 First, let me thank all of you for coming. I think that we face a critical national set of decisions. We are dealing with a war which in many ways is over. The question is whether we are willing to make the kind of effort that can create the transition which would actually win it. And to win it, we have to have a strong presence. We have to deal with political and economic uncertainty. And I can't think of anyone better than Michael Corbin to discuss this. And normally, I would probably go in detail through Michael's resume. But instead, having said the fact that he is someone who has great practical experience on the ground in Iraq, let me just very briefly set the stage in a few ways as to what's happening in Iraq. First, I think it is very important to see how much we have altered the path of violence. You can see the peak. You can see how much things have changed. And in these handouts, which are available on the web, you can also see that as the acts of violence have gone on, horrifying as some of the bombings and incidents are, the overall level of casualties has gone steadily down, and particularly in terms of civilian casualties. And that the risks and the problems in Iraq, in spite of sometimes the headlines, have really changed. And there is great opportunity here. At the same time, we deal not simply with violence, but with a nation whose demographic and other pressures require, in a transition to any form of stable governance and civil society, help and outside aid that goes far beyond simply the military and the security dimension. And if you look at Iraq's population, you see just how striking that is. I think, too, that often far too many of us use the term oil wealth. But oil wealth is not a matter of national oil income. It is a matter basically of how much that income can be shared among the population. And what is striking about Iraq in the Gulf is it is a country which ranks roughly in the 90th level in the world in per capita income. To put that in perspective, the next country in the Gulf is Iran, which is roughly 54th, almost twice the ranking in per capita income. One of Iraq's neighbors, Qatar, is arguably first or second in the world in per capita income. And that illustrates the challenge that Iraq and we face in dealing with economic terms. And it's illustrated here by just how low oil wealth is in a country where oil is really somewhere between 70% and 80% of the source of income for the gross domestic product. Let me say, too, and this is my view, not that in any political sense. We have left a legacy in the region where when we entered Iraq, it was a counterbalance to Iran of equal or superior military capability. And today it is essentially a military power vacuum in dealing with Iran. And without outside aid, things like FMF, without a strong State Department and US military mission, that power vacuum inside the Gulf will remain. And it will take some time to alter. And finally, let me just note that Iraq is not simply an influence on Iraq's oil, but the Gulf's oil. And to make a point which cannot be made by any American politician, I was dealing with energy in the US government when Richard Nixon announced we would achieve energy independence in 1980. Some of you may have noticed we did not succeed. What is far less popular to point out is that the models of the Department of Energy indicate we will not have achieved any meaningful progress in energy independence in all of their cases through 2035. More than that, these calculations are based on direct imports. They do not take account of the fact that every basic import we have in our consumer society is an indirect import of energy from other areas, and if it's Asia from the Gulf. Nor does it take account of the global economy. And these are forces that I think are fundamentally critical to the role we will have in Iraq. And now let me turn it over to the real expert and let him explain where we stand and where we're going. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. And I really am impressed that we have this turnout for a subject which I think is particularly topical as we watch change in the Middle East. And what I'd like to try and do today in a compressed time is talk about Iraq, about Iraq's role in the region, and get a little bit to differences and similarities between Iraq and some of the uncertainty we're seeing in the rest of the region. I'm trying to try and leave lots of room for questions because I think that there are lots of questions, and I won't be able to cover. I'll only be able to scratch the surface as I go forward. But let me outline what I'd like to try and do. I'd like to talk about the two transitions that I work with every day. The one that consumes most of my planning time is how we're transitioning from a military security-dominated relation in Iraq to a civilian-led all aspects of cooperation relationship in Iraq. That's the military to civilian transition. The second transition, which permits the first transition and I think is actually something that's quite spectacular, is the Iraqi transition. What Iraq is going through, how Iraq has changed, how Iraq is changing, I like to say every three months. I used to say that Iraq was changing and the rest of the Arab world was standing still. I can't say that anymore from the last three months as we see enormous changes going in the rest of the Arab world. So that change, that second transition that Iraq is going through is from Saddam Hussein's Iraq, isolated from the region, a cause of wars, supporter of terrorism and neighboring Arab countries, internal conflict, the Arab-Curd conflict to a country that is seeking a very different future. And that's an important transition that I'd like to talk about for a little bit because I think it's so important. Then I'd like to talk about Iraq's relations with the region, which we see, as I said, going from a time of conflict and isolation to trying to work with all its neighbors. And that's important as we go forward and that leads to the last thing I'd like to address, which is what's going on in Iraq today and how it's different from Egypt, how it's different from Libya, how it's different from Oman, how it's different from the next country that we can't predict what's going to happen in the Middle East. So without, and then I like to leave lots of time for question. So trying to cover all of that is a tall order, but let me go ahead and start with the military to civilian transition. When you look at the peak of the U.S. troops that we had in Iraq, 165,000, with countless contractors supporting that, we have had a huge security-dominated footprint in Iraq that is rapidly coming down. We now have approximately 50,000 troops in Iraq. Our embassy presence is in terms of direct hire about, if you count everybody about 2000, we have contractors, but we're still using military contractors. What we're doing in order to meet the terms of the security agreement is to get the security forces, the U.S. military down from 50,000 to a civilian-controlled office of security cooperation similar to many of our other security assistance missions around the Middle East. And this is an enormous task, and what it reflects is what I like to say is a relationship that was 90% a militant security and 10% everything else, to just flip that to a relationship that's 90% everything else and 10% security. And that's a tall order as we go forward. Luckily, we have a lot of agencies working together to do that. In order to conduct this change by the end of this year, we have four programs that I work on every day. The first one is the U.S. military was all over Iraq in numbers influencing people, monitoring the situation, separating people, encouraging people, just being there. So how are we going to replace a high of 165,000 with our small foreign service cadre and with some other civilian agencies who will join us? And we have a plan to have two consulates, one in Basra and the South, which will be very focused on the economy, on oil, on relations with the Shia South, to a certain extent dealing with Kuwait-Iraq relations because Basra is the closest city to Kuwait. We'll have a consulate in the North, in Erbil, different focus. This will be because the largest conflict in historically in Iraq has been the Kurdish-Arab conflict, and our consulate in the North will be working with both Baghdad and the government of the independent Kurdish region on all the issues that have to do with Kurdish-Arab relations. Because we need to be around the country, we have two things called embassy branch offices that we're going to have in Mosul and Kirkuk, and basically you have an embassy, you have a consulate, and in the stands, after the fall of the Soviet Union, we had things called embassy branch office. They are diplomatically recognized offices, and we're planning one in Mosul, one in Kirkuk because they're on the Arab Kurd fault line because Mosul is a Sunni center. Anbar has a lot of Sunnis, but when you talk about the Sunni political leadership and economic leadership, the Hadbeh gathering, for example, come from the Mosul area. Kirkuk is famous as the city that is the flashpoint between Kurds and Arabs, and we believe we must have a presence there, and events in the last couple of days are a point to the importance of being in Kirkuk. We also wanted to have an embassy branch office in Diyala, which has less significance but is still on that Kurd-Arab fault line, and has been the site of dislocations, terrorism, and human rights violations as different groups struggle for influence there. So the first of four programs that I'll talk about is that civilian presence that we have to have around the country. One thing that we've learned in over eight years in Iraq is that you can't do a rock on the cheap, and you can't do it with few resources in terms of people and presence. So this is very important. We have to have our presence in Iraq, and that's something that is a mainstay of our taking over for the military. The second program that we're focused on is called the police development program. It's really more than a police development program. It's building on our support for rule of law in Iraq. That means judges, that means the prosecution, that means police, it means going after criminals as well as going after terrorists. And we're taking over a program from the Pentagon that was focused on getting police recruits on the street to combat terrorism. And this meant getting raw recruits trained to get them to have the basic professionalism and organization to get to the level where they are today, where for example the national police is no longer viewed as a source or a haven for death squads as it was in 2006, where the national police is actually respected around the country. The program will be different than the military police training program in that we will bring in civilian aspects like community policing, like human resources, countering corruption, and it reflects what the Iraqis want to see. The Iraqis want to see both US soldiers out of their cities and towns, and they saw that in June of 2009 when we moved our forces out of the cities and towns per the security agreement, but they also want to see the Iraqi military out of their cities and towns. They would like to go back to a situation where they have a police force that's responsive to the community, that's addressing both security and on the terrorism side, but more to the point the organized criminal gangs that are operating in Iraq, the corruption, the lawlessness that we see. So this rule of law program, what we call the police development program, will be a key element in our going forward, and we've asked Congress for a billion dollars for this program so that we can continue to engage with the Iraqis on this rule of law. A third program, and I mentioned that we're gonna change from a 90% everything else and to having, but maintain 10% security, will be what we call a foreign military financing program, which is what's the basis for traditional security assistance around the Middle East and other parts of the world. We want a large, robust program to work with the Iraqi military and Iraqi security forces to continue the work that the US military has done, but to inject into it some of the elements that foreign military financing brings, such as more attendance by Iraqi officers in command and staff colleges in the United States, more interaction between contractors and uniform service people and all levels of the Iraqi military. And this program will go hand in hand with a large foreign military sales program, because the Iraqis have already signed up for over $10 billion worth of different types of American systems. My argument since one of my tours in the Middle East was working to defend our foreign military financing program with Egypt, where we gave 1.3 billion every year since Camp David has been that the results of that, the money that we gave were seen in Tahir Square when the Egyptian military under impossible odds did not fire on the protesters, respected human rights and they were not trained for dealing with civil disorder. They were in, as I said, an impossible situation. And I would argue that our foreign military funding programs over the 30 years with the Egyptians meant a level of integration between US values and US service people, the number of Egyptian officers who attended command and staff training colleges in the States is enormous. The fact that the Egyptians had American systems that contractors came with them, uniform services came with them, whether it was F-16s or Apaches or M-1s, you had an enormous building of values and professionalism in the Egyptian military, which I think paid off in Tahir Square. Still, the history books are yet to be written about what the role of the Egyptian military will be, but we have an opportunity to build that kind of relationship with the Iraqi military so that they will not return to the period of the 70s when they were the source of coups in Iraq and they were a source of interference in the governing structures in Iraq. So the third program will be this foreign military financing program, which will go in hand in hand with foreign military sales. The fourth program that we'll have is traditional development assistance, and this means USAID, it means grants to civil society groups, all the traditional diplomatic tools that go with a development assistance program. We have opportunities there because under the military, under the US military, which was doing a lot of those programs, we weren't doing traditional development assistance. We were doing commander's emergency response fund assistance. We were responding to individual needs rather than working with the governors. That's changing, and it's changed a lot even in the last two or three years. The governors have power in Iraq. They have the ability to determine where resources are spent. We're going to work with, using AID programs and others, work with the local people on traditional development assistance programs. So those four pillars are going to form the basis of our military to civilian transition. There's been a lot of discussion about whether there will be a military follow-on presence over and beyond the Office of Security Cooperation, and that Office of Security Cooperation will run our FMS, foreign military sales, and foreign military financing. Basically, the Iraqis have to ask us. We have to have an agreement on what the terms for a follow-on military presence will be, and we're not there, and that's a subject that has to be discussed politically and worked out with the Iraqis as they look at what type of partnership they have. What I will just say is that we are planning for a robust Office of Security Cooperation that will have sites around the country and will do this type of program that we've had with Turkey, that we've had with Saudi Arabia, that we've had with Egypt, that we've had with other countries in the region. So that's the military to civilian transition. I can address lots of questions about our challenges, use of contractors, there's a lot of discussion of that, how we're going to do security, why it's different than the military way of doing security, but I'll leave that for the question and answers. What I'd like to move to now is the second transition, which is where the Iraqis have come from, where they're going, where the challenges are, and how we are working with them as they go forward. Basically, my benchmark, although there's many different benchmarks, my benchmark is the period in 2006 when the country really looked like it was coming apart, when people can debate about whether the country was going into civil war, but there were bodies turning up in the streets. It was on all the charts that the Dr. Cordesman showed at the beginning, it was the peak of the violence in Iraq. It was when people really thought there was a question of whether the country would survive. When you look at what's happened since then, it's not an oversimplification to say that Iraqis have rejected violence and have turned to compromise and politics as a way of settling differences, rather than armed militias, rather than defended neighborhoods, rather than Kurds and Arabs seeing different futures, rather than the Sunni sons of Iraq not participating in the government. You see a situation now where there is broad agreement that compromise and working together is the way forward. Now that is a result of elections, it's a result of decisions by the political leadership, but it does show a change in the basic way people are thinking about the future in Iraq. What goes along with this is a maturity on certain decisions such as the decision on opening the oil sector. And when you look at the importance of oil in Iraq, I always find this statistic fascinating, Iraq was exporting 3.5 million barrels a day in 1979. We're nowhere near that yet, although we're approaching that, but that's before Saddam Hussein launched the attack on Iran, that's before Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. That's a period where Iraq was able to take full advantage of its oil resources. Iraq now exports about 2.5 million barrels a day. That number is coming up, but they're limited on the infrastructure. They're limited by the capability of the infrastructure to do exports of oil. They've made the decision to bring in the international oil companies, and this was very hard. If you know the history of Iraq, the 1920s to the 1950s saw, and the British took the lead, but we can never blame the British for everything. We were certainly involved in this. There was an exploitation of Iraq's oil wealth that Iraqis remember to this day, and they really wanted to see a rejection of foreigners having anything to do with their oil wealth. The Iraqi government made the decision to invite in the foreign oil companies. They did free and fair bid rounds rather than a national oil company, which would have rather than nationalizing the oil companies and proceeding that way, they've invited in the international oil companies, and the international oil companies, particularly in the south, are working diligently, and they made their production targets in January to get this oil online. It's not a problem of getting oil to the wellhead. It's a problem of the pipelines. It's a problem of the pumping stations. It's a problem of the infrastructure required to get Iraqi oil to market so that we hopefully can change some of those charts that Dr. Cordesman showed at the beginning. So where are we going in Iraq in terms of elections, in terms of government? We had an eight month government formation period. I'm glad to see that just the other day the Belgians finally did go longer without a government than Iraq, so I'm pleased to say that Iraq doesn't have the longest government formation period, but that government formation period was important because it allowed the Iraqis to negotiate and to compromise, and as we look at the problems that we face now in Iraq, it's based on the fact that the Iraqis have a different way of trying to solve problems. Now, the government that we ended up with was the one that we suggested at the beginning, which is an inclusive government that includes all the different groups, Shia, Sunni, and Kurds, that includes the different political factions, including the Sotiris, who with their firebrand leader, Mukhtar al-Sotir, the problem with this inclusive government is it's going to be a little bit difficult to make decisions because what you do, what you get is you get a government, a coalition government, where decisions have to be made by all and where efficiency is not going to be the name, the first priority. It's going to be consensus, and we realize that, but we believe that having the Sunnis participate, having the Kurds participate, having the Shia compromise and not hold on to all the power was the most important element in forming that government. The Iraqis have done that, and they're now, they're now dealing with issues step by step, just to point to the challenges of this inclusive government. Everyone will have seen that last week, Dr. Iadalawi, the secular Shia who's the head of the Iraqi block, which won the most votes in the March elections last year, said that he was not going to participate in the government, and that's a sign that he has decided that the inclusive route is not going to work for him. The question for us was would the members, the politicians in the Iraqi block, largely Sunni, decide to leave the government with Iadalawi? And to date, there's been very little indication that the Sunni leaders are leaving. Basically, they have key positions in the new government. The first person named in the new government was Asama al-Nujafi, the Sunni speaker of the parliament. The minister of finance, Rafi Asawi, is a Sunni. The Asala al-Mutlak, who is a source of controversy, is back participating in the government. This, we still have to see the implications of Iadalawi's decision not to participate. Specifically, in terms of the process, Iadalawi had agreed to head something called the National Council of Higher Policies, which is a mechanism to distribute the power of security services, and it was to remove all those decisions from Prime Minister Maliki's hands and put them into a more consensus organization. We believe that organization will still be formed. Iadalawi has said he will nominate somebody else to head that organization, but that is, it does raise questions as to how this consensus government is going to work. In terms of other elements that the Iraqis are working on, I mentioned the Kurd Arab dispute. We see that the Kurds who were instrumental in the November decision, Barzani went down to Baghdad to help get this agreement between Iadalawi, Prime Minister Maliki, and the Kurds. The Kurds are instrumental in the formation of this consensus government, and all indications are that they have decided to continue to see their future in Baghdad and not in the mountains of Kurdistan as they may have done in the past. Now, the recent developments last week when the Kurds moved Peshmerga forces around Kirkuk was worrying for us. I have to say I was in Houston the week before last, and I said that the greatest threat to Iraq is not the Arab Kurd dispute, it is corruption, and I still believe that it is corruption, but of course just because I said that, then the Arabs and Kurds created the situation around Kirkuk, which is always going to be a flashpoint. Now, the good news about Kirkuk is that all sides are staying calm about this, they're working out how to gracefully work out a return to the original positions. The proximate cause of this deployment was protests in Kirkuk that did in fact turn violent. So there are discussions going on between the Kurds and the Arabs about how to resolve this quickly and peacefully, and you have to understand the context that this is a part of the disputed areas that are so critical to be settled between the Kurds and Arabs. So the spirit of compromise is there, the issues, and I'll get that to that in the end, of how the government, the challenges the government's going to face, so call this all into question when you look at efficiency, but let me first talk a little bit about regional relations. Iraq is trying to establish moderate, constructive cooperation with its neighbors and with the wider region. And if you go around Iraq, whether it's Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, or Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, Iraq has a consistent plan now to try and engage each of these countries in a constructive manner. Why don't we start with Iran, the most difficult, because of the fact that the Iranians have tried to influence events in Iraq. Very simply, Iraq wants positive relations with Iran, which means, for example, that Iranian Shia pilgrims still come to the two holiest sites of Shiaism, the Kerbala and Najaf, that Iran establishes productive trading relationships, that electricity provision from Iran is able to be done on a moderate, a constructive basis, that Iran does not claim Iraq's oil fields or invade them along the border, that Iran does not support Shia extremists in Iraq. This is going to be a push and pull, and what we see is that the Iranians are using more soft power than hard power as they go forward, but Iran still wants to influence events in Iraq, and I can get to the question and answer period how that's working. Turning to Turkey, we've seen an enormous evolution in Turkey's relations with Iraq. When you actually think that the last country that invaded Iraq was not the US, it was Turkish land forces in the spring of 2008. When you look at the relationships between Ankara and Baghdad, and Ankara and the Kurdish region, you see positive constructive engagements in terms of trade, in terms of politics, in terms of the Turkish role as a positive moderate force in Iraq, even in the question of Kirkuk, where the Turkmen minority used to be a lightning rod, there's a general move and the Turks have established consulates in the north, they are working with both the central government and other countries, and the other parts of Iraq. I don't want to spend too much on the regional peace because I want to get to question answers, but let me just say that Syrian-Iraqi relations are going to be fascinating as we go forward as both sides try and figure out what's in there at their benefit. The neither side I think is going to make the clear decision, which they should, that it's in each country's interest to have good economic relations because each could benefit so much from that. The relations are much better since Maliki visited recently and has worked to improve relations, but the Syrians don't make decisions generally on economics, they make decisions on the basis of politics, so it'll be fascinating to follow that. Saudi Arabia is going to be critical in terms of the relations with Iraq. Concerns in Saudi Arabia about a Shia-dominated state, a Shia-dominated government, and concerns specifically about Prime Minister Maliki have made relations between Saudi Arabia and Iraq complicated. We see after the coalition government was formed, after the Sunnis have continued to participate in this government, that Saudi-Iraqi relations are on the upswing and that there are indications that the Saudis will work with the Iraqi government. Now, this is complicated by everything else that's going on in the region, and I think Saudi Arabia is much more focused on Bahrain now than they are on Iraq, but we will monitor this carefully. On Kuwait-Iraqi relations, this is important because, of course, Kuwait has the most to fear from Iraq, but we've seen positive indications there in the visit of the Kuwaiti Prime Minister to Iraq in January, and then Prime Minister Maliki's visit to Kuwait recently. Kuwaitis and Iraqis want to have economic relations. They want to be able to work together, but there are political concerns on both sides, and that will be an interesting one to watch. I would just say that that brief review, and I didn't mention Jordan because that's basically a positive relationship, these relations show the Iraqis trying to develop positive, moderate relations with all their neighbors, and this balancing act is going to mean they'll come under pressures, but my bottom line would be to argue that Iraq is not under the domination of any one of these countries. Some people say it's Iran, some people say Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and others will play enormous influence in Iraq. They will seek to play a role in Iraq, but Iraq will work to balance those influences. Speaking about the region and what's going on in Iraq as compared to the rest of the region, we saw protests last Friday and the Friday before that became violent. The bottom line that we report on these protests is that people are protesting not for regime change, but for services against corruption, for better government response to their needs. When you looked at those GDP figures and when you look at the educational needs and the employment needs, Iraqis have been protesting and will continue to protest for more accountable government. And the fact that these demonstrations turned violent depends on where they occurred, what the local governor did, how the Iraqi security forces reacted, and there were problems two Fridays ago. Last Friday we saw the Iraqi security forces reacting in a much more measured way, but there have been signs on both sides that these protests will continue. The government is concerned about these protests and we've protested against some actions against journalists. There were apologies about actions against journalists, but that's not enough. There were actions just yesterday against two political parties that may have had their offices closed. We have to watch what the government is doing as they go forward, but then we also have to watch what the protesters are doing. Mukhtar al-Sadr, the Sadrist leader, has been known to call demonstrations against the state and to, and of course the Jais al-Madi was in conflict with the state until Maliki, with significant help from us, crushed them in 2008 in first in Basra and then in Sadr City. But we have to watch what the other sides are doing as we go forward. But basically you're going to continue to see protests in Iraq, especially as the summer months come and people want electricity and the electricity is always going to be behind as we go forward. The attack on the Beji oil refinery last week didn't help, although news reports about how bad it was are not, it's not as bad as has been reported. The Iraqis will be able to put the Beji refinery back together, but this shows that there will be continual challenges as they go forward. Let me wrap up by talking about some of the major challenges that Iraq faces. The issues I think are corruption and employment and education. And all three of these issues are going to be something that we will try and work with the Iraqi government on, but the Iraqi government is going to have to make enormous strides in order to keep up with the demands of its people. On education, you basically, for the last eight years, have had people, teenagers, not going to school the way they need to in order to be trained for jobs. On employment, we need to look at sectors such as agriculture, which can employ. The oil sector is never going to employ a lot of people. That's just not the nature of the oil sector. But agriculture is something that the Iraqis do want to return to their farms. Irrigated agriculture is something that, even Saddam Hussein was not able to destroy that. And that irrigated agriculture went into, recently, until the last eight years, irrigated agriculture has been important. The Iraqis are going to have to combat corruption. And this is where our rule of law programs are extremely important. The hope is that the council of representatives, the parliament, with 325 members, will continue their efforts to combat corruption. I say that at least 90% of those parliamentarians ran on an anti-corruption program. The governors are under the spotlight. The prime minister is under the spotlight, hopefully being under the spotlight, and hopefully with a free and fair media, although we've seen some challenges to the media. We absolutely believe that Iraq still has the ability to use its media, or people have the ability to use their media to combat corruption. We'll have a basis to deal with this big challenge. Well, I said I was big for 20 minutes. I think I've done a little bit more than that. And I've only scratched the surface on all the elements that we have in Iraq. But I hope we can have an open discussion, and I can talk a little bit more about Iraq in relationship to the rest of the region as we go forward. Michael, thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, the kind of data that you've seen in these charts on the levels of violence, some of the issues in shaping the strategic importance of Iraq, are available on the web along with the details of the FY 2011 and 2012 budget requests that Michael's gotten into. Now I move to the challenges of being moderator. If you look around, you can see there are a lot of people here. Let me, as we raise a question, ask you to do two things. First, make sure it is a question with a question mark. And second, it is a one part and relatively short question rather than an introductory speech. The second is to wait for the microphone, and when the microphone comes, I will not attempt to identify you just where you're sitting. Please do give your name and organization. And with that, let me open things up in terms of the question. The lady in the second row there. Thank you. Molly Williamson, Middle East Institute. My question is on the first portion of your remarks, the transition from military to civilian, what happens to the implementation of our policy if Congress does not provide the requested money? The question that we wrestle with every day as we look at the budget debates that are going on right now, basically we already have had congressional support for our plan in Iraq in terms of the FY 10 supplemental that was passed last year that gave us money to start this plan. We briefed the Hill about the police training program, we briefed the Hill about our provincial presence. Obviously, we need the support of Congress as we go forward in order to be successful. And Secretary Clinton went up to the Hill last week for three separate occasions and made the point repeatedly that what we're doing in Iraq is vital to what the State Department is doing. As a foreign service officer, when Vice President Biden said this was the biggest thing we're doing since the Marshall Plan, we really feel it in the State Department. This is an opportunity for us to take over from a military in a conflict situation and to build the civilian institutions and set the stage for other conflicts and other countries, which will all be different, but that if we can succeed in Iraq, at least we lay the basis that we can succeed. It may be different in Afghanistan, it may be different in Yemen, it may be different in Somalia, but this sets the stage for success. We're working very hard, the Secretary of State taking the lead and the President and Vice President on the importance of Iraq. I think that as we go through the budget discussions, we will continue to have discussions on how important Iraq is. And when you look at the rest of the region, and when you look at the developments and the uncertainty, when you look at Iraq's potential in terms of a source for oil, in terms of a country which is getting over historical, ethnic, and religious differences, you have the potential for a country that might be able to provide some sort of stability rather than the 40 years of unrest that Iraq provided under Saddam Hussein. The gentleman in the back row, fourth row there. Thank you very much. My name is John Ozan with the Turkish Embassy. Just for the record, you alluded to Turkey's cross-border reparations in 2007 as an invasion. I mean, we cannot agree with that because we were under severe tech with the PKK. Excuse me, just a question. I'm sorry that we are not in your speech. Just for the record, but this is the second time. And I think the last country we made was Iran and Butanna. All right, thank you very much. In the back there. Saddam? Howie Lin from Floor Corporation. Good to see you again, sir. Question on the, you kind of made reference to if the US military was extended in Iraq. Just, I know it's a politically sensitive issue, but how might that process take place? For instance, would it be back channel discussions amongst their officials to our officials or like a formal process from the Iraqi Parliament to our government? If you could comment that, thank you. All I can say is that we went through the security agreement process, which was a very formal process where the council of representatives, the equivalent of their parliament, did vote and approve the security agreement. And the, because they have a parliamentary system with the checks and balances that have been brought from, that in their constitution that have similarities in our system, there will be a discussion that has to be a formal process on the Iraqi side. There is, we have a similar, a separate agreement called the Strategic Framework Agreement, which talks about all sorts of different types of cooperation, but for the type of, if you want to call it a status of forces agreement that wouldn't be necessary for a security follow-on agreement, it would necessitate a formal process, is all I can say, but we're not at that in a formal process. The gentleman and they first row here. I'm Jensen from National Defense University. It seems that the Iraqi government has got a lot of confidence in the last three weeks because of all these unrest and they see that they can be a model for democracy. And you've talked about, the US has a lot of interest in the success, obviously in Iraq, but some Iraqis feel like the US has lost interest a little bit in Iraq because of what's going on in the Middle East. I mean, have you noticed that and what is the US going to do to show Iraqis that they are going to be a priority rather than just focusing on Libya or these other things? I think that we're in some ways lucky there because I've been working for the last pretty much two years on this military to civilian transition which involves enormous cooperation with the Iraqis. I think that the vice president's leadership and the fact he's visited Iraq more than any other country shows the Iraqis we're focused on their situation. The fact that we have a $6.2 billion request in front of Congress right now that the Secretary of State is defending I think sends a message loud and clear that we are working with the Iraqis and the high level visitors continue to go to Iraq. I think that everyone is looking at the rest of the region country by country and there's a lot of concern, but we have the basis, a security agreement and a strategic framework agreement for cooperation with the Iraqis and they see that every day. They've got a process where they've formed an inclusive government that wants to deal with us and that wants diplomatic relations with us in every way. The gentleman over there on the back. Bruce Wright, senior advisor, CSIS. Michael, thanks very much, Dr. Quartzman. A question really for both of you. I'm interested in your views of the long-term impacts or diplomatic considerations for the presence of U.S. air power in the region, specifically Al Adid, I've been in Qatar a long time and Incirlik in Turkey. Neither I note geographically or in Iraq which I think is important to note that we don't have a plan for long-term air presence in Iraq. There has been discussion of the Iraqis buying F-16 aircraft which was one of the elements of the Egyptian foreign military financing program that I pointed to as I believe being very successful in the future. I think that Arab militaries do seek American weaponry and I think that there are benefits to be had from that but in terms of air power in the region I think that Iraq is not part of that discussion. I think Iraq will be, the question will be when you look to that chart is how Iraq builds up its own forces and how it works with other countries as it goes forward. In terms of Incirlik and Al Adid, I don't know if Dr. Quartzman wants to address that or if we want to save that for a discussion on a subject other than Iraq. I think we really ought to defer it and for a very clear reason. We're going to have to completely reshape our posture in the Middle East and the Gulf both because we are withdrawing from Iraq and because of the political changes taking place widely in the area. So I think by next year virtually every aspect of our strategic posture in the region is going to have to change and be redefined and it is perhaps going to be one of the more interesting periods in changing the US strategy in the region. Certainly one of the most challenging but let me go on with further questions. The lady in the back there. Thank you. To both. I'm an Italian journalist. I'm the former Chief Public Affair Officer, Media Training and Spock Person for the NATO Training Mission Iraq. So I would like just to ask you, in Italy we had corruption. In Iraq there is still corruption. In which way you think it's, I mean, which is the best way to eradicate it? I think the best way to eradicate, you don't eradicate corruption. I mean in the US we still have corruption. What you need is I think at least three things. You need a free media that can write stories or do TV specials on all types of corruption, even that of government officials or those in positions of power. You need a judiciary, judges and prosecutors who are empowered to go after corrupt individuals and are not threatened or bribed to prevent them from doing that. And then you need an executive branch that is willing to put its own ministers who tend to be sometimes not the worst offenders, but the ones that the public holds most accountable since they're elected. You need an executive branch that will go after its own ministers. In Iraq the record is mixed. We do have that free media that I talked about. There have been some threats to the media. I would argue these aren't systemic threats as you have in some other countries where the government is focusing or controlling the media. This is where individuals are threatening members of the media. Now we did have an attack on a police station, a radio station last week in which we condemned strongly, but you generally have a lot of media in Iraq and a lot of people spreading a lot of information around. In terms of the judges, we've had some successes with the judges. They're moving. They started having to be protected so they could do terrorism trials because the terrorists obviously, the way to deal with terrorists is through rule of law and the terrorists were threatening the judges. We helped protect judges. The Iraqis are now protecting their own judges and they're putting terrorists in, judges are putting terrorists in jail. The judges have now moved to organized crime in Iraq, which is a huge problem that doesn't get reported in the media. The next step we would argue is that the judges have to go after corrupt officials. Each of these stages is hard, but that's where we have this rule of law engagement with the judges and our Department of Justice is very active there. So we think we have a way forward. On the executive branch, we've seen the problem of ministers invoking an article of the Constitution which allows them to not be, to face investigations while they're in office. We, I believe that the parliament, the 325 member council of representatives is going to go after these ministers as they did last year. And this is going to be something where the executive branch is going to have to be accountable and have to respond. I think corruption is just, is going to be a very difficult issue to deal with. I think that there are certain sectors where we have certain advantages. The oil sector, generally the Ministry of Oil is viewed as an area where you can work and where there's enormous possibilities, but there are still problems everywhere. And the Iraqi people are going to demand a high level of accountability because they participated in these elections and whether the government can respond. And one of the ways the government of Iraq has responded is to not make decisions that they should because they're afraid of being accused of being corrupt. So there's a, this is an enormous area of challenge. And as I said, I think it's one of the greatest threats to the future of Iraq. So we are focused on it and we'll do everything we can to support the Iraqis as they go forward. Father, gentlemen over there in the back. Thank you for the presentation. Good seeing you. Following the demonstrations, my name is Ahmed Ali Amman, Iraq Analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Following the demonstrations, there have been calls by Prime Minister Maliki and the Speaker of the Parliament to hold earlier elections, whether local or provincial, which will clearly be an Iraqi affair. Could you tell us what will be the position of the US government with regards to those elections, if they happen, and what kind of assistance will be provided to elections in special places like Kirkuk, which hasn't had the provincial elections since 2005? Very important question because these local elections, the municipal elections were supposed to be held in conjunction with provincial elections in January of 2009 and were not held. The municipal elections are extremely important because there have been elections for the governors and for that level of provincial authority, but there haven't for the municipalities which have councils that have held on since 2000, well, they haven't had real elections for those councils in a long time. Our position is strongly to support these elections and the only reason that the municipal elections didn't move forward is because there just wasn't the organization and the ability to hold those, but we are pushing for municipal elections to be held. The way we supported these, and I think this was a success, or we supported the provincial elections, was the civil society organizations and that's another, when we get to corruption, that's the one other thing I forgot to mention. What I'm very encouraged about in Iraq is a number of civil society actors. Now, some of them are just political fronts and some of them are websites with one people, but there are a lot of civil society actors in Iraq who were organized and Iraq's elections were monitored by Iraqi observers who represented many of these NGOs in Iraq, the NGO law that was passed by the council of representatives last year is one of the most forward leaning in the region. The encouraging civil society is something that we think is extremely important in Iraq and I think they will, those civil society organizations who've already gone through the experience of supporting the provincial elections and the national elections will provide a basis for supporting more elections into the future and that's something that we will continue to work on and continue to support. The gentleman in the second row there. Sir, good morning. George Nicholson from Stratt Corp. In your introductory remarks, you said you would get to contractor support in the question and answer period, particularly with withdrawal of US forces providing airlift, quick response security, medivac, casualty of that, what kind of increased role, if there is gonna be an increased role, do you see for companies like that were like Blackwater, Triple Canopy, AAR for airlift and security? Yeah, the issue of contractor and I thank you for getting to that because contractor support is an extremely important issue and the State Department is sometimes accused of going to be relying on a contractor army to do all of the functions that the government itself should be doing. The fact is that if you go to a US base in Iraq now, the perimeter security is largely performed by contractors. The under the log cap system, the basic life support for the US military is provided by contractors. We're taking over those contractor services in order to get that type of support that the US military has decided that it needs and that we are going to need in a similar security situation in Iraq. The issue of how we manage them, we have ways of managing them that we think have go beyond the way that other people have managed contracts. After the Blackwater Nassour Square incident, the controls that we implemented meant we've had no incidents with our private security contractors. I'd also note that as opposed to Afghanistan where private security contracting companies have a hard time, after 2000, not well, starting in January of 2009, those security contracting companies that didn't make, didn't apply for licenses, translate their documents into Arabic, register their weapons with the government of Iraq, left Iraq and those security companies that are operating in Iraq are now those who are working with the Iraqi government very well. There's bureaucratic headaches, there's difficulty for security companies, but you see a large number of security companies providing security for Iraqi officials and Iraqi businessmen and others in Iraq and there isn't this feeling as they're, I understand from Afghanistan that of rejection of those contracting companies. There will be an enormous role for contracting companies in Iraq as we go forward. The key is how do those contracting countries, companies work with the local, with the host government and we've seen enormous progress and these are professional companies that operate in Mexico, South Africa, other places around the world. It was difficult when the US military was in control to tell those contracting companies that had to work with host government. Now they're doing that and we see a way forward where they can do that and we'll see, we're going to see the largest part, we're going to have approximately 17,000 total in Iraq and FY12 or in actually in the calendar year 12. Of that number, the vast majority will be contractors of one type or another and security will be the largest component but we believe we have the tools to manage those contractors as we go forward. The gentleman in the third row back there. Could you wait for the microphone please? I'm Robert Gard from the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation. Do I recall correctly that the constitution delegated considerable authority to the provinces or possible combination of provinces and I recall that in Kurdistan, they were contracting with oil companies to the objection of the central government. Is there a problem now with this constitution and if so, are we taking any action to rectify it? A lot of complex elements and an answer to that. One of the elements of the constitution which allowed the independent Kurdish region is to allow groups of provinces to band together if they choose to by referendum to separate or to not separate but to join into federation with the central government. There was talk in Basra a couple years ago of them trying to do the same thing that the Kurds do because they're sitting on a certain amount of oil and they might have thought it was in their interest to do that. We don't hear, there's still some politicians who talk about that but basically when you look at that benchmark that I mentioned of 2006 when Iraqis were looking at their own communities and not looking at the center and not looking at a concept of Iraq, you've moved away from that period. People are now participating in Baghdad and are participating with the central government and so we've moved away from the drive for independent regions. Now there is a very important role for decentralization in Iraq and I used to say that in Egypt and other countries all decisions were made in the capital. It's still probably the case but things are being turned upside down in Iraq, in Egypt. In Iraq the provincial governors have resource decisions, they have police decisions, they have governing council decisions that they make which we think is a very healthy development and we're going to continue to encourage that decentralization as we go forward and finally on Kurdish oil, very important because this was an enormous source of friction between the central government and the Kurds. There's been a lot of compromise that went on during that eight month period of government formation and there is, there's a recent deal where the Kurds are contributing to putting oil into the northern pipeline. I think there's a lot of factors that go into that but despite the events in Kirkuk last week we see the Kurds and the central government working together for the exploitation of hydrocarbon reserves. The gentleman in the first row and I do see the woman in the first row, I'm sorry it was, I will get to you next. Honored to Borgraph CSIS, Dr. Corbin the last time I read about the numbers in Baghdad and Kabul these were the two largest US embassies in the world and what is the current number and will that remain to be the number as far as one can see into the future? The issue there is the contractor support because a lot of our functions now are being done by contractors who are under the log cap to the military. We have about 1,600 foreign service officers, civil servants, 3161s, the different categories of people who are under our authority in Iraq. That number of civil service, foreign service, 3161s, other agencies that are there will probably continue, may even increase a little bit as we take over some of the functions of the military. The number of contractors that we can't even give a number of contractors because there's so many contractors working with the military in different functions but as I said we plan to go to a 17,000 total. If you go back to when I mentioned there were 165,000 troops in Iraq at that time there were probably 100,000 contractors also so you had a quarter of a million US hires in Iraq in one way or the other. We will continue to have Iraq as one of the largest embassies if not the largest embassy in the world because of the importance that we see in this supporting this transition as we go forward. And some people said well as the military comes down then the state numbers should come down. We see the opposite. We can't, I mean some of the military thought that as their numbers go down our numbers would shoot up but we can't do that because we don't have the personnel resources and we have to support Afghanistan and the rest of the world but we will maintain a large presence in Baghdad and around the country because as I said one thing we've learned from Iraq is you have to have presence and you have to be on the ground and you have to be there in force in order to engage the Iraqis. The lady in the front to the right. Thank you, I, is this on? Oh, thank you, I know I'm out of your sight line. Secretary Corbyn, thanks for your time. Emily Kade with Congressional Quarterly. I was hoping to get your thoughts about how the current budget gridlock is affecting your planning on the ground in Iraq and in the State Department here in Washington specifically the lack of a full year fiscal 2011 budget. What sort of uncertainty that's creating if you're lacking the authorizations you need to transition from military to civilian lead on some of these things. And as I said before we've seen congressional support for what we're doing in Iraq. As Secretary Clinton mentioned in her testimony we are very focused on having success in Iraq and she spoke broadly about the impact on the whole State Department of the projected cuts that are being discussed. Our planning is based on this military to civilian transition. The US military is moving out of Iraq according to the timelines. We have to move forward with our planning. We work very closely with Congress to provide them information on what we're doing there. But the current budget situation is worrying to us because we see this as an extremely important endeavor for the State Department, which as I said goes beyond what we're doing in Iraq but has implications for everything that we're doing and for our ability to take over from the military in a post-conflict situation. Let me again say that we do have a paper which I listed on the web which does describe the details of this request and provides more detail as to exactly what is needed. There was a question in the back there, the woman. I should say lady, excuse me. Viola Ganger from Bloomberg News. Can you tell me how concerned is the US government about some of the unrest that has come up in Iraq recently? And what are you telling the Iraqi government about, or advising the Iraqi government in relation to this and how to handle it? And particularly, are you sending any signals and messages to the government in relation to some of the reports of repressive tactics that the government has used against certain organizations, not only military or security tactics, but also legal? I think we're very involved with the Iraqis in terms of the professional Iraqi security forces that have to deal with these protests in an even-handed and appropriate manner. We issued a statement over the weekend about attacks on the radio station and other journalists. We're focused on political maneuvers behind the scenes that could cause the protests to be worse. But as I said, these protests have been going on, or I didn't say this specifically, but we had protests in Basra last summer, for example, over electricity. We've had protests in Sader City, organized by Muktadal Sader from afar, every Friday for many years. The question is how these protests will change as the new government is held more accountable. I say that the general themes across the Middle East of I want food on the table today, I want a job that allows me to put food on the table tomorrow, and I want an education for my kids so they can have at least as good a standard of living as I do, are prevalent throughout the Middle East as well as they are in Iraq. And we are working with the Iraqi government as they work to provide, and they have been working over the last couple of years. The people who have the most focus on electricity in Iraq is not the U.S. government, it is Prime Minister Maliki and the government of Iraq because they know that's one of the demands of the Iraqi people. Healthcare and employment are something that Prime Minister Maliki knows are absolutely critical as he goes forward, and the way that Iraqis are using their resources, the way they're trying to address these problems reflect the importance that they place on these issues. So we will continue to work with the Iraqi government. I think that the intricacy and complexity of Iraq suggests that you can't just look at what's going on in Baghdad. Every province has a different relation. Some governors are more popular than other governors. The whole independent Kurdistan region has a different political system in some ways than the rest of the country. What's going on in Anbar is very different than what's going on in Najaf, for example. And the fact that this country does have a certain amount of decentralization, we think is a good thing because the local governors can deal with the situations according to what the local people are demanding and the situations will be different as we go forward. But we continue to work closely with the Iraqi government to support them as they ask for different types of support. Used to be electricity, the Iraqis have their own electricity plans now. When the Beji oil refinery was attacked last week that was one of those areas where they come to us and see what we can do to help them to get that oil refinery back on track. So the gentleman in the fourth row there. Thank you, Sean Kane at the United States Institute of Peace. Mr. Corbyn, nice to see you again. I wanted to ask a question on an issue that we're still struggling with ourselves, but it's particularly important in Iraq given its history of authoritarianism and that's about the separation of powers. There was recently a Supreme Court decision in Iraq placing certain independent institutions such as the Electoral Commission, the Commission on Public Integrity under the Prime Minister's office. There's not a avenue to appeal this, but Parliament has responded by trying to pass a law that would fully entrench the independence of the Supreme Court. And I'm just wondering if you could comment on how you see the importance of that law both on its own merits, but also as a symbol around or a signal on separation of powers and what you think its prospects for passage might be. I won't get into specifics of the law, although one of the elements that we see as positive is the ability of the Council of Representatives to serve as a check and balance and to take actions. There's going to be a tension between the Executive Branch and Prime Minister Maliki in particular, his tendency towards centralizing decisions and running the country as he's been able to do in the past and the new inclusive government that requires consensus and agreement. I think that when I talked about that positive trend towards decentralization, the general trend for any politician, I would argue, is the more decisions you can make yourself rather than having to make them in coalition or consensus, the more you'll try and do. So we've got to fight the tendency to centralize decisions. I mentioned the National Council for Higher Policies. This was extremely important because it set up a way of having more of a more consensus and decision-making process on key security decisions or decisions of strategic importance rather than having the provincial commands reporting to the Prime Minister rather than having the office of the Commander-in-Chief making decisions, the Iraqis are trying and we are trying to divide up these powers. That we think the Parliament is the right way to address laws that will balance the executive branch's power. I think that because of the protests, because of what's going on in the rest of the region, I think Prime Minister Maliki is going to be responsive to calls from his people to make decisions in consensus rather than making them by himself. There will be a tendency, electricity is one of those examples where Prime Minister Maliki made decisions to try and get more electricity online and you can argue about whether it was good that he did that or bad but it was one of those things where a politician uses authoritarian tendencies to make right decisions rather than wrong decisions. So we will be following this very closely and we commend the work of USIP in supporting this process there as we go forward. One of the projects USIP did that I visited last year was getting a caucus and I haven't mentioned minority communities here so I'm just going to use this as a plug for the fact that we do follow that. The communities, the Christians, the Shabbat, the Yazidis and others have been under attack by terrorists in Iraq extremists because they are vulnerable and we do have programs where we work to support them but one of the elements that focused on the parliament was a USIP sponsored conference to teach them how to caucus, to increase their numbers so that they could have more influence in this new parliament and that's the type of project where you see Iraqi leaders using the tools that come from a checks and balance system to further their own goals and we think further the good of the country in general. The gentleman on the back row there. Amatsib Aram, George University and Haifa University, two issues. One, Amatsib. Hi, long time no see. First, it seems to me that you still need a buffer force in the North and you need some support for the Iraqis on the Iranian border, less on the Syrian one but certainly the Iranian border. So if you think that keeping some American soldiers still in Iraq, time is running out for so far, for a new so far. That's the way I look at it. You already are planning out. Your military is planning to go out already. Second, what will happen to the regional development teams? Regional development teams. Provincial reconstruction. Yes. So on the first one, I think that the Kurd Arab issue is being addressed through compromise, although we do have something called the combined security mechanisms where we have worked with the Arab forces and the Kurdish forces, mainly the Peshmerga. We will, we are looking at how this mechanism will transition. We see that there's a role for you Nami. There's a role in the discussions between the central government and the Kurdish authorities on how they're going to address these issues but we think it will be through compromise and that the presence of U.S. forces or other forces may not be necessary. And if we see how this Kirk Cook, the recent developments in Kirk Cook are resolved, if they're resolved through political negotiation as we think they should be, that will be a good sign. In terms of the provincial reconstruction teams, they are transitioning. We had a peak of 26, we're now down to 16. Some of them are transitioning to be the consulate in Basra, the consulate in Erbil, the two embassy branch offices in Mosul and Kirk Cook. Others are transitioning as they close. They're transitioning their functions to the provincial governors. They're making sure that we keep the context that have been developed. We're making sure that the Iraqis have access to us either in one of the embassy branch offices or the consulates or in Baghdad itself. We feel that the experience of these provincial reconstruction teams was extremely positive. It was military civilian cooperation. It was rocky at first and some of the teams didn't work. But in the end, we believe it was a positive example. And while the Afghanistan teams are different because they're military led rather than civilian led, there are some lessons that have been, that we are passing on to the Afghan side, particularly as we look, as they look at transitioning to more of a civilian lead rather than a military lead in terms of US government presence. One last question, the gentleman there. Thank you. Michael Johnson, Council on Foreign Relations. How concerned is the US government with the lack of integration of the Sons of Iraq and what are we doing to urge the Maliki government to speed up this integration? Thank you. The Sons of Iraq is extremely important question. I would say that now that we have the Sunnis participating in the government, it become, you have to look at in that context, the Maliki government, the previous Maliki government and the current Maliki government have made a commitment to integrating the Sons of Iraq. That was put on hold for a while around the national elections because the Sons of Iraq helped provide security. The issue is where do you employ these people and the Iraqi government has tried to employ them. There have been steps. A more positive indication has been that the Iraqi government does pay them. They are responsible for paying the Sons of Iraq. It's often late. There's a lot of complaints from the Sons of Iraq but generally this is not the issue that it used to be and the Sunnis are politically participating in the government. There is a commitment to the Sons of Iraq. There are certainly disaffected Sons of Iraq who want a job. They want to leave the sort of security element that they're in but it's hard for every Iraqi to find employment. We see a commitment but the key thing is we see a commitment from the government of Iraq and we see this as generally with lots of bumps in the road, it's generally a success story as we go forward and I think that it will continue that way as long as Sunnis keep participating in the government and as we see with the reaction to Eid-e-Lawi deciding not to participate, we see an opportunity for them to keep, we see them continuing to participate in the government. Ladies and gentlemen, I think we'd all like to thank Michael Corbin a bit. But I also have a special request. I promised him he could leave by 10.25 which means he has to get in the elevator and get to a next meeting very promptly. So if we could give him the chance, please. Thank you.