 As Nate Farrer mentioned earlier, this is our military strategy forum on Iraq, stability, security, and U.S. policy. And I'd like to thank you for joining us here. My name is Stephanie Sannick. I'm a senior fellow here at CSIS. And it's my pleasure and privilege to introduce you to your panelists today. But before we get started, one of the remarks from Ambassador Crocker that I found particularly interesting was he identified the fundamental challenges facing Iraq as it transitions. Not only politically, but economically, socially, looking at issues ranging from hydrocarbons legislation to disputed internal boundaries. One of the things in Washington that I've noticed in the last year or so, as Iraq has fallen off the radar screen in terms of public, congressional, political, and it appears to be executive branch attention, has been that the focus has been on the Iraq election and its transition. And lately, we've been seeing more and more attention, such as it is, on the U.S. transition in Iraq. And today, the panelists will focus not only on the topic, which is stability, security, and U.S. policy, but also looking at how do we get greater attention paid to this very important topic, the investment that we've already put into Iraq, and making sure that the U.S. policy is developed responsibly and in coordination with our Iraqi partners. Our first speaker today to lay the groundwork for the discussion almost needs no introduction. He is renowned, he is prolific, and he is Anthony H. Cordesman. The Ashley A. Burke Chair in Strategy here at CSIS, Dr. Cordesman has really been one of the most vocal, outspoken people, policy experts here in Washington on the subject of Iraq, which for many of us is our favorite four-letter word. Dr. Cordesman publishes quite a bit and is engaged not only in Iraq, on the ground, with military commanders calling him to come visit, come tell him what they see and where they should go with their policy. But here in town, he is remained actively engaged, and he is what we would like to consider a national security professional. He's held senior positions, not only the Department of Defense, but he's worked for the State Department, on the NATO international staff, and he's worked in several countries, including in the Middle East. So Dr. Cordesman will lay the groundwork for our panel discussion. He'll then be followed by Mr. Nazar Janabi, who is an Iraqi, living here in the States right now. He's an independent consultant and associate fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Prior to this, he was within the Ministry of Defense in Iraq. He was an Iraqi Army officer and an engineer by training, but he also helped determine what the Ministry of Defense chain of command would look like and then participated in that chain of command by focusing on policy and requirements, everything from force structure to strategy to manning levels, procurement, force transformation. And I think Mr. Janabi will offer a valuable perspective on where the Iraqi security forces have come from and where they are going. And now Ambassador Crocker also mentioned repeatedly congressional support. And in trying to highlight both public and political awareness of this issue, we've got two congressional staffers here today. We'll try to treat them kindly. The first one is Michael Casey, who is a professional staff member on the House Armed Services Committee staff. And I'm pleased to say he was one of my counterparts when I was also on that staff. He's a great travelmate, but he's also probably one of the most focused staffers on the Middle East from an Armed Services perspective. He asks scary questions or at least questions that the administration finds scary. And I think he can offer a great perspective on where the National Security Committees on the Hill are seeing Iraq ago in the future. And he will be followed by Daniel Silverberg. Daniel will talk a little bit about the role of the Foreign Affairs Committee on the House side in conducting oversight over what's going on in the U.S. transition in Iraq. So without further ado, I would like to turn the floor over to the legendary Dr. Cordesman. I think I have been oversold at the point where I cannot possibly meet expectations, but Stephanie asked me to both give a brief overview of what we need to focus on. And then I will look at the specifics of how the U.S. effort to deal with Iraqi forces has moved forward. But let me say that often when we talk about the lack of information on Iraq, it is sometimes a lack of attention. The Congress has mandated the Department of Defense provide a quarterly report on Iraq. That report covers not only the security situation, but the economic and political situation and the impact of U.S. aid. I can't say it is always a timely response to the congressional request, but it is the most detailed official picture. The Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction provides a great deal of detail and overview information. A lot of that is a warning of the need for U.S. continuity and continuing effort. You have within the Energy Information Agency three documents which receive far too little attention. I suspect because they're not terribly politically correct. One is the EIA report on Iraq, which I would encourage anyone to read who believes there will be a sudden, quick, or even midterm increase in Iraqi oil production. Oil companies can promise 12 million barrels a day by tomorrow. The estimate of the Energy Information Agency is something like 7.5 by 2030. That could change with a much more stable Iraq and a much more effective Iraq. We need to be very realistic because that underpins everything that happens in Iraq in the near and mid term. That is the economy. That is the funding of the government. That is how stability will flow in terms of currency. Another report is the International Energy Outlook. And why is that important? Because if you look at it, what it says is that the United States will basically remain dependent on energy imports through 2035 in all of the cases that it runs. And that's as far as it projects. And it makes very optimistic assumptions about U.S. energy policy, about alternative fuels, and about conservation. And when you talk about the strategic importance of Iraq and the Gulf, it is time to be perhaps realistic because we have been talking about energy independence and depleting America first since the Nixon administration. And if some of you are old enough to remember, the first date for the promise of energy independence was 1980, a promise that one ought to keep in perspective. The last of those reports is the Annual Energy Outlook, which talks about the structure of how the United States can vary its energy supplies. Ambassador Crocker talked in broad terms about the challenges. But we are coming out of a period in which some $38 billion worth of outside aid did not make meaningful structural changes in any aspect of the problems Iraq inherited from some 30 years of crisis and from a time that it went virtually bankrupt in 1982. Because of conflict, because we did not have the ability to manage these programs, we not only have an oil sector which still needs basic laws and legal reforms to begin effective security and where one of the critical problems has been the inability to restructure the oil police and the security structures that would give oil companies the ability to operate. But because of the solderous role in the education and medical ministries, you have basically a breakdown in basic capability in education and medicine. And while people talk of Iraq as being an educated country, it is not. First, you have something like a 46% functional illiteracy rate in the intake to the police and the army. That's one of the reasons it has been so difficult to absorb the suns. Basic literacy is not the issue. Functional competitive literacy is. Medical services are a problem throughout the country. If we ignore infrastructure, there is a critical problem in agriculture and in water. Water is going to be a growing problem because of Syria and Turkey. But it's also a critical problem because the structure of an agriculture based on inundation and flooding, which is incredibly wasteful in water. And for the first time in Iraq's history, the Tigris Euphrates system fell the levels last year below the intake to the water purification plants in some of the river cities. You have a state sector in industry which consumes the budget in terms of simply funding employment. If you look at the Iraqi budget out of what is actually funded without structural reform, which is a matter of four to five years at a minimum, that budget is being consumed in personnel costs. And we talk about forming a new government. But running ministries and having governance is not something that comes on the day you form a new government. Even if you appoint the right people, it takes you three, six, eight months to develop a functioning ministry under a new leader and to find a solution to what is another enduring problem, which is a budget crisis. One of the things I'll show you in a moment is a presentation of what has actually happened to Iraqi security forces. And essentially, Iraqi security forces are about two years behind the goals that we had hoped to have when we signed the agreements and planned for U.S. withdrawal. Part of that has been a matter of expectations which couldn't be met. Part of it has been waiting for a government to form. And when one of your critical ministers is running against the prime minister, the minister of interior, you do not always have effective leadership and coordination. But more than that, the budget crisis that began in April 2009 led to a freeze on personnel to a cutback in capital spending and to major cuts in operating spending. And the end result is you have had some improvements in the training base, but you have had a significant drop in manning and readiness. And you are behind your goals in every aspect of Iraqi force development by at least a year and often two years over what we had planned to have when we withdraw at the end of next year. Now these are realities that you do not quickly deal with, but let me show you a few other realities. This briefing is on the website and the sites are available. I'm not going to take you through the agony of every aspect of PowerPoint. And at this point, I don't even seem to be able to get it to move but thank you. Okay. But here's where we have one of the critical issues. I've mentioned our continuing energy independence. Rightly or wrongly, we removed a critical containment from Iran in terms of military capability. In 2003, Iraq was the leading military power. In 2010, we have a handful of obsolete tanks in Iraqi forces and Iran leads it by something like 11 to 1. You had superior Iraqi air forces in 2003. You have no meaningful combat Iraqi aircraft today. And I think Ambassador Crocker quite frankly was grossly over-optimistic. You will not complete the M1 delivery program for all of 144 tanks before 2013 in a way where you can sustain and train for the tanks. The F-16 request that was announced in September of this year will not lead to the first cadre of meaningful combat aircraft until somewhere around 2013 to 2015. Creating an effective national defense system of any kind is going to take till somewhere around 2017 to 2020. And it is not simply a matter of lead aircraft. Oddly enough, the situation in tanks and combat aircraft is better than any other capability. It is far worse in artillery, surface-to-air missiles, and all the other elements because of delays in the order structure, because of funding problems, and because the Iraqi Development Plan for 2009 and 2011 has effectively had to be put on suspension to the point where it is dead. If it is to be revived, it will be revived by planners under the new government. When that government appears and at the time that it can reach a decision. Now, let me just note, I won't attempt to analyze the threat. It's on the brief for those of you who want to see it. We have made truly major progress. But what these complex models show is that one chart, which is very familiar, does not tell the story. There is still a very significant level of internal violence in Iraq. It is about 60% of the total level of violence in the war in Afghanistan. That puts it in a perspective that often gets lost when we look at the striking improvement over time. We have cleaned up and altered the ethnic and sectarian violence. It is far, far lower than it has been. But the seeds of that violence still remain. It is a potential if we have the wrong government and it makes the wrong decisions over time. And the unity of the security services and the effectiveness of the security services is not a matter of what happens between now and the end of 2011. It is what happens between now and the end of how long it takes. And to say that it will take less than 2015 is historically a remarkably optimistic and unrealistic picture of the history of events. I will not repeat what Ambassador Crocker said. He did point out that we are maintaining a significant amount of military capability. It is important to note that the four advisory assistance brigades are regular combat brigades with an additional advisory presence and special forces assist the Iraqis. It is not at this point withdrawal that becomes critical till the end of 2011. There is time if Iraq wants it. But that withdrawal is a great deal more serious than people may understand because often they see it in terms of personnel. If you look at this briefing, you also see the pattern of base closings and facility closing. But more than that, while we delayed the reductions in personnel to allow the election to take place, we removed the equipment. And later in this briefing, and I will not take you all the way through it, you can find the numbers. The fact is you simply do not have the core supplies, the core weapons or the core equipments in theater to sustain a high ground presence or even a high air presence of the kind you once had. This has already happened. And it will go on steadily during the course of the next year. Reintroduction is a difficult challenge because it means re-projecting the elements of power projection, sustainability and operations. The good news is we do have the air capacity in the region. We do continue to fly a significant number of air sorties in support of the Iraqis. Not in dropping munitions, but in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Looking at the numbers, the Iraqis will need that capability through at least 2013. There is no way they can find a substitute that would give them anything like the effective intelligence or surveillance data that they have with the support of U.S. assets, of which these are only a part. This is a long briefing. Again, the numbers are not always critical. But when I say that there are serious problems in every element of Iraqi force development, you will find these laid out in detail throughout this briefing. And every number comes from the Department of Defense and every number reflects a serious problem in counterinsurgency and counterterrorism capability. It isn't just a matter of major forces. It is a matter of serious problems in training and leadership. You are far short of the NCOs and officers you need. You do not have the logistic and sustainability you need. You have not been able to put the intelligence and communications institutions in place you need. You are building up one mechanized division out of a 14 division force that will have the ability to provide national defense at some level and that division will not be ready before 2014 at the earliest as an organized, sustained, trained force. Creating numbers and equipment is only part of the story. I do not find it meaningful for the administration to talk about 660,000 Iraqi security forces as a measure of our capability when that is not the real number but the number authorized. And when more than half of them are policemen and in the Ministry of Interior. We could be a great deal more honest in communicating to the Congress and to the American people about what we have not done and still need to do. We also have within the Ministry of Defense, let me just note, these are figures still current. In April we had 68% of the officers needed in the Iraqi Army for the existing force. It's actually dropped over the last few months. Those are not numbers which lead to immediate cases for strong forces and security. The counterterrorism force is just at about half the level it should be. The one element of the police which can really handle paramilitary operations which is the federal police is at this point at roughly a quarter of the level that is manned and the level that is said to be the minimum level to provide paramilitary security for the other police in Iraq. You have basically a failure to form the port police as an effective force. You have serious problems within the border security police. Even if the police you had were effective and they aren't, you have about 60% of the minimum required. The oil police, the electric police, the facilities protection services are all facing a period of at least two to three years to form the levels necessary to provide some kind of lasting transition and again these are not my figures. Let me just conclude with two other points. I said that the Iraqi budget and I know everybody's budget but your own is a really dull subject. But the fact is the budget figures are quite clear. The budget is consumed by the need to pay for people and often these people are not functional and without capital investment and without operations and maintenance they cannot be functional. And it is at least several years before Iraq can bring this into balance without outside aid. We cannot basically go to Congress for more economic aid. We are transitioning from major flows of economic aid to technical assistance not because this is the right thing to do but because we have no choice. And we will downsize our PRTs to five facilities in Iraq because that again is driven by cost and feasibility. We have not yet defined what the military assistance mission will mean. To make it work we need not only a strong one but a very large amount of military assistance because Iraq cannot fund the basic purchases it needs to make out of its budget. That request will come from the Department of Defense if OMB and the administration allow it to come but it is something we have not yet begun to even present to Congress and the figures are not necessarily small. And this problem which is broken out here for the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Interior affects every aspect of the Iraqi government and every aspect of Iraqi planning. One last point about this structure. We also are planning to transition to the State Department's management of a police development effort in the course of the next year. I wish us luck. I have to honestly say that in every case where INL has ever been tested informing a police force under difficult conditions it has failed. I am not a believer in the quality, effectiveness or integrity of the contracting effort informing police. This may not be a popular conclusion but I have seen too much of it in the field. But beyond that there is the fact that the police effort is completely out of phase with the rule of law effort. We will create if these police programs are successful a police without creating a justice system and again these are numbers coming from state and the Department of Defense. More than that we will not have bothered to create the protection capabilities to even allow judges to function at the numbers required. What is the source for this? It's the latest quarterly report from the Department of Defense and the one that's coming in theory will not change the conclusions. To make this work we have to have dedication and the willingness to stay and to say we don't just set this system up we ensure that it actually function. We have been waiting for the year of police since 2003. We will have to wait till at least 2011 and probably 2012. Now these are underlying realities. They are numbers which are part of what the U.S. government is actually saying. And behind them is a whole set of numbers which defines exactly what we mean by technical assistance at the economic level and the level of governance as well. I don't for a moment question the intention or the capability of the people who set this up. But I'm simply going to say at this position point in time if we have an Iraqi government we work with and can work with the plans and structure we have are extraordinarily marginal and if they are not fully funded by the Congress and if they are not made fully effective by the executive branch this is a war we will lose having won it and lose within a few years. Thank you. Thanks Tony. Sir. Good morning everyone. To talk about the future role of the United States after 2011 I'm of course I'm an Iraqi citizen so I'm going to make the assumption that the United States will continue its commitment to Iraq's sovereignty. And with that I'm to understand the role of the United States or the role of the U.S. forces in Iraq we need to answer this question. Will the Iraqi security forces be able to defend Iraq after 2011? And the short answer is absolutely not. With about 680,000 government sanctioned personnel between the Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Interior, Counterterrorism Bureau and other organization what the country has right now is a kinder semi-functional counterinsurgency force with a chronic lack of strategic vision at the top and a centralized top-down decision-making process. Operations are hampered by growth and development problems. They are not yet adept at synchronized combined arms operations or planning without the help of their U.S. counterparts. Not maneuver-oriented and cannot deploy or control battle space outside of their traditional areas of operations for long periods of time. Apart from the special operation forces, the current Modus Apprenti is very much that of the past. Static checkpoints, fixed base operations with short patrolling outside the wire. Engineering assets remain deficient and the rules of engagement are loose, particularly the rule of proportionality in the use of force. Iraqi security forces have no control over their Iraqi airspace nor any air defense capability whatsoever. The list goes on and on, but since I only have three to five minutes, I'm going to go to the upside. The upside is the Iraqi Navy is increasingly capable and they have several projects in the pipeline and in the process of being executed that will enhance their capability to protect the small shoreline that Iraq has and the significant and extremely important offshore oil platforms. The Air Force as Tony had mentioned earlier seems to be getting some fixed wing capability. However, this won't be deployable until at least or at the earliest 2013 if we're lucky. The Iraqi Defense Ministry understand that its role is not to be the country's policeman and has the goal of reclaiming Iraq's position as a regional power as an organizational goal and one of my personal favorite is that the Iraqi Army is staying out of the political fray for the time being. Overall, the picture in the longer term is cautiously positive if the Iraqi political stalemate resolves itself and the security services can get their collective act together. This will require a commitment from the United States well beyond 2011. In conclusion, the case for strategic patients remains valid, maintaining a sizable and robust contingent of advisors, trainers and capacity builders with a hands-on approach in coordination with an upcoming Iraqi government will support Iraq's continued development and provide a level of conventional deterrence against external threats allowing Iraq's democracy the breeding space it desperately needs. That's my three minutes. Thank you very much. Mr. Casey. Thank you. First, the caveat is congressional staff member. I'm not speaking for anybody actually in Congress only for myself. And secondly, in the interest of time I'm going to curtail my remarks a little bit to discuss something Ambassador Crocker touched on when he suggested that the Iraqis might come back and ask for an extension of the security agreement. I hope that happens personally. I also think it's going to be a much heavier lift than he thinks for a couple reasons. First off, it's Iraq and as somebody who's watched Iraq from Congress for about four years now nothing is ever easy with Iraq. Second of all, Congress really didn't like the original security arrangement security agreement as written and largely accepted it because they didn't have a choice. The UN Security Council resolution was running out and it was a temporary agreement that got us out of Iraq to suggest that you're just going to extend the current version of it would be unpopular and challenging and I'm not sure you can get there. And given that and the Congress would essentially ask for a renegotiation of it and given the internal Iraqi political dynamics I'm not sure you get an extension of the agreement that's acceptable to all sides inside the amount of time we have remaining before the last US forces leave. And then it becomes very difficult to put them back. The second issue with the SOFA is obviously the number of troops you're talking about depends on the list of missions you want but I don't think it's unreasonable to think in numbers of say 10,000 if you're actually making a force that can protect itself and do some number of useful missions. 10,000 and up. What's currently costing us about a billion dollars a year for every thousand people. For Congress to suddenly be presented with a bill and additional bill and a DOD budget of 10, 15 billion dollars is not going to be a popular thing. That no one has seen it coming. No one sees it coming. The supplementals are going away as far as Iraq is concerned and it's going to be it will be a tough hill to climb. You can already see sort of those budget trends going, this ongoing fight as General Hunziger knows about Iraq's security forces spending. Administration requested two billion dollars. One house of the Congress cut that in half. That number remains to be worked out but even in what is the last year of ISF funding, Congress is highly resistant to going into large numbers, anything big in that anything that suggests that we are changing the narrative of ending DOD's role in Iraq largely ending DOD's role is going to be a tough hill to climb and it's not impossible but if the administration wanted to do it, they're going to have to start making the case publicly and now and put it up against the other priorities we've got because the budget problems we face are not going away and the belief in Congress is that we are done largely done with DOD's role in Iraq and it's going to take time to overcome that and with that I will turn to my foreign affairs colleague. Thank you. I feel dressed for the role as well with a bow tie. So first like Mike anything that I say is in my personal capacity I'm not representing the Committee on Foreign Affairs or any member of Congress. I want to pick up on that point exactly. When Ambassador Crocker mentioned that the administration needs to come to the hill with well articulated well defended requests, I think both of our years perked up because I would argue I'm not sure that's happened yet. There's certainly been tactical conversations. I would say that the State Department has come quite forcefully and laid out exactly what their plans are particularly in the INL context, the numbers they're going to need, what the construction costs are and I think it's been couched in this context of yes this is going to be a difficult mission but it's going to be a diplomatic mission and it will be relatively normal to the extent it can be. There's no question this is far from a normal mission this is an unprecedented mission and here is I think the key point which is we are constructing consulates and fortifying an embassy in circumstances that in any other part of the world we would be closing embassies or at a minimum we would be evacuating them. So there's a real question here from the foreign affairs perspective of how do you even do this diplomatic mission and second speaking specifically to the to the budget point. For years the foreign affairs committees have been asking this existential question what kind of State Department do we want? What we really want are a hundred Ryan Crocker's who are going to win the award for being expeditionary. We need a more expeditionary more operational State Department and we're trying to do that through rewriting the Foreign Assistance Act and other efforts but it is really hard to do particularly in this kind of budget climate when the Secretary of Defense comes to the hill hand in hand with the Secretary of State and asks for the President's budget the 150 account to be funded at his request level and it still gets cut. That's problematic. Now when you have the Iraq mission in that context I think we could have a real problem. This is a mission that I think is not naturally in the State Department's DNA. It's one that to some extent is still military in nature. Mike and I always he knows better than anyone that my job is to protect the jurisdiction of our committee and more important the prerogative of the Secretary of State but this is a context where I think that some of the tasks their State Department is being asked to perform are inherently military and will be difficult for it to perform and for which there is shrinking public support and so I think that we need to see a much more what I like to see a more robust campaign on the part of the administration to not just present the tactical details but to really come in and say here's why this policy is important and here's how the State Department and our civilian agencies can make it happen and there is more than a willing partner on our side but those are a few of our concerns. Thank you. Before I open the floor to questions I do want to pose a question both to Tony and to Daniel building on something Daniel just said. He talked about the need for an expeditionary Ambassador Corps and I think more broadly foreign service officers and he also mentioned opening embassy branch offices where in any other situation we would be closing or evacuating them. I think this comes down to not only the capacity of the State Department to undertake the missions for which it is signed up but also it brings into question the role of contractors. I know the INL request to conduct the police training program in Iraq will use be heavily reliant on the use of contractors as well as program officers who I'm not sure the State Department has either but if I could ask Tony and Daniel to both comment briefly on the role of contractors in the Iraq situation going forward and perhaps what the political climate is when right now to be honest the phrase private security contractors it's not exactly well received. I won't call it a dirty phrase but it's not well received on the Hill so if you could both briefly comment on that. You have quite a number of problems. You often have very good contractors. It is not clear they are the people who are selected for the contract. Often the actual terms of the contract and the conditions under which the contractor is supposed to operate are not completely functional. You have not provided the guidance and the level of detail you needed and you haven't defined what the contractor task should be in meaningful terms. You don't always have people who are managing or running the contract that have the experience or the level of capability they really need. This can lead to anything from failure to corruption to simply the wrong structure. We often separate the contracting effort for policing from the overall effort to create a functioning civil justice system and to match it with government services. We then call for a concept of civil policing which is not one that matches the culture that we are attempting to transform and the end result is not something where you blame the contractor or you necessarily blame the contracting officer. You wonder how anybody could ever have done this in the first place and we are watching this being repeated in Afghanistan right now in ways which are being run by the military and where it still is not working. I think that we are at a point where we have to ask ourselves is this the way to go particularly if you look at the number of police training points that you would actually have to put contract personnel and INL people into which is very different from the idea of having five consulates, a military advisory mission and some kind of police mission. I don't say this is mission impossible but the numbers and the data I have seen to date are a whole bunch of interesting arrows, flow charts and concepts with no plan, no details and no measures of effectiveness that I would regard as workable. When it comes down to private security contractors I think it is already clear from what's happening in Afghanistan that this has to be put under either extremely tight controls where I would say that US contractors have to be made sufficiently subject to local law and criminal prosecution to straighten out an effort which is degenerated to the point where they are not trustworthy and I have seen this in the field repeatedly or you have to consider what the future role of the US military is but changing the name of bad security contractors does not make them better. I'll pass. I'm a little more optimistic on the State Department's, certainly it's a commitment to try and get this right to improve the capacity of its contracting personnel to operate in what arguably is a non-permissive environment in Iraq to be more discerning about what kind of contractors they hire but let me paint a very stark picture which is the State Department came to us and said well to perform our mission we're going to need 26 Blackhawks something of that number, UAVs, possibly C-130s, I think it's 63 MRAPs and we heard that you're coming from the State Department an Assistant Secretary doesn't have his own aircraft to fly in his region but we're basically going to have an airfield in Baghdad to service the mission there there's no question that presents very challenging oversight problems when it comes to contractors but I'm somewhat heartened by the fact that I feel like the State Department is being realistic about those challenges and then it boils down to numbers there's just, we don't have the numbers right now to conduct the kind of oversight on these contracts that I think we need if we get the budgeting for it it might work if there's no budgeting then I think we have a real problem this is just a happy day I'm going to go to the floor for questions if you could just introduce yourself and your affiliation and keep your questions brief Mr. Friar Hi, Nate Friar, CSIS I have a two-part question, very short Nazar, if you could from an Iraqi perspective what would an ideal US military presence look like beyond December 31st next year and then from the Capitol Hill perspective what do you think an acceptable military presence would look like and how would it be sold? Thanks Well, from an Iraqi perspective an ideal military presence assuming that the new Iraqi government inshallah will ask for it that would be first minimally visible to provide enough deterrence to our neighbors and three, able to actually train and advise and mentor our security forces in order to bring them up to the level that our special operation forces are our special operation forces worked with American forces for several years and now they are considered one of the best in the region hopefully in the long-term capacity building in the Air Force in the Navy, in the mechanized services and all kinds of services in the Iraqi military working in conjunction with Americans would be helpful to bring them up to par and also I know Americans are keen on having interoperability I think interoperability is key and has to be emphasized always with Iraqis especially when they kind of tend to go on shopping sprees in Eastern Europe I think that should be very much discouraged That's what I'll take a shot at the congressional perspective The numbers are probably a little numbers of troops that would be acceptable it's probably a little less I don't know a real good answer 10,000 is not undoable The issue is going to be more that the administration has to make the case of why you need them there and what priorities they're willing to give up to do that You're coming into particularly a budget from a budget perspective, a budget environment that everything's a zero-sum game There's no additive now This is lobbying friends over here laughing I just don't see it as a realistic possibility that they can say, hey, we need another $10-12 billion to do 10,000 folks in Iraq and just accept assume that that money will automatically be there It's going to have to be a hard sell of this is why we need to do it this is why it's in the national interest and it's more important than these three other things we're giving up Just please wait for the microphone Frank Oliver from CQ The Congress has shown a real willingness to cut civilian side funding of these efforts Iraq and Afghanistan and I just wanted to kind of get your take on what Ambassador Crocker talked about as far as the Iraqization of security potentially it doesn't look like you're going to get a lot of money and so managing these kinds of security contractor forces are going to become a significant problem over the years so have you guys talked about the idea of turning over security and vetting those troops and leaving it with the Iraqis' hands to help support the diplomatic mission there I've never had the discussion although I would point out that Congress is increasingly also happy to lean in the direction of cutting the military efforts too I tried to highlight the dispute about the Iraqi security forces funding right now so I don't think it's just civilian side and it's Iraq I don't think we've had that conversation explicitly yet I think part of that is that we are as the transition is ramping up there's going to be more dialogue on this hopefully with the administration I think Iraq however one pronounces it Iraqis'ization that in some ways will take place inherently because the diplomatic mission is going to be almost entirely reliant on Iraqi security forces whether the security forces are going to be able to perform that mission to the level necessary for example just to protect the outside perimeter of the embassy is something that we're certainly concerned about I won't speak to the defense of embassies but I think we need to be very careful about the pace of Iraqiization as I pointed out the border police which are the primary paramilitary force are only authorized at 52% of the strength that we calculated was the minimum to provide the stiffening they would need over the next five years that's not the numbers they have in place and they have been a very effective force within the numbers they've had but that's only part of the story the border police which are not proving to be terribly effective are better than no border police are still at about 60% of the minimal level if you use the authorized figure rather than actual strength the port police which are critical to the functioning of the airports and the ports are at numbers but don't have facilities don't have explosive detection equipment basically in terms of staffing they're at about 40 to 50% of the required level as of September the oil police is in formation this is critical to what happens not only in terms of pipelines but any future for oil facilities on paper they're at about 29,000 out of 47,000 required but they're probably about 4 to 5,000 short of that in practice and the quality could be politely described as not effective the electric police are in the same story the facilities protection service which would be the general protection force for industry and the source of a lot of people who should be guards are 17,000 and I use the term liberally police plus 77,000 contractors which are to be integrated into a 110,000 man force of government employees which will not begin until the new government is in place and effective now I realize these numbers do not make everybody swingingly optimistic and they can be changed over a 2 to 3 year period but when we talk about the Iraqiization it is going to require 5 U.S. diplomatic presences or even defending INL and contractor presence in some 27 police training facilities it is something that requires a lot of time and effort and it's going to require U.S. support and if you don't get it Iraqiization of defending our diplomats is not going to solve any meaningful problems back please Thanks Stephanie my question is for Nazar I think we've clearly laid out a case that the military presence is required in Iraq and the near term has kind of a dual function of both a training mission but also a deterrence mission regionally to counter Iran how is that possibly something that could be used to bring the government together to some type of coalition and how does this new Iraqi government convince our congress that this deterrence force is going to be required until the Iraqi forces are capable of providing regional security for themselves Well having a big stick is only as good as your willingness to use it having the presence in Iraq having this deterrence in Iraq is important to Iraq's security from a perception point of the Iraqis and Iraqis will see this presence as a commitment from the United States to protect them to protect the government now using this I didn't really understand what you mentioned about using this presence as a way to help form a government is that did I get this right well, first of all if the United States is going to use this presence as a means to help bring parties together to help bring factions together and form a government if that presence will be used then the option is that the next government will be friendly and positive looking towards the United States from and if we assume that that's also another leap if we assume that then the next government the next Iraqi government will have no other option but to come to the United States and ask for the extension of the presence and the way to sell it or the way to promote it if I was a member of the Iraqi government I would assume that along the lines of having the military presence in Iraq there must be some economical arrangement that will engage Iraq and the United States the Department of Commerce had set a goal of tripling Iraq it has not happened yet and what's happening now is Korea, France almost everyone else around the world is jumping onto the Iraqi market and the United States is just pulling back and taking a hands-off approach rather than a hands-on approach so economic ties would be a good way of trying to promote or maintain an extended American presence in Iraq thank you I'd like to thank all of you for your participation today I'd like to also thank Rolls Royce North America for sponsoring the military strategy forum and also if you could please join me in thanking our panelists I'd appreciate it