GROSSMAN: Yes, sir.

SEN. FEINGOLD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.