dr. burman. >> thank you. cochair and commissioners, it is an honor to share thoughts with you today. i have submitted a longer statement for the record. i will summarize the key points of the two major arguments. first, to the question posed by the hearings title, arms security officers have been performing in afghanistan since before the definition of the basic functions of government. second, determine should ban the use of contractors for moving in combat zones. if the u.s. government is going to engage actively in countries where the lives of its personnel are at high risk, we will need to build up our in-house capacity to staff those missions appropriately. as i have argued elsewhere, it makes good sense for the government to harness the energy, efficiency, and bottom- up creativity of the private sector in as many ways as possible, up to the point where marked imperatives begin to undermine the public interest. we have reached such a tipping point in iraq and afghanistan. iraq and afghanis

dr. burman.unless and until we at least establish the goal of phasing out private security contractors in these most difficult circumstances, as a practical matter will it ever develop the organic capacity to take over that function entirely? >> the u.s. government has an appreciable capacity to conduct security operations. it does not have sufficient capacity to, for instance, guard the u.s. state department in its missions abroad and so the state department contracts that out. the decision to bring all of that inside the government is an enormous one and i don't think the forcing function should be making the decision to call private security an inherently governmental function. instead, that would require dramatic changes in the structure of the department of defense or department of state. >> i'll come back to you, dr. nagl, in the next round. mr. soloway, in your statement you mentioned the following. measured against a number of inappropriate incidents or even alleged unlawful actions. it's

dr. burman? >> i agree with dr. avant. >> we have talked about budgets and they are going to come down but they are under a lot of pressure. there are a couple of ways where this could be done. one could be a light item that doesn't effect the rest of the budget which would drive d.o.d. and the state nuts, but it is doable. another is taking mr. gates' approach which says i'm finding money but i'm going to give it back to you. he says wousome of that money g to finding the kinds of people that we are talking about. right now they are talking about insourcing and talking about cutting budgets, and those two are not entirely coistent. how would you find the money? you can't throw your hands up in the air and say we can't find the money and this has been an academic debate? how do we find the money? >> the people we most need are contracting officers and their representatives. some of that is already happening. secretary gates, his primary source push is on those functions and i think that we can get that money from so