Transcript: Gen. Meyers Testifies on Capitol Hill

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard B. Meyers, along with Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker and Commandant of the Marine Corp. Gen. Michael W. Hagee testified today before the House Armed Services Committee about the U.S. position in Iraq. This is a transcript.

HUNTER: The hearing will come to order.

Our guests this morning are General Richard B. Myers, United States Air Force, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; General Peter J. Schoomaker, United States Army, chief of staff of the Army; and General Michael W. Hagee, United States Marine Corps, commandant of the Marine Corps.

Welcome to the committee, gentlemen. We all look forward to your testimony and we appreciate your appearance before the committee this morning.

We called this hearing because the committee has focused practically all of its energy on moving our defense authorization bill through the House and addressing the Abu Ghraib prison situation for much of the last month. While that’s all very important, we must not forget that there is a war on and our troops are in the thick of it.

And we appreciate all your great work over the last several months in helping us to know what your requirements are and helping us to shake this defense bill. I think we’ve turned out a great product yesterday afternoon.

While the media has been absorbed with the misdeeds of a few M.P.s, our soldiers turned back an uprising by Muqtada al-Sadr and his Iranian supported Mahdi Brigade. He and his militia are now cornered. They’ve retreated into holy sites in Najaf, proving to Iraqis and the world that he has no respect for Islam or Iraq’s future as a nation. Ultimately winning that war and building a secure Iraq are immensely important to the future, and we must not lose sight of that. I called this hearing to make sure that we don’t.

Gentlemen, we look forward to your testimony. And I want to just take this opportunity to thank my colleagues, Republican and Democrat, on this committee, who’ve put together a defense bill for your personnel and your services in this year, the year of the troops. And we’ve passed this bill out 60 to zero, which I think reflected the common ground that we have in supporting our troops.

We want to thank you for the great relationship that we’ve had here over the last several months. When we needed information, we’ve gotten it quickly.

As we go down through the conference with the Senate, when they turn away from this prison mess and get on with the work of maintaining our military, they’ll be producing the product. And we need to get into this conference and get this thing done and get it to the president’s desk so that we can have everything that we need to continue to pursue our mission, not only in Iraq, but in the Afghanistan theater, and with our total force around the world.

So we look forward to continuing to work with you on a very close basis, and produce a good product for the folks that wear the uniform of the United States and for our national security.

HUNTER: So thanks for being with us.

And I want to thank Mr. Skelton for all of his great work on shaping this bill, and would turn to the gentleman from Missouri for any remarks he might want to make.

SKELTON: Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. I join you in welcoming our witnesses, General Myers, General Schoomaker, General Hagee. I hope we can have a full and interesting discussion this morning.

As the chairman noted, we passed a bill yesterday afternoon, the Department of Defense bill, $422 billion. We think basically it’s a pretty good bill, good for the troops in particular.

A good part of it, as you know, is a $25 billion supplemental which we marked up, and it helps with the end strength in both of your services, the Army and the Marines. I think that’s a very, very positive step, and I hope you all will support that end of the day.

I think the question we want answered today is, where are we in all of this? There’s reason for optimism, there’s reason for pride. Our forces, acting in concert with our coalition partners, have accomplished a great deal. We want to hear about that. And they’re having success in areas; reconstruction efforts seem to be progressing.

And on the other hand, we’re bombarded in the news media, not just with the incidents at the Abu Ghraib prison, pictures thereof, but more recently, yesterday, today, with the Chalabi situation. I hope you will tell us what you know about that. That’s very distressing, because, as I understand it, we relied so much on him.

And I was troubled when I watched on CNN, and I think I got his quote correct, former General Joseph Hoar (ph) said we are on the brink of failure. I certainly hope that’s not correct. I wish you would address that.

Tell us the positives that are out there. Tell us how we are getting along. Don’t whitewash it, varnish it or anything, we want to know, because we’re in charge of maintaining and raising and oversight of what you do.

SKELTON: And we must come out successfully in these two efforts -- I’ll underline the word "must" -- or we will write a very damaging chapter in American history if we don’t.

So, Mr. Chairman, with that lecture, I will yield my time.

HUNTER: Well, on that note of optimism, we’ll move to our witnesses.

And one thing, too, General Myers, that we are very concerned about is the status of forces in Korea. We’re making a -- we are shifting a brigade. We’re moving a brigade.

I think one of the smart things that we’re doing is moving our forces, resetting them out of the range of that -- the 6,000 or so artillery tubes from the North, getting them out of that artillery fan, which I think is a good thing. But we are moving a brigade, roughly a tenth of the force, from Korea to Iraq.

And from the information that we have received -- and so, maybe a little information about your evaluation of the capability of the Koreans to maintain defense. The state of their forces versus their threat to the North. And that’s now an important piece of this overall global footprint.

So thank you very much, gentlemen, and we look forward to working with you as we work this bill down through conference. And that’s why I think this is very timely. We’ve now got a little product out there, and we hope it’s met a number of your needs. And we need to know, as my colleague from Missouri said, your unvarnished outlook on what we’ve done and on the state of play in Iraq and our global footprint. Thank you.

And, General Myers, the floor is yours.

MYERS: Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Congressman Skelton and members of the committee. I’ll just take this time to briefly share my assessment of our progress on the war on terrorism and then, obviously, we’ll go into more depth in the questions.

First, let me assure you that the coalition remains strong. Two weeks ago, my staff co-hosted a coalition conference. Poland and the United Kingdom were the other co-hosts. It was an extremely productive session, with senior military representatives from 53 countries, as well as representatives from the United Nations and NATO.

The goal of this conference was to share information, primarily from a strategic perspective, on the way forward, on the war on terrorism, focusing on coalition operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. We received tremendous positive feedback from the participants and are planning another conference this fall.

In Afghanistan, the 25th Infantry Division has replaced the 10th Mountain Division, and CJTF-180 continues combat operations in the south and the east. We are seeing steady progress in the destruction of the Al Qaida and Taliban, and continue to focus on the kill or capture of high-value targets.

Enemy attacks have been primarily targeting the Afghan government and nongovernmental organizations.

MYERS: We believe that continuous present provided by the provincial reconstruction teams is having a positive impact on the security situation, which is why we plan to expand this effort into additional regions.

We are also focused on the national elections in Afghanistan, now planned for September. We expect anti-government elements will attempt to disrupt or influence the elections, so we’re working closely with the Afghan government, the Interim Security Assistance Force in Kabul and the U.N. to develop a comprehensive security plan to ensure the safety and the legitimacy of those elections.

In Iraq we continue to move steadily toward a 30 June transfer of sovereignty. You’ve heard General Abizaid stress how important sovereignty is. The Iraqi people understandably want to know that their efforts are in support of their own country and their own government. Iraqi security forces want to work under an Iraqi chain of command, and put their lives on the line for their own country.

The Department of Defense personnel, both here in Washington and in CENTCOM area of responsibility, have been working very hard to ensure the 30 June transition is as smooth and effective as possible.

On May 15, the Multinational Force-Iraq officially stood up, which replaced our Combined Joint Task Force-7. This coalition headquarters is designed to coordinate and integrate the parallel efforts of Iraqi security forces. Iraqi security liaisons will work within the headquarters and division staff and coordination centers, and that will ensure at the tactical level that we are fully integrated with our Iraqi partners.

Of the 25 government ministries in Iraq, authority has been transferred to 11 of them already. Much work has been done on the part of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the nascent Iraqi government, the Department of State, the Department of Defense and many other government agencies and organizations to enable the transfer of the remaining 14 ministries.

Members of my staff have participated in an ongoing series of planning conferences and exercises to ensure a productive relationship between a sovereign Iraqi government, the U.S. mission under Ambassador Negroponte, and a Multinational Force-Iraq headquarters under the command of General Sanchez.

You specifically asked about the decision to send a brigade from the 2nd Infantry Division from Korea to Iraq. We think this decision makes sense. We need those forces in Iraq, and we will still have sufficient capability in Korea to meet our commitments to the alliance there.

We are always very conscious of the stress on all our troops, active, Guard and Reserve, and the need to equitably share the deployment load. Exactly what the troop requirement will be in the future is always something that General Abizaid evaluates, and is never fully clear until we get closer to those decisions.

MYERS: I do think the situation after June 30th will still be challenging. There are some very positive signs, however, that the Iraqi people are ready to take responsibility for their future.

A recent report in the New York Daily News quoted General Latif, the leader of the interim Fallujah Brigade. He told a gathering of sheiks and tribal leaders, quote, "We can make them" -- meaning the Americans -- "use their rifles against us or we can make them build our country. They did not come here to occupy our land, but to get rid of Saddam. We can help them leave by helping them do their job, or we can make them stay 10 years and more by keeping fighting," end quote.

Most Iraqis do want and deserve a peaceful, prosperous, democratic Iraq, and they understand why our troops are there. So it’s especially frustrating when all the progress, all the cause for optimism is lost from public view.

A few days ago, a member of my staff, a Navy captain, when to southern Pennsylvania to give a talk to a Lions Club. The people there told him that when they go to church or out in their neighborhoods, they often get to talk to soldiers who’ve recently come back from Iraq. The troops tell them they’re making great progress in Iraq and they’re appreciated by the Iraqi people.

The Lions Club audience asked this captain why the situation looks so bad in the news, because it doesn’t match the stories they hear firsthand from these soldiers who have just returned. I get the same question all the time, of course, as I’m sure many of you do as well.

I especially want to thank all of you who visit our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and other deployed locations and meet with them in your districts and for helping to tell their story. You know what a great job they’re doing. It’s very important to give our troops due credit and give the American people an accurate view of the situation.

Again, I thank you for all you do to support our brave men and women in uniform. I haven’t fully looked at your bill yet, but I appreciate the fact that you have passed a bill, and look forward to seeing all the details in it.

MYERS: I know some of the details. And we appreciate very much your support of our efforts.

And with that, I’m standing by for questions.

HUNTER: Thank you, General.

General Schoomaker?

SCHOOMAKER: Chairman Hunter, Congressman Skelton, distinguished members of the committee, I don’t have a formal statement, but I would like to say just a few brief comments here.

First of all, I stand with the chairman on his statement. And I too would like to thank you for your continued support.

I know we’ve had lots of dialogue as you’ve worked through this bill. We’ve had our points of difference. And I think that we’ve had very beneficial discussion as we’ve gone through.

And although I don’t know all of the points of the bill, I understand that our points have been heard and that it appears we’ve gotten great support out of it. And I thank you for that.

The United States Army continues to take the long view on this. We have two strategic vectors, and that is to support the global war on terrorist, and to fight and win that, and to transform the Army for the 21st century. And that is precisely what we are committed to do, and we are doing it.

Finally, I’d like to say that I remain very proud of our men an women in uniform, not just our soldiers, but our sailors, airmen and Marines, Coast Guardsmen. And I’m extremely proud to serve with them at this difficult time.

Again, I thank you for your support. And I stand ready to answer your questions.

HUNTER: Thank you.

General Hagee, thank you for being with us too. We appreciate you.

HAGEE: Sir, it’s good to be here.

Mr. Chairman, Councilman Skelton, members of this committee, I would also like to thank you very much for your great support. It means a great deal to those young Americans deployed throughout the world.

In the last month I had an opportunity to visit Marines, soldiers and sailors in Afghanistan and Iraq. In fact, I was in Fallujah. And I can report to you that their morale is high. They are focused on the mission. And I believe there are three main reasons for that.

HAGEE: They are well-equipped. They know that they are well- trained. And they know that they have the support of this Congress and the American people.

And I cannot stress that latter point enough. That is the most often question I receive, is, "Do the American people understand what we’re doing and do they support us?" I’m always happy to be able to report that in fact they do.

Just 10 days ago, I was in Hawaii and Southern California and had an opportunity to talk with the spouses and families of our deployed Marines and sailors. Are they happy that they are separated from their Marines and sailors? Obviously not.

But I can also report to you that they are quite proud of what they’re doing. They understand the importance of what their Marines and sailors are doing. And they strongly support what they are doing.

So once again, sir, thank you very much for you support, and I look forward to your questions.

HUNTER: Thank you very much, General Hagee.

General Myers, we’ve got about 38,000 troops in Korea. We’re going to be moving out roughly a tenth of those troops for deployment to Iraq.

Obviously, the defense of the Korean Peninsula depends primarily on the South Korean military, and as I understand, we’ve got some 19 infantry divisions, three mech divisions. They have approximately the equivalent of about seven wings of TACAIR; some of it modern, much of it less modern. Nonetheless, it appears that it’s vastly superior to any air power that the North Koreans have.

HUNTER: Just giving us your view of the evolution of the South Korean military, which in the past has had big numbers but hasn’t been modern, I’d like you to give us your take on whether you think they’ve got the wherewithal to carry this burden increasingly.

And, General Schoomaker, you, obviously, have the bulk of those troops that are in-country. Could you give us your view on the capability on the South Korean forces and the capability of the American forces that will be in place after this move of the approximately 3,800 personnel to Iraq.

MYERS: Well, Chairman Hunter, it’s a great question. Remember that all of our moves in Korea are centered around our overall study of our global basing posture. This is part of it. It’s looking at a situation on the peninsula where, in many cases, we’re in the same locations we were when the cease-fire was signed back in ’53. And so, as you mentioned earlier, part of it’s a consolidation move.

Also part of it is to give more responsibility to the Republic of Korea armed forces. As you mentioned, they have a total of 41 divisions, 21 active, 11 reserves, seven homeland divisions.

General LaPorte, our combined forces command and U.N. commander and U.S. Forces-Korea commander, thinks that these forces are well- trained and generally very well-equipped, well-motivated. And we’ve been passing various tasks that used to be only U.S.-only tasks, in terms of some of the command and control and some of the missions over time...

HUNTER: Now, General, you said they have -- the information I saw was that they’ve got 21 active divisions, and of those they’ve got 19 infantry, three mech -- or 22 active divisions, I think is it. But you say they’ve also got a substantial reserve or homeland divisions?

MYERS: Yes, they have seven homeland divisions that, basically, the rear area security. And then they have, my information is, 21 active, 11 reserve.

And the mix between (OFF-MIKE) to them. So over time, over the last couple of years, we’ve been doing that.

MYERS: It’s been, I think, welcomed by the ROK military and the senior leadership in the Republic of Korean. We think it’s the right thing to do as well.

We do not think taking this brigade out is going to leave the security situation on the peninsula any less than it was when they were there. We think, you know, one brigade with all those forces we just talked about, our remaining forces there, that we have a very robust presence to counter any threat from North Korea.

As I think Secretary Wolfowitz testified to, there’s about $13 billion in enhancements to our forces that are committed to the peninsula in the next several years that are going to make our forces even more robust in terms of their capability to handle the threat.

We’re deploying additional Patriot systems to deal with the extensive missile threat that North Korea has, and we’re going to rely on those things that we know where we have an asymmetric advantage, and that is in our tactical air. And in a classified setting I can talk to you what we’re going to do in that regard, too, but there’ll be some adjustments.

HUNTER: General Schoomaker?

SCHOOMAKER: Yes, sir.

I would just add to the chairman’s statement here that, since the first time I served in Korea, which was 1974, you know, in the intervening 30 years the situation on the peninsula, in my view, has changed enormously, not only the standpoint of the development of the ROK army and air forces and navy, but in terms of the way the terrain has changed there, the way which the peninsula has developed. And it’s fundamentally changed the way conflict would occur there, if, in fact, conflict does occur.

And in this forum it’s probably not appropriate to talk about that, but I will tell you that I share General LaPorte’s confidence that, you know, should we have to fight there, it would be a significantly different fight than it would have been 30 years ago.

SCHOOMAKER: And I share his confidence that this move of pulling a brigade off of there is -- should not be of concern.

And other than that, I fully support, you know, what General Myers said here. I think that there are other dimensions of our capability over there that play a far more important role than they have in the past.

MYERS: I may have misstated, Chairman. It’s 23 active divisions. It should come closer to adding up the -- I think I said 21.

HUNTER: Well, thank you very much.

The gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Skelton?

SKELTON: I don’t know who to ask the question of, but have you considered backfilling the 4,000 numbers, the brigade that you’re moving out of Korea into Iraq, backfilling them with either Guard or Reserve?

MYERS: In Korea?

SKELTON: Yes.

MYERS: No, sir, we haven’t. That’s not been part of the calculation.

SKELTON: We seem to be getting two pictures of chances for success in Iraq. In speaking with you and in our trips to there, we get a pretty positive picture in talking with the troops that are there and talking with the leaders and, of course, some Iraqis. Things seem to be moving along, in particular the reconstruction portion. And then here, we are bombarded with negative images of what is going on in Iraq. So let me touch on a few of those, if I may.

How damaging is this prison situation, General Myers, in relation to winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqis?

MYERS: Well, obviously, you know, the Iraqi people, I think, deserve to see how we handle this. And they got a glimpse of that, I think it was yesterday or the day before, when we had the first court- martial.

There will be more of that. Obviously the results of those sorts of events will be made public. And I think that most Iraqis whose contact is with our service men and women who are out there throughout the land, from basically north to south, understand that they’re only there for one reason and that is to -- and it’s a very noble cause -- and that is to give the Iraqis a chance for peace and prosperity, a chance they haven’t had for a long time.

I think the majority of Iraqis understand that. I think they probably understand that this -- whatever abuse has occurred will be worked very hard by this government, by our military.

A process we have in place to work this, by the way, is a process that has been around for a long time, has stood the test of time. And I would just note, this has been -- the detainee issue has been an issue here for the last three, three and a half weeks. But this investigation started back in January, and we already have one court- martial completed, others going on, other investigations to look at every little thread that we can possibly find here to see if there are other situations where abuse could have occurred that maybe have went uncovered yet.

But I think the Iraqi people will look at our process -- General Abizaid tells me, as he talks to not only Iraqi leaders but other leaders in the region, that what they want most out of this is justice for those who have perpetrated any of these activities. That’s the most important thing to them.

I think they understand that the security situation in the country of Iraq is not something that Iraqis can handle today; that they’re going to need coalition help. And as I mentioned in my opening remarks, we want to take that help and turn it into a partnership with the Iraqis. And that’s why we stood up this new Multinational Force-Iraq, so we can start to create that partnership with the ministry of interior, ministry of defense and all the way down to their tactical units; that we’re working with them, in concert with them against the common enemy to progress in Iraq.

SKELTON: I’m not sure you know enough to answer the question about the Chalabi situation, but is there anything you can touch on regarding that?

MYERS: What I can say about the Chalabi situation is that it was the -- my understanding is, and the reports to me say that it was the Iraqi minister of interior that wanted this action to happen, that it was Iraqi police who conducted the activity, that the role for U.S. forces was as an outer cordon, not part of the activity in any of the facilities or that business, and that the Coalition Provisional Authority was notified of this. That’s the limit of my knowledge.

But I think it’s important that this was an Iraqi minister of interior initiative, done by their police. And my understanding is that the evidence is now in an Iraqi court.

That’s a good process. It’s Iraqis doing what they should be doing. And I don’t know about the facts in the case about Chalabi and so forth, but to have the minister of interior, the police and the court connected, doing things they think are important is a good sign.

SKELTON: Do you see a potential positive change or uplifting change in attitude of the Iraqi people come the June 30 sovereignty turnover?

MYERS: Personally, I think that, as the U.N. helps set the stage for this turnover of sovereignty, and we know that the first folks that are selected to be the executive part of this new government will probably be temporary, but I think...

SKELTON: It’s called an interim government. Is that correct?

MYERS: Interim, right. Interim government.

I think the Iraqi people will have to take hope in that, that Iraqis are now going to be responsible for their own decisions and they’re going to have to make those decisions. They’ll need help along the way, and we should provide help.

I think we’ll be particularly strong in the security sector. That’s where we need to cooperate for some time to come, because there will be those -- and I’ll just point back to Zarqawi.

The assassination of the president of the interim governing council the other day is a terrible blow, and there will be people that will try very hard, with tactics like that and other tactics of intimidation to families and so forth, to keep from having political progress in Iraq.

There are a lot of forces, though, on the side, and I think most Iraqis are on the side of, "Let’s progress, let’s get our interim government going, let’s elect a national assembly, let’s get our constitution going." And I think there is reason for great hope that the Iraqi people will take this and run with it.

It will not be without its challenges, both from a security standpoint and from a political standpoint. But I think it’s time to get going. I have been in favor of moving this faster rather than slower.

So I think there’s cause for hope. I think anytime you give people a chance to decide their own destiny, people will have the responsibility for these very important decisions they’ll be making, it’s a good thing.

SKELTON: Mr. Chairman, I have some other questions, but I’ll reserve them until later. Thank you.

HUNTER: I thank the gentleman for his very thoughtful questions, and I would turn to the chairman of the Terrorism Subcommittee, Mr. Saxton.

SAXTON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

General Myers, General Schoomaker, General Hagee, thank you for being here this morning, and thank you for continuing to do the great work that you do. At every chance I like to thank the folks who are in the field doing a great job as well.

General Myers, you were just -- let me put it this way. It’s real easy for us to talk about the past and what’s transpired so far in the war on terror. It’s a little more difficult to talk about the future. But I’d like to talk about the future from this perspective.

Some months ago, I invited a well-respected columnist by the name of Tom Friedman to my office to talk about some columns that I had seen him author that were printed in the New York Times on Iraq.

SAXTON: And I called him because I found that it was unusual -- what he was saying in the New York Times was, kind of, unusual for the New York Times.

And, basically, he was saying that the Iraqis will find a way to make a government work in Iraq, but they have to do it. And put as bluntly as he did, he said, "We’ve got to get our of their face."

Recently in Fallujah, we have stepped back and put an Iraqi peacekeeping force, if you will -- I’m not quite sure what we’d call it -- we put an Iraqi unit in charge of security in Fallujah. And that Iraqi force has been in place now for, I’m just going to guess, a couple of three weeks.

I guess the question is: How is it working? And if it’s working relatively well, does it lend credence to the fact that we can, kind of, look forward to stepping back, but still being there, of course, outside of the cities, turning security in cities like Fallujah over to an Iraqi force.

MYERS: Representative Saxton, that’s an excellent question.

I’ve read a lot of Tom Friedman articles. I don’t know that I’ve read that one. He is very thoughtful. In fact, we asked Mr. Friedman to come lead a breakfast discussion the last time we had the combatant commanders in town for a conference and give us his views like that.

I’m not the tactician here or the strategist in Iraq.

MYERS: That’s General Abizaid’s responsibility. But I can tell you that I think we’re all in agreement that we need to turn Iraq over to Iraqis, and there is always risk in that. And there’s risk in the Fallujah situation, but it’s a risk I believe we must take.

So far, the situation in Fallujah is working out OK. It does not mean that in three days from now or a week from now that we’re not going to have to use force to achieve some of the objectives that we set out to achieve in Fallujah. That may still be the case, but we’re working with Iraqis, the so-called Fallujah brigade led by General Latif.

He is working, I believe, well with General Conway, the three- star Marine who is responsible for operations in that sector. I’m sure they’ve had many conversations; maybe General Hagee can comment in a minute on that.

My personal view is this is the right way to do it. Like I said, there are risks with this approach. But we have our goals in Fallujah and so far, the people of Fallujah seem to be responding. General Conway is responding with lots of reconstruction projects for that area, which is something that has not been consistently applied. That’s very, very important. The unemployment, as you might imagine, would be very high.

I think General Conway and the Marines out there are probably the largest employer now in Fallujah with the money that you have made available for them to use in these kind of situations.

So I would say the trend is going in the right direction. We need to know when to use force. We need to know when to back off. We need to know when to let the Iraqis help with the solution.

But I’m of the school that the more the Iraqis can do, the better, and the faster we can get them to do that, the better as well.

And Mike, you may want to -- Mike’s pretty fresh, having just talked to some of the folks out there.

HAGEE: Yes, sir.

Like the chairman, I’m also not the tactician or the operator over there, but I did talk with General Conway this morning. And I can tell you that over the past couple of weeks, it has been very quiet in Fallujah.

HAGEE: Not only is the Fallujah Brigade doing relatively well, but, most importantly, the people in Fallujah are supporting that particular brigade.

As General Myers mentioned, the leader of that brigade, in a news conference yesterday, along with the mayor of Fallujah, talking with the Arab press, supported what was going on.

And, in fact, I have this secondhand, but I believe it’s correct that the mayor of Fallujah apologized for what happened to the Americans in Fallujah to the Arab press.

Over the past couple of days, some of the heavy weapons have been turned in to the Fallujah Brigade.

But, as General Myers said, this is a day-by-day process. We’re optimistic, but there will probably be downturns as we move forward.

We not only want to put -- I say we, the Department of Defense, the American government -- an Iraqi face on this; we also want to put an Iraqi chain of command in place there. And right now, it’s working quite well in the Al Anbar Province.

SAXTON: Thank you very much.

HUNTER: I thank the gentlemen.

The distinguished gentleman from Texas, Mr. Reyes.

REYES: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and gentlemen, welcome.

We definitely appreciate the hard work that everyone is doing on this issue and on the support of our military troops.

I want to start off by asking: Has the security situation in Iraq deteriorated to an extent that CODELs cannot be supported, because the staff was telling us that there’s a question of whether or not we’re able to go in next week into Iraq?

MYERS: Congressman Reyes, I haven’t gotten a good update on that. And I’ll get back to you -- during the hearing, we’ll have somebody research that question and get back to you.

REYES: All right, thank you.

The next question I’ve got is, earlier this week we were told that we’ve got about 210,000 Iraqis -- combination of security, army, police -- that are being trained and prepared to take over their own security.

My question is: What kind of a system do we have in place to evaluate their effectiveness, their ability to stand up against attacks, to be able to repel attacks? What method of evaluation do we have regarding those 210,000 Iraqis that we’re training?

MYERS: Congressman Reyes, it depends on what segment of that security force we’re talking about, will dictate what kind of system we have. With the Iraqi police, for instance, there is a formal certification system that certifies them after they’re trained. And there is a mentorship program that we want to continue for some time where we do joint patrols with them and so forth.

There’s a lot of leadership training that has to go on past even the formal eight-week school that is being conducted now. And we think that can be done by coalition forces to help, you know, instill the sorts of traits we want these police officers to have as they go about their daily business.

Of course, in the Iraqi army, the coalition is training them, and they’ll be certified like any armed forces. With the civil defense corps, each army unit that trains one of those, or certifies them, and it’s compared to the police or the new Iraqi army, it’s a level below that, and so on. It goes all the way through, but there are certification regimes for each of those.

I might mention that in this new organization, how we train, how we equip and how we mentor once they get back to the field are very important questions. And we have put General Petraeus, who was the commander of the 101st, and I think just turned over command probably -- last day...

SCHOOMAKER (?): Three days ago.

MYERS: ... three days ago. And he will be in Iraq between the 2nd and 3rd of June. So he’s coming from Iraq, changed command back in Kentucky, and he goes back to work, the training and equip of these forces. And he did a superb job up north in this capacity. And we put our very best to go back over there and work this -- the very issues you’re talking about to make sure we have a certification program.

If I may, as has been said I think before, when people aren’t properly trained, aren’t properly equipped, and if there’s not a chain of command that is an Iraqi chain of command, it’s not surprising that some of the performance when the going gets tough is less than perfect. But the equippage issue, I think, has been solved.

That does not mean everybody has their equipment today, but the equipment is on the way. For instance, I think in the case of the police, they will be 94 percent equipped with their vehicles, their communications gear and their weapons by December, 94 percent.

We should have done this earlier, but it was somebody else’s responsibility for a while, and now that’ll come under General Petraeus. But this equipment is on order. It’s delivering. And that’ll be, I think, a very important component of allowing these people, then, to do what they’re supposed to do to protect their citizens.

So I think we can be pretty positive about those developments.

REYES: Thank you.

The other area I’d like to ask a question on is the use of contractors.

REYES: And I asked this question because last weekend when I was in El Paso, Halliburton was there recruiting for contract drivers and a few other duties, particularly in Iraq.

And a number of questions came up that I think it would be beneficial to get your perspective on. The first question is where are we on allowing contractors to be armed, to carry weapons?

I know a number of their families of those contractors that are already in Iraq that are from El Paso have asked me why contractors are not allowed to carry weapons in a combat zone.

And I see the red light is on, so I’ll stop right there, if you can answer that question.

MYERS: I will attempt to answer. I think part of it I’m going to have to get back to you for the record on the arming of contractors.

I have not seen the final policy. Based on a lot of issues that you know about and that you’ve raised, we have had an extensive review of the policy of arming contractors, because there’s so many different types of contractors in country and the needs are different.

So let me get back to you. I haven’t seen the final policy. My guess is it’s probably close to being fully-developed. I know General Sanchez is the approval authority for that in country and has a very practical view toward that. In fact, we got one of those questions when we had our town hall meeting in Baghdad, and General Sanchez was the one that answered it.

But let me get back to you for the record specifically. It is a concern; I understand why the families of contractors might be concerned. I need to see where our policy is. And it should be pretty close to being promulgated, and I’ll get you a copy.

REYES: All right.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And, thank you, gentlemen.

HUNTER: I thank the gentleman. I think that’s a very important question.

And, General, the facts and the figures I saw were to the effect that Halliburton has had 34 people killed in action, mostly running those ambush alleys, bringing food and supply up to our people up in the bases in the Baghdad region.

So, obviously, having the wherewithal for defense and also having the requisite firepower attending those convoys is, I think, extremely important to this committee.

So if you could let us know what the state of play is here; that’s important.

MYERS: The other thing I would mention, Chairman, when you brought up the convoys and our major supply routes -- the major supply routes were a target in the April time frame, looked like a fairly coordinated tactical approach to taking on our major supply routes, trying to interrupt the convoys, as you said.

Since that time, General Sanchez and the division commanders have changed their tactics and their techniques and their procedures with respect to the major supply routes.

MYERS: And, I think, the overall situation now in terms of convoys and their security is much different than it was just three or four weeks ago, because of the tactics, techniques and procedures that have been changed.

(CROSSTALK)

HUNTER: OK, off the record, it might be useful for us to engage with you folks on a classified basis and take a look at that.

MYERS: You bet.

HUNTER: I think that’s real important to us.

MYERS: It is important. And General Sanchez and his folks thought it was important, and they’ve done some pretty smart and aggressive things in that regard and I think cut down the incidents where convoys were being disrupted.

But we ought to have that discussion. Yes, sir.

HUNTER: OK. Thank you very much.

I thank the gentleman for his questions.