the outline of something possible if the state of what it's the most votes and can't convince the kurds to come in on a certain level iraq and the list they can for my government or with a number of others creating an antikurdish list this would be extremely dangerous. extremely dangerous. remember in the north getting a very solid list and the national dialogue front in kirkwood doing extremely well and have a hard line united kurdish alliance in parliament that is being ignored or pushed out this can be extremely dangerous.

complaints if they are as well observed as they were last time i think they will be less. it's going to require patients on everyone's front to allow the political process to work in the coalition to form. the united states government and the obama administration is going to have to be patient. it should avoid getting too heavily involved in the collision formation process, and it should avoid personalizing policy as it did unfortunately with the justice and accountability commission. there seems to be a rule of law issue for ambassador hill and general odierno. this came about a person and that was an irony in agent. this was a mistake and they should avoid it in the past. thank you. >> thank you to read it's an honor to be here. when michael contacted me to join the panel, he mentioned one

of his colleagues was unable to ftp to attend and i don't know about you but the first person as the replete met i don't know if i would have picked brian from the center of american progress. [laughter] but we do have a lot in common on the panel and we have worked on iraq for a long period of time and i've been on panels with scott before and have lively exchanges with michael. what i would like to do is fulfill my brief and try to talk moly about the elections but about u.s. policies so three key points on the elections and then three about u.s. policy. very important. first, and i want to highlight this, i think it's extremely powerful that on sunday the voters are going to the polls. it's a very powerful thing i think is not recognized by enough people in this town and i see that as a progressive who has supported democracy and worked on democracy in the middle east a long period of

time. personally when i first went into iraq in may of 2003i saw the trauma that was exact on iraqi society and to see the society potentially moving beyond in this election i'm hopeful for that. second, we are not merely close to having a stable democracy in sight of iraqi these days and for a number of reasons. scott talked about the debaathification curve awful mostly from the political angle. i think it represents and says a lot about the institutional maturity of a set of iraqi institutions and lack of transparency and i think that the befuddlement for those of you trying to watch this and talk to the iraqi context what is going on is the lack of transparency in the process is worrisome but it's also for those who have gone through and worked on space transitions it's probably not an outlier. it takes time to these

institutions and if you look at the things i've written it's been about an over emphasis in our policy approach on security and security forces and not enough on how to help other iraqi institutions stand on their own. that said i think there were broad concerns about the respect for human rights and iraqi society and of personal concern about the state of christians and this is a live issue today and the mosul province. it's a broad issue. i think it's a consequence and sad consequence the we we went about trying to promote freedom without enough attention to issues such as these and i think there are also concerns we should watch for in the post election period about the role of security forces and whether or not some elements could be used in a political way. we should watch because there have been some signs about that so we are not out of the woods.

the second point it's very much still in a fragile state. it's a lot better than it was in 2006 and 2007. iraq acting national security adviser told me the conference a few weeks ago he was deeply concerned about the over militarization of policy and politics in side of iraq and i think that's an important week. the last thing michael and two others will look at is we are moving into a very uncertain period. not only on election day but post-election period. i'm not going to place bets who might emerge as the next iraqi leader because we could all have a separate to our discussion just on that. there will be complex collections that may be formed and there's a added elements how the next iraqi president it's chosen. it's different than the past process not requiring supermajorities and not requiring the sorts of mechanisms aimed at fostering

consensus but may have in fact actually helped contribute to some of the deadlock in iraqi politics we have seen for a long time so those are the three points, simple points but this is i think an important opportunity and we hope iraqi leader's i think the voters will see we hope the leader sees this to advance iraq democracy. there are very worrisome signs i think about just what human rights, the rights of minorities, things that are not addressed in the elections that need to be addressed in long-term work inside the iraqi government and third the uncertainty i think mike will talk about that we addressed the open list system i think introduces potential for great uncertainty and surprises on sunday but the big supplies comes in the weeks and months in the negotiations over forming a government. three points on u.s. policy and my first will be a minority position in this room i think

shared by many americans and around the world on the balance for u.s. policy i think the iraq war is stealing that negative. we are still in the midst of a selfish preparation trying to correct mistakes that were made particularly from 2003 to 2006. we can debate this but i think we are still trying to take a sad song and make it better inside of iraq and i think we need to recognize that. on several fronts to u.s. national security which is the core focus we look at our americans more secure and are they see first offered on many accounts. first and foremost on terrorism i was in afghanistan recently and i know the tactics and technology. these things i think were enhanced and developed in a light training ground that simply did not exist before. i'm not for giving saddam hussein should have stayed around. just the way we handled the post

saddam transition i think opened the door to bigger problems and a spread of the threat for the u.s. national security interest. iran which was discussed in the context of iraqi politics and maybe we will talk about it and build more but i think iran is growing influence of the iraq war mike and we it was prosecuted and contributed and the iraq war also to a large extent was made to show and say something about american power after 9/11 and it's only succeeded showing its limits so we are in the process of rebuilding. this administration is pragmatic and trying to rebalance the portfolio and brought in national security without abandoning iraq and its key to stress in the political debates we often hear the accusation obama is abandoning iraq to iran and that's it and i think it's something much more transformative going on.

the second point we are in the midst of a policy transition that i rockies and american support and it's not just about the troops. much of our debate i think is focused on troop training and last summer u.s. troops withdrew from the cities and there was a lot of hyperventilating what impact this would have and i think yes it is a fragile security situation but i think i rockies are demonstrating a willingness to take on a lot of their own internal secure the challenges. what i would like to see is more debate about the other elements of american power including economic development assistance, the sort of things the state department an expanded mission is at least set to do. we had to agreement signed by the bush administration before he left office, the agreement that laid out a timetable for the troops drawdown and a separate strategic framework agreement which mapped out a very comprehensive set of dot

i's on bilateral relations and political economic social and educational ties and from my perspective these agreements were linked as the u.s. began to disengage militarily. it is needed to increase its support rather than at and in iraq due to the institution building activities i suggested earlier in the first part of my talk. i have concerns that will likely focus on that and do that properly and its tight how the state department operated for years and decades and the lack of balance not only just resources but whether it can deliver and i know scott, you worked there and have seen some of those constraints. the last point and i will close here is i have a bigger concern about u.s. policy overall and glycol strategic and coherence in the broad regional policy and i think it is a in coherence in iraq and brought middle east this existed essentially since we took the decision to go to

war in iraq in 2003 and we haven't reconciled big issues. this administration has only begun to reconcile this in coherence. i think very simplistically and 1980's we had a policy supporting the saddam hussein regime as a buffer against iran and the clinton administration had a dual containment policy and we have entered into something after this iraq war something quite different that at this stage i don't think the pieces add up when we look at the ticket items for u.s. policy in the region and as a policy analyst i think this is a -- is somebody watching? [laughter] this is incoherence that the bridges to administrations and i think this election and iraq if it produces the leadership and if it produces the opportunity for strong ties between the united states and iraq it can help us sort through our income appearance but issues like iran and whether we are going to actually get iraq to support in

our broad efforts in iran remain a very open question and at this stage it depends who emerges as the leader of iraq so a lot of these things we cannot control ourselves. a lot of it is contingent on the type of partners that he urged and as we move forward on other policy agenda items including the iranian nuclear program watching what happens inside of iraq and thinking through in a textured way in a nuanced way ma just we are handing over iraq to iran i think it's going to be a fundamental struggle for several years now. thank you. >> michael? >> thank you very much. no one knows the outcome of these elections and it's refreshing to see that when we are talking about elections in the arab world. it's a positive outcome. i want to stress repeating some of the points made by my colleagues on the panel i've got to agree with scott about the

importance of the open list. it's amazing the important, the devil was often in the details and oftentimes in the broad american community we don't pay enough attention to the details but it's great because we are abandoning a system that really in power more demagogic forces and we are talking about a system which politicians can finally become accountable to people rather than to ordinary citizens rather than powerbrokers and this is also interesting a lot of people work on this, i have to credit for a lot of the pressure to move towards a more open list and the u.s. embassy and others also contributed to this also interesting because many iraqi politicians found it in their interest to also increase the open list and criticized their opponents as being proponents of the closed list of protecting interest and so forth. we saw this especially with in

iraq and kurdistan but i will let kathleen talk about that. the coalition building at the last municipal elections as also incredibly important when we look at the space evolution. i see democracy as a process and certainly the process is nowhere near complete. but it is rather healthy rather than the maximo list attitudes taken so often in 2003, 2004i iraqis are willing to embrace the idea or accept the idea they can campaign hard and heavy against their opponents and the same opponents are going to be the partner as they try to strike deals. most importantly and not often discussed, oftentimes in washington we like to assume everything revolves around us and is response to our plans and too seldom do we take into account the variable time that sometimes no matter how well

laid out the plans it takes time to increase new attitudes to allow the changes to the sword. once the new government forms and let's assume it lasts for years we are going to have a n#@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ r# rights in iraq and i hope with the open list system this can improve a little bit but it's printed a lot of outside pressure. however, we have to be worried about the blow back coming in a

few different directions. how did we get to where we are with regard to the debaathification disqualifications? the u.s. embassy from early on basically from the period inside the collision provisional authority recognized or came to the conclusion that de-baathification was occurring in the wrong way and especially under the ambassador afterwards lobbied hard in order to abandon the de-baathification and this is where we started having work with the iraqis and frankly with u.s. embassy drafting of the justice and accountability law which removed restrictions against baptists. what happened subsequent is it seems that the followers of muqtada al-sadr your who were reducing independence in parliament work to reduce this and in effect there is no mention of the saddam baath to apply it than perhaps they could have done with the initial

de-baathification. it became effective on february 14th, 2008 under ambassador crocker signed by the presidential council including. i tend to trust scott in his criticisms of the process but there's different versions of out whether the justice and accountability commission said that the de-baathification commission personnel can stay on the until a new was appointed. what is clear however that this is where i also want to extract the lesson from what certainly is an unfortunate occurrence is where petraeus and maliki, general petraeus and prime minister maliki worked on the security plan for baghdad general petraeus pressured maliki to throw out this renewed de-baathification commission. what we should extract however it is a sign of influence and

political cynicism that it's back now at this point in time and we do have to recognize to borrow the phrase that we are no longer necessarily the strong course the people want to ally themselves with because whether they like america, whether they like what we say diplomatically or not it seems increasingly people are going to make accommodation with the forces that might replace america after the eventual u.s. military withdrawal. i do want to see a couple of words about the shiite. i worry about iranian influence and have been writing about it since my first trip to southern iraq in 2003 when i was still inside the coalition provisional authority. my concerns were dismissed them and i've read about it as soon as i got out of government in 2004. i don't think anyone can accuse me of not being suspicious about why iranian intentions. that said it's wrong to secede iranian influence only with shia. and here i do want to point out

that as we talk about withdrawing, we have to worry about the iranian influence from the other party as well. not only some of the arab sunni instances or so-called secular of list but also with regard to the kurds in a very large way. i do want to also emphasize however not all shia are the same. during the i ran -- gura nye war it was like world war i with poise and grass to get gas and barbwire and so forth. it wasn't a famous sons on the front-line fighting against iranians. often times it was the shia conscript's treated like dirt by saddam hussein's regime. we have to recognize there's still a force of iraqi nationalism on the shia in fact if the united states underestimated the psychological impact of occupation, the iranians have underestimated the

importance of iraqi nationalism all along. the idea that there can be a grand coalition between maliki's state of the wall list and the alliance to be is laughable it might exist on paper but i can't imagine shia and iraq as diverse political and fractious as they are sticking to the eckert there is devoting as if the had the party loyalty of the british parliament. de-baathification i also wanted me now seems in many cases to be more on the popular among americans than it is in white swath of iraq. i mean al anbar accepted, but in a vast swaths we used to throw out these statistics that 55% of iraq was shia mostly because of the southern provinces. however given the flight of refugees especially sunnis refugees and given the lack of census i think it is safe to say

the proportion of the arab persius is even larger now. now, when i was recently in iraq i had the opportunity to meet with one of the grand ayatollahs and what najif and i got the importance of 1991. each one brought up this idea that in 1991 the united states purposely abandon the the shia to saddam hussein's gunships and it doesn't matter whether that is right or wrong because in the middle east generally speaking perception means more than reality but it would be a mistake to underestimate the impact of that historical what we see as a historical episode on iraqi attitudes today and this also goes to the nature of de-baathification as well as iraqi and specifically in talking abut general iraqi

shiite attitudes towards general petraeus and general odierno. it's not politics in washington to criticize general petraeus but iraqi shia both clergy and politicians were talking about general petraeus as being naive when it came to the baath and he could be antagonistic to the shia. we do have to recognize this especially with of the recognition that we in many ways are becoming actors in iraq and people are naturally reacting against us but also this idea the baath could be in power to pave the way for a smooth u.s. withdraw seems to be gaining residents in southern iraq whether that's the act quality of what is going on or not i

don't know but the fact of the matter is we have to deal with the perception. a few problems as i conclude i am worried about election fraud we can talk about this during questions and answers. i'm worried about people gaming the system by purposely awaiting specific ballot boxes if they feel they are not going to win the district they could try to cheat in the district. there is less faith in the independent commission of iraq now and perhaps there was a couple years ago and also even though it's laughed at in the united states after all we have spent so much blood and treasure on this episode there's a widespread belief i heard again and again from the shia, sunni and kurds and people on the iraqi military about the possibility that someone could try to stage a coup in 2011. that doesn't mean it would be successful. most people thought it would never be successful. and at the last point that i want to make as i conclude and turn the floor over to kathleen

is oftentimes we focus our analysis even though we haven't been on this panel on personalities, on maliki and sterilizing will the president talabani. i'm nervous whenever we put more faith in an individual than the strength of a system especially when we have a situation with respect of violence that's always able live away from the removal of the symbol official and with that let me turn the floor for to kathleen. >> you were the only one who went over in time despite yelling at me to be ruthless in my moderation before hand. so there. [laughter] thank you. >> michaels prerogative i guess. [laughter] thank you. it's a pleasure to be here. thank you for addressing the subject because it's very important. a few people have already noted the importance of this election but it is immensely important for the kurds both locally and

nationally. within the kurdistan region of course the kurds particularly kurdistan alliance which is made up of the two main parties it would be the question whether or not they would hold on to power. we had a parliamentary election for the kurdish region in july in which an opposition group winstrol 25% of the seats in parliament much to the loss. so the kurds will be looking to see how well they fare in the region nationally the issues go to all of these outstanding questions whether or not there will be resolved by the next government of course we know if you let iraq the past seven years the issues are pushed back but have to be dealt with and we know in the coming years and this year alone we will have a census. we are scheduled to have a sense

this. i know that was long past due so that may be again. the issue of what role will the half with in the iraqi army and what levels will they be allowed to keep in the kurdish region. issues like oil. these will be coming to a head so it's important to have a strong position in baghdad coming out of this election. again enormous turmoil in the kurdistan region on the ground leading up to this election particularly because it is challenging the puk so what you see is unfortunately some very on the democratic acts going on in the region, attacks on journalists and on canada so you have seen a number of candidates shot at in the last week. one was killed in the last month offices being attacked, verbal

attacks in the press. one of the most stark commentaries was last week with an independent kurdish newspaper had a blank page you have guns but we have pens. so the kurds are following this issue with or not people are moving from the kurdistan alliance the parties on both sides are claiming victory so you see in the kurdish press every day headlines where it says hundreds of supporters have come back to the puk and they claim of hundreds of gone back and thousands are coming our way. so time will tell how that will play out. we will know in a week or couple of weeks from now when the results come in but it's interesting because guram is campaigning on this idea we are forward thinking and we are

about the change in the system, eliminating corruption and cronyism. ironically much the same argument the puk used when i was established it was established from elite coming out of the kdp it's almost a cyclical thing of course if you are from a detractor for guram you will argue it is made up of the puk so how different can they be and frankly in terms of policy they are very much aligned. they will say it comes down to implementation. we want to implement on a different level. the puk supporters will say that guram wants nothing more than power and money and that's why they've broken away so they are

in on unproven entity and remains to be seen whether the voters will continue to support such an entity but it's important in terms of democracy, democratic to the limit and pluralism in the region nonetheless. in terms of power in the region the kdp holds more power than any other group having been weakened. for now they remain aligned with the puk. they are on a joint list and in terms of policy they are supporting the p u.k. however maintaining contact with members of guram so you see members coming in having meetings with the kdp. fairly routine. also you have issues going on where the kdp appears to be trying to assert its power over

the puk so you see he left baghdad, deputy prime minister. he's from the puk to get you into the kurdish region and was replaced by a member of the kdp. the puk has renominated and member of its party to be the kurdish vice president and the kdp has not ruled on that yet. they still haven't approved it. this has been going on a couple of months now. some might argue the kdp is some might argue the kdp is trying to influence and@ @ @ @

financial backgrounds and submit to this audit said the puk is taking steps. in terms of kirkuk we see the same battle brewing. the puk has a strong hold. guram is on the ground fighting this every step of the way so it's very petty you see things like election posters torn down, candidates attacking each other, physically or verbally. you see a lot of anger on the streets. but again when you look at a place like kirk and it applies to all of the party whoever ethnicity or you will support your ethnicity for stand party second. can guram make inroads? it remains to be seen. he's campaigning on this idea of

a joint administration. guram says the kurdistan regional government which wants to incorporate crewcut into the kurdish region has not done enough to make that proposal attractive to the other groups living in kirkuk so there are doing there's no political space for the other groups in the kurdistan regional government. they have reacted to that by saying that's not right we are open to this and in fact we are open to the possibility of having a joint administration. this something you don't hear about. they've made references to this, vague references in the past. he commented on it again recently, his deputy also commented on it a little bit more at length in january saying we do need to take a hard look

at the puk and how we have acted towards kirkuk and try to be more inclusive, and we are indeed open to the idea of a joint administration. of course in iraq in the campaign season all things can be said and retract leader so we don't know whether or not this will hold. in terms of baghdad the big issues for the kurds will they be aligned if guram does well? guram is claiming about 20 seats in the parliament. if they do by chance when those seats will they stay allied with the kurdistan alliance, this is important. i don't believe guram will go against the kurdistan alliance on big issues especially if they're related to kurdistan because no one wants to be seen as giving an inch of land of kurdistan or giving up the kurdish fight also for the arab partners because of these big

issues paul leal and pushmataha and kirk who is the valuable partner. someone made reference to this. the problem is there is growing animosity towards them and it doesn't matter what party look at, it can be sunni or shia. i don't think there's one party that exists in iraq today that doesn't have members that feel the kurds have overstepped in their ambitions and it's something you hear talk about a lot below the surface and i think the kurds are starting to become acutely aware that this will be the big challenge who are their partners in the next government and i guess i will stop there. thanks. -- before the jury much. those were wonderful presentations. i'm going to open the floor to questions in just a moment but it struck me there were two things that interested at least me that we didn't talk about

very much. the first is our timeline. the united states -- united states withdraw. some of my colleagues and i had the opportunity to sit down with folks from the military and our embassy in baghdad to talk a little bit about this and it seems to me this time line of withdrawal and transition from combat to non-combat and then complete withdrawal is dictating absolutely everything and that is not a sort of conditions based imperative but is an imperative of that could lead us to hand off things a little bit perhaps quickly than we would otherwise want. understanding i think as broadly and said we all want to see this withdrawal had been so i'm curious what the speakers have to say. the other thing i quickly want to ask about and we talked about this a lot on fi de-baathification questions i do

wonder -- the iraqi government explored during this one way and another way. at the end of today however there has not been any brilliant suggestion for any truth and reconciliation in iraq and the lack of ability to separate the present and future from the past seems to me to be a handicap which presents opportunities always for those who want to exploit -- it's not right to call a day bogie, they were an awful party and had more adherents than just saddam hussein and his two sons. but that is a problem for the future of iraq and i wondered people think. i turn to the floor now. >> anybody? nobody?

there you go. >> i am not a military logistics but i do look at iraqi politics the way this time line actually evolved and in the closing stages of the bush administration they are demanding this timeline. i don't know how strong the demand remains once the government changes and once they have elections and there is a new set of leadership in my view there's been a strong and national in polls of declaration of sovereignty on the part of the iraqis. my personal perspective on the streets of iraq and 03 and in 04 shaped a lot of my own analysis the you never did a second chance to make a first good impression of the way we have made up for some of the past mistakes. so the points that i would say on the timeline is that any suggestion from coming from the u.s. first and foremost may

complicate iraqi politics in ways that may not match up with the security situation if you understand my read and if i could make it clearer if we are suggesting we should stick around longer as opposed to iraqis, suggesting it could create certain this functionality is of the sort of any type of intervention and whatever we think about vice president fighting's intervention i looked at the iraqi press and arabic press and saw how it was characterized and some vicious vociferous terms as a zionist coming to the country trying to reinstitute the sunnis into the system so yes these are largely out of your views but even within the mainstream iraqi politics suggestion coming from the u.s. and may create certain complications from a u.s. policy perspective i'm not certain staying there gets any more leverage. a u.s. policy question at this

point michael eluted to inductors is how much leverage to be actually have at this stage presumably we have more with more troops in the country among certain factions but i'm not certain how clean but winds up. ytd to people who made proposals titled conditional engagement and have elaborate schemes to tailor the security assistance in ways that could help effective rate political outcomes on the big questions like constitutional reform and arid kurdish question. i've been skeptical of that because i don't -- i think it is too complicated by half. please listen briefly on the de-baathification question and truth and reconciliation commission i agree it's not been resolved, it's been an issue and eight foreign in the site of many iraqi. i would add to that iraqi side talk to when they look at the period from 2005 to 2007, and the activities of the militia

and people who still have not been brought to justice for things that have happened recently i would add it is even more complicated than trying to get people to account for crimes in the world war i crimes under saddam and after. it is even more complicated but i think by that period of time and the fact you have anywhere from i don't know the latest estimates from three to four iraqis still living in places they did not live in 2003. idp said refugees and i've probably over analyzed the idp is politically but i'm curious to see how they play out in these elections and to actually if anyone is there a police in this election because i had the presumption while the surge helped lead to decline in violence, iraq is much more fractured and still remains fragmented and always i am curious to see in the results of the concerns of the idp and

refugees bubble up and then the answer importantly by the political system later this year and early next. >> on the policy issue i think i agree with brian however i would say that one of the things we should not do is speak out publicly like i did general odierno did saying that he has a plan be should things go badly are not the inside of iraq i don't know how helpful that is. i do think that we have a great degree of influence still if we use it wisely and i think part of the challenge is to play the cards we have in an intelligent way and sometimes i don't think we are doing that so terribly well. on the justice and reconciliation issue i would call attention to the first minister of poland who used to talk about thick line of history

to say there is the future and there's the past and we are going to just kind of forget about it, and poland today is still going through this process of looking at its past in terms of who is a communist, who wasn't, who benefited from the system and who didn't and it's happening in other parts of central and eastern europe as well, east germany is another example so i think this process is going to move in fits and starts. one thing on strongly believe the zero ase reconciliation as a notion has been much more our conception than an iraqi consumption. accommodation? great. we want to look for ways to accommodate with one another but reconciliation, we are not quite there yet. and in order for there to be true if there has to be justice so it is no accident this was the justice and accountability lal not just and reconciliation that there is one thing has to

come before the other and so i think that it's going to be two steps forward, one step backwards but i also think strongly that these local committees are getting out of control. they are out of control and the government has to train them and because it's leading to a great deal of intimidation and as one of my colleagues has referred to as incipient mccarthyism it has to be avoided, has to be reined in because the de-baathification is a very serious and required process, don't politicize, don't cheapen it. >> i don't think i'm going to attempt to summarize my thoughts in terms of time lines and impact of the troops but i wanted to give my the true sense

of wisdom in terms of a truth and reconciliation because i am probably the only one in this panel that has -- that was raised in the military dictatorship in a country that had the honor of having a high political ratio of political prisoners per capita in the world in 1978. and today is a very special day for us because secretary of state clinton is attending the inauguration of one of the insurgents that word hostages for 15 years of the military regime and who went through the polls was tortured other times by the way and in the same

election they rejected a referendum to basically abolish the amnesty against the military. it took 20 years. my first point is basically anybody who has lived through this sort of process and rejects the work for conciliation@ @ @ l past in many ways and the local

committees do not help in closing the past. the fact of criminalizing one of the things we learned in latin america is basically that to the barbarians who oppose the law and therefore you don't create flawed process these of basically taking people to task for act committed in the past without recourse to the law. that is exactly the opposite of what is happening right now in iraq so in many ways, it has to do with a comprehensive strategy. it has to do with education, it has to do with time but it also has to do with making sure institutional arrangements are in place so that even your worst enemies and people who tortured

you basically have what you didn't have which was the law. >> will set psp for free much. but we opened of floor for questions. if you didn't hear to the rules come before a microphone, state your salt and put it in the short form of a question. the microphone is here. sir. >> thank you. cno resources. the discussion so far seems to have focused on persons and party maneuvering and mention of local issues but our international issues beyond the de-baathification. what about discussion of all the major issues we hope by the election will help results like hydrocarbon law, the disputed territories, the thrust of economic development, the delivery of services, constitutional forms and so on. so are their national elections or is it really about local politics, politicians and

de-baathification? >> i would have to see those issues and that sort of campaign which i think maliki and others really want to discuss was a victim of this kerf waffle as we've been putting it related to the de-baathification issue. i think when it emerged as an issue to come at a certain stage of the election campaign where the pri minister and his party had to take part to the right and it became this huge debate within society and consumed the national newspapers everyone was talking about that to the bis service of many of these core what i would call you are right, national issues. but i would also sue because the electoral law and feel you to have a national list to go alongside some of the constituencies is the issues really are more localized

because the parties of that are running are running in the governance and have specific interests that they want to protect so the national agenda will only be set after those groups are in the parliament and are able to set the national agenda. it's not going to be the same national agenda that went into these elections because of the new political actors that will emerge on the speech national league. >> if i can add to that in this case it seems the externals countries are often times baliles. they've made much out of saudi arabia's animosity -- receive animosity to permit mr. mulkey and vice versa the shiites are being perceived as just being pawns of iran even though this far more complex than that to be that same time, the open at list accountability ase in fighting development in a different way. look, turkey announced its opening a consulate in irbil.

and when you go to iraq, kristin gore frankly baghdad or i'm sorry, basra najif, most of the more investment turkish come in the south much of the investment is iranian. when you go to baghdad would always strikes me when i go to baghdad is you don't see any cranes on top of the buildings, you don't see any signs that debt is getting buildup or indeed it is changed much in the last several years but in this way accountability of politicians matter. people are talking about who was able to bring development to najif at the converse to that is who took too much money off the top the disenfranchised or stole money from ordinary civilians. in baghdad will be interesting to see whether any discussion is sparked by the open list about why so little is happened here in terms of development. one of the metrics i'm going to be carried is about is how many people actually return to parliament.

when i talk to folks of bad debt and for cities on set within four years the expect 50% of the faces in parliament now to remain in parliament. the would be to reduce what happens with that before we move forward with the issue of a wide scale national issues as you have said. >> three quickly all of these outstanding issues i said they are important for the kurds but more than that, if you are a political party or person campaigning in a government do you really want to highlight these issues? because what you're highlighting particularly if you are running for reelection as you fail to achieve them in the last four years so it's something no one wants to talk about. for the sable you definitely don't want to talk about federalism because they paid for that. the iraqi voters said we don't want federalism, so the same can be said about other issues going

on particularly when you get to places like basra where people were outspoken about the what they want. so if it is just the idea of what's not rock the boat. let's try to focus on other things and the de-baathification issue was perfect for that because it refocused peoples energy's on something that candidates can get behind. >> a couple of reasons up. this one please. ..

it really did awaken iraqi nationalism in a way that they, among the shia that perhaps surprise the iranians. one of the big takeaways would be bad if there is any military strike on iran for example this summer, that is likely going to be in that timeframe when iraq doesn't really have a government, when it is going to

be a lame duck government if it takes 45 months to put together this coalition that is something we need to have in the back of our minds. the other thing precisely i'm worried about, i had the opportunity to meet with officials from the south oil company in basra. there is a lot of discussion about closing the straits of hormuz and what worries me much more swept militias might do to take off-line the southern iraqi oilfields which after all provide about 70% of iraq's oil. that way if it closes the strait of hormuz, you more or less, if you close the straits of hormuz you more or less stop iran's own oil exports and if you take out iraq's port or if you take out the oilfields iran can benefit from the price spike in oil. >> if i could add, my concerns about strategic incoherence. this hits the nail on the head and whatever the policy lever is used by the united states in the international community the question i have this is where does iraq fit into that and when

i talk to people in this administration i don't see a clear picture. they talk generally about trying to help iraq reintegrate itself with its neighbors and michael is correct in terms of what i think is a sea change in turkey. two years ago turkey was invading northern iraq and now it is opening consulates. the thing from u.s. policy perspective that concerns me is i don't think we as a country this administration and the previous one too has sorted out how it reconciles its policy objectives on iran versus iraq. it is a question that came up when secretary rice was at one of these international contact on iraq meetings and she was after somebody was asked about iran's extensive investment and the cross-border trade and a lot of the extensive ties that exist naturally between two nations. if the overall imperative is to come as many people in this room have supported, try to pressure iran through sanctions and

through a tightening of the news through diplomatic and economic -- do we have not only the iraqi central government is doing have the kurds onboard? i'm not certain that that is the case and i don't know that we will have an answer to that question because of the uncertainty that exists, that will exist in the iraqi government and who is leading it. it creates a strategic conundrum for us which i don't think there is any easy answer to and just one last bit on the bid on the regional reintegration effort and we hear this from the pentagon and others, i don't know how well or what their precise proposal is to try to get iraq better court made it with a security strategy in the gulf air of states that the administration has been trying to develop. it is a big policy question and i don't know if anybody on the panel has an answer but it seems like an enormous inconsistency in the point of incoherence that did not exist before. 's pie will pie will certainly endorse brian's incoherence and

wholeheartedly that there seems to be, as you say, the problem of incoherence between specific country policies and broader regional policy something that affects not just the last two administrations but is a consistency in washington in terms of iran, people oftentimes talk about how we play checkers and the iranians play chess. i think that is a reflection of that incoherence. >> thank you for the panelists, for the presentation. i am from the washington institute. since last summer vice president biden has been the point man for the administration on iraq and has made it number of troops to iraq, and it looks like, very likely that he will still be the point man for the future. i'm wondering if any of the panelists would like to assist the vice president's performance

with regard to iraq and does iraq need a special envoy just to focus on? >> if i may just speak more broadly and then perhaps turn the floor over to brian i am not going to address vice president biden per se but what i do want to highlight is a note of caution that when we go into this coalition building efforts over the four or five months after the election, we have to recognize that nothing, that we cannot compartmentalize statements as much as oftentimes in washington we like to do, that everything that is set in washington is going to become a political football in iraq if it relates to iraq by some parties, by other parties, by some people claiming favor by other people asserting iraqi nationalism and so i would just extended note of caution not only to vice president biden staff but frankly too many in congress, to republican critics of this administration and so forth.

we have got to be cognizant that nothing that is better said that is said in d.c. stays in d.c.. >> i think a fair assessment of his and waldman and i'm not certain exactly how much authority he has with the particular bureaucracies, those who work at the state department and others. it matters how much he can actually say to chris hill, do this and he has got a large team in the embassy. this largest u.s. embassy in the world and getting larger. jack lou announced i think an increase in that sort of effort. one of the points that i maybe went through very quickly and i would take it far away from the notion of envoys and he was even the point person, it is important to have someone in the white house who is focused on this. hopefully someone with the stature of joe biden can make sure iraq stays iraq's days as a high priority agenda item in any crowded national security agenda. i worry that that is not the case, and you can read between

the lines of my comments. i'm concerned that we don't have a fully integrated strategy. i'm not certain that simply having the vice president or a special envoy is the answer. making what you have got on the groundwork and work effectively, making sure to stitch together in an interagency process inside the u.s. government with the pentagon which has far more resources and personnel at this moment and managing what i call recalibration, the theory of it, of a decliningi&h!rb@ @ @ @ @ @ doesn't even get into coordination with other international organizations like the united nations. i hate to sound market

bureaucrat but this is how policy is actually done and we have civilian agencies that frankly don't operate as efficiently as they could and others on the panel can speak i think better from experience on that. so my answer would be you no vice president biden i think is deeply interested in this issue. he has intervened in some ways that i think have created negative reactions but it is not the issue. i think the issue is how do you get the u.s. government any more integrated policy as it is managing one of the most complicated policy transitions we will try to undertake in the long period of time. president obama says we want to be careful getting out of iraq, as careless as we were getting in. i worry if we don't have senior management level attention on how we are doing what we are doing whether we will be getting out pretty carelessly.

>> frank gunner, lehigh university. we spent 25 months in iraq as an economics adviser. before i went there i thought the biggest economic problems were security, oil and agriculture. when i left last year i was convinced it was corruption and i know mr. rubin has spoken and written about this topic. i would like to know do you think the election or the election results will have an impact on the level of corruption in iraq? thank you. >> i will just say briefly with the obama system, the issue of corruption has become front and center in iraqi politics. it was a major factor in the election if you will of the islamic supreme council down in southern iraq. it wasn't just an issue of the federalism although that was also a factor. it is an issue with regard to prime minister maliki's staff.

whatever recommendation he may have and he is a better recommendation than some of the people underneath him, to certainly been felt by some of the people underneath them with regard to how they are being pitted up in different provinces and so forth and as kathleen said, the whole existence of the khaddam list is as a reaction to corruption in the kurdistan regional government specifically kurdistan, although as kathleen also said, it is an open question about whether if the good dumb is able to get in power whether it will be less corrupt than their predecessors were. we tend to focus a great deal on terrorism and terrorism inside iraq, terrorism is of course a huge issue but it affects a limited number of people. the difference with corruption is corruption affects people across the board in iraqi society whether it is in the health care system in iraq, whether it it is an everyday goods and services, whether it

is ordinary people dealing with the police in the street. i do wish that one of the lessons that we extract from our time in iraq, once we put all the partisanship aside, is how do you best interim to a reconstruction nation-building exercise without flooding, without using the amount of money allocated as a metric when all too often flooding that country with money can create almost as much harm as good. >> we will take one last question. maybe one or two last questions. missing people. thank you. >> my name is matt and i work with brian at the center. looking at the politics of iraq over the past few years we have seen the dawa party empowered by u.s. policy, other parties, religious parties such as the solders-- sadrists and it speaks

him diversity some diversity among islamist political parties what lessons do you think can be drawn for u.s. policy toward islamic parties throughout the middle east from the last few years of politics in iraq? >> thanks for the question. my view on this is perhaps heretical here in washington but the fact is what we have seen in iraq is when you open the political system and you begin to allow islamist to compete, that they collapse in on themselves because they can't deliver anything. i don't know why it is that we rush out to embrace the islamist politically, thinking that somehow they are the answer to the opposition everywhere in the world. it seems to me that the lesson from iraq is that islamists can't govern and when they, when they try, they quickly run up

against the limits of the islamic is the solution slogan, so i would say that what we see even in the names-- you try to find the word islamic in the political coalitions that exist in iraq today, you won't find it because it is not attractive. so i think that that is one of the lessons i would take is, let's worry about the system in pushing for opens political systems, where political parties can register, where there can be freedom of expression, where all the aspects and elements of an accountable system are in place and then let society function. >> let me add one thing to that. one of my greatest criticisms of democratization during the bush years was the willingness of the greater u.s. policy community to ignore or to legitimize

political parties as the lyrical parties if they relied on militias in order to enforce their will. if you are going to go to the ballot box you should base your legitimacy on the ballot box. if you still want to hedge your bets by basing legitimacy on the point of a gun, then i would be loath to bestow any legitimacy upon that group or may washington angle. whether it is the problem in palestine, whether it is the issue in iraq with the bother corps or if i can be heretical some of the peshmerga units as well versed dj shah mahdi. it is a major problem which i'm not sure that washington fully has gotten its arms around. >> my name is mohammed and i am in the enter news agency. i was wondering what you think about whether the kurds can 18 very key make her position after the elections that they have had

in the position following the two last national elections and how do you see the power and influence of kurds changing in baghdad after these elections? >> everybody is writing and talking about the kurds being the key makers and i think it will really come it really depends on how this election plays out for the shia. however, i don't think it is necessarily the case that they are. coming out of the election. if maliki does very well, if allawi does very well, and they a line with smaller groups that do fairly well, they can build their own coalition in the parliament and won't necessarily need the kurds. again this rising anti-kurd died in iraq will have some kind of impact. it might not initially. initially maybe we will see the same kind of alignments as we did in the current parliament,

but i think down the road, before these four years are up, we will see a shift and i don't think the kurds are very well positioned coming into that period. and the influence of the kurds in baghdad of course is also-- depends upon how well they can play their cards, who they can align with. it was very interesting that prime minister maliki came out yesterday and said he wants an alliance with the kurds and allawi's and after the election. arch enemy would be a strong word to use but i would say that in terms of either i found it very interesting. again this is posturing for an election, so if you know anything goes after an election. this is iraq and as someone just said to me this morning we are things happen in an election

season in iraq, but the kurds are definitely in a difficult position. >> james from national journal magazine. two quick questions. apparently after after the debaathification controversy that thought is the sunnis will take part in beaumont be disenfranchised by the elections. if there is a four or five minute gestation period for government we are pulling 50,000 troops by august what does the panel rate the chances that we will see violence and perhaps another spend toward civil war? it is not a majority but i'm curious what you think the chances are because that is my biggest fear. also brian laid down the challenge he thinks this has been a strategic net minus this war in iraq and i'm curious where there they are our other panelists. >> do you want us to vote here on balance? maybe we can just get a couple

of comments and answer to the questions. scott. >> just on the first question, i am less worried about a renewed sectarian violence between the sunni and the shia and i am about the prospects for real flashpoints on the border with the kurds. i think that is much more likely. the issues that are outstanding that have been yet to resolve politically are those issues related to kirkuk, the disputed territories, the oil law, all of these issues somehow related to what the final status between the kurdish regional government and central baghdad are going to be. on the whole, yes i would say that it was worth it. >> any one else? [laughter] >> what i would say is that especially in the coalition building time, we are going to see certain parties resort to

violence to see whether violence pays off. we should be very very careful about incentivizing that violence. this by the way is one of my concerns with regard to the u.s. approach to the debaathification and three death breathe at the vacation issue, this argument that if debaathification occurs that there will be violence. it seems we are reacting to preempt violence in a way which that should do which of them i think some of those who might resort to violence in the future. as to whether it is worth it, i would say, i disagree with brian respectfully on this. i would say yes especially since we forget that what we do know from the harmony database documents from the documents seized from saddam hussein was that sanctions were collapsing. we know that and saddam hussein was determined to reconstitute the programs which we found out he didn't have at the point in time when we went in. >> just a few words on the violence issue and i will take

the coward's both on the other one. [laughter] but, basically, in this type of situation, we tend to forget that violence is also a form of political language in a campaign that there is a lot of violence that occurs not as a reaction to anything but as testing of the grounds, as provocations, as basically intimidation and in that sense i think that we have might see some violence coming our way, and the important thing is how the international community and the iraqi's themselves operate on the basis of that violence. there is going to be some

violence in the next few days obviously. i mean many of the attacks on the incoming, on baghdad, is part of campaigning in terms of assuring that maliki does not control the security situation. so, basically we have seen it already happening. it is going to happen a lot more as testing of the grounds in terms of the time of the coalition forming and it is also going to be targeted violence in terms of some key players emerging from the polls as a result of the acceptance of the results and the current configuration. violence will not be absent for many years. it is not absent in many transitioning actions by the way and it is a lot more frequent than people expect. it is just that basically they lens of the press is a lot more focused on situations like

afghanistan or iraq than of jamaica where basically every year every election year for instance there is violence as part of the political discourse of the different candidates. >> and just to add to that, said terry and hisism i think will continue and i think this idea of closed communities, a sunni arab community, there will be a sunni shiite community and there will be not-- makes communities. i think this trend is continuing and it will continue or go in terms of real violence, i would say of course that northern border area is mixed areas, kirkuk and diyala, the contentious areas. this is where we will see more real violence in the coming years or continued real violence. i think baghdad will probably settle down. it has been pretty quiet. there are reports of anecdotal

sectarianism continuing but i think that is going to finish because i think people will just move out and you won't see those ms. communities and therefore it won't be an issue. 's be with that i'm going to actually close down our panel and thank our audience and our panelists for very interesting, at least

coverage. it's just getting underway here on c-span2. >> reconstruction and stabilization projects and these

shortcomings can put huge sums of money at risk of waste and undermine our efforts to improve the lives of people in iraq and afghanistan. these concerns apply not only to u.s. government agencies but to operations conducted by our coalition partners. nongovernmental entities and international organizations like the world bank and the united states. during this decade, international pledges of assistance for iraq and afghanistan have climbed to nearly $80 billion. however, our focus here is on interagency coordination. within the u.s. government. which has committed even larger amounts. since the start of the contingency operations in southwest asia, the u.s. government has appropriated reconstruction funding alone of more than $53 billion for iraq and $51 billion presently for afghanistan. the commission is interested in

this fact because much of the money passes from taxpayers through the accounts of government agencies to contractors. in fact, more than 50% of the worse commonly understood and well documented are now contractors. our research and investigations since 2008 have naturally looked at the contracting process. contractor management, contractor auditing and related issues. that's one of this commission's mandates. but we're not strained from our mandate when we raise questions about interagency coordination. the language of our authorizing statute assigns the commission particular duties. these duties including assessing and i quote, the appropriateness in of the organizational structure, policies, practices and resources of the department of state and the department of defense and the department of state for handling program management and contracting.

so here we are. our mandate includes organizational structure and how it's working and is it effective. as i mentioned, our witnesses last week concurred that there are substantive coordination problems in federal agencies, reconstruction and stabilization efforts that senior leadership needs to address in a timely manner. there is, in fact, no locus of visibility over all our projects. never mind a locus of coordinating authority. in his latest quarterly report to congress, the special i.g. for iraq reconstruction or what we refer to as sigar observes that the u.s. military has improved its in-house cooperation and integration. but he adds the iraq experience illustrates the need to expand corporation and integration against u.s. agencies but most especially among dod, dos and

usaid and end of quote. that is why we're holding this hearing today. and that is why we've asked each of our witnesses the key players in their organizations on this matter to offer testimony to this commission. the special i.g. for afghan reconstruction not to be referred to as sigir but sigar because that's the reference has called attention to his latest report to inadequate coordination of programs in judicial reform and the afghan energy sector as well as questions of staff and resource adequacy and limitations which we're very interested in talking about today. although our witnesses concurred on the existence of coordination problems, they differed on their views or causes. or the emphasis of multiple causes.

the secretary of s/crs has primary responsibility for coordinating and planning and execution of reconstruction and stabilization efforts. but there were questions raised at last week's hearing about the adequacy of existing staffing and resources. an area we'll explore. the national security council is an obvious meta-agency candidate for oversight coordination. but it functions far above the operational level. and testimony suggested that its interagency management system is not functioning as intended. if so, this is disturbing. some have further suggested that the federal government needs an all together new organization to oversee interagency coordination. or it may be that the real problem is not structure. staffing or resources but execution by the principals on the ground carrying out well-planned, well-coordinated

sensible projects with the organizations in place today. that local people need, want, and can sustain. without effective leadership and without full and complete coordination by all executive organizations there is added risk of funds appropriated for reconstruction, as i referenced before now exceeding $104 billion will be inefficiently and ineffectively spent. as part of using taxpayer money it would achieve u.s. objective of peace, good government, stability and economic growth for southwest asia. as the divergence of last week's diagnosis suggest we face a big complicated problem that even the full transcript of our last hearing can only describe in broad strokes. pursuing that problem today we have assembled three expert witnesses. thank you, gentlemen. from the agency's most heavily involved in america's reconstruction and stabilization efforts.

our witness panel consist of ambassador john herb stabilization department of state. mr. james bever and if i pronounce that wrong -- did i pronounce that right, sir? >> yes. >> i almost always make the point and i didn't in this case so thank you for getting lucky. director task force for afghanistan and pakistan. u.s. agency for international development or usaid as it's referred to. and dr. james schear deputy assistant secretary of defense for partnership, strategy and stability operations, united states department of defense. we look forward to hearing our witness describe what they have done and what their organizations have done and are planning to improve interagency coordination. and to tell us what they think about the comments and suggestions made by last week's witnesses. we've asked our witnesses to summarize their testimony in approximately five minutes to

allow adequate time for questions and answers. as with prior existing practices, when we're done with the complete cycle today, we'll afford each of you a reasonable time, like five minutes, that if you want to summarize different things that you heard to give you the opportunity -- you'll kind of have the last say. the full text of their statements will be entered into the hearing record and posted on the commission's website. we also ask that the witnesses submit any additional information that they may offer to provide and responses to any questions for the record within 15 days following this hearing. the commission appreciates the cooperation of our witnesses. and looks forward to an informative session. if the witnesses will please stand. and raise their right hands. do you swear or affirm the testimony that you give today will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but truth? thank you.

let the record show that all the witnesses responded in the affirmative. thank you. please be seated which you already did. ambassador herbst, we're a bipartisan commission and i forget my cochair. and i apologize. i would like to introduce my cochair, mr. christopher shays. ambassador, please. >> thanks for the opportunity to speak. i'm the coordination for reconstruction and stabilization at the state department a position which reports directly to the secretary of state. and is responsible for organizing response -- >> ambassador, could you pull your mic a little closer. >> involving failed and failing states. while incorporating the lessons learned from past operations, we embody secretary clipt's smart power utilizing all government resources in the right combination in managing complex crises. in today's highly interconnected

world we face a growing danger from failed and failing states such areas can become breeding grounds of terrorism, trafficking in humans and narcotics, organized crime and piracy. failed states also generate refugee flows. while iraq and afghanistan are the subject at hand they are not the only countries that fall into this category. the complex challenge posed by ungoverned space is part of a response mechanism. to be effective our response must utilize all the civilian skills appropriate for the crisis in question and where our military is engaged the response must intergrate civilian military activities to form a single operation. as we have learned from past crises, particularly iraq, they cannot afford reconstruction crises in an ad hoc manner but must be prepared in the manner of the u.s. military with the trained, skilled, equipped and ready civilian force to respond immediately when national security interests are in doubt. whether with the military or without.

the civilian response corps which is being developed and managed is that civilian force. at full capacity given our current budget appropriations, the civilian response corps will consist of 264 active members or full-time dedicated first responders and 2,000 -- >> ambassador, my staff is of pinging on me. we're doing your testimony digital. we're going to give you a little bit more time. but can you slow it down a little bit; otherwise, they'll come in and say they only caught a few words. thank you, sir. >> thank you. >> tapping experts from the usaid the cooperation is a eight agencies state, usaid justice, homeland security, treasury, agriculture, commerce and health and human services. through this partnership we can bring true whole of government approach to complex operations. to date, 99 members of the corps have deployed to 16 countries. if you count s/crs staff this number is 174. we have also deployed crc

members to exercise and to the combatant and commands. in one sense the exercise exercised civilians participated in what has been the largest single exercise in history. one of the strengths of the corps is the ability to engage in dedicated planning, conflict assessment and mitigation activities that will reduce the need for future military intervention by helping to stabilize countries at the tipping point of conflict. the goal is to deploy the civilian response or to prevent confidence in the stability not just to respond to conflict. in addition to its mission to help prevent and respond quickly in a coordinated manner to conflict, the corps is unique in its redness requirements which is the closest in the u.s. government to the training the u.s. military requires before deploying its soldiers. every single crc member must complete a strict training protocol before deploying and maintain readiness on an annual basis. although s/crs was initially established in 2004, s/crs and

the civilian corps was not authorized until october 2008 when the reconstruction stabilization management act was passed as part of the fy09 national defense authorization bill. once more funding was not available to establish, train and equip the civilian response corps until early fiscal year '09 after being appropriated to state and usaid first under the fy08 supplemental. to date a total of $290 million has been appropriated of which $225 million has been provided under the civilian stabilization initiative. what this means is very important. is that s/crs has only been truly operational for 18 months. not for 4 1/2 years. 5 1/2 years. yet, in that short period of time we have built the civilian response to its current strength of active members. 86 will be 92. and we'll have 150 by the summer and more beyond that.

we've managed over 350 million in 2007 this has funded 25 projects in 23 countries. we developed something called the interagency conflict assessment framework with our partners in usaid and used this in fourteen countries to come up with ideas to prevent conflict. we have deployed 70 corps members and other staff to afghanistan alone where we led the development of the first civilian military integrated campaign. we've also had operational plans for all 12 american prts as well as for regional command east and regional command south. we provided on short order for ambassador holbrooke a team to monitor the afghan elections. and we provided a similar team on strategic communications. we also deployed civilian response corps members to africom, centcom to work on planning and further expand coordination with the military. we deployed 13 members fair to

say civilian corps to the democratic republic of congo to follow up on the secretary's visit. we responded to the earthquake in haiti by deploying civilian response corps member to assist the embassy and the humanitarian relief effort and we activated the crc from across the agencies, from across the government to staff task forces here. we were asked one day to help provide support for a specific task force in the state department. the next morning we provided 40 people including all eight agencies that make up the civilian response. that is true interagency work. true interagency coordination. this is not to say there have not been challenges. the pace of hiring for the civilian response corps has been slower than anticipated. although we picked up the pace substantially over the last six months. but that is why the president's fiscal year '11 budget has flexible hiring authorities which congress has already granted for civilian staffing in iraq and afghanistan. i can understand why some are impatient with current efforts to unify the civilian side of

the usg for complex operations. no one is more frustrated than i am but some historical perspective is needed. the integration of the military under goldwater-nichols took over 10 years. the establishment of joint -- what it's called socom special operations command was an over ten-year project. we've been in real operation for a year and a half. we are starting to take off. now is the time to empower us. to make changes will only slow down our efforts to create the new tool this unified civilian force which could be used for complex operations. thank you very much. >> thank you, ambassador. mr. bever, please. >> thank you very much for inviting a.i.d. this morning before your commission. my remarks i want to focus on three main issues. one is planning reconstruction in afghanistan.

second is interagency and international coordination and third is lessons we learned from both afghanistan and iraq. i've been with a.i.d. for over 27 years. i was on the ground from 2003 to 2004. and then the american a.i.d. director for israel, west bank and the gaza strip after that and then deputy assistant administrator for iraq and now executive director for afghanistan and pakistan where i task forced for our agency. iraq and afghanistan have similar challenges for a.i.d. and similar response challenges related to security, staffing and grants oversight, just to name is few. but at the same time they're different. there are different operating environments and they pose some of their own unique challenges. i'll start related to our planning discussion with our budget. in iraq, allocations managed by usaid peaked in 2003.

a number of years ago. at just under $5 billion. it has been coming down since then. last year, our budget was less than $500 million. the largest resources were for infrastructure up until 2006 and the current shift over time has been toward more stabilization activities that focus on building the iraq government's capacity as well as promoting the grassroots democracy and economic opportunities for longer term growth. still a major challenge. if you look at afghanistan, it's somewhat a little different. over the last five fiscal years you say it's managed resources that have risen from below $800 million in fiscal 2006 to the current estimated $2.1 billion for the year 2010. one of our primary initiatives under afghanistan model is the afghan first program. it will increase local procurement and significantly transfer the responsibility of development programs more and

more to afghan and afghan government as they can handle it. as a result, we begun to move away from larger awards towards smaller ones and more short-term grants with local afghan firms where they can accountably manage it. they're also working to channel more with the government of afghanistan ministries and i can talk more before that. -- about that. the shift is a.i.d. to work closely with counterparts among the inspectors general. and i want to just state very clearly we welcome our a.i.d. inspector general. we welcome sigir and sigar. international coordination i'll just summarize we work with the case of iraq and we also worked quite well and quite closely in the case of afghanistan. we contribute to, for example, the afghan reconstructed trust fund in afghanistan. we contributed to the iraq

reconstruction finance facility in the case of iraq and have regular coordination meetings with our fellow donors in both countries. including with world bank, asian development bank and afghanistan and so on. in terms of internal usg coordination which i'm sure we'll talk more about later this morning we worked very closely with the predecessor coordination entities in iraq. coordination continues with the prts and to the district levels which we can talk about now. particularly in what -- and we welcome the opportunity to discuss a little more what we are now calling the shape clear hold build and transfer approaches to coordination at the local level. in terms of lessons learned and i'll wrap up with this. we need -- we need to maintain

the ability to have speed and flexibility in the way we program our people's money. we need to be able to continue to have a usaid inspector general on the ground with us for concurrent audit. and we need creative approaches to monitor and evaluate our activities where it's too dangerous all too often for american officers to travel. i will close by saying we welcome some of the comments that sigir, stewart bowen addressed in his book that was published by sigir, hard lessons of the iraq reconstruction experience. we focused on about a dozen of those lessons. and i'll be happy to share of some our thoughts on those for the record afterwards. we've done this with other committees. i will close my remarks at that point. thank you. >> thank you, mr. bever.

welcome, dr. schear, please proceed. >> thank you very much, co-chairman, members of the commission. my sincere thanks to all of you for the opportunity to offer some perspective on the coordination challenges that we encounter in the design and execution of stabilization and reconstruction operations. as osd's steward for partnership strategy and stability operations, i could not think of a more timely topic for today's hearing. set against the background as it is of our ongoing operation unified response. our whole of government disaster relief effort in the wake of haiti's devastating earthquake. i appreciate this is not the core focus of your commission. but i underscore it today because i think the events of the last several weeks and indeed the courageous efforts of our service personnel to enable the international humanitarian

contingency response now underway are a stark reminder that stabilization and reconstruction are pervasive themes in many types of crisis contingencies be they sudden, onset natural disasters as in haiti or persistent irregular conflicts as we have seen in afghanistan and iraq. cochairs, if i may, i'll briefly summarize the key points of my written statement, which i'll be submitting for the record. as you all know very well, the coordination of s & r activities is a constant preoccupation of our senior policymakers. we in dod have been very supportive of institutionalizing structures and processes to strengthen this coordination. we recognize that every contingency requires an integrated effort across multiple lines of operation. our overriding priority is to act quickly, smartly, and in a thoroughly accountable fashion.

from a u.s. government standpoint, this coordination is fundamentally about strengthening the relationship between the department of defense and its interagency partners. and i would add both in the foreign affairs community and as we've seen in haiti increasingly in the homeland security community as well. since the early 1990s, our country has led or supported a wide range of s & r missions. not only in afghanistan and iraq but also in cambodia, the balkan, somalia, haiti, and other venues. as these cases illustrate, interagency coordination and the s & r domain revolves around three critical areas. the first area is crisis management, which is conducted by senior diplomats and policymakers. and is aimed at mobilizing international action in the face of looming threats or disasters.

a second area is contingency planning and operations orchestrated mainly by functional specialists who span all the relevant areas, it security relief, rule of law, economic development. that are deemed critical for a given response. the third area focuses upon the mobilization and effective targeting of resources. not just the funding and authorities but also human capital. specifically, our capability to deploy teams of expeditionary civilian experts and military professionals who can work together in permissive as well as nonpermissive settings. to re-enforce coordination we have culture and opportunity to improve habits of cooperation. related to these efforts i understand you have had an extended discussion at your recent hearings about ways to

improve coordination centered on the proposal by the special inspector general for iraq reconstruction to create a u.s. office of contingency operations, so-called usoco. i understand this is an important issue and i'll be happy to address our agency views on that in detail in the question and answer period. let me now turn, if i may, to some issues about sustainability. it's a vitally important issue. projects -- we require projects that are developed and selected and executed will bring lasting benefit to a local population and enhance legitimacy of the host nation government. we also want them to endure long after they're handed off to local authorities. i understand you will have some reasonable interest in the status of our commanders emergency response program, the

so-called cerp program and we understand this is of close interest and i'm ready to discuss that with you. at the end of the day, sir, and i understand my time is slipping past, we understand that coordination with s & r partners is never going to be flawless. but if the recent past is any indication, we are making some progress. we need to intergrate multiple lines of authority to ensure the appropriate response to contingency planning, crisis management and resource mobilization. scalibility and adaptability are also critical ingredients. sir, i'll wrap up on that point. and i look forward to your questions. thank you. >> thank you, dr. schear. we'll use the same process we used before. we're going to have two wounds

of inquiry of questions and answers. led by myself and concluded each round by my cochair. and then we're -- we'll have an order that we'll go through on this process. so i start the process off and today i really have two themes. and the first one -- i talked about -- we talked about in the opening statement, executive leadership. the criticality and that's why we ask you folks to come up and talk to us. and myself and this commission talk about this all the time. because it's so critical to the process. that's my first one. and my second one will be in the second round of questions. my first one is actually an initial compliment to the secretary of defense. and when i'm done, dr. schear, i'm going to ask you whether you

agree with the secretary and it might be an easy answer. but you might think about it. the secretary wrote a letter in the middle of december, december 15th, to the secretary of state. one secretary to the other secretary. it wasn't written by staff. and staff weren't referenced in it like call so-and-so and contact so-and-so. and the title was options for remodeling security sector assistance authorities. that's quite a title. but that's what the title was. the point it was a proposal for consideration of one coordination mechanism. but the leading paragraph to me was very powerful. and it was just two significant paragraphs but part of that paragraph said, even so, and they're talking about the coordination between agencies -- even so the challenges have been substantial. the expansion of dod's authorities and funding driven by requirements of afghan --

afghanistan, iraq and other conflict prone areas have produced some notable successes in past years but stirred debate over roles and missions that often require adjudication. at our level. a very diplomatic way of saying we had differences that couldn't be resolved. and they had to be pushed to the top. these recurring debates have taxed the time and energy of our departments and do not meet the nation's long-term needs. my sense is that these requirements will be enduring ones given current and future security challenges. i consider that spot on. in terms of a statement and in terms of a problem definition and a communication that says -- that goes on to say here's an idea, i'll work with you. i'd like to work with you. and just last week, secretary gates made a keynote

presentation to the nixon center washington, d.c., last wednesday. and in his comments, he went back to his letter. and he said last year, you know, we're talking about march now -- but he said last year i sent secretary clinton one proposal as i see as a starting point of discussion for the way ahead. and he laid out the proposal. and he says both the state and the defense departments would contribute to those funds and no project could move forward. and i'm sure there would be a threshold and people would work that out without the approval of both agencies. and he talked about incentivizing collaboration. but then he goes on -- secretary gates goes on and says regardless of what approach we take to reform -- so he had put out a proposal and a willingness in december and a desire to communicate what approach we took to reform and modernize

america's partner capacity apparatus. whether it's something like the proposal i just mentioned or some other arrangement, it should be informed by the following premiums. -- principles and he laid out four principles that he proposed and they all kind of make sense and obviously this is a major effort on the part of the secretary of defense to reach across and to try -- and to acknowledge, you know, there have been some significant differences in order -- and this commission is about efficiency in contracting. not having, you know, contract costs elevated because of the lack of coordination as well as organizational structures, which could evolve from this. i'll start with -- i'll make one other statement. in one of my prior lives for 11

years i was the number two person in a pretty big defense agencies. it ranged from 7,000 to 4,000. i want to tell you -- i was the deputy throughout the period. and if someone from another department or another agency within a department of defense at a high level communicated with us, that was the highest priority. we communicated back. why? because why else would you do that. there's a difference of opinion. we told them if it's something we had to analyze it, we told them how we were going to analyze it and we usually offered someone at a very senior level to work with them and that seemed to work well and that's really where i'm coming from. the importance of coordination. so i really -- this inquiry is for two of you. and now dr. schear, without an elaboration because i think i elaborated for the secretary, do you agree with the secretary of defense? >> sir, i'd be -- i don't think it will surprise you to say that i absolutely agree with the

secretary of defense. i'm very pleased that he has elevated these issues to the point of a national debate. for serious consideration across all the agencies of government and with congress. i think his concern reflects the fact that in our current era, there are no purely state department diplomatic or defense department military equities. there's no exclusive zone of equity here. we have overlapping interests. and security sector assistance as it has been developed has proven challenging in the past several years to manage. so i think this is a step forward in a sense of putting out a proposal. we look forward to further engagement with interagency colleagues on it. >> thank you dr. schear. throughout the first three months i have been -- we've had people who worked for state.

i think a lot of the state department -- i think they're a very formidable organization. and i say where's the response? well, they seem to say it's kind of in motion. and they're working on it. i would like to offer to staff, in other words, staff should be monitoring, you know, so many communications come across. but i don't know. ....

>> i just had to make the statement. i am the democrats in this bipartisan group. but in this particular case i am compelled that that is unacceptable than i would ask you to go back and say, because i think secretary of defense has been much more diplomatic than i have here by saying something sensible but i think i have to call it like it is. and if the two principles, gifted, powerful, dynamic leaders aren't engaging, then we can have you all talking about it until the end of tomorrow, and it will be a challenge. so i think you, but i have a

deep concern on this. commissioner tiefer, your next. >> thank you, chairman. as in the past, i thank you for your leadership in these areas, and you took us so far a year ago when we are just standing up, and i didn't even know -- i often didn't know what agency we were talking about, but you always did. so i thank you. ambassador herbst, last week commission reviewed sigir's report outlined hard lessons. the state department has basically brushed that report off, despite its very fine work and structure, in a way that looks like to make they brush us off the same way if we made proposals. one of the things they did was present in your office, that there is no need for the states

term creating new mega structures. so i want to understand about your office to get a helpful opening statement, and i'm buried in the numbers is your current active strength, your civilian response corps, is 86. now, some of those our new employees who, s/crs is the agency that contributes them, would be the one that could send them to afghanistan if anyone could. my understanding is most of these 86 already work for the state department for d.o.d. or for a.i.d., one way to describe the people as they are dual. their own agency, the state department could contribute them to afghanistan, even if s/crs didn't exist. so the first half of my question is, if the number under 30 for the actual number of the single

employees of s/crs is far off, please give me an actual number. my second half of that question is jack lu, the deputy secretary of state who has said there will be a civilian surge in afghanistan and the provincial teams, just under 1000, about 980 was the number i saw. this civilian surge is one of the best many fine, efforts. he is trying to provide support to go with our military search. more power to him. of those 980, is the number from your active core just about 16 less than 2 percent of the civilian surge? can you tell me numbers that are more precise under 34 single and for about 1646 civilian surge if i am far off?

[inaudible] >> i believe your single-hattedness do not apply. there are 86 members right now, they are responsible for. of we have not received the budget to build civilian response corps, these 86 members would not exist. in many cases i don't have the numbers handy but i can get them to you. the 86, some of the 86 were hired from outside. in some cases, they were employees on board who moved from one job in their respective agencies to another job. but they are simply members of the civilian response corps in their agencies. they are not quote unquote dual hatted as the way you describe. >> i have to stand with my number is. i have not been given alternative numbers although i know you will supply them for the record. >> no know. i'm not -- >> i know you dispute the

concept. i hope to have different numbers as for those who do or don't have another job besides your core. >> and what i'm saying is -- >> you get the concept, i understand. a id has, excuse my putting it this way, god out full personnel shortage in afghanistan. this is not criticism. you have shortage of personnel everywhere. you are doing what can. is and is the case that s/crs is giving to afghanistan so few people that -- i'd be interested y to befriend and you're grateful for whatever they give many people, s/crs is giving a id in afghanistan, my own characterization which you can accept or reject them as a handful of people. that is less than 20.

but you tell me. >> thank you, commissioner. first, i do want to acknowledge that we and s/crs have worked very closely together, and i have highly regarded and respected ambassador herbst's leadership in taking on a very tough task, state department is coordination in reaching out to a id and others. that's the first thing i want to say. the second is that when i went out to afghanistan again, maybe about a year ago or so, i was impressed with a couple of very sharp officers there who had organized a coordination group at the embassy. and i was very pleased to see that those were s/crs officers. i think they have no sense of finish their time and recycle back to washington. there are -- i don't have the precise numbers, but --

>> is under 2 20 approximately correct? >> i think under 20, my count would be, certainly correct. from my understanding. to the extent what we have reached into the s/crs -- >> my time is limited, and i will just say when we talk about numbers so small, i cannot understand what the state department hides behind s/crs in refusing to look at reform proposals like segars and i expect like ours, it is a small agency, a small agency. it's not its own fault. mr. beaver, i want to ask you about the kabul power plant. my time will expire but will have a later round will pick it up there. the public has kind of nickname did the white elephant of kabul. i want to see if it lives up to that characterization. i know you're proud of the plant, i can do is proud of the plant. just now being completed i'm sure it will make a

contribution, but i want to look at its sustainability. this is the first thing that's been in public since sigar published two very important reports, one on the 20th of january, just about this play, and one of the 15th about energy in afghanistan generally. let's start with a sustainability. a id take to make this plant something costly, and i would say wildly overambitious, by making it a dual fuel plant that runs it on diesel fuel, which is that you of afghanistan, that's natural. or heavy fuel oil for which there is no distribution network in afghanistan. heavy fuel oil is much harder to use. it is lower quality, leftover fuel. it needs far more technical skills than the afghans have. the afghans have said they won't even dare use heavy fuel oil for the first two years. sigar has said that the improper use of heavy fuel oil could lead to the complete failure of the

generators. we know, this sounds very similar to a non-sustainability in iraq. i want to ask, can you bring yourself to admit, perhaps in retrospect, it was a mistake to build it on that basis? and even if you can't go that far, could you say you've taken on a real risk about sustainability with this power plant? >> just to make this short, we can go into this later, or later for two frc, i certainly would agree with the second point, commissioner, that it is a risk. there's always the risk for sustainability. this particular plant was a high-end model, but it was built in blocks so that it could be adapted. we knew from the beginning that the fuel supply was going to be a key question, but all of these kinds of programs and projects, they take years and rations over multiple administrations, in

this case, and multiple ambassadorships and aid directors. what we have negotiate with the afghan government is the importance of them taking the responsibly for the fuel supply. it is important for that fuel to be checked, cleaned and verified before it is used in equipment, or in fact you can ruin the equipment. however, i think if you were to talk to the people of couple they would complain less about power supply now than they did a year or two ago, especially in the wintertime. what we did know at the time that this plant was being put together, was whether the northeast power supply system with power wheeled from the central asian republics was asked what going to ever make it to kabul. this was a guaranteed insurance program. in fact, at times when a power supply has gone down, either because of sabotage or otherwise, this plant has kicked in and kept the power flowing to the city. so there are, there are some good reasons to have this backup

system which is really meant to supplement old thermal station in town as well as the lack of high capacity during the peak winter times. thank you. >> if you would excuse me, i'm going to do one more question, thanks to the grace of my two cochairs. you said this was a high-end plant. that strikes me as an underestimate. i will try some numbers and you can disagree. this plant is costing about 22 cents a kilowatt hour. power from the main competitor which is a power line from uzbekistan all the cost 6 cents a kilowatt hour, about one-fourth as much. i know you have strategic reasons for not wanting, when i see you, both united states and afghanistan have these reasons, but price was 22 cents versus 6 cents. civil servants, not just serve anybody out there, the press, but civil servants in the

relevant who have been in the relevant ministries of afghanistan said the country cannot afford this. it costs out that it is causing, if it is run at full capacity, pressed the diesel fuel at a reasonable price like 1 dollar a liter which might even be low over the term of time, cost $280 million which is one-third of the entire afghan national budget. $280 million. is a poor country. aren't the afghans going to be dependent for us -- let me ask you, what do you reasonably expect the afghan government to be able to pay for this? next year five years? 10 years? 15 years? put a number of years on the. when will the poor afghans be able to afford this high-end power plants? >> by heidi and i was comparing it to what was there before, which is the old decrepit

northwest kabul powerstation that the american people kept functioning all through the period since we dispersed the taliban in late 2001. as far as the costs go, no question, this is more expensive per kilowatt hour. that's on the assumption that you get the kilowatt hour is coming in from the central asian republics on a reliable basis. power gets very expensive when you don't have it at all in terms of the impact on families, business and economy, hospitals, and everything else. also, customers in the kabul a which is not in the 5 million population, pay a very high price for kilowatt hour that they have to depend on when the central asian republics applies words there in the old decrepit system was not working, so it's probably a lot closer to the 22 cents that they were spending

per kilowatt hour for their family or commercial needs. than the sixth sense. in terms of the $280 million being a third of the national budget, the numbers are right but i'm not sure the $208 million will be the end cost to the consumer base because that plant that we built is meant for peaking power, meant for emergency standby power. so assuming the central asian republics apply the power from the neps system, i'm not sure, i would have to check and get back to you on that number. as far as the budget and how much can afghan afford. that's a good question. that's a good question we've all asked about ourselves about everything we do in afghanistan. including the expenditures on what will eventually be 300,000 troops and police forces. that's probably seven or eight or 10 times the current revenue base of the government of afghanistan. this pales by comparison.

so i think -- >> they will have to be contributed -- >> mr. bever, i hate to cut you off but i have so exceeded my time. thank you. >> naked, commissioner tiefer. commissioner henke, please be back telemann, good morning. i have a question for each of you on national security, presidential directive 44, signed in the semper 2005. i'm sure you are all very for money with it from the point of inception now to the point of implementation. and the subject of the directive from the president is management of interagency efforts in reconstruction and stabilization, which is exactly what we're here to talk about today. one of the proverbial bottom line for the directive is very clearly pends the rose on the secretary of state for leadership on interagency

operations. the secretary of state shall coordinate and lead integrated u.s. government operations efforts to conduct stabilization and reconstruction activities. one of the duties in their, ambassador, and others is what the specific duties is to identify lessons learned, and to integrate them into operations. so my question for each of you is, if you could each identify for us to war three lessons learned for recent operations that have been implemented into what is currently going on in either iraq or afghanistan. so just to work to examples from each of you, there is a saint, demonstrable examples. and examples that are not what we're going to do the next time we do in afghanistan, or what we're going to do in five years, but things that have already changed the dynamic, the operational tempo, what i'm

really getting at is large organizations and how they are naval and able to learn quickly. so it each of you would give us two or three lessons learned that are effective today. >> one of the most important lessons we learned in iraq, and for that matter afghanistan, was the importance of integrating with civilians and military do. so our staff went out to each american prt in afghanistan and helped write plans for civil operations. we did the same in rc-east and rc south, we created a similar group at the embassy in kabul that wrote a national plan of similar operations. that is learning from the past come is something that has been done, it has improved our efforts in afghanistan. also, studying what was going on in the ground, our folks in

afghanistan, a small number but have had important functions, came up with the concept of district teams, district teams to go at levels below the prt. and those are factoring in now under general mcchrystal. >> district teams to do what, sir? >> to oversee the provision or help the afghan government provide services to establish a civilian presence at a more local level below provincial centers. >> okay. transixty? mr. bever? >> i was a very important lesson learned is listen carefully to our host country, come host country's civil society and host country private sector and to try to do what we to do what they want. and in that regard i think one of the lessons learned here in the case of afghanistan is how we have tried very hard to link our program to the afghan national develop an strategy.

i was a on a more operational level from and accountability perspective, the lesson we've learned the hard way over time is that your ig is like your in house physician. you want him or her with you all the time that you may not like the procedures they use, but you want to know the results and diagnoses so you can deal with it. and so we have called in the ig for concurrent audit in our programs. they are resonant with us that we think this is the best practice for these kinds of programs. and the third i think would be to say -- will, to others. won his grant mechanisms. early in a convert, and you have learned is held in not only have a conflict mechanism as well as other experienced officers, but to be able to have quick response with very quick moving grant mechanisms that were we can mobilize thousands of small activities very quickly. we did this both in iraq and afghanistan. finally a real lesson learned for me was to reach out for

foreign service national corps of usaid around the world and to get the best of them to come into these conflict zones as a third country nationals to supplement our american staff. thank you. >> sir, the prior two remarks covering an enormously rich ground. i'm not sure there's much i can add, but i will add one thing, and that is, certainly the point about the district teams and related to that civilian embeds in our regional military command i think has been very significant. but the one lesson i learned is we need to think harder about how we collect lessons learned. there is always a tension between i would call first person lessons learned, how i did, and third person lessons learned, how they did it. and the level of bias or independents is clearly going to be weighed in relation to first and third person. we are looking very hard at

systems and processes that rely and, in fact, work on our current i.t. capacity to have masses of people with experience to contribute to a lessons learned dialogue. there's needs to be a referee for that, because there will always be a certain noise factor. and we're looking hard at how to institutionalize that within the department of defense, and more broadly for the interagency. i would underscore in this capacity the establishment of a center for complex operations at the national defense university, stood up last year and working on lessons learned, best practices is part of their charter, and we hope they will in time produce a very good covert way forward on how we comply with a lessons learned. >> dr. schear, what is the lesson learned that is applicable or not just

applicable, but being applied to the current operation in afghanistan? >> well, that one has to start with a lessons learned is up front. you can't be attacked on the very end it would have to be looking systematically and merely. at field practices, the returns for all levels from the subdistrict, district all the way up to the national level in the host nation. so i would say the lesson is, let's start with the collection and evaluation process up front. >> mr. bever, your first point, could you elaborate on, was listen to what the host government, the host nation government wants and desires, could you elaborate and tell us how that is being done today? and why it is different than it was six or seven years ago. >> in the case of afghanistan, obviously we tried from the beginning to work with our afghan government counterparts. there wasn't much of a civil society available in time, find, and very little in the private

sector to deal with. overtime with our help and others, and their own internal leadership, they have enhanced those. gradually, they managed to put together something they themselves are very proud of which is the afghan national development strategy. it is not budget. it is not a budget tight strategy, however. and it lacks prioritization. so it is still a work in progress, too. but it gave us a framework with our people's money to put the money against those things which the the afghans themselves their leaders, believe and the reformers believe is important. whether it is in the health sector, whether it is in the agriculture sector, education sector, or deepening governments into their society. that's what we have framed our money around. as has the afghan reconstruction trust fund which is a multi-donor mechanism that is also key to that national devoutness strategy. so it's a framework and a tool, which helps us to minimize duplication, doesn't guarantee

it, but helps us to minimize the duplication both between federal agencies and between us and the donor. . . and i'm going to start with an observation that echoes my cochair's position on this. i have watched with increasing concern over the last couple decades over the militarization of our foreign policy.

and i think i first became aware of that when the admiral who commanded -- was a combatant commander in the pacific was able to get meetings with heads of states that our ambassadors were not able to get because it was, in fact, the admiral who had access to the resources that they could not bring to bear in those countries with those partnerships. i hope the delays in responding to secretary gates' proposal will in the end to be worth the wait as you said, ambassador herbst. co goat water nichols took us is long time but i think we're in a better position today having gone through that painful process. you also talked this morning about the process of coordination. in my experience there are three kinds of coordination one is it's a meeting on your calendar

every month or every quarter and you go in and you say what you're doing and the other person says what they're doing and then you go back to your real jobs. the second kind is you go in and you say, you know, i need some help here. and your partner says, i'm sorry but my boss says i have other objectives and i really don't have the time or the resources to help you. and then the third kind is the kind that, you know, we hope we all can get to which is i need some help and your partner says well, that's not exactly in my lane but i can find somebody who can help you or i'll free up some resources because, in fact, we are after the same objective here. so let me just ask you for a result of some of the coordination that you all have been talking about in the process. and if i could, i would like to refer to the cerp program. that is something that presumably you all are meeting on, i think, in one of your statements you've said that there is now more of a civilian component in looking at and approving cerp projects. can any of you give me an

example of a project that was turned down that a commander came forward with because of the civilian -- the participation of the civilian agencies? i'll start at the end, dr. schear? >> thank you. i actually cannot give you a good example because i have not been working at that level to refine my understanding of the actual results of the process. i know it's an important priority. possibly my colleague, jim bever could speak to that. >> on those that have been turned down i'm going to have to research that but i can give you some examples of ones where we coordinated bertha i'm proud of. and, you know, this has been an evolution. when this cerp and its -- you know, its ancestor, shall we say

were started in 2002, 2003 even it was highly constrained mechanism. even then we tried to coordinate with our military colleagues at bagram at the time. but what we see now is an effort as much as possible at the prt level and it's not -- it's not perfect. it's an imperfect situation. but there's a hard effort at these prts to try to coordinate what has with cerp money and what happens with the civilian money. i think there's a growing appreciation by our military colleagues that what you might do with cerp first and foremost you want to do no harm. second, you ideally what you want to do with cerp to fulfill something that's part of a continuum of development that can be picked up by others. ourselves, the british, the afghan government themselves. and that it's somehow

coordinated with the center planning, for example, construction of school. that it's actually on the ministry of education's plans that they will have teachers, the books, the maintenance and everything else for that particular location and it's not duplicating the fact that there's another school up the valley and they could all be going to the same facility or the same teachers. an example i would give you that i'm aware of is one related to the destruction of some bridges in the south along the kabul kandahar highway. these are bridges that we built at considerable expense and loss of life in order to build those bridges. a year ago they were blown up by either criminal or taliban elements. and when the -- and it slowed down the traffic and it led to other problems. what we found was cerp had some money that they could put into it. we didn't feel it was appropriate for us to put additional aid money into it.

it was a military need as well as a civilian need. and what our military colleagues did and what our people did at the prt and i think it was in zabul calat was to allow our military colleagues to use implementing mechanisms and implementors that had originally built that bridge to rebuild it with cerp money. so there was very close coordination on that. and that's the kind of thing we want to see more of. thank you. that's kind of the example i can give you right now. >> thank you. and ambassador herbst, i'm going to change my question a little bit for because mr. bever did give me that example. we had a hearing last week as you know and one of the witnesses at that hearing who had spent an awful loss of time on the ground in afghanistan made the point that s/crs had lobbied to get more involved in on the ground implementation of

projects but that it had not able to do so. and it was, therefore, being marginalized. so you would, based on your testimony this morning, you would not agree with that characterization? >> so that i understand the question, his point was we lobbied to be more involved in projects in afghanistan? >> yes, that's correct, uh-huh. and you hadn't been able to get in. >> i would -- i would agree with that characterization. >> there are a number of points. the first point we have been asked to do specific things in afghanistan where our staff brings unique value. so we are responsible for all the planning that has taken place. we've been asked to get involved in other projects where they needed people who could be put together quickly and do the job so, for example, ambassador holbrooke needed a team to go out and help with the elections. manage it from the u.s. perspectives. u.s. was not responsible for the elections as a whole. we put together a team of a number of 8 in a matter of few

weeks by ambassador tim carney and we asked for strategic communications. when unama need help with analysis in the capacity of the office of president of afghanistan for managing the afghan national development strategy they came to us to ask to send people out and we sent people out. so these things we've all done. now, we are not given the size of the civilian response corps able to provide a significant portion of the civilian uplift. if we had been given money in 2007 rather than 2008, we would have had -- those numbers we have available to us 12 months ago, but we didn't. what we have, though, is a capacity which is growing by the day and which will be available for future operations. not numbers of many hundreds but of a few hundred. >> and my time is up now but i'm going to come back to resources next round. >> i'm going to figure out to push that talk button yet.

thank you, commissioner zakheim, please. >> thank you very much. first of all, i want to associate myself with co-chairman thibault's comments as commissioner schinasi did. i think this is a bipartisan concern and i really think your agencies need to take note of it particularly the state department. secondly, ambassador herbst, all three of you actually i know reasonably well and you're all terrific public servants. i got some issues, though, with some of your agencies that you're associated with. and one of them, ambassador herbst, springs from the answer you just gave commissioner henke on my right here. you mentioned iraq and afghanistan. but i look at this map. and i don't see a single person from s/crs in iraq. why? >> the simple answer is we have not been asked to go in. although we've not been asked to go in, that's correct.

but although it is true that i had a conversation a couple of weeks ago with cameron who was in baghdad and we discussed with him how we might be helpful. >> so what you're telling me is in spite of the fact that we're so desperately short of civilians, and in spite of the fact that the secretary of defense wrote to the secretary of state that he has prepared to support state department on this and in spite of the fact that you're building up a special response corps, nobody has yet asked you for anything definitive on iraq? >> as i said, yes. >> okay. thank you. then let me ask you something else. you say you have 86 active folks right now; correct? and this builds on my colleague commissioner tiefer's questions. we desperately need people in afghanistan. you just responded to the commissioner on that. how come you have people in

ecuador, in bangladesh, in panama. last time i checked panama wasn't suffering from a major internal conflict. in paraguay -- could you explain that, please. >> first of all, let's talk about the staffing of afghanistan. >> no, actually i'd like -- >> i will come to your question. but it's important to understand. i think you're setting up a false dichotomy.@@@@z&z&

help with the ongoing conflict situations and, two, to help prevent the appearance of ongoing conflict situations. there are in each country we've been stability questions which we've helped address. but point of fact, until we have a substantial -- until we have a substantial civilian response corps, you say you're not in afghanistan in a major way is a false argument. >> wait a minute here. you're saying that you have made -- not you but the state department has made a choice that with limited civilian response corps resources, the man or woman on the margin goes to panama and the contractor goes to afghanistan? is that what you're telling me? >> i'm telling you that the folks -- the office which is responsible for staffing afghanistan makes decisions as too whom to send. >> and that's in the state department. >> that is in the state department. and that is not -- that is not

in my office. my office has provided the names of people who are available for afghanistan. it's also true -- it's also true that since we have a mechanism, which is working now for staffing civilians into afghanistan, it's useful to have a capacity in reserve for other things that may and will come up. >> okay. look, you've just proved my point that i don't have a problem with you. i have a problem with your agency because there's some office that's making these decisions and for the life of me i'm -- maybe i'm just simple-minded but i can't figure out how those decisions are being made. let me ask you this, when you say there are 19 people or 16 or whatever the number is, less than 20, i guess, the number is, right, charles -- less than 20, are they full-time equivalents or people who are there the whole time or are the people rotating in and out? how does it work? >> we have sent people to afghanistan in many capacities. some of them have gone just for a few months.

but the embassy has asked us -- basically going back 10 months when we send people out we send them for a year. so the people go out for a year, when they go out for a year they come back and they're working on afghanistan from our office. so the people who then we send out in their stead are being back-stopped by folks who really know the place. and then after they are back in our office for a time we ship them back out to afghanistan so the folks we are sending are high value and they're much desired. >> okay. mr. bever, i didn't want to let you off the hook entirely at least, jim. let me ask you this, you say that people from a.i.d. are involved now in the decisions regarding cerp, there's some degree of interface. isn't it the other way around. does the military sit in on your decisions regarding how you use your a.i.d. funds? >> well, first, you know, the final call for the cerp is the commanders. it's his authority. it's also his responsibility and it's his accountability or hers.

and so we consult but it's not like everyone has a veto power. >> okay. >> in the end it's the commander as it should had been >> and do they consult with you the same way? >> and the piece of a.i.d. -- the a.i.d. officer or the field program officer, again, if you're talking the prt, they will usually reach out because, frankly, they're all living together. they're all in very tight quarters. they see each other all the time and they meet very frequently. does the military officers know or care about everything we're doing? no. just like we don't necessarily know or care everything they may be doing. but there's a lot of give-and-take. so we're open to their thoughts and their ideas and frankly part of it is because we need them for the security. and part of it is we want to coordinate what roads we're going up and down and what roads we're building. for example, in marjah right now, one of the key things we will be doing is completing a major important road up there. so the -- we consult very closely with the military on that and vice versa.

>> the ring road started in roughly 2002 when i was coordinator for afghanistan. so here we are eight years and, you know -- two administrations later really if you count bush's two administrations. the ring road finished. >> i think there's still some small sections in the northwest north of the farria province along the, you know, where the area -- where the silt and the sand is very difficult for road construction. i think the asian development bank had agreed to take that area. i don't think they're quite finished. if they are, it's just been very recently.rt that's unfinished? >> as far as i believe, i think that's the only part that's really unfinished. so it was a vision. everybody had. the afghans first and us also and it's taken quite a few years to do. we did the kabul, kandahar and

herat under budget cost but what we didn't that it would cost so many lives and the loss of lives to build the secondary roads on the country. the second thing i would just say on the ring road is the deterioration of security on the ring road over time has been tragic. >> mr. schear, bhooirnl is up. -- my time is up. i'll be back to you. >> thank you, commissioner. commissioner green, please. >> thank you. all of us up here have different priorities in the contracting arena areas that we think are more important than others. i for one don't know that there's any area that the commission is looking at that is more important than coordination.

the opportunities for waste, not to mention fraud and abuse but waste are just -- they're huge. we have got -- as we all know, a lot of policies and procedures. and, in fact, statutes in place that tell us, direct us, encourage us to do a better job. but we're not doing a great job. maybe we're doing a better job than we were five years ago but we're not doing a good job. i don't know whether it can be attributed to resources, staff and money. whether it's focus. whether it's roles and missions. whether it's just plain on leadership or whether it's turf. i don't know why we're not doing better.

it's my understanding that both of the departments represented here -- and i'm not excluding usaid but the department of state and the department of defense are not in agreement with the proposal made by the special i.g. for iraq reconstruction on usoco. and i'm not supporting or defending that one way or the other. i've also got to assume that by the delay that i would be very surprised if the department of state supports the proposal made recently by secretary gates to secretary clinton. i'm just assuming that that is happening because i think if they were in agreement, they would have been back in a nanosecond saying i love it.

let me just say this, and then i'd like some responses -- we've never had a defense secretary who has been so supportive of development, diplomacy, smart power, if you will. he ain't going to be there forever. we ain't going to be here forever. sigar and sigir ain't going to be here forever. and hopefully these two wars at some point will be over. what is your incentive to do something. we don't agree with any proposals that have been made. are we going back to the same old stuff again? how -- i'd like to hear from each of you on that. ambassador herbst? >> we have a great incentive to, quote-unquote, do something.

and our office represents an effort to bring together the interagency completely for managing civilian -- excuse me, managing complex operations. to do this properly we need to have the civilian response corps built up and we have to use it once we build it up. we need to make sure we have all eight agencies engaged. and they are. and we need to make sure the decisions they're taken on an interagency basis. but again, our office has only been effectively empowered for 18 months. and permitted to work as we're starting to work right now, we will be able in front a year to field a couple hundred people for our mission and ensure that it involves the full agency and we're committed to achieving that full objective. secretary clinton believes in smart power. and we represent smart power. >> i don't doubt that the

department thwarts embracing smart power but i have sat through years there in that department when you fought -- when we fought for every nickel and what i'm concerned about is once the champions of this -- and i mentioned a few of them, go away, the people that are putting the pressure on, if you will, we go right back to the same old stuff. >> if two or three years from now the civilian response corps is trying to achieve 264 active members and 2,000 standby members and we have used them in some operations and people have seen the good results, good results which come not just from those numbers on the medium size, not the -- but also from the coordination, this process will be institutionalized. >> okay. mr. bever?

>> well, commissioner, you've certainly laid out very important challenge. and to put it in even starker terms than i had thought about before. because we do have the advantage right now of some leadership within this administration and we should take maximum opportunity for that leadership. what we're involved in right now is secretary clinton and our agency is the quadrennial development and diplomacy review. one of the key committees of that process deals with conflict stabilization kinds of issues. i will take your question back to that committee as well. and we are looking at that. but i don't want to telegraph -- it's not appropriate yet in this hearing to telegraph what some of the discussions have been there. i would just say that i agree

with the earlier comments that these kinds of issues are going to continue whether in how long afghanistan continues. there will be other issues out there in the world that will demand this kind of a response. a.i.d. is an agency. in the end it's all about our people. our people and our systems and the courage of those people in how smart those people are. our challenge is recruiting the best people. retaining the best people. and building those lessons back into our procedures. and in terms of coordination, i would use your characterization that it is better than it used to be. and we also look to the national security council for some of that coordination among our agencies and a policy directive. and we also coordinate under special representative for afghanistan and pakistan which i

think has been a good initiative for bringing agencies of the federal government together around one table that normally we would not have met together on a weekly basis. both ambassador herbst and i do that every week. i'll just close with that comment. >> dr. schear? >> sir, you're raising a series of concerns that i think are absolutely legitimate that we have to look very seriously at. i would add at some risk of sounding a little bit too scholarly here, the instrument of contingency operations and our understanding of how to work that in a stabilization and reconstruction manner will be affected -- is affected by the environment. the environmental character of our global security right now very much features persistent irregular conflicts where countering insurgency requires

especially within the department of defense a whole series of practices and training from the whole spectrum of capacity-building within our department focuses in ways we couldn't really have imagined with great prescience a@@ @

i think there will be a continued legacy and experience. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> i just -- you know, i am not an academic. i'm a very practical person who has lived through the battles at the state department particularly in funding an emphasis. and what i don't want to see is an opportunity lost because the champions will go away. and i'm not promoting usoco. i'm not promoting the gates solution. i'm not promoting an nsc solution. i don't know what the solution is but you three guys and others are going to have to come up with a better way to do it. thank you. >> thank you, commissioner green. my cochair, commissioner shays, please. >> thank you, mr. chairman. this seems more like a scholarly discussion than i would like. and it kind of puts us all to sleep.

i'm trying to think of some way to wake us all up here. and one of the things that i think of is the lack of coordination costs billions and billions and billions of dollars. huge waste. which means that we don't optimize the dollars that we spend. it also results in the loss of lives in our military, the lost of lives in our diplomatic corps, the lost of lives in our civilian civil servants, the loss of lives of u.s. contractors, allies, our nato friends, the loss of lives of local nationals, both as contractors and as civilians and the loss of lives of third country nationals. that's the bottom line. so it's a huge, huge issue. would any of you deny that the lack of coordination has resulted in serious cost of money not that it's your fault. but the lack of coordination and

the loss of lives because we haven't optimized our military and we haven't succeeded in rebuilding a nation like we want to? i don't need a long answer. i'll start with you, ambassador. we'll go right down the line. >> certainly coordination has been problematic in the past. it's been getting better. and it -- >> that's not the question i asked. i asked, has the lack of coordination resulted in wasteful money and the loss of lives? >> i think it's safe to say -- >> it's not a hard question, ambassador. >> coordination could be better. and the absence of effective coordination has led to losses. >> loss of lives and the waste of money? >> i think you could -- >> ambassador, the fact that you have a difficult time saying it is more concern than anything. it's a no-brainer it seems to me. let me interrupt you a second. this is a hearing to which we want to know is this something that really registers with you?

and if you can't tell me it doesn't cost the loss of lives and the loss of money -- i gave you the easy question. the hard questions are to follow. >> there's no question that there have been losses in money. have there been losses in lives, perhaps so. >> perhaps? so it's just a money issue. it's not an issue of using our forces more successfully? don't you think that if we are able to help the iraqi -- the iraqis and the afghans that this would help bring peace sooner, therefore, not cost lives? that's kind of like basic it seems to me. >> better coordination would lead to better results including victory faster, yes. >> and, therefore, not the waste of money and the loss of lives; correct? >> presumably. >> presumably, is that the way you want the record to say? you can't say yes.

again -- >> it's not a hard question. mr. bever? .. >> so we always --

>> attribute her, i was in congress. we didn't appropriate the money that we need for coordination. so i don't put you out there as somehow you have caused the loss of lives, or that you have wasted money. i put us all in this together. and it seems to me you deal wit. and it strikes me again like the ambassador, it's hard for you to say what is reality. i'm giving you a chance, doctor. >> sir, i am quite sure that, looking back over the past eight years, yes, there has been waste associated with the lack of coordination and very likely the loss of life, although i cannot verify your surge with any concrete examples that i would however at this point, we have to think about the quality of coordination that you are underlining here. in many cases, it's a lack of

coordination between those who have good situational awareness, understand the human terrain that where we are operating in a wartime setting, and those who are responsible for actually designing and executing projects. that -- and i underscore a recent article, by major general flynn on intelligence on this. i think that level of coordination is key. finally i would have to say and a wartime setting there is the cost of local loss of life. i don't know how many girls schools in southeastern afghanistan have been hit and how many students have been hurt or killed, but that's also a factor i would add an. >> if i was answering the question i would've just said yes. and the fact that you'll have such such a struggle in saying the obvious, i didn't ask the question because it was so obvious. otherwise why are we here? if it's not costing money and it's not costing lives, and you guys are wasting your times trying to a better coordination.

so it was a no-brainer. and if i was a professor, it wouldn't be a good grade. and speaking of professors, there's a story of some harvard students who thought they would be smart and go up to maine to study for the weekend for a final exam. and they had, for whatever reason, they didn't study. and they were prepared to take the exam, so they decide to miss it and come back and tell the professor that they had a flat tire and so that's why they were late. he said no problem, no problem. and he said i'll give you the exam. he put them in four separate rooms. there were four of them. and he asked him one question. and the question was, which tire? i would be tempted to ask each of you to tell me how you coordinate with each other and not have you be in the same

room, just to see and satisfy myself whether the answer would be the same. i can't do that, so we will start with you, ambassador. had you courtney with mr. bever and mr. scheer? how do you coordinating with usaid and d.o.d.? >> with the d.o.d. and ait i have members on my staff. one of my day piece is from usaid to ensure close coordination. i have several members from d.o.d. who were detailed to my staff. in the reconstruction and stabilization ipc, which i share these two agencies said, jim scheer is my principal at osd to talk about developing capacity. and gemini for together on a variety of things as he is mentioned. our coordination is comprehensive that it is in my office. and it makes every work product we produce. when we deploy people to those countries, which dr. zakheim spoke about, that has involved a

process. >> so you have 86 people. how me are in iraq, how many in afghanistan? >> we have no one in iraq right now. we have i believe it is 20 in afghanistan today, but i can confirm you that. >> so nobody in iraq to coordinate? >> correct. we have already explained why. >> mr. bever? >> representatives from ambassador herbst group me with us every week. where we have our own interagency meeting at usaid headquarters. it includes representatives from the department of defense, treasury, health, human services and others. agriculture include it. we also meet regularly, weekly, along with other assistant secretary level, undersecretary level, officers at the state department. we made at our deputy assistant secretary levels and that the

deputies committees. that's all here in washington. in the field, as well, obvious at the region of commands and kabul. in the case of our colleagues from the pentagon, that's almost daily, hourly, coordination effort with, especially the pakistan-afghanistan coordination unit that has been set up at the pentagon. we also have military representation at a id in our office of military affairs. they work on my task force and we meet regularly. that is your shimbun. in the field, that's as i said an ongoing exercise. we have liaison officers at the lieutenant colonel and colonel level in our resident mission, and kabul sitting inside our offices, both with us and with our agriculture colleagues who are also in our office. >> mr. schear? >> yes, mr. chairman. as ambassador said, i just sit on interagency policy committee

for reconstruction and stabilization. that gives us my office and his a good opportunity to interact very intensively on a wide range of issues. i would also add that there is an nsc role in interagency coordination, particularly relevant to that is the point made by several of you about secretary gates' proposal on shared responsibility, pooled resources. there is a larger interagency review on security sector assistance, which had an appropriate point will turn its attention to the secretary's proposals. so it is an ongoing process. i place a high premium on active nsc involvement in interagency coordination in this area. >> mr. bever, mr. schear, would you each get the three people in the officer to work with? transixty? rob gibbons is one of them at my level that we work with. he is usually the debian acting

deputy to ambassador herbst. >> anybody else to? that's the one idea with. >> do you deal with anyone else because there are staff people that come to our weekly meeting. >> mr. schear? >> mr. mcnamara who is the chief of plans and mr. jenkins who i believe has actually just rotated out, but to be replaced shortly. >> i will just conclude, because i hope we have three rounds, not too. my view of smart power isn't soft our. my view is it is the use of hard and soft our. and it strikes me that one of the challenges, mr. hertz, why we did not set you up soon enough is we were not willing to do with reality, and that was we were into nation building to give your into nationbuilding, or state government, whatever you want to call it, it means that we got to put more resources into usaid and into state to do that job. and a failure to do that has

resulted in our being six years behind. it means our troops will be in iraq and afghanistan, particularly afghanistan longer than they need to be which means that means their lives are in danger longer. it meets all the contractors who are there, their lives are in danger longer. and so i would like us to talk, my next round will be about the whole concept of nationbuilding or state building. thank you, gentlemen. >> thank you, commissioner. we will start a second round now, and we will start with myself. i want to go back, i love my second area of discussion, but i'd like to calibrate also offer the initial remarks about the importance of very senior level executive secretarsecretary to secretary discussions, and i'm smiling because it's already now called the gates proposal. and secretary gates, in his presentation, and i want to read

this because it's real important. i would propose do he doesn't care all to the was accomplished, as long as an improvement is accomplished. because in his presentation or his statement, he said, and i'm pulling sends out, unlike the existing structure and processes left over from the cold war, and he sort has a history to be able to make that statement, which often he's talking about h @@@@r

been involved in them. they recommend very powerful, very important study groups and things like that. and it stretches it out. well, there is an immediate need. so i think that's an opportunity lost. someone mentioned it before. and then the thing i would like to talk about is, if several of you have referenced we are moving in the right direction. i think there's a lot of progress being made but i don't think we're moving -- i don't think you can make the mistake we are moving in the right direction. and have it withstand close scrutiny. and i'd like to talk about one partnership that's ongoing that is not a partnership at all, and that is there's a significant afghan national army and afghan

national police action in process involving coordination. those organizations. this commission sat, and there's a transition going on from state department in many of the aspects to the department of defense. and this commission sat in on a briefing by the program executive who had been handed the contract that he was going to use. and i was the one, it could've been anyone who asked him the question, so he made his great presentation, straight shooter, really knew the procurement business. we're talking about a wartime contract, and i asked him, so what have you done with state department? and he is answer was, nothing. and i said why not? isn't the incumbent state department? and his answer was i was told not to. and i know everyone was going, because it was a big protest, it will take the course it will

take, but they're going to have everybody out of there the first of january, have a program accomplished. and now we're into the end of july with the incumbent, and i would propose to you that lack of initial coordination, cause that. and then doctor, i will talk about intra- agency which is part of what leads him to interagency. i again asked the question, $300 million on one of the contracts was for life-support. now what is a life-support rhyme with? it rhymes with logcap. but, of course, housing, feeding, in the case of ana, dozens and dozens of locations. the united -- and a decision was made to use a contract where the bidders would be lockheed, raytheon, northropto grow because you don't know the expansion or the cost. and the united states army had

gone through and exhaustive three-year process to identify as part of its logcap program, three exceptional contractors. those contractors are qualified that have done a good job. forget about cost issues and whatnot. forget about ethics issues. there have been some. by the customers that they dealt with said they really knew life-support. and those were not any of the five. they were kbr and dyke. it's disconnected. was going to happen? those other companies coming out asked the question, their great program in aggressive pursuit i mentioned, they have proven track record. what's the history in feeding and housing and putting up electrons and putting in little roads and bases and burns and security and trained people to do that and hired them? zero. now blackwater has a little history on the afghan border police. if you know it. now, it doesn't seem and that's an immediate case, and that's not the only case.

so my point is, i'm going to ask the two of you, give you a free rider, mr. bever, are we really moving in the right direction and the sense of leaving the impression that things are really kind of assembly and i'm building up a head of steam? or do we have real critical problems that could cause us dozens and hundreds of millions of dollars because of a lack of effective coordination? dr. schear? >> mr. chairman, you're absolutely right to put your finger on intra-agency coordination within the d.o.d. community as you know. there are many stakeholders, the military departments, the office, the office of the secretary of defense, the combatant and commands. so i am not conversant on the particular details, that you are siding with respect to logcap. understand its importance broadly, but yes, we are only as good as our next screw up, sir. >> i my say on the logcap, i

talked to logcap people. their edge to me was logcap can't do this. and my response was idled its logcap can do it. you've got great contractors. by great, well qualified contractors, who can do this work. why wouldn't they want to bid on life support in the same everywhere they have people in camps that they are supporting? in the answer is like, well, that's someone else's problem. but, please. >> i think you have made the point very well, and what i think it does, suggest and there is an appreciation at our departments leadership level on the need for bringing all the stakeholders together. >> thank you. ambassador herbst? >> coordination has improved but it is far from perfect that the specific problem you've mentioned, i'm not in a position to respond because i just have no responsibility for but we know there are many problems. >> is your inl organization that is making that transition that

rated that income and, i could care less whether that income and it works or not, but rated that income as doing a great job, but that income is not part of the future because of the interesting -- we'll have time for contracting processes that are being debated presently. so i have usurped a bit of time. i'm switching the order a little bit, if i might just to sort of give balance year. mr. hinchey, i'm going ask you, commissioner henke, to go next. commissioner tiefer, you are after that. >> ambassador herbst, and your 2009 recap obligation that you provided to us today, you made the case that your letter is titled five years in progress. you make the case that you are steps in 2004. but then your statement is this. and i think it is very insightful. like most good ideas at birth and crs was full of vision for the future but low on resources to publish them. and then you say later in 2009 the office began to hit its

stride and in the 2009 state department budget finally provided s/crs with the regular stream of funding for its operationoperations. further you go on to say despite his limitations as the artist has managed to deploy whatever assets were up it will. my question is on resources. isn't it true that you have all the resources you need in fiscal year 10 to do everything you need to do? >> the resources we have gotten fy10 budget is $150 million, $120 million, but all designed for the civilian stabilization initiative to build a civilian response corps support and crs core staff operations. that is sufficient for us to do what's in front of his. >> right, but the point want to draw out the issuer funded -- you told the congress last year that you had reached your in state of active response corps is 250 people? >> it was 250, but we use money that was in my office has posted

a civilian response were ever decide to add another 14 positioned. so we're talking about 264 active. >> fully funded by her office, right? >> that's from our money and usaid's money because they are paying for their half of the proponent numbers spin and you play a money in fiscal 10 to do that? >> yes. >> when you defended your budget to congress last year, did you tell them that you would be at two and 50 plus or minus by the end of calendar year 2009? that's what the congressional report indicating. >> we told them we would be close to that number, just. >> your actual number is 86? >> correct. >> so there's plenty of resources, right? you have plenty of money? >> we have the money to did what we have been asked to do. we're not asking for additional money. >> just the people understand a track record, in $209,145,000,000 appropriated. and 2010 at the end of the day you at $150 million appropriate.

120 plus 30 in a id, correct? are your resources between ninth and basically tripled, is that correct? >> let me give you the funding streams. you're missing one stream. we got -- letzig, $55 million from the fy 2008 supplemental. that was 30 or s/crs and 25 for usaid. and then in the fy 2009 budget, we received $75 million, $45 million, or s/crs, and 30 for usaid. and now in fy10 budget, we have received $150 million. so those are the three stringed. >> and for the standby response corporation, not the simple, but for the standby is 2000? >> correct.

>> i just want, you are funded to provide 2000 standby members and your number onboard now is 558, 600? >> correct. >> in all cases you're about 25, 30, 35 percent of your authorized number and your funded number? >> correct. >> the resources are not an issue. >> that's correct. >> thank you. >> can i make one point on the staffing? it's important. one, to build the standby to 2000, we're going to need flexible hiring authorities but we need flexible authorities. right now to be a member of the civilian response by legislation, you have to be an american active duty in the federal government. we have divided response between eight agencies and usaid is both to the largest percentage, 37%. because of their skills most appropriate for this of all the

agencies. that means they need to provide 740 standby members. as you know, -- >> those are hires, correct? >> no, standby is not added highest. the active members are active hires. so the active members based upon the money we have, but we are building fast now. on the standby, you go to people are currently members of your agency. usaid as everyone knows had serious drop of total staff over the last 35 years. there are helm reform services office and usaid now? you're not going to get 740 standby members from the office of core fully 1400. we have asked, and were hoping to get legislation this year, to get authorities to higher also foreignng that five years into, that we need afford not to do something that we have provided along. >> have been denied how many

times? >> were denied authorization legislation three times. we finally got in late 2008, and with that we didn't get everything we wanted. but we've been asking for, but we did not get that then. >> with a german yield? >> yes. >> i have trouble sometimes when i hear we asked what. how long is we -- who is we? >> i would say the state department i would also say the administration, the previous administration and this one. >> so we're talking about your predecessors or you? >> both my predecessor, the first two years and then me since then. >> angela benioff is how long? >> three and half years. >> last point. on the active component. we're at 86 what do. it took us several months to really get rolling. we had to in effect streamline some hiring procedures, some opn hiring procedures that we have problem with a security cleared from people for the outside. we are adding at the rate of a

couple of we, sometimes faster than the. >> i am out of time. thank you. >> thank you, commissioner henke. commissioner tiefer, please. >> thank you, chairman thibault. dr. schear, we are both in a way academics, or at least we were energy with the national defense university and the at the university of baltimore law school. and more the house of that is your old writings are still there waiting for you. i want to as you about coordination in the field and going to come to a very concrete question and not a general fluffy question about coordination. but let me get there. the afghan study group which you were a distinguished member@@@@" east.

and another study where you were core contributor bias or a strategic international studies, you are a core contribute and that might note that dr. zakheim was a distinguished member. so when he asked questions he knows whereof he speaks. in that study, there's challenges identified, included inadequate input from civilian agencies, cerp projects have rarely been designed with input from u.s. diplomats and develop professionals, i would translate that as a.i.d. this is a question on your behalf, mr. bever, whether you want me to do it or not.

rarely, rarely been designed with input from u.s. diplomats and professional developers who make place of those in a broader political strategy and institution building requirements. i know you can talk about the coordination on cerp and the embedding and having individual professionals from state or a.i.d. but i want to ask concretely, since elsewhere you say, the programs relied, this is cerp, on imported, usaid and other u.s. agencies has been uneven, would you be willing to say not merely input, but that on cerp projects above a threshold, give me a number. 500,000, 1 million? cerp projects above a threshold are now development at the lead agency if they are supplying personnel. should be usaid. argue for the defense department

willing to do that or does the defense department, is using, putting this away on cerp and not you willing to put a.i.d. in the legal? >> sir, i guess i'm a hostage to some of my previous writings. but i would be happy to provide you some views on that. i honestly believe that our service personnel downrange at the end of the day are pretty agnostic about how this gets done. they wanted to be done in a smart, effective way, as quickly and coherently as possible. i don't think that means that they would necessarily want to hog everything, or to offload everything. they would look pragmatically at each funding source of channel and each and come to a judgment. speed is not always, of course, you'll to the best answers. something stupid careful study. and i also would acknowledged

that our military commanders and various unit levels bring to bear a somewhat different set -- >> you won't say different when you're talking about more expensive projects at a.i.d. should have a specific larger women talk about big projects be? i'm not sure -- the inference in your question is right. cerp has never meant to be a very high cost item. it was always initial impact, quick impact as it were philosophy, very much a small-scale. whether micro grants or -- >> but your own study says it sometimes use at high money levels. you won't just say yes, at high manila for a.i.d. should have a larger role? >> i would agree with that. but i would also -- >> you'll have time at the into and. i appreciate you a green. that's a rare thing in the searing. mr. bever, i'm not -- i am not blaming afghan corruption on you. i am not.

i am far from it. 1 million miles from and. but in a study of afghan electrical system done by sigar, this study came out and it had some of the frank is writing about corruption i have seen in anybody's writing, official writings in afghanistan. and so i want to ask you to be blunt in a numerical way about the impact of afghan corruption on power, the u.s. taxpayers, expenditures. i will read a couple of sentences or two about it to capture the flavor. corruption in the energy, this is a guard, corruption in the energy sector affects afghanistan's ability to collect revenue. according to usaid, a major point of corruption in afghanistan is the electrical dish addition ross estes, according to the asian development bank, numerous witnesses in afghanistan's management of the energy sector, leave it susceptible to

corruption. consumer expectations of bribes to pay for utility services, and investor expectations of demands and bribes. it is built-in. would you agree we have numbers for what security costs in iraq. we used to say 15 to 20 percent of a development project went for security. would you be willing to say that you can pick a number far below or far above, but if you like, would you agree that 10 to 20 percent of our development money goes where a.i.d. says he goes, sagar says it goes, into afghan corruption? >> i'm not going to give you a percentage. i'm going to leave that to the ig to sagar and to the general accounting office to give us a percentage. we try our best to minimize corruption problems. and i don't recall the exact

context of that particular line, there are problems. it's not a problem by the way unique in afghanistan. you see the same difficulties in neighboring countries in that region because it weakens institutions in the inability of actually enforcing tariff corrections. >> would you say it is a lot or a little? >> on a.i.d. programs? i'm going to say it's a minimal. >> my time is up. >> thank you, commissioner. commissioner zakheim, please. >> quick question to you, mr. bever. who do you report to? >> i report to the new administrator of a.i.d., doctor birgitte shah. >> thank you. ambassadors reports to the secretary of state. mr. bever reports equivalent of

a debt the secretary. who do report to? >> i report to the undersecretary of defense for policy, assistant secretary of defense michael vick a. >> so basically you are reporting to mike vickers. do you think that is sufficient for the department that is often described as the 800-pound gorilla, that spends big bucks, even on cerp, which when i was there was 40, 50,000-dollar deal, but now gets chopped at the, correct me if i'm wrong commissioner tiefer, is over $1 million, a chopper full? >> i think so. >> do you think that is a sufficient level of coordination, that - -- how oftn do spee-2 ambassador herbst? >> on a weekly basis, we're in europe. >> odyssey if you traveled together to speak to everyday? >> not every day, no.

>> once a week? >> probably. >> do you think that is sufficient? when i was undersecretary i talked to my counterparts every day on the sorts of issues. do you think that is sufficient and? i think it is driven by the needs of the mullah. i will be happy to talk to every half-hour. >> so there isn't an urgent requirement here. i thought this ring made a pretty clear that this thing is pretty clear around here. >> our staff, our locked and loaded. >> no, no, no. stocks locked and loaded is nothing new. you heard that from commissioner schinasi. that doesn't work. so you think it is sufficient just to speak to ambassador herbst once a week? and mr. bever, use became wanted -- you speak to him once a week also? how often do speak to? >> i speak to many people speed is how often you speak to him. how often do speak to jim bever? >> very rarely because i'm not

doing continued the oversight that i am doing capabilities added to see. that is a different slice. >> fine. how often do you guys talk about corruption amongst each other. to pick up again on commissioner teachers point. ambassador herbst, how do you discuss corruption? >> where we are engaged, corruption is an issue. >> how often do you discuss it? is it on the agenda at every meeting? once a month? once every six must be? corruption as a distinct issue is not something we discuss. corruption specific operations is something we discuss. >> regularly? >> yes, regularly. >> would like to do for me? >> absolutely. >> i would like to say i commend the commission for raising the corruption issue. we do try to do with this within the context of a we do at usaid, our coordination through the special representative office and at the state department, and out at the embassy. as well as with our ig and

sigar. we're trying to work very hard with the various institutions, the afghan government. and i can -- and it comes up almost weekly with us at my level. and daily with my own staff, and those at the state department that we coordinate with. not just -- i will close wednesday at a london conference just a few weeks ago, this was a key feature of discussion among all of us of all the donors that contribute to the afghan reconstruction trust fund. we can talk more if you like. >> i heard something, and i'm not sure that i've got it right. mr. deaver, you can correct me. i understand our folks in this avoid responds or who have warned essentially as contracting expert. and a.i.d. does not use them. is that wrong? >> we have reached out to both defense department and state department to see what assets they have available that we

could look out for various fields. in the case of the defense department, i think we look at among the list that they gave us, there was a handful of people with contracting capability that met our needs and we pursued them. this is in the case of afghanistan. i believe in the case of s/crs, there may have been '02 that we look at that have that kind of background. and i think we were looking at them. i don't have the specific names. i will have to get back you on that, but procurement officers are very high valued commodity. and grant officers as well. >> i heard something quite different. finally, it ambassador herbst, how has ambassador holbrooke used the civilian response corps? >> we have provided names of civilian response corps to his office, which is responsible for staffing our people, the people many usg people in afghanistan. >> how many has he used to? >> i would have to come back to

you, but the other, he has assess to do specific things and we provided people -- i mentioned the election team. i mentioned the strategic indications team. >> so out of 86 folks, the person who is in charge of our most critical operations in the most critical part of the world has use 10%? >> well, -- >> and how often for? >> it is a plus six. okay, and this is year round or just short-term? >> the election team was there for about six or seven months. they are gone, i visited the strategic indications team is on the ground since i don't know, october or november. and him as he is now assess to do to get another election team for the coming provincial elections. >> so i was right, 10%. thank you. >> thank you, commission. commissioner schinasi, please. >> thank you.

ambassador herbst, are you going to have any intelligence analyst in your civilian response corps? >> yes. they are part of the team. >> and dr. schear, let me ask you. one of the things that we know has happened with this expansion of the military dimension into many new, i guess they are not new anymore, but into many of the reconstruction and stabilization efforts, is that the department has turned a lot to contractors to perform functions so that to free up its military for its more traditional roles. would something like a civilian response corps, would that be an alternative in your mind to higher contractors to do some of those functions? and ask that question generally, and also with respect to specific functions, particularly those of intelligence analysis. >> actually, commission, that is a very interesting question, because we have seen a growing need for civilians within d.o.d. field components.

and while i can't speak to that particular requirement for intelligence analysis and whether that might be civilian or military, i can tell you that we do have an ongoing initiative. that is beginning to take flight. is called the civilian expeditionary workforce, the cw. and it is within the department of defense intended as an estimate for resourcing civilian jobs now, and at whatever unit level we can within the field, jobs which generation ago would have been handled by officers are now handled by civilians. and the cew is our effort to appropriately resource d.o.d. operations. i'm not talking about the larger civilian component, but it is very much a work in progress. and we would be happy to look at areas where we might complement the crc. thank you. >> and ambassador herbst, are you aware of that effort? and are you looking to see

whether or not part of what you can do with a civilian corps fits in with what d.o.d. is trying to do to decrease its reliance on contractors? >> the cew i believe is two years old, and we have been kept apprised of it from its inception. and our understanding it it has been printed as agenda said to provide civilians for strictly d.o.d. related activities. where the crc that we are building is meant to be involved in stability operations. working with the society in which we are, where we're deployed people. >> i guess that raises an interesting point. your description of strictly this agency's operations are strictly that agency operations that aren't we talking about here the fact that those lines have blurred and the way that we work, you know, in those spaces and tabs are little better? isn't that what -- >> the notion of coordination of

cross agencies as a budget which has been handed to s/crs and a civilian responsible and that is to make sure what each agency does is link one with the other to produce an overall operation which makes sense, which would be affected. and it's also true that each agency may have specific tasks which it needs do. in the case of d.o.d., it is a militant organization and they need to civilians to do specific things. >> let me ask you, turn back to iraq for a minute, and your comment that you haven't been there because you haven't been asked that it seems to me iraq is in transition as much as afghanistan is in transition. it's just a different way. so we are saying the same kind of overlap or gap him or seems that are going to develop an iraq. unit, we're going to take out plan to take out 10,000 troops a month until the end of august. we are seeing functions transferred like the police training in this case, going to

the department of defense to department of state. again, i guess mr. bever is the one he used the term a continuum. but, of course, are we placing strict lines on that continuum that you throw something over the transom, or are we trying to work for integration as we move to different points along the transom, the continuum. and in that sense, i'm not sure i understand why you don't go in somewhere unless you're asked. who has to ask you and it seems a very stilted sort of formal process still that we would like to see some more fluidity and flexibility with it. >> the answer is very simple. your question assumes that we are a full up and running organization when we are not. we are an organization which has been funded for 18 months. is only gradually developing capacity. if we had 1000 people come if we had all 264 active members, plus seven or 800 standby members, then we would be able to make an

impact in a place like afghanistan or perhaps iraq. but we have 15 people we have deployed two years ago. and we got 86 today. the numbers are growing by the week. but they're not significant in operation we are talking at a thousand civilians. >> i appreciate that that is where you are into have been constrained, and part of -- >> but now we are building numbers, i have been opposed by one of our senior folks at our embassy in baghdad and we aren't discussing what we can do. it's not going to be hundreds of people. we don't have hundreds of people. but we are soon reaching a stage, by soon i mean within a year, we will be able to do something medium scale to large scale. >> i guess your sponsor commissioner henke but you're fully resourced, but your response and if you're not resourced. . .

>> thank you commissioner, commissioner green, please. >> thank you. i think there's pretty universal belief at least certainly historically that the only organization with the capability to really rebuild infrastructure and stabilize the situation is dod. that being said and recognizing, ambassador herbst, that you're trying as best you can, certainly, within the resources you have to legitimatize the role of s/crs in that area as the organization that manages and coordinates those kinds of efforts. with that in mind and this follows somewhat to commissioner

schinasi's question, looking at the drawdown in iraq and the significant reduction that we're going to see in u.s. military and dod capabilities there, how is state and usaid planning to fill that void, particularly, since you have no one in iraq? who's doing it? either one of you? >> yeah, i'll start if you'd like. >> one, i'm not responsible for our iraqi policy at the present time. there is an office that is responsible and they are taking the lead. as what i've -- >> what office is that? >> it's the iraq -- the office that deals with iraq and nea. >> so they are the ones that decide on the people? >> they are involved for staffing in iraq, yes.

>> who makes the decision? that's all i'm asking. do you need if i ask that? they make recommendations and it's by the assistant secretary and it was by special envoy james satterfield was involved in those -- >> but who decides, their numbers, their people who decides? there must be -- >> who's responsible overall for the staffing numbers for civilians? >> yeah. who makes the decision for iraq? >> i'll have to give you that answer because i'm not personally involved. >> but you -- your office is at least nominally responsible for the coordination of the activities that we've been talking about today; is that not true? we are responsible for doing this going forward. for doing this going forward. >> okay. but going forward we're going to draw down there, that's forward.

>> excuse me, going forward in future operations. not current operations. mechanisms that are established to deal with iraq starting before 2003. and our office was created in 2004 because it was recognized by late 2003 -- >> i understand all that. who in the state usaid is doing the coordination to take over the roles that dod is currently doing in iraq? >> i can get an answer for you. i don't have that answer right now. >> ambassador herbst, you mentioned in your testimony that the pace of hiring is slow. why is that? what's the long pole in the tent? are you competing with the

political mafia, the economic mafia, who is decided -- it goes back to mr. zakheim's question. who is making those decisions whether the hundred people recruited by the state department -- how they're being distributed across the bureaus? >> you're talking about the crc members? when you say the 100 people who are recruited? >> crc members. >> first, on the hiring pace, it was -- it was slow at the start because we simply followed the old rules which led to inappropriate cannons coming forward. we realized that and we then streamlined the process but if you look at the hearing you'll see clear and steady improvement. who makes the decision to use the crc, we have been in

discussion with the office of ambassador holbrooke who are hiring so they can be considered in jobs for afghanistan. they make the decisions. >> okay. but who decides of the pool of people coming into the department how they're being distributed? and are you getting your fair share? >> ah, okay. yes, we have been getting our fair share of resources over the past 18 months. it took us -- before that, no. since then, yes. >> mr. bever, related to iraq if i may just comment to your question, obviously we are -- we at a.i.d. at least are normalizing the size of our mission to one that one would normally see in this kind of development situation. it's about $250 million a year

in the fiscal year '10 request and about 130 employees between our americans and our fsns. what is going on in the mission, in the u.s. mission, the embassy is an interagency coordination effort right now to figure out between military, state and a.i.d. which of the various assets and responsibilities will be picked up by whom. and that's going on right now under general matthews and ambassador munther. so that's an interagency process to pick up including certain elements of logistic contracts, operation and maintenance activities. i would just point the commission to one key question, which is something we've always stood for going back a number of years in iraq. we had an asset transfer coordination group within the embassy. one of the things we were always most concerned about was it's one thing to sign a document and transfer it over to the finance

ministry. it's a whole other thing that they would get their agreement in that your current cost budget elements required for operation and maintenance of the assets that are being transferred. we always insisted that they had to agree that they would leave room in their budget for operation and maintenance. so as the commission looks at these questions, i would just suggest you penetratingly looking at that kind of an issue. >> ambassador herbst, one last question, to go back to one of my earlier ones, and that is you feel you're getting your fair share. what's the long pole in the tent to getting more people? >> you mean beyond the numbers we've already described? >> yeah. >> i think that we willn÷ need get congressional approval and funding for more people. i think you may know that the original concept for the civilian response corps called

fo for 2,250. use the active and the standby and show you're using it and then we'll build the reserve. i think that concept is still one we are when i did to. -- whetted to. if we build a corps of that size, we'd be able to deploy at any one time and maintain in the field as many as 1200 people. that would cover completely our needs in a place like afghanistan right now. >> okay. >> so you would call that our medium term objective. but let's build this so we can deal with it. >> okay. >> may i just add to that. i think one of the challenges for our government is how to do what ambassador herbst just mentioned year in and year out. with the structure of the way that our officers serve, which is 12-month assignments. if you look at afghanistan right now, we're approaching 1,000 u.s. government officers.

we'll tax the dynamics and the resources of all of our agencies. so -- and that's just for afghanistan. if something else comes up along the way, and i can think of one, then, you know, i think we're still struggling to figure out how to recruit, motivate, incentivize and retain these officers who just like our soldiers also leave their families behind and serve in very dangerous places. >> would the gentleman yield for one quick question? when you say 1,000 officers, that's usaid employees? >> no, in the case of afghanistan that's state department and a.i.d. and a few other places. >> thank you. >> thank you, commissioner. my cochair? >> thank you. the reason i asked about the cost of lack of coordination in terms of dollars and lives, i had two reasons.

one, i wanted to see how seriously you treat this issue in terms of a lack of coordination. and secondly, if in my mind you can't answer succinctly the most obvious question and the easiest answer, it makes me -- it difficult for me to appreciate the responses to the questions i really don't know the answer. it's kind of like the proverbial hammer that costs $400 and the toilet seat that cost $4,000 about 20 years ago when they did an investigation. everybody harmed on that. -- harped on that. what's that the occasion is the wings on the plane must really have cost a lot but nobody knows how to evaluate the wings. i'm having a hard time in this hearing having some take-aways so i'm going to first read a quote. and this is secretary gates last wednesday. dr. schear, i would like you to listen to it. but for all the improvements of recent years, america's

interagency toolkit is a hodgepodge combined of a complex patchwork of authorities, persistent shortfalls and resources, mr. herbst, and unwieldy processes. so that's what he says. so this is my take-aways and i want you to react to them. my take-away is the s/crs is providing very few people in iraq basically contractors, that's absurd and afghanistan. under the civilian response corps. that's one of my take-aways. mr. schear's office is buried too far in the bureaucracy. that's one of my take-away. military is doing the work because usaid and department of state funding and staff don't have the resources but the military does. another take-away is practically speaking there isn't much coordination and state opposes both proposals in the sense that

they're silent to the proposal made by the inspector general in iraq, usoco. and silent to date on the joint stabilization funds proposed by dod. it strikes me curious in one sense 'cause dod has more funds and they're willing to put it in the same pool makes me wonder if state feels they lose control. another take-away no one has taken the ball and run away in terms of coordination reconstruction and stabilization. mr. herbst, notwithstanding, i don't see and feel the energy that i would feel if you thought there was the loss of lives which you don't seem to think. it is clear major reforms are needed. at least it's clear to me. that's one of my take-aways. so now i want you to respond to the following. these are options. one is the joint stabilization funds by mr. gates. you don't have to tell me whether you like it or dislike it.

tell me the pluses and minuses. usoco, an office of contingency operations by the inspector general. another one is multinational pooled funds through world bank or the region of development banks. another is the multinationally pooled funds through nato. another is national security council level office. we had some support in the previous hearing particularly from seth jones, who talked about that may be a way to move. and finally making current and structural work better through additional resources and that would be through you mr. herbst. i'll start with you, dr. schear. respond to some of these proposals. tell us what the strengths and weakness of them are? so let's talk about the joint stabilization funds. what's the strength? what's the weakness.

i'm not asking you whether your department supports it or doesn't support it. >> it's basic strength, it incentivizes collaboration and that's the basic incentive and that reflects the fact that both departments have very significant inequities in the stabilization area. its principal downside or the principal challenge is congressional oversight, quite frankly. if you have eight committees with jurisdiction here, that does create a major challenge for us. that's how i would -- >> that's very helpful. i thank you for that. usoco, strengths and weakness? >> its strength is systematic focus and its weakness it would be a red-haired stepchild and it would create antibodies and create a challenge for coordination and it would not replace. it would merely add on to existing command relationships,

both on the defense and on the foreign policy side. so it would complexify rather than simplify. >> and what's the positive part? >> the positive part is that it could be a steward, if you will, for contingency contracting and all the critical elements that go into that. the human resources piece, the i.t. piece, the contract management piece. but that's -- >> multinational of pooled funds through the world bank? >> i probably don't have an expert enough to give you a good sense of the pluses and mines uses sir. >> pooled funds through nato? >> same. >> national security council office? >> the plus there is responsiveness to the president, to the national security advisor and their principals. the paramount and chronic

question for the nsc is its ability to focus especially on operational-level issues which ought to be outside its domain. >> and making the current structure work better through additional resources? >> i never deny the need for additional resources. we have a list of things that we need to look at very hard within our own agency's way to improve it. >> do you think ambassador herbst needs a lot more resources in order to help him coordinate the effort? >> i think he has put his finger on what i see is the principal need, which is human capital. and that's the -- has been the long pole in the tent. i think state department impact in a positive extent is not simply an issue of sizing. it's the function where the level of bureaucracy something

which dr. zakheim has raised. >> mr. bever, would you run through -- do you want me to -- let me bring them in the order that i did. the s/crs? >> yeah -- >> is your mic on. >> yes. >> take the s/crs providing -- i'm sorry. i apologize. right, the joint stabilization. >> i think each of these has potentially some merits that bear more careful attention. my own view and this is my view, in the intergovernmental process is that each of our agencies our government works best when each of ice agencies work to its own comparative advantage. >> okay. thank you. >> and when our authorities are not usurped in such a way, where the authority rest is different from where the accountability -- >> let me say it in my terms to

see if you agree. if everybody is in charge nobody is in charge? in other words, you feel you would have more accountability? i'm hearing you say you would have more accountability if you're in charge of the funds you're in charge in rather than grouping them in other funds? >> yes. this is why i like the notion of a continuing and involvement by the national security council. the nsc is the one entity that is able in my experience to pull all the actors of our government together. but i do agree -- >> usoco? >> operationally that's really not it's forte. sticking with the overall policy is. on usoco, similar to somewhat on the joint stabilization, i'm going to defer because i do not want to -- >> no, but is there a strength and a weakness you can just point out. not that you're going to -- tell us the strength and tell us the weakness that's helping us.

>> i think it's an interesting idea but i think to operationalize it would take an enormous amount of effort by all of our agencies that will divert and distract us from getting our job done. >> the pooling of world bank fupdz? -- funds. >> multinational trust funds can work well if they are well managed and i would point to the national afghanistan trust fund. it's where the donors do work well together. they have responsible lead from the finance ministry. they have reasonably good accountability on the inside. and i think it's a model that can be built upon. >> nato? >> frankly, whether it's on world bank implementation monitoring it could be the nato mechanism. i'm kind of intrigued by the nato mechanism. >> what about the nsc? >> my experience with the other administrations and the office of vice president were able to pull together fractious elements of our government towards a national priority in ways that nobody else could.

as far as making all the current structures better, i think we could do a lot more in that area. and frankly i'm -- in our case, i'm looking for ways and i think dr. schear mentioned it. it ultimately gets down to our human capital. and what do we do to recruit our people to retain them to promote them, to keep them in theater? we spend so much effort getting our people out to afghanistan, for example. what do we do next year? >> you know -- >> we faced this in iraq as well. >> we're looking at that issue, obviously, through the issue of contracting but we want to know what's inherently governmental and do we have an overreliance on contractors so it get us into the very issue you're mentioning and i'll end with you, ambassador herbst. so the joint stabilization funds, the strength and weakness of it. >> well, jim pointed out that it does ensure coordination. on the other hand, though, if

you're concerned about the militarization of foreign assistance you have to wonder. >> okay. >> on usoco, it's the point that i already made. you have a mechanism which can work. it's finally getting momentum. if you want to try and create a new mechanism, that's going to take you a couple of years. it will set back the effort to build a civilian response capacity. regarding multinational pooled funds, bob is good and it can leverage capital from around the world. the problem, of course, you put it in the fund and you lose control. on nato, pooled funds, there too you're putting funds in and you leverage it. it's a good thing. it's also true we have more influence probably in nato than we do in the world bank where we have a fair amount in the world bank. so you reduce the liability there, the downside. on an nsc level level, you certainly need to have an nsc engaged in the process.

and they are the place in theory where this can be done best but it really depends on the administration. >> and finally, you can end -- you get to be the closer in terms of my questions. and making the current structure work better. >> i think when you're in a fight and you need a capacity, you go with the capacity you have. you make it better. you empower it. again, we have the civilian response corps. it's small but it's growing under a steady rate. first let us build it. secondly empower us to use it. and you'll see what we can do. >> thank you, gentlemen. >> okay. what we're going to do is a brief wrap-up. we're going to give you the allotment of time that we said. we'll go around one time for any final comments. and then if anyone has a burning question, they can deal with it. i really don't. i have an observation. which is we've referenced

because this was just an excellent presentation by the secretary. and i think it could have been by either secretary except that the initiation came from defense. i'm taking away first of all, thank you, gentlemen, a significant need for evaluation but not the need to -- you know, you make comments about there's certainly a lot that we can do immediately. well, that's what's not in my view being done. and i think it comes down to a couple of points, which is the statement that we need to incentivize collaboration versus the existing structure and processes left over from the cold war. that's very powerful. now, a person could argue well, we've done a few things that aren't the cold war and that was just for brush coarse but it's hide-bound but my second point is as i listen to it -- and not

you gentlemen, you seem to be very collegial but all the examples of the lack of coordination that was presented today, you know, felt like organizational ego or said another way.